WHEN I LEAVE THE HOTEL - an hour after entering in a foul mood and with a stinking hangover - I am electric with delight and, for the first time in my life, I actually skip down Jaffe Road. I have just spent an hour in the presence of the astonishing Ramakrishna Sarathy - a leading Indian palm reader/face reader/astrologer - and I feel like I have just witnessed a miracle.
Sarathy's recent visit to the SAR went largely unnoticed. His name doesn't even appear on the Internet (the man can't be that great, I think, when the fax lands on my desk) and nobody at the New Age Shop seems to have heard of him either. However, it seems that despite the marketing vacuum, and perhaps part of the reason for it, Sarathy is the real thing.
The Dehli-based Indian seer became widely known when he was tracked down in 1980 for an interview for current affairs TV programme 60 Minutes. The Australian edition of the show had heard about a man who had been travelling the world since 1972, advising politicians, world leaders, artists, celebrities and business people about their future paths in life. The show was especially interested in his apparent ability to read people's futures through photographs.
'A journalist came and met me in Delhi when my office was in a five-star hotel, as a consultation room,' explains Sarathy, 64, when I meet him at the end of his two-week stay. He was conducting readings at Wan Chai's Novotel Century Hotel.
'They brought a lot of photographs and gave them to me, I didn't know who they were. They said 'these are politicians and businessmen and we want to know what will happen in the next election - you select'. I selected three people and two I gave a lot of preference. One man was not even a member of parliament - I didn't know that - and I said he will be prime minister in 1982, 83. They all laughed and said this man is not an MP, his Labor Party could not even dream of coming to power.'
The photograph was of future Australian prime minister Bob Hawke.