Next time you drink coffee, don't drain it to the dregs. Leave some behind for Nawal Gani of Bangalore (India) to tell you something about what lies ahead.

44-year-old Gani reads the future from the left overs in a coffee cup, and claims she gets it at least 60 per cent right. "I don't predict. I guide people to know themselves better," she says. The patterns formed on the interior of the cup are mainly Arabic writings or forms of animals, which could be deciphered to suggest future happenings.

"The key is the yawn. If I burp then there is negative energy within the client. I cleanse it by asking my clients to drink water and by chanting prayers," the former policewoman says.

Gani has read the coffee cups of Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Bollywood actors and actresses. But she will not reveal what she saw in them. For, official secrets are meant to be kept! Her common clients approach her with queries on financial and health-related matters -- they say she is 80 per cent right.

She charges 1,000 rupees (22 dollars) for a reading. And for those who want their cup read over the telephone, the amount is doubled as the procedure is more difficult.

"I ask for his or her name and their mother's name. Then I drink the cup keeping their names in my mind and on their behalf.

It comes out pretty accurately," she says.

Coffee cup reading has its origins in China where ancient monks predicted the future by reading patterns left by tea leaves in bell-shaped cups, a process known as tasseography.

Later, Arabs took up the practice but used coffee as a medium.

So, there is more to upmarket coffee than meets the eye -- there's some-thing for the inner eye too.

According to an unofficial source Nawal Gani stays in a house called Egyptian Block on Haines Road, Bangalore. The phone number is 55300310.