Will Satya Sai Baba live till 96? Well, the man who claimed he would has answered it himself when he died at the ripe old age of (ahem, cough, cough)….of 85. Sai Baba is hailed by many as a lover of humanity. Infact, Sai Baba loved humanity so much that his wheelchair-based darshan was always available for those who had bucketloads of dough available & ready to part with truckloads of it for the “love” of him.
He was also a advocate of free love…sorry, an advocate of free press – so much so that he got then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former CJ P N Bhagwati, Ranganth Misra, Najma Heptulla and Shivraj Patil to write a letter, declaiming the exposure or should we say coverage of his “love” for the fairer sex.
He has also been hailed as the “Sai Baba The Mighty!! Sai Baba The All-powerful!!” for his ability to produce vibhuti, or holy ash, and assorted trinkets, watches, sweets and fruits, on request. Sigh! One only sees it as a sleight of fate that Harry “Houdini” and John Anderson, who were remarkable for the same gifts in this line of work, never managed to capitalize on the same and create a Rs 40,000 crore ($8.8 billion)-worth empire. Someone ought to have had the good sense to make them change
their midnight blue magician’s robes for saffran-hued ones.
I mean saffron-robes to India, is what Bond is to Western cinema; It gives you – “The License to Kill.” You can get away scot-free with anything short of murder or anything, including murder, if you happened to be a 70-year-old pontiff of a South Indian matt. Now if you ever wanted to dally with a buxom South Indian actress or get some long-legged Mumbai models to strike evocative poses with you, all you have to do is rent those saffron robe from the nearby theatre shop.
Apparently there’s something super-hot & sexy about holy men claiming to life a life of renunication. They dedicate themselves to a life without sex and next thing you know all the lesser-known sex sirens are queuing up at his door; and within a month the poor guy gets hit with more sex scandals than you can say “Jack Robinson.” I mean even Dawood Ibrahim or Salman Khan don’t seem to be having it real hot in the “girls department,” if one were to go by what the media has to say about our “Goodmen,” sorry Godmen.
But then we really shouldn’t be going by what the media says – I mean if media is represented by what Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai or Radia Tapes-famed/ill-famed Bhakra sorry Barkha Dutt have to say. Maybe the Godmen are right when they say “Don’t listen to the media. They are just jealous.” I mean top journalists have accused Godmen of brokering political deals, horse trading, political black-money funding, flying in private jets and and do a reverse-Robin-Hood of stealing money from the poor to give to the rich; and then (journalists) have been caught attempting to do the same thing on a smaller-scale.
Some people might find it the height of irony that Godmen like Sai Baba and D G S Dhinakaran – famed far and wide for their ability to cure other people of sickness – have always had to get their sickness cured away by human not “divine” intervention. But they are the scoffers, the charlatans – for the purer, higher-minded believers, who have always chose to disregard, the sex, corruption, tax evasion scandals, — Sai Baba and D G S Dhinakaran have ascended to heaven to the rejoicing of angels and mourning of Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Advani, Karunanidhi & the like, who have always remained faithful to those lined with deep pockets & deeper handouts.
Now that LTTE Prabhakharan is dead and the Sri Lankan Army has triumphed every mainstream media channel is quick to dub him a “fascist, terrorist, warlord, zealot, etc.” The same media which pronounces him a ruthless and dreaded terrorist, is however not interested in asking questions like “Who was funding him?” If Prabhakharan is to be called a terrorist, what about all the Indian politicians from MGR, Vaiko to Karunanidhi who initially supported him? Only after the political weather turned rough post-Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination did TN politicians deem it wise to maintain a safe distance from the LTTE. What happened to Karunanidhi’s fond reference to the LTTE supremo as “Thambi (brother) Prabhakharan.”
When I recently visited Bangalore I was surprised to find that the hottest topic being discussed there was not the recession, but women’s sexuality. After the Mangalore pub incident and 53 other cases of moral policing by the right-wing elements in that state, one could say progressive views were the need of the hour.
When the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair broke out, I remember being quite surprised at the lurid interest the Western media showed. The Indian media for the most part never concerns itself with the private lives of politicians. Other than for politician Amarmani Tripathi- suicide/murder-poet Madhumita Shukla, the Indian media really hasn’t hounded anyone for their sexual peccadilloes. In fact, there are many politicians here, who have flaunted their wives/mistresses on stage along with them and the media hasn’t batted an eye.
if it is the Monica Lewinsky thing had come as a shock to her and she had never known of his behaviour before the media’s expose.
Suzanne -have shared in their husband’s well deserved public-hour-of-reckoning when they could have left him high and dry.
There are so many who enlist the support of their wives to share their humiliation…the list includes, Former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome, who had a sexual affair with his campaign manager’s wife.
My friend has tagged me!
Q. Do you speak Hindu?
Do you remember that a few posts ago, I had protested against a Christian Wife Disciplining (Domestic abuse) book on Amazon.
