Art of Living?

The 'insiders' Bal, Uddhav Thackeray and co are busy running a hate campaign against the 'outsiders.' This controversy over the growing conglomeration of migrants in Mumbai is selling like hot cakes; yes I said selling. The Fourth Estate is out on all its limbs to exploit the situation and in the process is gleefully trying to fill some deep pockets. To SRK this has turned out to be a godsend; the timing is great for the release of his "My name is Khan; the titular theme of this movie seems to be nothing but blatant self-glorification….am I drifting from the main issue here? To the myriad political parties in our nation, it is yet another vantage point where they could gain political mileage from.

The latest to have jumped onto the bandwagon is the so-called techie guru Sri Sri Ravishankar. Taking a jibe at Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena for their wrong stand against migrant population in Maharashtra, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on Thursday advised the Thackeray family to strictly follow his Art of Living regimes to calm their nerves. "Thackeray parivaar ko Art of Living ki sakht zaroorat hai (The Thackeray family strictly need Art of Living lessons)." As far as I can see, Sri Sri seems to be unnecessarily poking here because logically it is hard to convince anyone that a particular way of life is superior to the other but he is a shrewd businessman rather than a guru and the reason for his jumping into the fray seems to be other than to gain some cheap publicity for his premium courses on Art in Living which, by the way, are very expensive. Nothing but fiddling while Rome burnt; having said that I just cannot help but laugh at the guru's efforts to promote his 'Art of Living" to a group of goons who are the specialists in professing the "Art of Leaving."