Delhiwale: Between the lines with the Paharganj palm reader

Satyapal Kapoor, is a 54-year-old palm reader in Paharganj. He can be often spotted soliciting customers. But what happens when we ask him to read his own future.

This is a rare sight. The palm reader is reading his own palm.

Satyapal Kapoor has been a familiar sight in Paharganj for 30 years. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

We are with Satyapal Kapoor. A familiar sight in Paharganj for 30 years, he sits at his roadside stall on Main Bazaar gently asking passersby, “Would you like to know your future?”

We have always spotted the 54-year-old palm reader with foreign tourists. “Sixty per cent of my clients are foreigners,” he says, adding that foreigners usually ask him about relationships and love lives while Indians ask about money and children. Since the street is noisy, Mr Kapoor takes his customers to a quiet bookshop run by his cousin.

One afternoon, we followed him there and asked him to read his own hand. Mr Kapoor looked puzzled but agreed. This is what he said his life would be after five years: “I will no more be in India. I’ll be somewhere in Europe. My prosperity and my happiness will take shape in a foreign country.”

We ask the palm reader, “Have you ever been to a foreign country?”

He shakes his head but “I’ll die in a foreign country and at the moment of my death, I will have no family member around me. I’ll be utterly alone. My lines say so.”