Jumaani said he came up with the names for some of last year’s biggest hits, including one with the simple addition of an extra letter to the spelling of Mumbai in the film Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai.
The services of witch doctors remain popular in multicultural Malaysia, while in hi-tech Japan, Shinto priests hold purification rites for new bullet trains and many entrepreneurs are said to seek the advice of palm readers and star gazers.
Perhaps nowhere defers to the stars quite like Sri Lanka, where the country’s name was once modified to “Shri Lanka” by then president Ranasinghe Premadasa, after astrologers warned bad vibes from the original spelling augured ill for him.
Both the military and the Tamil Tiger rebels, crushed in 2009, were said to have consulted astrologers before mounting attacks against each other at the height of the separatist war.
“People don’t always have the power to solve their problems so they resort to superstition as a way out,” said sociologist Chudamani Basnet in Nepal. “The belief in a higher power that you can appease by offering it something can be reassuring.”
Jumaani even has a suggestion on ending India’s violent insurgency in the border region of Kashmir.
“They should change its name to Kashmiar,” he said. “Nothing else has worked so far, why not give this a shot?”
RSS