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As a 20 year lad I had declared that all philosophy is psychology. As a 70 year old I still maintain that. The intervening 50 years gave me enough proof of my hypothesis. My romance with palmistry had started at that time. I believe no other 'Shastra' gives a more accurate picture of the psychology of a person than palmistry. One hard look at the palm and you can read the person like a book. Astrology gives far more information about the likely events in the life of a person and their timing, but to judge the character and temperament of a person from astrology is a Herculean task. Only after great deliberation, a very experienced astrologer can make out the mental make-up of the native from the horoscope chart, with the same certainty. Assum- ing that the Moon gives away the temperament of the. native, after all how many astrologers look at the Nakshatra deities and other nomenclature connected with Moon in Drekkana, Dashamamsha, Dwadashamsha and Shashtyamsha to really get to the real meaning of Native's Moon. My father was an editor with a daily newspaper. He used to get some books on palmistry for review. That job done, knowing my interest, he would pass on the books to me. All the books were in Hindi, and being a designer and printer by profession I had developed a discerning eye to immediately see how poorly those books were produced. By the looks of them, I abhorred to read those books. The diagrams were drawn so poorly that they would fail to make the point for which they were drawn. Though they pretend- end to be on Indian Samudrik shastra, yet most of them contained western palmistry as espoused by Cheiro who had studied palmistry in India. Whatever content they had on Indian palmistry was more of a mumbo-jumbo and nothing was definitive. Then I came across Benham's Laws of Scientific Hand Reading. The systematic presentation impressed me. Then I read Cheiro's Language of the Hand. The English was so delightful that I, like innumerable other readers of the book across the globe, considered it the bible of palmistry, although, like the first love, my preference was still for Benham. Years passed. I accidentally came to know that in my city there have started some classes on Astrology. I immediately joined the (ICAS) classes. I had heard by then that Astrology is a much bigger Shastra, and it does not suffer from the shortcomings of palmistry, such as timing of events. Another love affair started and is growing stronger as I get older. In the year 2002, I happened to go to Fairfield, the city of Maharshi Mahesh Yogi in US, with Guru Karvey ji. Guru ji has a unique siddhi of telling anyone's full horoscope without asking for any details. In fact the native does not have to be present in front of him. The American astrologer who had organized the event was undergoing divorce proceedings those days. His then wife had thrown out all his books. He 'requested' me to take any number of books that I wanted. I picked up 7-8 books on palmistry from the huge heap. Those were all books written by westerners. I was very impressed by the overall quality and clarity of the books. In times to come these inspired me to write my own Lessons in Palmistry. By now I had started teaching palmistry with ICAS, Delhi Chapter-L With students of palmistry, I am sharing in the present book, whatever best I came across from Indian or western authors. Besides pouring my heart out in this book I have included the choicest selections from what appealed to my reason and stood the test of experience. This book contains the Sutras (the original meaning) as against the Bhashya so many books give. Gita is like a sutra, innumerable people have given their own bhashya, as per their understanding of the sutra. The book explains the technical aspects of palmistry. How a practitioner would deliver the palm reading to his client is a very different ball game. The student will do well to read the last chapter-My Experiments with Palmistry in a Foreign Land. It illustrates how the desh, kaal and paatra influence the reading that is actually useful to the client. An incident comes to my mind in this connection. We, a bunch of 5-6 boys and 5-6 girls in the age group of 22-25 years were going to Goa from Bombay (it was still called Bombay in 70s) for a week of holidays. I personally had not known anyone from the group except the organizer. Coming to know that I dabbled in palmistry, one very beautiful girl from the group who had just started modeling came for a reading. I told her that she should marry a boy selected by her parents and not herself£ Please recall that about 45-50 years back, it used to be a big issue among the young crowd whether they would have a love marriage or an arranged one. She narrated my reading to her friend who dropped in next for the reading. To her I told that you can marry whoever you choose. As you have rightly understood they were all in the marriageable age group. If you read this book carefully you would know what technical aspects I found in the palms of the two girls to warrant two opposite readings. Once I was given a book on palmistry for writing a review in an astrological magazine. I found the book to be so atrociously written by the teacher of that course that it was beneath my integrity and honesty to recommend it to any reader. The idea of writing a standardized book on palmistry germinated in my mind at that moment If errors or advice for improvement in this book are brought to my notice, I would be willing to mend it the soonest.