Once I met a Baba_22July22

 Once I met a Baba

From an early age, In India, we are taught and sometime forced to believe in God. The God has manifested itself as Baba/saint with different voices of businesses.

Perhaps the God’s business is the best one to start with as a Start-up. If you have no money, think smart, instead of begging for alms become God’s avatar for your disciples to throw it on you in crowd. No taxes, no valuation and here you go to live filthy rich life with heads bowing in rows.

I despise the very memory of Nithyananda’s visit to our college. We were pushed to pay certain amount for this event from our paltry monthly pocket money. He never turned up on a pretext of personal exigency. Albeit, made sure to send his preachers. We sucked up on the sanctity of those wretched creatures for hours together, praying for it to end.

Like a discotheque, they made us jump and dance speaking gibberish with closed eyes. It was complete madness and fun.

At the end, the worst was to bend on the knees touching his wooden slippers in front of his photo. To top up their bottom line, a donation box was placed. Being in crowd, how could you go without shelling a penny for noble cause. As malls exit at food courts post movies, these holy session and places exit in souvenir shops. His eyes, hands, face, whole body pics were neatly framed and displayed for purchase. There were plenty of other things like his autobiography, holy books, rudraksha and so on. Here nobody hurried to push the students out. It’s a customary that in places of worship, people are pushed fast to step out only when they are praying the idol.

Many years later, my anger knew no bounds when I saw him in Mumbai airport. He had a smiley face sitting beside a tall fair model clad in saint’s dress. I was seeing her and thought that … Are foreigners such a fool to follow someone blindly? How can somebody change completely with so much of trust? My Mom, interrupted – do you see her? She is the one?  …. What Maa? Mummy got irritated and said that lady was videotaped with him and leaked on social media. Now, I stared at her even harder. Felt like throwing the same chappal on her in front of which I kneeled. Now, they don’t have any personal exigency. A team of matching dress marched together with matching bags – all in maroon as if doing a fashion parade instead of check-in.

In the security check in, this gang rushed and stood behind us. Our feet automatically started moving faster so that none of them could touch us. Untouchability seeped in unknowingly. I held my boarding pass to be punched and she thrust her hand above me saying please let me go in first as Swami has gone in. My inner voice was like can’t you wait for 5 minutes to be with your Swami. All of us are gonna go in the same plane. My inner voice slept inside while she was ushered in.

It was horrible to see his holiness in the very first row immediately after stepping in the flight. He smiled and I started to kill. His smile retreated. On the other side of first class, his models were neatly parked together. What a privilege!! His holiness with lady and others on the other side. Few worthless people were clicking pics madly with him. Finally, I got my window seat and stuck my head on window. Still, my ears were picking up gossips in hushes. I as usual plugged-in melodies to sway the world away.

  - Saranya