So I was in sunny San Diego, California for a conference this past weekend. I met up with my old roomie from Chicago and his wife. We went to a good Mexican restaurant, had a Margarita and some good food and then we went to his apartment. Now my friend's wife is a big news addict and they have some Indian channels coming in through satellite one of which is Aaj Tak and she has this compulsive need to switch it on whenever she's home. So she puts it on and what follows is surreal. Imagine this, there is this seedy looking journalist who is reporting live from a town/village called Betul, MP about an astrologer who predicted that he will die between 3 and 4 PM that day.
The entire town has gathered around his home, and since it is also Karwa Chauth there is an additional dimension to the story (according to the reporter) and he interviews the wife asking her what has she asked from god on this day. Amidst promptings and verbal cues from other women surrounding her she says that she wants long life for her pati parmeshwar. This story gets almost 15 minutes of live time on the channel and at one time they break into a studio-reporter in the field format. Now you gotta be kidding me. Not only was it hilarious - it was actually pathetic that one of the leading news channels would cover such a story - live for quarter of an hour.
Of course, today I found out that the astrologer did not die after all. Reuters covered this story in its oddly enough section
here.
The funniest thing in the Reuters report is this
"Malviya's prediction is not the first of its type by an Indian astrologer. But in the past, crowds have beaten up astrologers when their predicted demise failed to occur."
Haa haaa - imagine getting beaten up because your own prediction of your own death was untrue.