My friends in Pakistan are often puzzled by the proliferation of spiritual gurus in India. I do not blame them. A lifetime of a mullah-enforced moral compass can be debilitating, to say the least. It makes them skeptical of anyone who claims a monopoly on truth.
I have begun to share some of this skepticism, and I have found many in India who feel the same way. The problem, perhaps, is not gurus per se but our tendency to want them sanitised, error-free, scrubbed and shiny — zero sex drive, no hunger for power, aversion to money. Is it not possible to think of them as ordinary people, with a few things to learn from?
I began to think along these lines after I met filmmaker Shekhar Kapur last week. He had flown down all the way from London to launch his documentary film titled The Science of Compassion, which revolves around his interview with Mata Amritanandmayi, lovingly called Amma. She is a spiritual guru, whose ashram is located in Kollam, Kerala.
It's tough to imagine a guru who is not a charlatan
I must confess that I went in wondering why the hell a man who has directed films like Masoom, Mr. India, Bandit Queen, and Elizabeth would want to make a film on a guru. It’s tough, you see, to imagine a guru who is not a charlatan, when there are so many around. I mean, come on, he could have chosen a better subject.
I went to the launch, nevertheless, because I wanted to meet Kapur. And I cannot tell you how grateful I am that it happened. The ten minutes that I had been promised by his film’s publicist, stretched to thirty. We met in the coffee shop of Hotel Intercontinental a little before the launch but we hardly talked about the film. As soon as he knew that this column is written for readers in Pakistan, he said, “Let’s not talk about Bombay. Let’s talk about Lahore.”
Kapur was born just a year before the Partition of 1947, and his family home was on Nisbat Road. His father studied at Government Law College, and his mother at Kinnaird. He managed to visit all these places when he came to Lahore to work with Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on the music of Bandit Queen. As he recounted that time, he switched seamlessly between Punjabi, Hindi and English.
Shekhar Kapur
“I think I came closest to God through the voice of Nusrat Sahab,” he said. “When he sang, he lost his identity. It was not an individual singing. It was some other energy flowing through him.”
If you follow Kapur on Twitter, you’ll see how much of his time is spent contemplating questions that seem to have no answers. During his childhood years in Delhi, he used to stare at the night sky for hours. “Delhi wasn’t polluted. You could see the Milky Way clearly from my chhat (terrace).” He would ask his mother, “How far does space go?” And she would answer, “Forever.”
The realisation that one cannot measure, grasp or make sense of everything made him turn to storytelling. “Einstein told us the story of relativity. It didn’t change the world. It just changed our perception of it.” Today, Kapur is interested in exploring “what lies beyond rationality”, and in trying to “comprehend the addiction to individuality.” That must be quite a task for someone in showbiz, where so much depends upon how you project yourself.
Kapur, unlike many senior people I have met, did not enumerate his accomplishments. He didn’t carry the air of being busy and important, or enquire about the circulation figures of this publication. Yes, people do that kind of stuff. Kapur was completely in the moment. I learnt later that he directed the film for free. The only thing he wanted was to meet Amma for a one-on-one interview. His questions were about creativity and compassion. They did not carry the weight of his own stature as a celebrity. I liked that. Humility is attractive.
He was led to Amma’s ashram by his search for specialists in Haptic technology. Okay, now don’t ask me what that means. Go look up a search engine because I suck at science. Kapur wanted to use this technology for a installation he was creating for Terminal 2 at the Mumbai airport. The idea was to build on the common childlike impulse to touch when one sees water. This installation would produce music every time someone put their hand in.
Kapur told me that he got more and more intrigued as he found out how Amma, an uneducated person, has built not only ashrams but also schools, hospitals, and institutes of higher education. In the excerpt I saw of the film, he asks her if his education stops him from seeing. It is a portion that is incredibly moving. In fact, as I was watching, this thought came into my mind: “Chintan, you must go, and check out this place. You don’t have to be a devotee.” I guess that would not hurt.
“Everyone is looking for a miracle, a Bollywood drama,” Kapur told me. “Your breath itself is a miracle, isn’t it?” Well, that is true. But I wish my breath did not have to deal with all the pollution. Maybe I just need a good dose of mountain air.
I guess things worked differently for Kapur, since he was just visiting Mumbai, and wanted to soak in the sights and sounds before flying back to London. “Life is out in the streets,” he said. “Not five star hotels. That is just aspiration. You cannot live life aspirationally.”
Chintan Girish Modi is a Mumbai-based writer. That he shares his last name with a Prime Minister is purely a matter of coincidence. He tweets at @chintan_connect
