Mayank Chhaya Daily

A 40-second visit to Osho commune

I have been in Pune for the past six days finishing interviews for a book on nanotechnology. Yes, you heard that right. Nanotechnology, I said.

This is even as I wrap up my research/interviews/travel for a book on Ahmedabad to mark 600 years of the city’s founding in 2011. The final manuscripts for both have been contracted to be turned in by or before October and December respectively. Did I mention that I am also updating ‘Mon Monk Mystic’ along the way? If this is not a hack at work, then who is?

With your awe having been earned in sufficient measure at the sheer range of my writing talent, let me tell you about a 40-second visit to the Osho Commune, which I returned to after 24 years. The last time I was here it was in 1986 on my way back from Battis Shirala where I had gone to do a feature about its famous snake festival for the Associated Press (AP). I stayed at what then was just Blue Diamond Hotel owned by the Kirloskars. I came back to the hotel in its new avatar under the Taj management.

I had no plans to visit the commune but while taking an evening stroll along the leafy lanes around the hotel I ended up near it. I went inside the reception center where a sullen man in a maroon robe (It really looked like a gunny sack with two holes to slip in one’s hands) asked me why I was there. As I stretched to shake hands after introducing myself, he looked at my hand as if it was a slithery creature out to impregnate him. He recoiled and said no by shaking his head.

I said I was looking for Swami Chaitanya Keerti. He looked at me as if I had been roused from a slumber of a different era. “He is not here. He has not been here for a long time,” he said, feeling vindicated at not having shaken hands with me. Who knows what contaminations I might be carrying from whichever era that I had emerged from? That seemed to be the question on his mind. Before I could ask my next question he had moved on two women in white robes. I said, “Thank you for not shaking my hand” and left.

As I walked back to the hotel I reminisced about my encounter with Rajneesh at the Bombay airport after being deported by the US authorities following his arrest under immigration laws. That was in October/November timeframe in 1985. Rajneesh was a big story in the US then and the AP was naturally interested in a follow-up out of Bombay.

I was the only reporter waiting for Rajneesh and his entourage at the airport. Rajneesh was in a wheelchair being pushed by his aide Ma Neelam Dhal (I think it was her) when I buttonholed him for some comments.

I was told sternly that unless I addressed him as “Bhagwan Rajneesh” he would not respond. I kept calling him Mr. Rajneesh. He relented after a while. One of the questions I asked was whether his commune in Oregon was seen as a threat to the local Christian community. He looked at me with mild amusement and replied in his trademark nasal tone, “If a religion, which is nearly 2000 years old, can be destroyed by an old, unarmed man (namely Rajneesh), then that religion deserves to be destroyed.”

For the record Rajneesh was not that old then. He was 54 but managed to look much older. He told me he had been administered a slow acting poison during his incarceration.

Of enuresis and what it does to a child

I am quite familiar with enuresis or bedwetting, not as someone who suffered from it but being close to someone who suffered from it. And if you are close to a bedwetter in a family that for several years lived in a single room, you are, for all practical purposes, a bedwetter yourself. A passive bedwetter, really.

I do not want to get into the whole physics of how liquids flow across thin mattresses on the floor and how efficient coarse cotton linens are as conductors. Let me just say if you sleep next to a bedwetter, be prepared to be a bedwetter yourself. I remember my mother and grandmother waking up before it should be permissible by the country’s constitution to clean up after the family bedwetter and hang washed linens on the clothesline. Perhaps this is too much information on a Saturday morning or, for that matter, any morning.

Why am I writing about enuresis on a blog that calls itself South Asia Daily? For one there ought to be a large number of South Asians who have suffered from this condition. More importantly though, the post has been triggered by a brilliant extract from a book titled ‘The Bedwetter’ by Sarah Silverman, one of America’s most caustic and compelling comics. (The alliteration is entirely unplanned).

I read the extract in The Guardian here. You should too if you want to understand how a seemingly ridiculous physical condition can cause so much trauma. Silverman does a rivetingly empathetic job of describing what a child suffering from enuresis goes through. Being a comic of unquestionable talent she narrates her story with biting humor but there is no mistaking the underlying sadness and harrowing discomfiture enuresis causes.

I am just quoting the first two paragraphs from the extract here. I hope her publishers Faber and Faber are no so pissed off as to sue me for reproducing them without their express permission.

