INDIRA LAISRAM

Have you ever met a so called godwoman or godman in person? Well I did and I have to talk about this one. On Tuesday night, I got a call asking if I would like to come and meet Anandmurti Gurumaa. My knowledge about ‘spiritual people’ as they would like to call themselves is zero because I have never taken interest in their ilk and India being full of conmen in the garb of spiritualists you tend to look at them with suspicion. I had a friend who stayed for weeks at a house cramped with people in a shady lane in Delhi and they were all fighting and scrambling for the baba’s attention. The baba would perform pujas during the evenings, make them drink and wash with ashes and they would pour heaps of money buying the essentials. The people went to him for all reasons – to sort marital discords, business failures, illnesses, and even vengeance on enemies! It was frightful. I had gone to meet the friend but after a few hours scooted away more scared I would pick a bug from the unhygienic su

I remember being very excited about watching Lady Chatterley’s Lover at the lovely gardens of Rippon Lea Estate. It was an evening to remember as we sat down with our picnic sets and glasses of wine to watch D H Lawrence’s work being enacted. It was also my first brush with the theatre scene here. The nude scenes were played out with alacrity and what a matured audience. No jeers or whistles. Not that I was expecting that. Hello this is Australia not India, I told myself.  Two years later, I read the book which has been lying for a while. My reading was overtaken by the likes of E. L. James whose trilogy I did complete with avidity. Come on, if one can watch mindless Bollywood or Hollywood films, owning up to reading Fifty Shades of Grey can’t be that embarrassing. To be frank, I had Sons & Lovers when I was doing my Masters in Literature. But it was a long, long time ago and I feel really ancient now. We had all the weird novels in our course, yes weird were how I perceived

India is seeing an open season of sexism. After the December 16 infamous gangrape of a paramedic student which stalled the nation for two weeks after people from all walks of life took to the streets to protest, a new drama is being played out in the form of comments from so called leaders or people in public office who think rape can be prevented if women do not toe the line of modernity. In other words, follow ‘Indian values and cultures’. I don’t know who deserves the price for the best comment but I am going to paraphrase some just to make myself doubly happy that I left a country whose population of dolts are growing. I had no idea who Asaram Bapu was until I saw his face doing the rounds in Facebook. I mean India has so many Godman, Godwomen, hugging Matas, etc., that you lose count after a point. A Google search reveals he is a Hindu spiritual leader who preaches the existence of One Supreme Conscious and claims Bhakti yoga, Gnana yoga and Karma yoga as influences. At a pub

I have only bizarre dreams. Strange, odd, scary. Times when I remember them, I narrate it to the man who has the most simplistic of answers based on his analysis of me. “You have a hyper active imagination, write it down they will make a good story”. Some mornings I wake up like a teenager with a giddy head. This morning I woke up feeling divine, I had a wow dream, the same wow feeling I had after coming out of watching The Hobbit on a big 3D screen. I also wanted to own a house as the Hobbit’s, live in his scenic village and eat all his food in his dining room. The Hobbit hangover lasted for a while.  Last night, I dreamt of Shiva, the God. Does it have to do with my new fascination for singing Om Namah Shivaya? I taught that to my sister last year and in the dream, we were sitting on something like a swinging boat (funny why I felt it was one) up the hill in our Shillong house. Rocking to and fro with our singing we looked up the sky and suddenly there was Shiva – so big, so viv