ABSTRACT

My tiny Premier taxi shudders to a halt at the Mahalaxmi traffic lights. Immediately, a group of boy hawkers, wearing tattered shorts, efficiently fans out among the lines of waiting cars, searching for likely customers. The midday sun is oppressive and a cloud of exhaust fumes is already hanging over the junction. The boy who finds me is clutching a couple of books carefully wrapped in transparent plastic. ‘Deepak Chopra, sah! One hundred rupees only, sah!’ The books, which are in English, are titled: The way of the wizard: twenty spiritual lessons for creating the life you want. I remember how, about a year earlier, I had seen the millionaire New Age guru Chopra on American public television, peddling yuppie mysticism to an earnestly reverent audience. More recently, I had come across Chopra in the Indian press arguing that the cause of poverty was an individual inability to realize ‘wealth consciousness.’ Asked by a journalist whether he was ready for sanyas [renunciation], the urbane doctor replied: ‘Renunciation is in the consciousness. If I think myself into anonymity, that would be sanyas for me. I long for it but it won’t happen tomorrow.’ The traffic suddenly lurches forward, and the hawkers scurry back to their traffic island.