“On 16 August, 1977, Elvis Presley saved my life. The previous afternoon, I played with my six-year-old peers in Heather Peters' backyard. I was blissfully helping myself to pizza and cake when Heather asked me where my sleeping bag was. Heather explained – because I had somehow missed, or perhaps wilfully ignored – that this party was a sleepover. Fuck me, this is a sleepover?

It's helpful to mention, at this point, that I was – and would be for many years to come – a chronic bedwetter. The word "sleepover" to a six-year-old bedwetter has roughly the same impact of, say, "liver cancer" to a 40-year-old alcoholic. The moment the word is spoken, gruesome images of your near future flood your mind. At least with liver cancer, people gather at your bedside instead of run from it.”

At least he is not a scientologist

“A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined. More than a year and a half into his presidency, a plurality of the public says they do not know what religion Obama follows.

A new national survey by the Pew Research Center finds that nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama’s religion is.”

Those are the opening paragraphs from an overview of the latest findings of a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. When I first read about the findings this morning I told myself Obama could have done worse. He could have been considered as a Scientologist. His ears certainly make him eligible for that.

Although Pew does not suggest it at all, it sounds as if some Americans think Islam is an affliction that can be treated medically. Come to think of it, all forms of religiosity are an affliction only slightly deeper than skin rash. But more about that some other time.

Pew helpfully clarifies that the survey was conducted before Obama made seemingly positive comments about the construction of an Islamic center not too far from Ground Zero in New York. A similar survey now would probably show that except yours truly everyone in the US would believe/suspect that he is a Muslim. I think he is merely a politician, which as afflictions go, is probably worse than religion.

The survey shows that the belief that Obama is a Muslim has “grown sharply” among Republicans, which is not news at all. Republicans also believe that he is a communist/socialist/fascist. At this stage they would believe anything about him, including that he is an alien probe sent to prepare for the end of the world in 2012. What is intriguing, however, is that even among the independents, many of whom voted for Obama, the number of those who think he is a Muslim has gone up eight points. The independents who voted for him may be looking for extenuating circumstances or alibis or mitigating factors for his impending failure as a president and Islam would be a fairly good choice. “If only he was a Christian..” they could argue.

I think the most instructive/amusing part of the findings has to be this bit: “Beliefs about Obama’s religion are closely linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing. Those who are unsure about Obama’s religion are about evenly divided in their views of his performance.”

Let me break this down in simplistic terms: Muslim--bad, Christian--good, Others--who cares?

Skyping god about Randiv’s no-ball

I Skyped god this morning to discuss an issue we all know can, at the very least, seriously alter the equilibrium of the universe. I refer, of course, to Sri Lankan offspinner Suraj Randiv no-balling Virendra Sehwag and depriving the Indian batsman of his century.

God chatted with me even while watching every single TV channel out of India simultaneously. Apparently god can do such multitasking. I reproduce snatches of my chat below:

Me: Hey god, what up?

God: Not much time right now. Suraj Randiv is screwing up my happiness.

Me: How come??!!##

God: The bugger no-balled Veeru and by that one immoral act nearly destroyed the universe as I created and maintain it. I have to reboot the universe.

Me: Is the action that serious? I mean, come on god, it is just one effing no-ball and one effing century.

God: Don’t go effing on me. You may use the full word. I invented it like everything else in the universe, including you.

Me: I forgot that but why bother about a no-ball, dude?

God: Did you watch how intense Anjali Doshi and Ajay Jadeja were on NDTV last night? After that who could stay aloof?

Me: Good point, god, but, I mean, who the eff cares?

God: You do. You ambushed me on Skype, did you not?

Me: Good point, god, but, I mean, who the eff cares still? I have nothing better to do.

God: Then get off the Skype and let me do my job.

Me: And your job being what? Fixing pathetic little cricket scams?

God: Get off the fucking line before I cut you off.

That is precisely when the following warning started flashing on my monitor.

“You are in violation of Government of India Telephony Act of 2010, Rule XII, Section VIIXI, Subsection VVIIXXX,very subsection XXVVIXX, that prohibits the use of profane language on any and all messenger services, including but not restricted to Skype. The entire transcript of the chat has been intercepted and sent to concerned authorities for further action. Your Internet connection has been suspended pending official judgment.”

