Reading your Future, Knowing your Fortune!

One of man's oldest and unattained curiosities is to know what lies in the future for him. Even the most advanced technologies cannot confirm us about the things that will happen in future. However, in Gulistan, one of Dhaka's busiest commercial districts, Shoshodhor Gonok has been unveiling the secrets from the future for past 20 years. His only instrument for doing this impossible task is an opaque, single-handle magnifying glass which he uses to decipher the curious lines drawn on the human palm. With a fee of only twenty takas, he describes elements from a person's life by reading his or her palm – events from the future, not to mention hidden truths, personal traits and dangerous secrets!

If by any chance, Shoshodhor Gonok notices signs of negativity in his customer's fate, he prescribes the person to wear talismans to evade the unseen danger with the condition that the person will buy the talisman from Shoshodhor only. And for this additional advice, he charges another fee of Taka 20 excluding the cost of talisman. “The talismans are made of holy Ashtadhatu which prevents the Saturn to cast his evil eye on a person. Saturn is the cause of all evil things in the human life,” says Shoshodhar. The cost of the talisman ranges between 100 to 500 takas, depending on the nature of the hazard it fights off.

For over two decades, Shoshodhar, the fortune-teller, has been providing a one stop service of revealing future, the hidden hazards and providing the means to prevent them as well. However, he himself has miserably failed to evade the hazards in his own life. Shoshodhor has been evicted several times from many areas of Dhaka by the law enforcers for running illegal and a fraudulent business. He earns only around 3,000 tk per month and with this meagre income he has to run a family of five – his wife and three children. But as a member of the Gonok caste of Hinduism, Shoshodhor cannot leave his ancestral practice of palmistry. Once evicted from a particular area, sexagenarian Shoshodhor can be seen in another part of the capital with his magnifying glass and a placard translating to, “You can read your future here.”