‘Cal bk urgnt’ read the sms from my easily-flappable, otherwise fashionable Gujju friend early Sunday morning. “Hetal and I are off to Singapore and Hong Kong for Christmas week – New Year shopping, you know,” he said when I called. “And you wanted to know if I need a new zoom lens, or a smartphone?” I ventured with more hope than certainty. “No yaar, you know we started going to these spiritual camps, ne? Hetal said to ask you what trendy clothes we could buy to wear at these ashrams and all. You must be knowing…”
Actually, I am not quite be knowing – has Nike suddenly launched meditation robes impregnated with charged ions to give you that extra boost in the lotus position? I must confess to owning a couple of extremely comfy Lacoste kurtas, but that’s more a matter of function than form. And judging by what the evangelical channels offer, the religious and spiritual heads of our planet seem to be a sartorially challenged community – whether it’s the padres, mullahs or mahamandaleshwars (though they’re still not as badly dressed as our cricketers!) No wonder youngsters shy away from spirituality – it simply doesn’t seem cool enough! Let’s call for a spiritual design and lifestyle week in 2008, and send some of our gurus to these reality TV makeover shows.
Yoga seems to be rapidly exhausting its commercial possibilities, and yoga studios have probably outnumbered psychotherapists’ chambers in New York. Let’s face it, spirituality is hard work, and who the heck wants to work hard at this sort of thing! That’s why I don’t predict our page 3 glamarazzi turning spiritual in 2008; after all, what do you have to show after six months of meditation? There is no spiritual equivalent of the six-pack abs.
Which leaves us with the only real spiritual trend for next year, the incorporation of Indian spirituality by the global management training fraternity. Already, leading corporate trainers prefer to be known as Management Gurus, and their workshops are now peppered with concepts from the Bhagvad Gita and of course the Arthashastra – Machiavellian MBA’s, anyone? Seriously though, it’s bad enough that we had to wait for yoga and spirituality to get repackaged in the west and sold back to us before we appreciated it, do we now have to listen to Americans selling us dharma in the workplace? Look at the Japanese, who for decades have brought their cultural traditions and social mores to their workplaces, driving their businesses to global supremacy. India has a rich heritage of economic success and resource management, and most importantly people management – look at the local kirana stores and other “family-run” establishments whose loyal customer bases span generations. This is knowledge that’s just waiting to be translated into dollars by our business houses, I’d prefer that just this once, we become the trendsetters instead of the wannabes.
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