Chapter 6: Oh To Be An Aries
The story
Of all the things I inherited from my upbringing,
astrology was never meant to be the most
powerful. And yet, here we are. The stars –
distant, silent, and vaguely judging – seemed to
follow me all the same.
I was bestowed my astrological fate at birth
by the midwife. Then a pavement, semi naked
astrologer, in a saffron loin cloth who had letters to his name formally declared, “You are Aries, like a tiger”. The logic quite suited who I wanted to be, the firestarter of the zodiac. A little wild. A little loud. Bursting with opinions and ready to fight for them – even when they might be wrong.
Astrology in India isn’t just entertainment –
it’s biography, career planning, marriage
forecasting, and in many cases, spiritual
roadmap. It decides whether your wedding goes
ahead, whether your baby is named Asha or
Priya, and whether you should leave the house
on Wednesday. And although I always had a
certain scepticism, I couldn’t help but enjoy the
mythology of being an Aries. A ram, a tiger,
a ball of cosmic fire. Who wouldn’t want that?
It was a beautiful delusion – and like most
beautiful delusions, it lasted just long enough to
leave a dent.
Then, as the song tells it, came the revelation:
some fortune-telling traveller (and later, cold
science) declared I was born just after midnight
– and under Greenwich Mean Time, I wasn’t an
Aries after all. I was Pisces. A fish.
A fish! All softness and introversion, intuition
and watery depths. The tiger in me snarled at
this indignity. I wasn’t made for ponds. I was
made for flames. But astrology, like identity, is
rarely clear-cut. I became trapped in a lifelong
metaphysical tug-of-war: the tiger versus the
trout. The bold versus the bashful. The believer
versus the realist.
The song Oh to Be an Aries is, at heart, a comedy
of contradictions. It winks at the oddities of
astrological faith, but it also explores something
deeper: our need for story. Our need to be
something that makes sense. “Aries” gave me
permission to be loud, defiant, and full of reckless optimism. “Pisces” felt like a cosmic clerical might – and the stories we spin around them – can be life changing. For better or worse.
In the final verse, a tongue-in-cheek twist:
modern artificial intelligence, having none
of astrology’s poetry but all of its precision,
confirms what I always suspected. My birth
coordinates are restored, my Aries fire
re-ignited. The cosmos is back in
alignment – or at least, I’ve decided
it is. Sometimes, believing in your own mythology is more important than whether
it’s “true.”
Like Lehrer’s songs, this one pokes at superstition with a sharp stick, while secretly admiring the human need for magic. I may never read a star chart seriously, but I still like to imagine a constellation somewhere, burning faintly in the shape of a tiger, smiling down on me with mischief and pride
Lyrics
I was born after midnight
on the first day of spring.
Good news said the nurse
an Aries with a thing.
The Saffron man said
I was a tiger, and free
But, the world wouldn’t know
what to do with me!
Through my youth, I was fiery,
an Aries with might,
I’d charge at the world,
and I’d always be right.
If they called me too brash,
I would smile and explain,
“the stars in my chart!
I’m not to blame.”
Chorus
Oh to be an Aries
with my flame burning bright.
Charging through life with a tiger’s delight.
I’m Aries my friend it just who I be,
If the cosmos disagrees they can jump into the sea.
Then in Kent in a tent a Roma told me,
You’re a Pisces according to GMT.
A fish out of water, I had to transform,
No more roaring like Aries,