A disjointed post about Gandhi Ashram

The Hriday Kunj at the Gandhi Ashram (Pic; http://gandhiashramsabarmati.org/)

Not being Amitabh Bachchan my recent visit to the Gandhi Ashram was unheralded but was no less compelling. Sure, I did not walk around unshod because I just do not like the idea of soiled heels. My toes retreat like a tortoise head when dust touches my feet. It is an evolutionary response. I should have been born with shoes on my feet. Instead I was born with my eyes wide open.

If you care about such things, try and analyze the paragraph above. In those six lines there are so many thought leaps fraught with some deep-seated psychology. Why would I start the post with Amitabh Bachchan unless it had some matching complex in my mind? Or why would I talk about the fact that my visit to the Ashram was “unheralded” ? Or for that matter, what’s the deal with dust on my feet and tortoise head? And I am not even going to touch the bit about being born with my eyes wide open.

This is what happens when you wake up at 4 a.m. and post a blog entry even before somnambulistic influences have been fully rubbed out of your eyes.

Coming back to the Gandhi Ashram, visitors routinely speak of the tranquility of the place. While a lot of the tranquil vibe of the place is genuine, I think a significant part of it is also one’s mind projecting it. Because we have primed ourselves to expect tranquility, we somehow find it even in Ahmedabad’s debilitating heat in the summer and suffocating humidity during the monsoon season.

The only time it feels really tranquil is when dawn is just breaking and birds are fluttering out of their nests on the neem trees. Or when dusk is falling and the same birds are returning to their nests on the same neem trees. That phase lasts no longer than 45 minutes combined. Take my word for it because I have done it many times and actually timed it. Twenty three minutes at dawn and 22 at dusk.

Its minimalist air, stripped of any grandiosity, makes one feel as if the inmates of the Ashram between 1917 and 1930 led a life so full of bliss and serenity that 80 years after the fact it still pervades its environs. Those who know history would tell you that under Gandhi the Ashram was anything but tranquil, simply because it was the nerve center of India’s independence movement.

The sheer amount of political brainstorming, strategizing, moralizing, sermonizing and executing by the who’s who of India’s freedom movement that happened here must have generated a great deal of intellectual heat. It would have been a lot of things but tranquil and serene it certainly was not.

India leads China in fundamental values: Dalai Lama

Here is the final post/story wrapping up my recent interview with the Dalai Lama in McLeod Ganj. This story too was distributed worldwide on the IANS wire. I had specifically sought his perspective on China becoming the world’s second largest economy after the US, having just overtaken Japan.

By Mayank Chhaya

McLeod Ganj: China might be more economically advanced than India but lacks in fundamental values like freedom, transparency and rule of law, much required for political growth, exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama says.

Acknowledging China’s economic rise, he contrasted it with India, quoting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s observations last year during his visit to Washington.

“As the Indian prime minister expressed, China may be more advanced than India in the economic field, but it is lacking in other fundamental values such as the rule of law, transparency, personal freedom and freedom of the press ,” the Dalai Lama said in an interview with IANS at his residence here.

“America and the free world consider these fundamental values very important and they practise them. Individual freedom leads to innovation,” he added.

The interview took place in the Dalai Lama’s official bungalow atop a mountain at an altitude of over 6,000 feet, overlooking the lush Kangra Valley on one side and towered over by the pre-Himalayan Dhauladhar range on the other.

The Dalai Lama said China’s economy has grown in recent decades with outside money and by exploiting cheap labour. “Of course, recently, there are reports of more innovation out of China. That’s good, but politically still everything is controlled,” he said.

“The free world’s strength is not only (dependent) on money but there are other factors. In China it is only the strength of money,” the leader said.

“So in the long run many Chinese intellectuals and some leaders in China realise that is a weakness and they want to change. They want modernisation both in the economy and in the political field. There is a wind of change in China,” he said.

China’s rise as the world’s second largest economy overtaking Japan is a “positive” development that would give the country “self-confidence” to deal with tricky issues such as Tibet, the Dalai Lama opined.

“If the country gets more self-confidence, they can handle domestic problems better. If their whole situation is a little shaky, they are more hesitant to handle tricky issues,” the Dalai Lama said.

