Gaysia (34 page)

I
N THE MIDDLE OF
a six-hour taxi ride from Delhi, I paused at an outdoor cement urinal that smelled – weirdly – of human shit, wondering whether I'd made a terrible mistake. According to my estimates, we were in the middle of nowhere and it made me anxious. ‘Middle of nowhere' wasn't an exact coordinate, but when you're in India on your own, relying on a driver who doesn't speak English and becoming paranoid that neither of you knows where you are, it's difficult to be precise. Plus the cold was fuddling my brain. The chill had an almost liquid quality, the way it seeped through my beanie, gloves, multi-layered thermals, down my jeans and into my shoes. No one had told me the subcontinent could feel so Arctic.

Our destination was near Haridwar, one of India's holy cities and a well-known site of pilgrimage. On the map, though, our
target was a tiny cluster on the side of the road, a cameo appearance from humanity: it would be all too easy to miss.

I zipped up and scurried into the cab's backseat. The driver shook his head and reclined the passenger seat to show me I could lie completely flat.

‘Sleep,' he said, pointing. ‘You sleep.'

It was 1.30 am. I liked the way he thought.

As I slipped into unconsciousness, the driver turned up the heat to block out the cold that was entering through every crack. Outside, the temperature continued to plummet, breaking Indian meteorological records. Across the country, thick wafts of movie-set fog were causing epic train delays, forcing stranded passengers to sleep on station floors with blankets pulled over their faces, and giving platforms the look of giant makeshift morgues after a natural disaster. That night, people died from exposure to the cold in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.

The driver woke me up three hours later. We had arrived at Patanjali Yogpeeth, also known as Patanjali University. It wasn't really a university, but rather a strange hybrid of health research institute, conference centre and massive yoga retreat. I shouldn't have worried about missing it: the entrance for the guests' quarters was huge, a white concrete frame recalling the entrance to a Hollywood studio, set off by warm glowing lights. Juvenile palm trees sprouted alongside manicured pathways, bordering tidy flowerbeds of gerberas and chrysanthemums.

Staff dressed in military gear asked me for my papers, then walked me to my room, protecting themselves from the cold by pulling heavy blankets over their shoulders and scarves around their faces like improvised balaclavas.

My bathroom was a slab of cement with a basin and faucets.
The showerhead didn't work, so I bathed the way most people in India did: by filling a large bucket with as much hot water as possible and then scrubbing myself raw while crouching on the freezing concrete. In bed, I cocooned myself in blankets. I couldn't doze for long: my glow-in-the-dark watch told me I'd have to be awake soon. In less than two hours, I'd have my first chance to see the guru I'd come to meet. One of the most powerful and influential men in India, he had gathered millions of disciples and devotees worldwide, attracted by his claims about the curative power of yoga and ayurvedic medicine. It was believed that his practices could cure cancer and reverse diabetes, but his most controversial claim was that he could cure people of homosexuality. Of course, I had heard this before, but Ramdev was different. In India, he was a household name.

Swamiji Baba Ramdev was known by many names: Baba Ramdev, Swami Ramdev, Yogarishi Swami Ramdevji or, simply, Babaji. If you showed his photo to any Indian on the street, they would recognise him immediately. His picture was plastered outside traditional ayurvedic pharmacies throughout the country: long, slick black hair, bushy beard and squeezable, always-smiling face. In his youth, he had resembled an Indian version of the apple-cheeked American actor Mark Ruffalo. No one knew Ramdev's real age, but most people believed he was in his late forties or early fifties.

Ramdev led the simple life of an ascetic – steamed vegetables; strict sexual abstinence; same old orange robes day in, day out – and reportedly didn't even have a bank account in his own name, but he was ridiculously rich. His empire of yoga camps, ayurvedic drugs, fruit juices and natural toiletries was estimated to be worth 25 million US dollars.
India Today
declared him to
be the twenty-ninth most powerful person in the country. To his 80 million followers worldwide, and 20 million regular television viewers who followed his morning exercises, Ramdev was not a mere yoga instructor but a holy leader and cult hero. No matter whether they were Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian, Ramdev said everyone could benefit from his teachings.

In mid 2009, there had been a huge nationwide campaign to repeal Section 377, a colonial hangover that effectively outlawed homosexual sex in India. Ramdev used this moment to become a prominent anti-gay campaigner, insisting that homosexuality was a sexual abnormality, which he could cure.

‘The verdict will encourage criminality and a sick mentality,' he said in a press statement. ‘This kind of thing is shameful and insulting. We are blindly following the West in everything. This is breaking the family system in India. Homosexuals are sick people. They should be sent to hospitals for treatment.'

At Patanjali, my alarm went off. I hadn't really slept. It was still dark outside. I could hear my fellow yogis opening their doors, switching on lights and shuffling their feet. Outside, loudspeakers stirred us from our rooms.

‘The yoga session will start at 5.45 precisely,' they announced in English. ‘The yoga session will start at 5.45 precisely.'

