Salvation Through Smoking!

INDIA THAT IS BHARAT

Oh, my god! Are you listening? More specifically, are you reading the morning paper? For Satiricus has a question for you : What, oh God, is the difference between a man of god and a godman? You think this is a stupid question? Granted, Satiricus is stupid, but who wouldn’t be stupefied to read a recent piece in a leading paper titled You could smoke meditatively from the writings of godman Osho? Satiricus has read about yogis who excelled in meditation, from Vasishtha, Vishwamitra and Patanjali of ancient times to Aurobindo and Vivekananda of modern days, but nowhere has he found them teaching Satiricus how he could and should smoke meditatively. Still he must admit that the idea of salvation through cigarettes was novel enough to attract him to this precious printed piece of oh-so-high wisdom. He thought to himself if a single cigarette and a minute’s meditation could help Satiricus ascend to the seventh smoky heaven, why not?

However, there’s a catch. Actually, more than one. The first of them is that Satiricus is not qualified to learn anything from guru-cum-godman Osho. Why? Because once, when living, Osho had frankly said he was the guru of the rich, while the very idea of Satiricus getting rich on the peanuts he is fed for this column is rich in the sense of ludicrous. Secondly Satiricus had read that when Osho was living in America as the living link between the Americans and God, he had acquired a fleet of 56 cars on the other hand Satiricus does not have even half a Nano. And over and above this logistical difficulty in the way of transports of divine joy, there is a basic disqualification from which Satiricus suffers—he does not smoke. If he does not know how to smoke, how can he know how to smoke meditatively?

Fortunately, one lives and learns. Even Satiricus lives and learns from Osho. For, in the very opening of the piece published in the paper Osho said : “I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking. I have tried hard, but I have always failed. Is it a sin to smoke? Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. What are you really doing when you are smoking? Just taking some smoke inside your lungs and letting it out. It is a kind of Pranayama filthy, dirty, but still a Pranayama. You are doing Yoga in a stupid way…. I will suggest : Smoke as much as you want to smoke just smoke meditatively…. And you will be surprised: by watching your smoking, slowly smoking will become less and less. And one day suddenly…. It is gone.”

So there! Thanks to chain-smoking, “filthy-dirty”- Pranayama-practising godman Osho, the secret of how salvation goes up in (cigarette-) smoke lies revealed. It is certainly a tempting technique. For simpletons like Satiricus, for whom the Yoga explained by Krishna in the Gita is too complex to comprehend and the Yoga taught in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra too abstruse to understand, Osho is the obvious choice. In so many words this godman assures Satiricus : Just put a “filthy” fag in your lips, do some “dirty” Pranayama and hey, presto ! Salvation is secured.

 Syntaxing Situation

There is bad news for us journalists. It is that according to a study the human brain is wired to spot grammatical errors. This study, done by a university in the US, has reportedly found evidence that people detect grammatical errors without being aware that they are doing so. This is decidedly dangerous for us journalists. Journalism being an illiterate profession what we write is not bound by the wretched rules of grammar. But if the people who read newspapers have their brains wired like this, will they let us enjoy this freedom from grammar? Satiricus doubts. In fact he sees only one way out of this syntaxing situation the human brain that is reportedly wired against our poor grammar should be declared inhuman.

 Smart App!

Is Satiricus as smart as a smartphone? He does not know. What he knows, however, is that, next to God, a smartphone can do anything and everything, from checking your cholesterol to detecting your diabetes. It can even be used to talk and listen, ‒ an incidental ‘app’, one may say. Now it has come to light that a smartphone can help its user save 58 minutes in a day or 22 days a year. At least that is what a market research firm in America has carefully calculated. What a wonderful technological progress! But does it also not show that yet more progress needs to be made? For instance, how about that shameful shortfall of two momentous minutes per every single day? How many long years do we have to wait before the smartphone gets smarter and saves one whole hour instead of 58 mere minutes ?