“From that viewpoint the People’s Republic of China getting stronger is useful. It may be more positive,” he said responding to recent reports that China has now overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

The Dalai Lama said: “Obviously in the 60 years until 1980 when China remained isolated, the thinking of the people remained limited because of a lack of knowledge.”

“After Deng Xiaoping (China’s first vice premier) opened up the economy, wider contact developed with the outside world. So, a greater number of the Chinese people are now open-minded, more liberal-minded,” he added.

Illustrating China’s rising self-confidence and open-mindedness, the leader said: “For example, in the last two years we noticed articles written by Chinese people in the Chinese language about Tibet, all very much supportive of our approach, criticising the government policy.”

“Thirty to forty years ago this would have been impossible. Now such things happen,” he added.

Net neutrality and why it is important

It is obvious that you do use the net. You would not be reading this otherwise. Since you do use the net, the principle of net neutrality, which governs the Internet currently, is of significance to you.

Not a lot of people who use the net understand or care about the principle of net neutrality. However, it is possible to argue that the astounding growth and proliferation of web content in the last decade and a half owes everything to do with this principle.

Let me explain in simple, succinct terms what net neutrality means. It means that all data , regardless of whose data and what kind of data, should have the freedom to move at the same speed. In other words the net user should be able to open The New York Times website, which might serve up between 30 and 40 million pages a day, and this blog, which might serve up 3 to 4 pages a day, with the same speed. If the Internet were a country, then net neutrality would be the most important part of its constitution.

That principle is now coming under a serious challenge in the US and the two players mounting that challenge are giants in their business--Google and Verizon. Telecom companies such as Verizon have maintained that since they are the primary movers of data on the net they should have the option to decide whether I should be able to watch an obscure Mohammed Rafi song called “Mein hun ek khalasi, mera naam hai bheem palasi” on YouTube as easily as someone else should be watch a pay-per-view blockbuster.

On the face of it this may seem like a fair point but once you begin to unravel all the complexities of what will eventually happen without net neutrality you understand net neutrality is important.It is about controlling which content you watch by paying whom and how much.

Google and Verizon want wireless data, the net data that you see on your mobile devices, to remain free from regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) so that they can decide what to let open up first. The FCC wants to retain that control to ensure that net neutrality remains even on wireless devices.

It is not clear how this would play out because there has been a tremendous pushback from a large number of people who want net neutrality to remain. So far the Google-Verizon proposal is just a proposal but given their individual and collective clout in America they could begin to turn things around.

Obama and the US constitution

President Barack Obama (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

I don’t see how strict constitutionalists in the US, many of whom tend to be his trenchant and kneejerk critics, can possibly object to President Barack Obama supporting the right of the Muslim community to build a mosque not too far from the Ground Zero in New York. It is part of the fundamental rights guaranteeing religious freedom irrespective of whose religion and whose freedom.

Quite aware of the pile of political dung he has walked into by upholding the constitution, Obama has now somewhat nuanced his response saying,“I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”

“As a citizen, and as president,” Obama said earlier during an iftar at the White House on Friday, “I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

To those who define America as a “Judeo-Christian” nation—and they have certainly grown in their assertiveness if not necessarily in their numbers in recent years -- the very idea of an Islamic center, housing a mosque, in the vicinity of the site where the Twin Towers once stood constitutes an unpardonable affront.

Many, who otherwise swear by the US constitution when it comes to the Second Amendment that guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, show expedient suppleness when it comes to religious freedom of the kind that the proposed Islamic center seems to test. It is almost as if they want to qualify that religious freedom to mean freedom that is hued in Judeo-Christian tones. I seriously wonder whether there would have been so much outcry had a Christian center or Jewish center been proposed at the same site.

The founders of the United States in all their wisdom charted a course for their country they knew would be particularly demanding to maintain in the ensuing decades and centuries. It was a result of some profoundly felt political, cultural and social convictions. If the constitutional purists now think that the document, which they otherwise believe is set in stone and must not be altered in fundamental ways, then they have to uphold the right to religious freedom, particularly the kind they don’t like.

Separately, those who have proposed the Islamic center in Manhattan could not possibly have been innocent to its political and symbolic implications at a time when America is getting so deeply divided. To that extent they too are consciously testing how far they can go. It would be hard to believe that the planners of the Islamic center did not pause and reflect on whether their proposal would be seen as controversial at the very least, if not provocative altogether.

