The Return OF
         Karma Cola
(Newer and Fizzier)
__________________

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA takes a bemused look
at the Indian exotica invading the West

Unbeknowst to the bucolic world, it transpires that India has become the world’s largest milk producer, squirting ahead of the United States, Canada, and a host of other bovine superpowers. Of course, this should not surprise the great unwashed who revere and husband the gomata (Go! Mata, Go!), although judging from the battered and emaciated strays holding up traffic on the streets of Bharatvarsh, bounteous kamadhenu, the First Cow, is not the first cow that comes to mind. Still, adding up a dribble here and a spurt there, economists or statisticians or
whoever does the adding up have concluded that milkdom it is—not software—where we are creaming the world. Drink to that, folks!

Milk and manpower may well be the latest items to join the great Indian exports that began with silk and spices. But incontestably our oldest and now our ritziest export is religion and spirituality. What else can one say when the mascot for Bharatiya manna is Madonna, who it is now tempting to re-christen, Maa Dona? Playing across the United States lately to universal retching is the film The Next Best Thing, which in the interest of reflecting box-office bounty and the material girl’s manner with mammaries should be re-titled The Next Bust Thing. In this flatulent flop that is earning astringent raspberries from critics (‘‘Hideous... an abomination,’’ said The San Francisco Examiner), Madonna plays Abbie, an instructor of Ashtanga yoga who teaches her class Sanskrit while playing the harmonium. In one scene, she puts her foot behind her head in a demonstration of a difficult pose that wicked minds would speculate was mastered even before she took to yoga.

The film is not Madonna’s first demonstration of her recent fascination with India and Indian religions and spiritualism. Over the last couple of years, the woman who is arguably America’s smartest makeover artist mastered Sanskrit to pull off what even some pandits said was a pretty good incantation of shlokas for her album Ray of Light. She’s been spotted with a bindi here and a sari there, has dabbled in Bharatanatyam and Odissi, and heck, if you haven’t seen her doing her laundry on the ghats of Varanasi under the scorching Indian summer sun with her child under her arm, too bad, you’ve been too busy following the cricket scandal. Just kidding.

Varanasi and Ganga bring us to the other popular musician who courted fame and infamy with a spiritual quest that combined hemp and Hinduism. As a callow hack in the field of foreign correspondence, it fell upon your true scribe to report some five years ago the dying wish of Jerry Garcia, late of the Grateful Dead, that his ashes be scattered in the Ganges in deference to the influence India and Indian religions had on him. No sooner was the wish public, a convoy of ex-wives and ex-spouses, more conversant with mammon than mysticism, contested both his will and wish, arguing that poor Jerry’s soul should not be contaminated by waters of one of the world’s most polluted rivers, whatever else the ‘‘Hindoos’’ might think. Outraged at the heresy and slur, the pandas of Varanasi responded corrosively: On the contrary, they shot back sulphurously, it would be the ashes of a man steeped in narcotics that would pollute the holy Indian River. One does not remember the denouement, but suffice to say western fascination for Indian religions has had a long, controversial, and tempestuous history, so delightfully chronicled in Karma Cola, a slim novella of such piercing insight that it deflated a whole generation of gurus and godmen. But after a hiatus of a couple of decades, Indian Gods, gurus, and religions are back in the news, although—aptly—in several different avatars. If on the one hand there are the Madonnas and Uma Thurmans reverentially learning the finer aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism, there is the wacky Mike Myers spoofing the phonier side of it all. If there are the Gwen Stefanis and Joan
Osbornes adopting as fads bindis and body piercings, there is Alexis Arquette depicting Krishna on the cover of the gay magazine Genre.

India is back in the USA, and we are not talking software folks. Indian diners, Indian dresses and divas are decorating Main Street, USA. Indian Gods, Indian gurus, and Indian gibberish are being seen from the PBS channel to derriere kinare—aka, on the seat pants of tight jeans. India is In, again. Moseying around Las Vegas last weekend, it was something of a jolt to see the world’s greatest gambling city celebrate themes such as Aladdin and Excalibur, while overlooking our own Mahabharata. On the verge of a depression that would have done the nearby Grand Canyon justice, I was rescued by the news of six Indian restaurants with the attendant desi paraphernalia in the middle of Mojave Desert.

