What do they do?
As a young girl, Monika Chawla, now 45, wanted to become a dancer. She did manage to master the art and opened a dancing school, Mridang, and made her mark in wedding choreography. Tragically, however, she developed health problems and two surgeries later, she wasn’t fit any more to do what she loved best.
Having nothing to bank upon, Chawla turned her attention to tarot card reading, which basically involves interpreting the beautiful illustrations on a special deck of cards and predicting the future of people who come to you for ‘readings’. As cards give ‘solutions’ to a problem, many readers consider themselves to be healers too.
Learning the art was no mean task as there were no training centres or certified gurus to teach Chawla. “I went to learn card reading at a professional’s place in south Delhi. It was not a very nice experience. Luckily, after that I got to know about a tarot master, an Australian gypsy by the name of Gesenia Hanks, who was at that time staying in Greater Noida,” she says.
Convincing tarot master Hanks to take her as a pupil, too, proved to be somewhat difficult. Hanks gave her the Rider-Waite (the classic tarot deck) cards to place under her pillow for a few nights and “I was asked to chronicle all my dreams for three nights. After interpreting the dreams she was finally convinced. It is popularly said in the profession that the cards should accept you rather than you deciding to become a tarot card reader,” says Chawla.
You do not require any special qualification to become a tarot card reader. What matters is how well you vibe with your cards and how clearly you can interpret the messages from the 78 cards in a deck. This passion has led several qualified professionals to quit their jobs and take up tarot card reading fulltime. Dishaa, a Chandigarh-based reader, is a management graduate. It was her burning desire to explore the mystical world of card reading that made her quit her bank job. Similarly, the world of the occult had Seema Midha, an MSc in psychology from Banasthali University, Jaipur, hooked. “It helps if you have studied psychology,” says Midha.
Chawla, who belongs to a family of doctors, is an English honours graduate and a trained bharatanatyam dancer while another tarot master Jyoti Mishra is a postgraduate in psychology from Gorakhpur University. “I have also learnt hypnotherapy and Reiki and use all my knowledge (psychology, Reiki and hypnotherapy) to fix my clients’ problems,” says Mishra, who practises in Chankyapuri.
Where readings are concerned Chawla says she has to be prepared to handle a myriad queries. “You handle questions from CEOs who have suffered losses in the market, or a young girl who doesn’t know who to choose as a boyfriend from among her four male friends. Sometimes some stories can send chills down your spine,” she says.
Midha, like other tarot masters, too, gets clients ranging from businessmen, salaried people and housewives to young professionals, politicians and even TV and film personalities. “We all face some problems or the other. I didn’t know those people (read politicians) could be so insecure,” she says.
Such diversity in the mysteries she unravels makes her work exciting. “Even after ten years of reading the cards, work never gets repetitive. Each case is different; their problems are specific and need special attention. It never gets monotonous,” she adds.
Chawla always tries to be truthful whenever she reads the cards. “Before I start reading them, I tell my client that they’re not going to hear what they want to hear. My cards are sacred. If I predict some distressing story, I always purify the cards with my prayers,” she says.
