Sunday New York Times Magazine ran this feature on Baba Ramdev who’s built a multibillion-dollar business empire and become a political powerbroker in Indian. Tell me that the Prophet Of the Lovely Star wouldn’t have been jealous as fug! Here’s an excerpt:
“We strolled along a brick path to a small bungalow, and there was Ramdev, seated on a beautifully carved wooden swing, laughing and chatting with a guest. He rose and greeted me with a hug. I was struck by his slight stature; his bushy black beard, gray at the fringes, seemed more substantial than his thin frame. He emanated a loose-jointed warmth, like someone who has just run a long distance. Apart from his thin saffron robes — one wrapped around his chest and one at the waist — he wore only padukas, the traditional platform wooden clogs with a metal post for the toes to grip.
“’This is my basic and ultimate mission,’ he said, speaking in strongly accented English. ‘I want a healthy, wealthy, prosperous and peaceful person, society, nation.’ He looked into my eyes and touched my forearm as he spoke. The left side of his face was paralyzed by a childhood illness, and the resulting squint gives him a look of cockeyed intensity. ‘Health and happiness, without yoga you cannot achieve,’ he went on. ‘Yoga is my basic work.’ Ramdev practices and teaches yoga every day from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., in a hangarlike auditorium with hundreds of students and TV cameras rolling, and then again (when he can) in the afternoon and evening from 5 until 7:30. In between, he told me, he oversees Patanjali and its associated trusts and charitable activities. “
But, yes Viriginia, there is a dark side. Read the whole jawn:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/magazine/the-billionaire-yogi-behind-modis-rise.html.
