Yoga-to Be Flexible To Salute The Sun

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Ever since Narendra Modi took oath as PM, he’s been jet-setting, trying to convince the world that India and selfies is the best thing to have happened since sliced bread. In an attempt to promote India’s ancient cultural heritage, Modi persuaded United Nations to embrace Yoga, India's biggest contribution to mankind since zero. 21st June will now be observed as International Baba Ramdev Day thanks to his initiative.

While BJP and its sibling outfits are vigorously practising ‘hasahasana’ and rubbing their palms in glee, celebrating this as yet another assertion of Hindu superiority, minority religious groups have planted their feet firmly on the ground in Tadasana, opposing its compulsory imposition in schools.

Some Muslim Groups have expressed anxiety that saluting the sun (one of the asanas to be included in the mass drill) will turn them into beef-hating Hindus. Their fears were further fuelled by BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi, who declared that Muslims do yoga five times a day and that the Prophet had been a great yogi.

These Muslim Groups have now renamed themselves as Ray Ban and can be spotted wearing burqas to protect themselves from the un-Islamic rays of the sun.

This has sent ripples of fear in the US, one of the first countries to adopt Bikram and his hot variant of Yoga. They are now attributing their new-found love for vegetarianism to Yoga and its ghar wapasi after-effects. The beef lobby is urging New Yorkers to boycott Yoga guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s session to be held at Times Square. They are afraid that the asanas will trigger a craving for paneer and make the participants shun beef.

Jersey Cows association has welcomed International Yoga Day with much enthusiasm and are hoping that Mother’s Day will now be observed as a day to honour their valuable contribution to increasing American girths. India TV in its 65th breaking news of the day has reported that a Texan farmer refused to butcher his cow, insisting he could hear his dead Mom’s voice in her mooing.

I feel the fears are as justified as renaming Christmas to Good Governance Day and Valentine’s Day to Matru-Pitru Diwas to counter its corrupting effects on our youth. If celebrating Christmas can turn us into Christians, surely Yoga will turn its practitioners into Om-chanting devout Hindus!

I’m surprised that the Pope hasn’t appealed to the United Nations to observe 21st December as World Aerobics Day, the surest way to becoming a Christian. Missionaries can certainly do with a break from converting poor tribals and dalits to a new faith.

Meanwhile the saffron brigade, the true upholders of our culture have started looking at the Moon from a new angle. They are now insisting married women who break their fast looking at the moon on Karvachauth are lunatic and anti-national and should be packed to Pakistan.

Their husbands are aghast. With no wives, how will they crack the same wifey jokes again and again and convince their friends that they are not afraid of their better halves?

Modern turned Behenjee, Yoga Didi is befuddled. If she can straighten people’s spines, help them extricate their foot from their mouth, squeeze out their excess gas, surely, she can rid the world of gasbags hell-bent on saffronising her? Don’t these fools know, the more they force people to love her, the more vehemently they’ll reject her?