Dear Shakespeare, It's all in our stars...

Around my under-grad's first year time, my mausi started learning astrology for reading horoscopes and all of us, driven by curiosity, happily served as the guinea pigs for that newly acquired knowledge. It was fun, amusing, and sometimes baffling also; but it mostly remained a superstition. Although I got my horoscope read and interpreted, I seldom believed those prognostications. I was, at best, an agnostic.

In the coming years, we witnessed many a predictions and foretelling coming true - almost as many as that went wrong. But as another fun thing, I started learning astrology and horoscope reading myself. Although I never learnt it too well, thanks to my impatience and tight time-schedules, but I managed to understand some bits and pieces of the puzzle.

In the past four years, I've done the readings for a few friends as well as have been keeping a watch on my own horoscope, in addition to consulting with some more enlightened ones. And over the period, I've got so many predictions correct about the looming crises and the good times coming that I somehow stand converted into believing in the 'science' of astrology.

Horoscope reading has benefited me in at least one dimension - I understand now that neither good nor bad times are permanent. And with astrological guidance, I can even estimate the duration of such phases. Sure, it helps in keeping me cool through the ups and downs of life. So what was fun, superstition, and unscientific once, I have no reasons to not believe it now.

Therefore, Dear Brutus, do not believe that Shakespeare fella (or that Cassius either), when they say, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars..."