An Astrologer’s Day

Writer: R. K. Narayan, Indian writer

Characters:

1. An astrologer
2. Guru Nayak
3. The astrologer’s wife

Summary:

An astrologer earns his living through the business of fortune telling. With his forehead smeared with sacred ash and vermilion, and a saffron-colored turban around his head, he sits under a tree in a park and gives service to his customers. However, he is not an astrologer in reality; he doesn’t have any knowledge of astrology. He is just a pretender, but is smart enough to deceive his customers. He makes them speak for at least ten minutes, and then gives them some generalized inferences and predictions on the basis of the information provided by them. What he tells them becomes always right one way or other and thus astonishes them very much. All this is a result of his long practice and shrewd guesswork.

One evening, as the astrologer is about to pack up his equipment and return home, a man appears before him. After a bargain about payment for some time, the astrologer sets up to read the palm of the stranger. As he looks upon the face of the man carefully, he recognizes him. He is the man from his village, with whom he had quarreled once, and after stabbing him with a knife, he had pushed him into a well and had run away from the village. But the man doesn’t recognize the astrologer because of his changed appearance and the dim light in the park.

Stricken with fear, the astrologer doesn’t want to proceed, but his customer refuses to leave without having his fortune told. So, the astrologer tells him that his name is Guru Nayak and he was left for dead. Surprised, the man shows the scar on his chest and tells that he was saved by a passer-by, and now he has come to that town looking for the man who had left him for dead. He has been seeking revenge and wants the astrologer to tell him now where and when he can find that man. Very cleverly, the astrologer says that the man is already dead, crushed under a lorry, and that Guru Nayak should return to his village catching the next train to avoid some great danger again, and never come toward that direction again if he is to live for hundred years. Believing the astrologer and paying a little money, Guru Nayak leaves.

Reaching home, the astrologer tells his wife everything. The clever astrologer is able to save his life again through his shrewdness.

Theme: shrewdness