By Vinay. September 20, 2010.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to read the mind of the pretty girl you are talking to and find out if shes going to marry you !! 😉
or the mind of your client to find out whether he is going to give you Big Business??
Well, not on the same but something similar happened a couple of days back when I was in Bangalore to attend the website launch of Paul Writer (some great articles on marketing in there) In the end was a mind reading session by this person called Nakul Shenoy !!
Nakul Shenoy was introduced as one of India’s best and a world class mind reader ! He claimed that he can actually “read” minds, He asked for 8 volunteers to come on stage to prove that. Now I don’t trust these kind of guys, So I almost instantly volunteered.
The 8 of us had to introduce ourselves. He starting off asking us some questions, which we were supposed to answer instinctively without thinking, like described in the Malcolm Gladwell book Blink. He stood in front of the 1st person, looked at him probingly for a while and asked him “Up or Down” the reply was “down”. Next he got to me, gave me the same probing look for a while, I was eager for my question and shrugged my shoulders. He said “I haven’t asked you anything yet” for which I replied “I didn’t answer anything either”. Nakul said “You did !!” I thought he was just acting smart and then he shot my question which was “White or Black” and I answered “White”. So there you are.. just some random simple/silly questions shot at all 8 volunteers. after which he got back opened his file, did something. Got 8 sealed envelopes numbered 1 to 8 out and handed it over to a random person in the audience whom he declared The Judge !!
The rule was that the Judge was supposed to cut open each envelope and read out aloud the message that was inside !!
So the game starts, Nakul read out the first one, which was something to the effect..
Envelope 1, “Listen to the questions carefully and act responsibly, If not you will pay for it !! ”
So the stage was set !!
Envelope 2 read, “Any 4 of you take a step forward !!”
That was simple, I stepped up and so did four others, So we were 5 in all. Nakul asked if anybody wanted to step back. One person did. So we were 4 left !!
He now asked the other four to stand behind us !
Envelope 3 read, “The ones who did not act and take a step forward, Kindly get back to your seats”
So the 4 on the back returned to their seats..
Envelope 4 read, ”Any 2 of you raise your left hand”
I guess I pulled up first, we were 3 who had our hands up !! Again, On being asked if one would want to opt out, one of the gentlemen pulled his hand down !!
Envelope 5 read, “The ones with the raised hands stay !!”
The other two got back to their seats. So it was just the two of us now !! Me and my friend Vivek.
I was finding this kind of funny !! and then
Envelope 6 read, “One of you take jump ahead and strike a pose !”
That is something we both did, I guess I was a little slow. So was asked to stand back !!
Envelope 7 read, ”Its very easy to jump in front and hog the limelight but its tougher to stand back, So the one who stood back is the ‘Winner’ !! ”
Now I was the only one on stage , It was a little confusing but then I was fine “Winning” now Nakul wanted to give me a gift so he pulled out 4 books and said “Choose One”. I went through the title briefly they were on game theory and so on. The choice was upto me, I could choose any book and I picked the “Black Swan”
Nakul ran through the other book and showed me that nothing was handwritten written in there, he now asked me to open mine and I found the below (expect for my name which he wrote much later )
It said “The Impact of the Highly Improbable is rather Intriguing !” and “Thank You for making all the Right Choices !!” Signed Nakul Shenoy.
I was surprised !!
Now it gets more interesting
Nakul picked up one of the other books, asked a person form the audience to stand up,Nakul was going to run through the pages of this book and whenever he heard the word Stop!! he would stop at that particular page. He started running through the pages, There came the Stop !! Nakul asked if he was sure or should continue flipping , The person said “No, Stop it there” !! He gave him the book and asked him to read out the page number, It was 122/123
Now asked me to get to that page number in my book and said read the 2nd line, and I read out
and finally the Judge was asked to open the Envelope 8 which read :
I guess there were close to a 100 guests in the hall and we had all seen him handing over the sealed envelopes to the Judge. This was surely impressive !!
This surely freaked me out a bit, I dont believe in these things and there he was reading my mind !! Had a brief chat with Nakul after the show and kept thinking of it on the entire drive back to Mysore.
You must be thinking “How the hell did he do that??” well..now even I can read minds huh 😉
I eventually figured most of it !!! and i was thankful to Nakul for not revealing that part of my mind which was also looking at pretty chicks out there.
Now how I think he did it will be in my next blog !! until then do enjoy this case study on Royal Mysore Walks & Social Media written by your truly for Paul Writer.
Keep thinking guys !! It always helps 😉
Note: Article reproduced from When This Mind Reader Freaked Me Out !! – Royal Mysore Walks (WebArchive)
The Mind Reader 