AFAR Magazine

Lisa Abend searches in India for a cure for her broken heart. It takes two temples, one elephant, a palm leaf astrologer, and the kind driver of a velour-lined taxi to make her whole again.

For hours as you drive toward Vaitheeswarankoil, there is nothing, and then suddenly there is too much, and all of it the same. Located in the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the town is composed mainly of ramshackle storefronts pressed tightly against each other, slowly decaying in the dusty swelter. Brightly painted signs, garish as any Las Vegas neon, mark them as Nadi astrology offices. There are also a handful of modest hotels, a few stalls dishing out sweet, milky coffee, and an immense temple that, with its ornate carvings and shadow-filled interiors, manages to be excessive and eerie all at once. But mostly there are Nadi stands.

I had come to Vaitheeswarankoil for Nadi. A branch of Hindu astrology native to Tamil Nadu, Nadi holds that the lives of all humans were inscribed in ancient times by sages on palm leaves, one leaf per person. Find the Nadi reader who can find your leaf, and it will all be there—the story of your life, including how everything turns out in the end. Which is what I desperately wanted to know.

Eighteen months earlier, my partner of 12 years had left me for a much younger woman. The man with whom I subsequently fell madly in love had suddenly remembered, months into our relationship, that he had a girlfriend.

In the wake of my exploding relationships, I felt as though I had been dropped unwittingly into a foreign country—one of those horrid, pre-1989 Soviet Bloc ones where everything is ugly, no one speaks your language, and every meal is an unending sequence of soggy fried meats. I felt, in other words, sickeningly alone. And once that feeling took hold, it was hard to believe that it would ever go away.

I could have done the Eat, Pray, Love thing and sought answers for my emotional crisis by committing myself to a rigorous program of Eastern spirituality for a year. But that would have required work and sacrifice. And I was way too depressed for that.

Which is why I went to Vaitheeswarankoil. I needed answers, and I needed them fast.