Ramdev crowds lured by Delhi-trip carrot

From Meerut in Uttar Pradesh to Falta in West Bengal,they came to attend a yog shivir but cannot stop raving about the wonders of Delhi. Suman,one of the office bearers of Patanjali,spoke with pride from the stage about the women from Bahadurgarh in Haryana who have come all the way to Delhi for the first time in their lives to support “Baba’s noble cause” because he is the son of that soil.

Pankajbhai,who had come from Godhra,can barely hide his glee at having finally seen Delhi and the ‘Taj Mahal’ before his friends in the bus correct him “Taj Mahal nahin Lal Quila” (It is the Red Fort,not Taj Mahal). None of them have ever been to Delhi but now that the three-day trip is over,they cannot wait to get home because they have already missed out on farm work for five days. “The bus is supposed to leave at 5 pm that is why we came back. Anyway,the ground is wet,” said one of them who does not want to be identified.

The evening snack of poori and aloo is the last reason to stick around for many of them. Some like Tinku from Jamshedpur are packing it in tiffin boxes. “We will take two days to go back so this will last us some time. The food was not very tasty here but they made sure there was enough at all times. That is why we did not mind missing a week of farm work to be here. It was mainly through word of mouth from the yoga teachers. It was a big thing,a free trip to Delhi,” he says.

It is their responsibility to make a success of Baba’s clarion call for “revolution” and there has been much talk of braving bullets for mother India but Saturday morning’s downpour and the Ramlila slush are definitely not par for the course. So the “teeming millions” were reduced to some 5,000 by evening,worrying organisers.

Ashima Haldar from Srirampore is the only from her party of some 50 people to still remain in the ground. That’s because she has arthritis. “They have gone out for a while. As it is the ground is so wet now that one can hardly sit,” she said. She’s not very clear about the corruption issue,yoga is on top of her mind but after three days of incessant indoctrination,the idea of India being luxuriously rich in national resources whose exploitation is the sole cause of her penury,has taken root. “I do not know too much. Wait a bit and speak to the men. Actually most of the people from West Bengal have already left,” she says.