Readers who went looking for the author.

I was delighted to see a book titled Science of Fortune at the house of my friend Mr Selvaretnam. At once it struck me that I should meet Guruswamyji. From 2007 I tried to arrange a meeting, and it did not materialise until 2008.

My happiness truly began in 2008, when I met the Guru soon after my wedding. The corrections he advised were small on paper and considerable in effect. I have recommended the book and the consultation to colleagues since, and I have yet to hear of anyone who regretted it.

I am an allopathic physician and have practised in the United States for the last thirty-seven years. It was my good fortune that I consulted Pandit Sethuraman in the early seventies.

Not only I but also my wife and my son were immensely benefited by his numerological advice. Many hurdles and challenges that were hindering my progress in a distant country were overcome with an ease I could not account for at the time — and, as a man trained to look for mechanisms, I have thought about it a great deal since.

I am delighted to write about how numerology, as expounded in this book, helped my wife and me achieve success in our professional lives — which in turn positively affected our children and set them on their own path early.

The year was 1966. Despite earning two degrees — an MA in Economics and a Bachelor of Laws — from the University of Madras, I could not find the footing my qualifications should have guaranteed. The correction made to my name preceded a change in circumstance that I had stopped expecting.

Panditji's counsel was sought at every consequential turn of our affairs. It was never theatrical, and it was never wrong in a way that mattered. He asked precise questions, took his time, and gave an answer he was willing to stand behind.

That, more than any prediction, is what earned him the confidence of families and institutions across three generations.

A single book, lent and never returned, changed the direction of a family. I have replaced my copy four times for exactly that reason — it does not stay on the shelf.

What convinced me was not the predictions but the method. The reasoning is set out plainly enough that a sceptical reader can follow it and check it against his own life.

I came with the ordinary questions: work, marriage, a son's education. I left with a correction to my name and a calendar of dates to avoid and to prefer.

The instruction was practical and unsentimental. There was no request that I believe anything; only that I follow the spelling exactly and report back in a year. I did, and I have been reporting back ever since.

What struck me first was the refusal to flatter. He told me what the numbers said, including the parts I did not want to hear, and he declined to soften them for my comfort.

In a field crowded with people who tell you what you came to hear, that is the rarest quality there is — and it is the reason the family's reputation has survived seventy years.