Uri Geller Xposed

While we were in Sea Sands, I was fascinated by Uri Geller's story in the book Strange Stories and Amazing Facts. I think gullibility is in Indian blood. We believe blindly in ESP etc. more readily than the folks in the west, I think.

I remember once a quack showed up as a guest at one of the kind-hearted residents at Sea Sands (this colony was filled with well-educated academicians, THEN). This snake oil salesman claimed that he spent many years in the foot hills of Himalayas, and that he found panacea. People (esp. house wives) lined up to buy his magic potion and paid up to Rs. 2,000 for ~ 100 grams of a light green colored powder.

This was long time ago when Rs. 2,000 was a lot of money for middle class people (even now, it is a good chunk of money). I estimate that this charlatan coolly made fifty grand and disappeared like in 15 days. Of course, he told the bakras that it would take a couple of weeks for this medicine to start working! I heard that Dr. Vaidyanathan of # 14 Sea Sands challenged that if the medicine works, he would quit his job - but his wife bought some davai anyway.

The following (old) video on Uri Geller reminded me of the story above. The last part of the video on psychic healers in Philippines was very well presented in the movie Man on the Moon (story of Andy Kaufman). R.E.M.'s title song for this movie is one of my favorites (see music video after following Geller's).

Though I was tempted to (out of curiosity), I had never been to a psychic or a Tarot card reader. But if I do go to a psychic, before I cough up ~$25, I would ask them to show me the annual average rate of return on on their stock portfolio!


REM Video - Man on the Moon