It's not a good thing to shoot at your Yoga teacher

A decent pose

It's not a good thing to shoot at your Yoga teacher. Generally. No matter how difficult the pose he/she has asked you to strike is. This week "Art-of-Living" boss, billionaire healer, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, (yes, Sri Sri, like UN diplomat Boutros Boutros, but not a third Sri ufffd Sri Sri is respect, Sri Sri Sri is someone slurping on a straw),u00a0 was shot at.u00a0 Well, he claimed he was, the Honorable Home Minister claimed he wasn't, which of course begs the question, why is anyone shooting anyone at a peace and healing seminar?u00a0u00a0 Subsequently, the media threw open a stable of muck about God-men, healers, yoga gurus and people arguably showing us ways to live better spiritually, who, allegedly live in sin but materially well (the infamous rumors of Osho's world, wild sex and a convoy of Rolls Royces still lurk).

Any sort of motivational speaker, mind, body, spiritual, healing, business, religion, etc. always come in for criticism because essentially he's selling you ideas. And the cynic and critic in all of us think, "Oh that's a bunch of gibberish, I could do that", like someone seeing contemporary art. What further complicates it is that the message (if non-business motivation) is often around the self above stuff, contentment above material possessions, except, later, you see the person giving that message at a VIP IPL box seat, or flying first class or hobnobbing with CEO's at Davos. As a friend explained of a world famous Bengali yoga guru in Los Angeles, "He came in silver thong underwear, shouted at a 1,000 disciples in an accent no one understood, thrust his pelvis, showed a video of himself and Bono, and left in a Porsche with a blonde Playboy model."u00a0 One could argue, if that's the art-of-living, that's pretty good, a thong wearing Bengali billionaire with a supermodel girlfriend, but the problem is, his central message says, "Happiness above wealth". Clearly when applied to self, the above is replaced with is.

Defenders of such people claim that their advice, exercises, ideas, actually improve and cleanse them, in body and mind. Skeptics claim that when Baba Ramdev is addressing thousands (and beamed on his private TV channel to another hundred million), while rolling his stomach muscles putting belly dancers out of work, he'su00a0u00a0 just showing you exercises any specialist masseuse could.u00a0 His avid fan base however (bigger than Madonna) claim he is showing you a better, healthier way to be. With a mindset freed of cheap capitalist drive. And whatever be the message ufffd yoga, numerology, scripture, art-of-living, wellness, if there is tangible mental and physical benefit, one can understand why these people become God-like to their disciples. It goes back to legendary tales of religion where various messiahs stopped wars, cured blindness, made legless people walk etc.
Here, it could be as small as removing a backache or finding money for EMIs. If it happens for the middle classes, and coincidentally because of following x or y guru, then you're a subscriber for life.

Whether one believes or not, all of them by and large preach a need for removal from the dirty things of everyday life, from petty human desires, from cheap conflict. They claim, and rightly, that it's all fleeting so we should aspire to things higher and serene. Except, when we read the news, we find those telling us to be above human frailty being most human. There's gunfire at what is perhaps the most peaceful of all gatherings (or so it should be), bickering among some of them accusing the other of spreading false philosophy, accusations of rape and sex cartels, denouncing homosexuality, running for political office, saying people are trying to kill them.

Ironically, gunfire has also plagued the world of Hindu devotional music in the 90s with people who sang messages of love and harmony, dying in rival gang warfare. Perhaps all messages of harmony require a few bullets here and there. Perhaps the message in the art-of-living peacefully has spread everywhere except at the doorstep of those that spread it.u00a0

Anuvab Pal is a Mumbai-based playwright and screenwriter. His plays in Mumbai include Chaos Theory and The President is Coming. He is currently working on a book on the Bollywood film Disco Dancer for Harper Collins, out later this year.u00a0 Reach him at www.anuvabpal.com

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