Last weekend, the Mumbai Mirror published a matrimonial ad under the ‘Cosmopolitan’ segment (a posh-sounding synonym for deracinated ungodliness). It read: “Wanted groom who reads The Hindu. Because The Hindu reports the truth. The writing is crisp and brilliant. And they read their ads before they post them.” Being nobly inert and impervious to criticism, The Times of India group, which owns the Mirror, appears to have shrugged off the send-up. The ad is being attributed to a Hindu fan, since the newspaper itself is perceived to be too propah to get down and dirty. But some pro-Times guy on Twitter counter-trolled, suggesting that the editors at the Hindu are such sticklers that they call up dead people for confirmation before they will run their obituary notices. So there. [related-post] Meanwhile, the government has become hopelessly embroiled in a matter beyond its remit. Along with the onerous responsibilities of defending the borders, minting money, drafting laws and harassing the public in triplicate, it has now taken on the task of promoting yoga. It shouldn’t have bothered. Yoga flourished through the latter half of the 20th century on the strength of private enterprise, with a little help from the media. While newsreaders like Salma Sultan and Pratima Puri were the first stars of Indian TV, the very first superstar was Dhirendra Brahmachari. He found favour with Indira Gandhi, whereupon Doordarshan smiled upon him. Older viewers will remember his programme as one of the lesser sufferings inflicted by the Emergency. Gentle Congress-wallahs, fret not. The off-colour jokes about the off-the-shoulder yogi are long forgotten. The world is changed, and a horrible beauty is born. If Dhirendra Brahmachari were a resident of contemporary Delhi, he may have been admired for his ability to swing the media. But then, he would have been on page 3 with the rest of the clever crowd, not on prime time. While Brahmachari built India’s first domestic yoga empire, Mahesh Yogi was handed a ticket to ride by The Beatles. Then Woodstock injected the “Indian guru guy” right into the mainline. The video from 1969 still gets massive hits, with Mahesh Yogi famously declaring: “America is becoming a hole.” ‘Whole’, the subtitles clarified, not ‘hole’, but it sounded more interesting without the ‘w’. And then a hippie acolyte added: “Yoga is like drugs but it’s better than drugs because you can do it for yourself.” Gentle BJP yogis, do not surge out in righteous anger and sue Max Yasgur. He is long dead. Such were the entrepreneurial ancestors of Baba Ramdev, who has leveraged television to turn yoga into a pervasive middle-class enthusiasm. The government did not really have to leverage the UN Yoga Day to demonstrate its commitment to wellness. And now, the originally well-intentioned move has degenerated into a Guinness record bid at state expense. In the states, the surya namaskar is being seen as an attempt to shoehorn majoritarian culture into the daily routine in schools. Yoga, everyone’s baby, suddenly feels owned. Next, maybe we’ll be told that Martha Graham learned it in Rishikesh, and we’ll be too peeved to say that it doesn’t matter. Three tremendous figures in Anglo-American culture left our part of the multiverse this week: Christopher Lee, who gave horror a certain bite, Ornette Coleman, who took bop and spun it fine into modern jazz, and NYC newsman Vincent Mussetto, who gave the beautiful tabloid headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar”. It is still taught in journalism school for its shock value, but I suspect that it was epic because it was poetry. Seriously, scan that headline – it’s trochaic. pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com
