“She’s beautiful and her tarot reading is uncanny.” These eight words by the head of an ad agency led me to meet Madhushree. She was 23 going on 24, but the wisdom she dispensed was that of a granny’s: from ‘tarot’s taught me to live life looking at the brighter side’ to ‘you can change your destiny’ to ‘your mind can see everything’.
This seeming disconnect was rationalised by her mother Dr Prabha N Wadiyar: “When I conceived her, I had a vision of an elderly Tibetan lady tugging at my clothes and asking if she can travel with me.” Madhushree was born nine months later. “Today’s children have extra ordinary powers. They are violet children.”
What started off as a casual intuitive session with friends and family eventually became professional from the year 2000. Madhushree’s first professional event was for Egos (now defunct pub) in June 2000 as a crystal ball gazer. She was a part of Astro-Night conducted in Mysore by Planet X on Dec 31, 2002.
Her tarot card reading and crystal ball gazing has led many multinational companies to invite her for get-together parties and tea breaks during the seminars. Some of them include biggies like Hewlett Packard, Intel, Accenture, Sun Microsystems and GE. She has been doing tarot card reading for the Taj Residency for more than two years. A few customers plan their visit to Bangalore only to have their life read by her (today, ofcourse she’s living with her husband in the US while her mom manages it in Bangalore). The secret of her success? Just three lines of approach: She tells you ‘where you are, why you are stuck and where you should be heading.’
Between themselves, the mother-daughter duo has been consulted by more than ten thousand people in the past five years, including film producers, writers, actors and industrialists. At one time, she read tarot for six hours non-stop and ended up reading the futures of about 60 people. Does that drain her mentally and physically? She has her safeguards: “I wear a beaded necklace and headgear that covers my third eye.”
And then, there are the occasional disbelievers in all things supernatural. “Out of 60 people I meet, atleast one person doesn’t believe in tarot or crystal gazing,” she candidly admits. “But after a week or ten days, they come back to me saying what I said became true.”
The tarot cards don’t lie; the interpreter could. “There have been cases where the tarot card readers have lied that the person will die or meet with an accident if someone doesn’t perform a certain ritual that involves a lot of money,” explains her mother.
Tarot reading is anything but that. “The basis of tarot is to transform people’s lives for the better, change their thinking patterns and solve their life’s problems,” says Madhushree. “I have seen my friends getting transformed right before my eyes. From being shy and negative-minded, they have become extroverts brimming with positive energy. Non communicative parents and children have come together after two to three sessions of tarot.”
Her best success story was when she received email greetings on New Year’s Eve from over 160 people from around the world. Madhushree’s clientele ranges from young working professionals to CEOs of top companies. That makes it anywhere between a 25-year-old and a 40-year-old.
What do the cards really tell her? At a CEO Enclave, she was flown down by the company to cast her uncanny eye on the participants. And most CEOs picked up cards that showed them who they indeed were. “They picked up the world or the sun card… all signifying that they had reached the pinnacle of success and they should get into something new.”
So what’s their problem? Most of them had one or both of these problems: extra marital affairs or the fear of losing their reputation.
She’s not Jane-come-lately and neither is she reading tarot for a living. Madhushree’s now employed with a healthcare firm in the US. She graduated in chemical engineering from Ramaiah College with the Best Achiever award. In twelfth standard, she won a rolling trophy in maths. Here’s a lady who takes her education as seriously as her supernatural ability to foresee things and alert you before it’s too late. Ofcourse, you can’t change your destiny, but you can minimise the impact.
If you want to know more, you could reach US-based Madhushree on madhushree(dot)tarot(at)gmail.com or her Bangalore-based mom Prabha on 91-80-9845141886.
