YSR Reddy Missing - Dead or Alive?

According to news sources Mr. Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, popularly known as YSR & chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, is missing since around 9:12 AM this morning. Search operations are going on. According to Times of India online edition, "From remote sensing satellites, fighter jets, UAVs, troops on the ground to barefoot deer-hunting tribals with bows and arrows- a mission of huge magnitude was underway on Wednesday night to trace YSR Reddy's missing helicopter." Everyone in India is asking the same question - what happened to YSR? Is YSR dead or alive?

As I don't have birth chart of YSR, natal astrology will not be of much of the use. In absence of birth details, horary astrology seemed the only resort. Horary astrology (Prashna Jyotish in Sanskrit) is a branch of astrology which is useful when birth details are not available. Some astrologers claim that horary is more accurate than the natal (birth chart) astrology.

So around 5PM today, I decided to cast horary chart to get the answer. Here are the query details for the horary chart -

Query: YSR dead or Alive?
Date of query: September 2nd, 2009
Time of query: 5:01 PM
Place of query: Agra, UP, India
Longitude: 78:00E
Latitude: 27:09N
Horary Number: 215

The detailed horary chart can be found here. Here is my analysis of the horary chart -

First house is house of overall well being. 8th house is the house of longevity. If these houses are connected with maraka (death giving) and badhaka (obstructing) houses, death is indicated.

In the present chart, ascendant sub lord is Saturn in 7th house. 2nd house and 7th house are called Maraka houses in Vedic astrology and presence of Saturn in 7th makes it Maraka. Saturn owns 12th and the 1st house. 12th house is the house of departure from this world & house of moksha etc., and indicates death if connected with maraka and badhaka houses. Saturn is in Nakshatra of Sun who is lord of 7th house and also posited in 7th house. So Saturn is a very strong Maraka planet.

Now see 8th house. 8th house sub lord is Venus. Venus is lord of 4th and 9th house and is situated in 6th house. According to Vedic astrology, for fixed ascendant, 9th house is the Badhaka house. Sixth house is the house of wound and diseases and generally gives indication of problem to the body. Venus is in the Nakshatra of Saturn and we have already talked about the fact that Saturn is a strong maraka planet.

Now let us analyze present dasa. Current maha dasa is of Moon who is lord of 6th house (disease/ wounds) and posited in 12th (departure from the world). Sub-period (bhukti) is of Venus and we have already talked about maraka and badhaka connections of Venus.

So to conclude, the chart doesn't present any good picture and chances of his survival looks bleak as per my analysis. I wish my analysis goes wrong. Quite a few of my fellow astrologers have predicted otherwise and I wish their predictions come out true. You can also read some of those analysis in the KP Astrology Discussion forum.

Note: This article is based on KP method of Horary astrology. KP Horary astrology uses an arbitrary number between 1 to 249 for calculating house positions and the above chart has been calculated using horary number 215.

Will Saina Nehwal Bring Us Another Gold?

Abhinav Bindra, by winning the gold medal, has not only made us proud, but also increased our expectations. We Indians, who never expected anything from Olympics, now expecting more gold. Olympics are not over yet, so it seems a fair expectations.

I am not following Beijing Olympics closely, so I don't know who all are there in the race. Two name that news channels are talking about are Rajyavardhan Singh Rathod, - shooting and Saina Nahwal - badminton. I thought it would be good to give a try to horary astrology in figuring out what is the possibility of Saina Nahwal winning the medal? What astrology has to say on Saina Nehwal's success

In absence of birth time what to do? Astrology has provided certain tools to answer such a question. In my astrology research forum, we tried various methods and received fair bit of success. Though I must caution that the success rate is much lower than natal astrology (analysis of birth chart). The present method that I am using is called Horary astrology or Prashna Jyotish. In this method, I am asking this question to myself

"Will Saina Nahwal Win a Medal?"

In a sub-branch of Horary astrology called KP Horary (Krishnamurthi Paddhati Horary), you require one arbitrary number between 1-249 to answer any question. I have chosen '55' in order to get my answer. Also note that you can answer only one question at a time.

The query details are as follows -
Question: Will Saina Nehwal Win A Medal?
Date of Question: August 11, 2008
Time of Question: 7:07:40 PM IST
Place of Question: Agra

Now I want to talk a little technical, so if you are not an Astrologer, you can skip this section. The cuspal positions are as follows -

1st Cusp: Mercury Rasi, Rahu Nakshatra, Mars Sub
6th Cusp: Mars Rasi, Mercury Nakshatra, Mercury Sub
11th Cusp: Mars Rasi, Ketu Nakshatra, Mercury Sub

You can also cast the detailed KP Hoaray Chart from AstroSage.com.

For judging win, we need to consider house number 1 (self efforts), 6 (12th to 7th, defeating the opponent) and 11th (fulfilment of desire). I think 3rd house is also important as it shows courage.
Now you can see that Mars and Mercury are repeating quite often and I believe that they want to communicate something to me. Mars is in 3rd house (house of courage), being lord of 11 (fulfilment of desire) and 6th (defeating opponent). Mars is in Nakshatra of Sun, lord of 3rd in 2nd. So generally Mars is well placed. None of the detrimental houses viz 5, 7 & 12th are connected. 5, 7, & 12 are bad because these are good for opponent who is represented by 7th house.

Now have a look at Mercury. Mercury is in 3rd being lord of 1st and 4th. Out of these three 3rd and 1st are good for this question. Mercury is in Nakshatra of Ketu, the planet posited in 2nd, neutral to the question.

Mercury dasa, Rahu bhukti, and Mercury antardasa also looks OK to me, if not the great.

So according to my analysis, Saina Nehwal is going to win the medal. It is very difficult to predict precisely which medal it is going to be, but seeing the planetary positions, she is definitely a contender for Gold.

I wish her and India all the best.

[Updates]
Saina Nehwal lost and now out of the medal race. I take full responsibility of the failure of my predictions. While writing above post, I mentioned "I must caution that the success rate is much lower than natal astrology (analysis of birth chart)". Failure in above prediction also shows that more research is needed before we can predict outcome of such events. We are also looking into the reason for failure in the KP research forum and if you are interested, you can see some of the threads here -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/k_p_system/message/18781
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/k_p_system/message/18758