A fair index of what’s in is the frequency with which the ‘‘in’’ thing surfaces in popular entertainment. By that measure, Indian Gods are pretty much in. From seat pants to foot soles, from magazine covers to television serials, omniscient Indian Gods are becoming omnipresent. My neighbour Karen Argentieri, whose job as a stewardess takes her closer to Him more often than any of us (at average flying altitude of 35,000 feet, what do you expect?), now sports a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of the Lord Ganesha and an inscription that reads: ‘‘Ganesha: 50 per cent man, 50 per cent elephant, 100 per cent cute.’’ Another American friend is the proud owner of a T-shirt that displays an impossible Kamasutra pose with the legend ‘‘Your Palace or My Palace?’’

Not all depictions of Indian Godhood or religion are considered zany and appreciated though. Ask Universal Studios and the producers of that absurd television serial called Xena, the Warrior Princess. With unsuspecting naivete, the makers of Xena last year ran several India-themed episodes including one in which the busty warrior princess battles the demon Indrajit with the help of Hanuman and Krishna (making a joint appearance in one episode!). She finally ends up as Ma Kali complete with black skin and hanging tongue, which wasn’t half as scary as the storm worked up by Hindu organisations that saw the episode as a trivialisation and a travesty of their religion.

One Indian academic called the Xena protests a ‘‘saffron vaudeville,’’ an act that was to repeat several times in the coming months. Mike Myers, a masterly comic whose epic spoofs as Austin Powers has cracked up audiences around the world, found out the hard way when he posed for a Vanity Fair picture dressed as a Chanakya lookalike swami. The spread, which showed Myers with an upheld palm saying ‘‘Call my agent’’ and a palm pilot organiser with the inscription OM, was ostensibly meant to spoof the pop culture’s yen for eastern religions. Instead, it spooked a coalition of Indian religious organisations that called for an apology.

Arquette, a self-declared gay, went one better and was fried even worse. Appearing on the cover of Genre dressed as Krishna next to a caption ‘‘Was Jesus Gay?’’ he incensed Hindu faithfuls. Another flap; another apology; another front page story for the media back home ever thirsting to portray conflict. Just as the episode was simmering down came the Southern Baptists, a Christian laity of such profound enlightenment, wisdom and depth that it felt compelled to characterise Hindus as ‘‘slaves bound by fear... to false Gods’’ and to describe Mumbai as a ‘‘city of spiritual darkness.’’ And you thought there were intolerant fundoos only in the subcontinent?

Typically, Indians would laugh at such foolish aggravations, but with the growth of the Indian population across the US, the more touchy among them have found strength and voice in numbers. At last count, there were more than 100 temples in the US. The Shiva-Vishnu temple in Maryland outside Washington, reflects the complex dynamics of the Hindu religion, incorporating both North Indian and South Indian Gods and architecture in a single complex. There are so many Sikhs and Gurdwaras in Vancouver that it was only a matter of time before a Punjab da Puttar became premier of British Columbia. Last week, the Jain community in the US joined the party, inaugurating a new $6 million temple for their faith on the West Coast. With Gods and temples, the godmen, and indeed godwomen, are returning too.

Nearly two decades after the scandalous Acharya Rajneesh rocked Oregon, a low-key, self-effacing woman is capturing the hearts and minds of spiritually-starved Indians and Americans. No one who has been to a congregation addressed by Mata Amritanandamay (also known as ammachi; www.ammachi.org) has returned unimpressed. The indefatigable Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who began the whole to-do by flooring four impressionable Liverpudlians in the sixties, soldiers on with his calls to change the world through Transcendental Meditation. Elsewhere, the urbane Deepak Chopra, spiritual heir of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and an academic heir of Dr Andrew Weil, described as a philosopher by some and a poser by others, continues to enthrall American audiences with his uplifting schtick about living life without stress. India’s major export is certainly doing well. Aum to that.