Kundan Lal Saigal: right note

The long-distance call was from Osho?s commune in Pune. On the line was the editor of Osho Times, Amrit Sadhana. From the voice I could not tell if she was Indian or a foreigner. The name could belong to any nationality as when they became disciples of Bhagwan Rajnish (Osho), he gave them new names. She was coming to Delhi the next day to present me with their latest publication, Body Mind Balancing: A Guide to Making Friends with Your Body. I told her she would be welcome if she arrived punctually at 4 pm.

She did on the dot of time, accompanied by a handsome young man with a camera. She was also easy on the eye, but I was not sure whether she was Indian or foreign: she could have been Italian or Latin American. ?Where are you from?? I asked her.

?Nagpur.?

?So you are Maharashtrian!?

She nodded her head. Like most Osho?s lady disciples, she was well turned-out, with a necklace and earstuds sparkling with diamonds. ?What made you join Osho?s commune? Were you unhappy? Are you married? Any children??

Osho?s disciples do not like to be questioned about their past. She dodged my questions by replying: ?I didn?t marry; I was given away in marriage; I have two grown-up children; they are on their own.?

I realized she was reluctant to be quizzed. ?What is Osho?s new book about??

She took it out of her handbag and waved it before me. ?Before I give it to you, I will tell you what it says. The mind and the body are closely related and not antagonistic towards each other as other religions depict them. They tell you to deprive the body of its needs by fasting and torture it to enrich the soul. Osho says exactly the opposite. Love your body, talk to it, share your problems with it and it will respond.?

She proceeded to explain the words of Osho. ?If I have headache I ask my head, ?Why are you angry with me that you are causing me pain?? The pain may leave your head and go down to your shoulder. Then speak to your shoulder and ask it what has upset it. The pain will go down to your legs, to your feet and then disappear.? She had a look of triumph on her face.

?Why not simply take an aspirin pill?? I asked

?No good,? she replied with a beaming smile. ?Aspirin only makes pain subside for a while. It will come back again because the real cause of pain remains.?

I did not buy that because with me aspirin works and my headaches do not come back for many days. However, I read Osho?s latest offering. Like everything else compiled from his sermons, it is very readable combining wisdom with naughty anecdotes. You get the feeling that though he has been gone for some years, he is talking to you. I quote a few lines from any early sermon:

?The right time never comes.

?It is not a story only about one poor man. It is the story of millions of people, of almost all. They are all waiting for the right moment, the right constellation of stars?They are delving into astrology, going to the palmist, inquiring in different ways about what is going to happen tomorrow.

?Tomorrow does not happen ? it never has happened. It is simply a stupid strategy of postponement.

What happens is always today.?

The man with the golden voice

Kundan Lal Saigal died on January 18, 1947, that is, 58 years ago. However, his voice lives to this day because no one before or after him had so rich a tone as his. I, who never was one for the cinema, saw Tansen in my college days in Lahore fourteen times ? not because of the story but to hear Saigal sing. He was no great actor; he was passably handsome; his talent for acting was limited, but his rendering of ghazals more than made up for his other shortcomings. I never got to meet him but heard a lot about him from my cousin, Balwant, who met him often and shared his passion for Scotch. Saigal was a hard drinker.

Without ever having met him, I got to know a lot about him through his daughter, Neena. We were for many years next door neighbours in Colaba, Bombay. She was then married to a Muslim tailor-master named Merchant and lived with her family in a block of flats barely five yards away and on the same level as mine.

She was a powerfully-built, attractive Punjaban. I fell for her when I saw her grab a fellow who had made a pass at her by his hair, slap him on the face and shower him with choice Punjabi abuse. We became friends. I looked forward to her dropping in on me when I was relaxing with my evening drink. (She did not touch alcohol) and regale me with her exploits. She often talked about her family, her relationship with her parents and siblings. She was not very comfortable with English, so we always talked in Punjabi. Her portrayal of her father was vivid. He spent many hours of the day doing riyaaz (practice), going over every line of the ghazal he was singing many times till he got it absolutely right. And of course his returning home from the film studio dead drunk. She talked of him with great affection.

Neena did not make a happy marriage. Her husband took up a job in Hyderabad. She divorced him and stayed on in Bombay. She took on another husband, again a Muslim much younger than her. She came to see me in Delhi once. She was looking radiantly happy. Then she disappeared from my life.

Somebody had to do a comprehensive biography of K.L. Saigal. Pran Neville has done it. K.L. Saigal: Immortal Singer and Superstar is a massive-sized coffee-tabler with rare photographs (one of Neena aged five) listed all the films in which he starred and the songs he made famous by his golden voice.

Way of all religions

One thing that has baffled me about the disclosures following the arrest of the seer of Kancheepuram is the huge math controlling scores of smaller temples with incomes running into hundreds of crores every year. Surely this is not what the Adi Sankaracharya, the greatest of Hindu thinkers, had in mind when he set up the four maths to propagate his teachings. He was also the founding-father of the Bhakti movement, of which Sikhism is an offshoot. I quoted his immortal lines in my two volume History and Religion of the Sikhs to prove the futility of institutionalizing religion. They read as follows:

?O Lord! Pardon my three sins. I have in contemplation clothed thee in form, Thee that art formless; I have in praise described Thee who art ineffable; and in visiting temples I have often ignored Thy Omnipresence.?