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Dial-a-Priest

Kamla Bhatt

The puja was supposed to start at 5.30 pm, but Umashankar Dixit, the pujari from the Shiva-Vishnu koil in Livermore (in Silicon Valley), was running late. He called from his mobile to inform the host that he would be there in an hour's time.

Dixit is no ordinary pujari. He is a Silicon Valley priest who sometimes gets stock options from his clients for providing them astrological advice. His involvement with a start-up is from the "ground floor", as they say in the valley. He helps his clients to choose their company's name based on their nakshatras (stars), suggests appropriate muhuratams and even advises them on when to file for their initial public offers.

Sometimes he offers tips on stocks to buy, complete with ticker symbols!

Dixit walks in at 6.30 pm dressed in a silk veshti and kurta. He quickly washes up and starts the Satyanarayana puja.

His discourse is peppered with hi-tech terms like stocks, options and portfolio. At one point, he comments: "After June 2 the economy will pick up and the stock market will do well."

A majority of those attending are young engineers employed at Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Exemplar, KPMG and Cadence Design System.

While conducting the puja, his mobile rings. The first time he ignores the ring, but the second time he switches off the ringer and calmly returns to his rituals.

A native of Bangalore, Dixit studied at the famous Sringeri Mutt in Karnataka and then in Bangalore under Putta Narasimha Shastrigal. He came to the Shiva Vishnu Koil in Livermore in 1991 as their pujari, and continues to work there at the weekends.

His Ganapathi puja is a sellout packed with engineers and entrepreneurs seeking the blessings of Vigneshwara, destroyer of obstacles.

In 1994, when K B Chandrasekhar and B V Jagadeesh started Exodus Communications, they called Dixit to perform the puja. As dakshina (fee), they gave him about 1,000 stock options. He sold the stocks and used the money for a temple that is currently under construction in Bangalore.

Since then, he has performed pujas and helped select names for some of the top technology companies, including Medplexus Inc, R-Cube Systems, Coolforms, Airflash, Catamaran Communications, E-hoho and Avakai Information Network.

Dixit begins his day by logging on to the Internet and spends an hour to see what is happening in the financial markets.

He hits the road in his Honda Accord, crisscrossing Silicon Valley, sometimes performing a puja for Vijay Mallaya's new Lamborghini in upscale Sausalito or a grihapravesh (house-warming) in Saratoga. "In the last two years I have performed about 200 grihapravesh pujas in Saratoga, Evergreen and Cupertino," he points out. All these are upscale neighbourhoods where a house costs $1 million and above.

The Durga Siddhivinayaka Temple currently under construction in Bangalore is Dixit's dream project. After that he will begin working on a hospital project in his village near Bangalore.

He travels to India an average of 5 times a year to perform pujas.

This dial-a-priest's monthly mobile phone runs into hundreds of dollars. "I have about 40 messages on my voicemail at home from yesterday," he says before getting into his Honda after a quick pranaam.

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