If the effort by those behind the Islamic center is to reclaim the loftier elements of Islam from the more sinister interpretations that drove the 9/11 attackers notwithstanding that it would provoke strong reactions, then it is a bold one. I am not sure though if that is what it is at the heart of the proposal.

In sharp contrast to the reactions from the lunatic right wing fringe in the US to the current debate, in the 1990s even some of the most rabid constituents of the Hindu right in India had expressed their willingness to have a “grand” mosque not too far from the site where they wanted to construct a Ram temple in Ayodhya after the Babri mosque was razed.

As an aside, I wonder what would the reaction have been had the Swaminarayan followers proposed to build a Hindu temple at the site where the Islamic center is being proposed.

Don’t dismiss Zardari for poor flood response

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari

Of all the ineptitude and incompetence, not to mention corruption, that Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari can/should be dismissed for, a poor handling of the floods should rank low on the list.

After all, a poor handling of any crisis that calls for efficient governance has been the Pakistani way for a long time, much before Zardari was anywhere on the scene. It was a terrible, and some might even say egregious, mishandling of a major cyclone in 1971 in erstwhile East Pakistan that whipped up enough anger and disenchantment that eventually led to a movement for Bangladesh.

However, as excuses go the floods are as good an excuse as any for the military to step in and dismantle the Zardari government. Some 14 million people, or nearly ten percent of the population, have been affected by the swirling waters in the country. Each one of those 14 million would like to see some serious accountability enforced.

All right thinking Pakistanis, and there has to be a fairly substantial number of those, should feel depressed at the quality of nation-state they have built up in the past 63 years of its existence. As the country’s celebrates its creation today it has to decide when it can actually achieve independence. Independence from poor governance, poor communal relations, poor democratization and poor ideas. It would be a mistake to confuse the country’s creation in 1947 with its independence. Achieving independence is work in progress for all those aspiring to be great nations. By that measure Pakistan has hardly even begun the process.

To think that on August 14, there are yet again reports that the military might step in to get rid of the Zardari government and form some kind of a national coalition underscores existential difficulties that Pakistan has always faced.

My recommendation: Don’t dismiss Zardari for poor flood response. Make him stay and make him work like he has never worked in his life. Make him shift his office to the worst flood ravaged area and make him stay until things improve. A country cannot be built on eternal buyer’s remorse.

Julia Roberts and her faith

Julia Roberts in ‘Eat Pray Love’

If Julia Roberts was working at McDonald’s flipping burgers and draining fries, her announcement that she is “definitely a practicing Hindu” would not have been heard past the din of her fellow flippers and drainers. Because she is Hollywood royalty, reputedly charging $20 M per film, the story has found global coverage.

Roberts says not just her but her whole family, cameraman husband Danny Moder, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus and son Henry all go to a temple together to "chant and pray and celebrate.”

I am always mildly amused when celebrities come to a faith, any faith. Despite their best efforts and sincerity it ends up sounding as if it is their latest fashion accessory. I am sure Roberts feels genuinely drawn to Hinduism for whatever reasons, but one is never sure when such fascination might wear off.

My discomfort is at the ease with which parents everywhere hand down their faith to their children as a fait accompli. Hazel, Phinnaeus and Henry, who were apparently given Hindu names Laxmi, Ganesh and Krishna Balram, have been co-opted by Roberts into her newly acquired faith without their knowledge and consent.

It is remarkable how families around the world just presume that they have the right to subtly or openly condition their children when it comes faith and traditions. Faith is an acquired taste and parents must let their children acquire it at their pace and volition.

Since Nature has spared me the faith DNA I hand down no faith to my children. Forget faith, I have even told them that their names are merely temporary space holders. If they want to get names that they like as grown-ups it is their right to do so. As for faith, why burden them at all?

I do not mean to single out Julia Roberts (Like she knows that this blog even exists, let alone cares what it  says). I am merely using her high profile and the fact that she is in the news to make a point about how people across the world have no qualms conditioning impressionable minds of their children rather than allowing them to discover life on their own terms.

P.S.: I am sure it is a mere coincidence that the title of Roberts’ latest film ‘Eat Pray Love’ sounds like what she says about Hinduism ‘Chant and pray and celebrate."’ That could be the sequel under her production company Red Om Films.