Kamath’s Cafe

Wednesday, December 15th, 2004

The seer of tomorrows

The name is Menon, as in phenomenon.

Sunita Menon’s name is scrawled in a child-like hand across a dark wooden plate and mounted on a pine door. You ring the bell and wait. The door opens and you enter, bare footed, into a magical world.

Wind chimes tinkle as the door opens into a waiting area. A large Laughing Buddha and a stone Ganesha are ensconced amidst bamboo plants, rose petals, candles and diyas. A gypsy’s scrawl runs across a canvas mounted on one wall. On another wall, there is a Ganesha festoon. There is a stack of film magazines, two coffee table film books and amid the tinsel newsprint, copies of Mata Amritanandmayi’s journal. A photograph of Mata adorns the wall.

You sit there in silence as piped chants reverberate around you. They emanate from a wall-mounted chrome Nakamichi 3-CD changer, which sticks out in this mystic chamber like Hagrid would in a Bang & Olufsen store. You wonder if, at some point, your chair will swivel into the wall and you will speed through a tunnel into the robe clad presence of Sunita Menon.

You are wrong. You are so darn wrong.

To the chiming of chimes, the door opens yet again and in walks a comely, caramel complexioned young lady in black jeans and a New York Yankees tee
shirt (black). She is followed by a man bearing a slim HP laptop (also black). In that instant, you forget all other questions you want to ask of this seer and merely check if she is free to go out for coffee. You don’t know quite yet if Sunita Menon is soup for the soul but boy, she seriously is candy for the eye.

You quickly banish the thought for fear that she may read your mind. If indeed she has, then her face does not betray this and you experience your first ever metaphysical brush off. Thus suitably chastened, you take a seat at Sunita’s glass round table. This is the inner chamber, the sanctum. There is a large Balaji portrait, backlit and glowing. There are Ganeshas on the wall, the table, the shelves. There are more bamboo plants, more candles and more diyas. There is a five-headed Hanuman. All manner of Feng Shui charms are sprinkled around the room.

Sunita is warm but matter of fact about the exotica around her. “They are all gifts of goodwill. The Balaji was gifted by Ekta (Kapoor), the feng shui frog by a woman in Singapore, that jar there is Gangajal, this hand painted coffee mug is a gift from an eight-year-old, the Panchmukhi Hanuman was given to me by a Baba in Allahabad for my protection. This evil eye is from Turkey.” She trails off. There is not a charm, a bracelet or any other spiritual accessory on her person. “People ask me to wear some charm or evil eye that will protect me. But I feel that your mind is the most powerful weapon to counter any force.”

She then concerns herself with her laptop and two sets of tarot cards. A tiny rudraksha bracelet sits atop one set of cards. One set is dark, one is checkered. In these cards, Sunita can see your life, dark and checkered as it were.

There is method to her mystique, science to her art. She starts by asking your date, place and time of birth and then her left hand works the laptop while the right hand deals the cards and this stranger who you met barely five minutes ago begins telling you intimate details about your life.

She even demystifies the process telling you how Indians follow moon signs and not sun signs, what sun sign corresponds to what moon sign, how Saturn enters everyone’s life no matter how high and mighty and powerful. Or, as REM said, everybody hurts.

Hurt. Sunita deals with it every day, every working minute. Some hurt financially. Some hurt emotionally. Some hurt physically. Everybody hurts. And they flock to Sunita in search of balm for the soul. Ensconced among the Gods and the bamboo plants, Sunita has seen the seamier side of Mumbai. Affairs of the heart, affairs of the mart, people cheating on their business partners, people cheating on their married partners. David Geffen once remarked that one is as sick as one’s secrets. At Sunita’s chamber, the secrets come tumbling out, the spleen is vent and the tears pour like rain.

Sunita points to the round glass table. “This table has seen so many tears. Every day, I go through at least two boxes of tissue. Each time a person leaves, I wipe the table clean and it is symbolically like wiping off their tears. It’s a good thing the table is glass. Glass washes, wood absorbs.”

The table itself has a history. “It was my dining table at home. When I first started, people would visit me at home. Then, word spread and it became impossible to accommodate people at home. I actually had to get an office. Then, mom said ‘how will you pay for the electricity, the expenses, the assistant?’ and so I started to charge a token fee. Most sessions just went on and on, so I had to restrict each session to half an hour.”

The seer’s tech tools and process orientation has taken her to prosperity (it often takes weeks to get an appointment), a TV show, a celebrity clientele featuring the likes of Ekta Kapoor and Karan Johar. (Both of whom, coincidentally, start their movie and serial titles with the letter k. Maybe not coincidentally.)

“There are no coincidences,” she says. “Everything happens for a reason. I used to be a stewardess. It was a great job, I was young, I was free, I was travelling all over the world. One day, I went to visit a friend who was ailing in Dublin. During my stay, I went to a seer who told me I would some day do what she was doing. It was spooky. I was 21 and didn’t even fully comprehend what she was saying. But she had said a few other things too, not very pleasant, and they all came true. So I returned to her and that is where this journey began.”

From time to time, she journeys to faraway lands just to get away from the intense pressure and demands on her time in Mumbai. She ends up drawing people wherever she goes. It’s ordained. But each land has different questions. “In Bali, the people are so basic. They ask basic questions like what they can do to feed themselves and what they can do for their country. They are so happy to be Hindu. They talk about the Ganga, Hindu Gods, the Mahabharata. In Dubai, the only thing people want to know is when they can make money and return to India. In Singapore, people are obsessed with their careers. Everything else is secondary. I travel nearly three months a year. I try and blend in where possible. Become one with the people. On a recent trip to Africa, I dressed African, even wore braids in my hair. They actually thought I was African. I occasionally go to seers myself and pretend I’m just visiting. That’s great fun but it doesn’t always work. Most of them can tell who you are and what you do.”

When in Mumbai, she unwinds by going for long walks. She walks to the Siddhi Vinayak temple thrice a week (it takes over an hour from her home in Bandra). She hangs with a group of close friends and loves nothing more than a good giggle. She never talks shop and will never name names. She is the keeper of secrets, the seer of tomorrows.

She speaks of a recent trip to New York and is amazed at the questions she got from the locals. “New York is getting more and more spiritual. The people ask questions about family, children, love, God.” 9/11 seems to have had a cleansing effect on the city and made people aware of the things that truly matter.

Ironically, Mumbai seems to be turning into the city New York once used to be. The value system is breaking down all around. Instant gratification is the order of the day at work and at play. You step out of Sunita’s office into a leafy lane in suburban Mumbai. It is raining. The street, like Sunita’s glass table, is wet. Mumbai’s tears are in need of wiping. It will take more than two boxes of tissue.

Mumbai. It used to be the city that never sleeps. From there, it went to being a city that sleeps around. Now, it is the city that silently weeps.

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