Oh My God, writes Twinkle Khanna

Around a year ago, Mommy dearest told me a little about Radhe Maa.  An acquaintance of mother’s was a follower and he had been rather keen to take her to visit the god-woman. Mother, not one to pass up on adventures, went along. When she got back that evening, I dropped by for the dope on this rather famous individual as I had seen her on more hoardings than the three Khans put together.

Over cups of green tea, I asked mommy, ‘So did this holy lady say anything insightful?’ 

‘No, she doesn’t really speak,’ replied Mother.

Err.. Alright, on to the next question, ‘Did she do something miraculous, you know, like, conjure tubes of Fair & Lovely out of thin air?’ 

Mother paused, had another sip of tea and replied, ‘No, she doesn’t do all that and stop asking me silly questions all the time.’

Since Ma had decided not to answer me, I went to the Baap of the information universe, Google, and up popped a video of Radhe Maa. She was sitting on a grand stage, smiling, all dressed in red. A man picked her up in his arms, hoisted her in the air and danced around for a few minutes, after which he passed her to another burly gentleman, who also carried her while twirling around a bit and then he put her back on stage. 

I yelped, ‘Mom! You went to a satsang or a dance bar?’

Mother dear sighed, ‘Beta, don’t talk like this. Who knows, these videos must be morphed! And really, what if she curses you or something?’ 

‘And then what, Mom?’ I retorted, ‘The two bags of chuna that she seems to put on her face and perhaps onto the public as well, will fall on my head?’

At which point, Mother quickly changed the topic by asking me if I had seen that gigantic, slightly moth-eaten Garuda head at Philips Antiques and how nice it would look right outside my bedroom door.

I also recall a friend very enthusiastically telling me about another strange godman who visited her home. This gentleman claimed that he could perform surgeries without a knife. He would fling his arms in front of the patient and in a fraction of a second, he would have bits of bloody flesh in his hand claiming that it was a tumour or something to that effect. Doctors, do take note of this amazing innovation in medical science and throw away your scalpels and degrees.

This mumbo-jumbo business seems so simple that if I changed my name to Twinkbaba, borrowed some eye-popping costumes from the wardrobe department of any saas-bahu TV serial and gave the striking students of FTII part-time jobs by making them design grand sets for my weekly discourses, write lyrics for my religious songs and direct grand spectacles featuring me on Aastha channel, while continuing their daily routine of protesting against an alleged follower of Radhe Maa herself, Mr Gajendra Chauhan, I could easily become the next god-woman.

Babas and their ilk, throng the streets of India at the ratio of two mystical creatures to one pothole and though, periodically, they are thrown in the slammer on various rape, scam and murder charges, they return undeterred to perform more of their wily sleights-of-hand.  We might point fingers at them but the fact remains that they exist only because of us. We, the people who desperately want to rely on everything else besides our own resolve, flock to these goons and shower them with our money and our hopes. And when our current idol falls off his pedestal, we simply call this particular one a fraud and go off on a quest to find the next perfect god-man. 

So, Friends, Indians and Countrymen, lend me just your ears and not your money, since I am not quite Twinkbaba yet, when I tell you that we must halt all this turning towards shifty light from simulated sources, like a bunch of silly sunflowers looking for the sun. How about we find that hope and sparkle within ourselves instead, because after all, isn’t a halo just another trick of the light?