Chandigarh, May 5
Madan Gupta Spatu has made the best of the genetic inheritance he had received from his writer father and astrologer grandfather. Madan Gupta has equally been doing a great job in making the ‘science’ of astrology accessible to people.
Though his new ‘avtaar’ as an astrologer is new, his name as a freelance journalist, short story writer, TV critic and the script writer of telefilm and serials that touches the sensitive issues like dowry problems, relationships, and Kashmir problem have become a household name over the years.
“I have written more than 5,000 articles for all the leading newspapers in this region,” says Spatu.
“If I wanted to be a full-time journalist, but what discouraged me was the less amount of pay during those days. So instead I joined a managerial post in Punjab National Bank,” he adds.
However, the dry job of banking could not curb the writer in him. Spatu’s literary career, which started with his first short story collection, “Neer ki Ore”, was selected by the National Book Trust of India for an International Book Fair in Mauritius in 1989, has come a full circle with him getting a citation and gold medal in the World Hindi Millennium Conference for his standing contribution to Hindi literature recently.
It is the streak of fluidity in his character that motivates Spatu to experiment with different media. Once the television made an appearance, Madan Gupta tried his hand at script writing and successfully too.
Woven around social issues or human relationships, Spatu’s stories for serials, documentaries and telefilms like “Harey Inqlab Ke Baad”, Udaan Ke Liye Tyar, Tum Akeli Nahin, Bandhak, Sahar and Basheera, received good response.
So what is the link between Madan Gupta as a writer and as an astrologer? “The science of reading the celestial bodies and their influence on human beings as well as the world surface was taught to me by my late grandfather, Vishwanath Gupta, but laid dormant over the years due to work pressure”, says Spatu, who has left his banking job to embrace astrology as a profession.
“Astrology is a pure science that owes its origin to astronomy but too many amateurs practising it and many others using this art to make money has given the skeptics a chance to look down upon this subject as something baseless,” says Spatu. “My aim is to revive some of its lost glory by making people aware of its scientific base,” he added.