We slowly filed outside, crossing our arms close against our bodies and watching the steam of our breath as we joined the human river headed for the amphitheatre. Most of the people were Indian, but a number of the delegates had flown here. Some had East Asian backgrounds, but a decent number were white people from America, Europe and Australia, hippies
who had hit retirement and were looking for enlightenment. Everyone was dressed bizarrely. The freezing weather demanded multiple layers of clothing, but we were also heading to a yoga class that required breezy, flexible apparel. People wore loose tracksuit pants
and
fur stoles; polyester jackets
and
Thai fisherman pants, over thermal leggings and
with
a suit blazer.

When we reached the yoga hall, I couldn't stop staring. It was a majestic space, a beautifully lit amphitheatre with 250,000 square feet of cement floors and padded cotton mats. The story went that Baba Ramdev had started teaching yoga in a modest 250-square-foot room. This amphitheatre was 1000 times bigger.

As musicians played drums on-stage, we cracked out our morning stiffness. I sat on my mat with my legs in front of me, reaching over to stretch my hamstrings. There was movement on the stage, a smudge of orange I immediately knew was Baba Ramdev. Later, I would see crowds of people walk up to touch his feet before backing away quickly, as if making contact with holy fire. We all stood to acknowledge his presence. Following everyone else's lead, I raised both arms in salute, humming a general
ohm
in his direction. Despite the Hitler Youth connotations, the gesture was a genuinely beautiful thing: a collective of people harmonising our voices. It was as if we had connected on a metaphysical level.

Baba Ramdev signalled for us to sit down.

‘Welcome everyone,' he said into the microphone, his voice echoing through the space.

He was wrapped in his usual robes: day-glo orange, the same colour you'd find at a rave. Two giant screens on either side of the stage projected Ramdev's image as if he were Bono at a U2 concert. Zoomed in close, you could see all his features in high definition. He looked older than in the program's photos
and his right eye was visibly damaged, blinking out of sync with the left. However, his beard was as healthy and as thick as ever: an upside-down beehive with afro-level density. It was the kind of beard you could lose cutlery in.

In a few quick moves, Ramdev refolded his robes from a flowing neck-to-toe number into the skimpiest pair of running shorts imaginable. Now displaying his famously luxurious mat of chest hair, he led us through the moves slowly and methodically: slow-motion star jumps, long-limbed cat stretches, knee-to-nipple leg pumps, bridge-like spine arches. In the middle of that last stretch, a middle-aged Indian woman in front of me released a fart, a floppy honking arse-trumpet that resonated throughout the chamber. The man next to me completely lost his shit, giving up on the stretch to collapse with his head on his mat, spasming with laughter.

‘These are traditional Indian exercises,' Ramdev said in English, ignoring the echoing fart.

The moves became more complicated: Russian Cossack leg thrusts, thalidomide-baby elbow claps. We briefly retreated to familiar territory with salute-the-sun routines, but soon Ramdev was performing them as fast as a breakdance, complicated manoeuvres that looked as if they'd cause permanent spinal injuries in most people. Ramdev pinned his hands on the floor in a push-up pose, flinging his entire body and legs through his arms – back and forth, back and forth – before sitting with his legs crossed to show us something cool we could do with
pranayam
breathing. Closing his eyes, he sucked in his gut to make a concave shape between his ribs, a hollow big enough to fit your entire face. He jiggled his gut around rapidly, like a lava lamp in time lapse. We applauded. It was as impressive as it was gross.

If these were the moves that were supposed to straighten out gay people, I would be gay for the rest of my natural life.

As the conference went on, I warmed to Ramdev. A lot of what he said made sense. He told people to reduce their meat consumption, not just because it was a good Hindu thing to do but also because of environmental concerns. He believed in chewing your food properly, eating raw vegetables and limiting the use of air-conditioning and heaters, because global warming and energy consumption concerned him. Ramdev was also a beautiful orator. In Hindi, he described the other delegates who had gathered there as ‘saints and seers'.

In the afternoon, Ramdev held a two-hour Q&A session in a cavernous auditorium. Shirley, the conference organiser, sat beside Ramdev on-stage and sorted through a Santa-sized pile of letters, selecting the questions she considered the best or most interesting. Those of us who couldn't understand Hindi wore headsets that broadcast a live English translation. Some of the questions were general; others were bizarre:
How do we reduce obesity in woman after HRT? How does one eat right, and when should one eat? Which yoga practices should and shouldn't be done during the menstrual cycle? Can yoga address autism? What about yoga for muscular dystrophy? How can we use yoga to help enlarge our prostates? Can yoga help with multiple sclerosis?

Ramdev nodded and answered each question in the affirmative: yoga could help with all these things. All of them. He insisted you would never need anti-wrinkle cream if you did yoga, citing his sisters as living evidence. Yoga could also cure osteoporosis and cancer. If you had glaucoma, eye drops and laser surgery weren't necessary. Natural ayurvedic medicines could easily reverse the condition. In fact, he'd recently cured a woman of glaucoma with a simple natural remedy, combining white onion,
ginger and lemon juice, which the woman administered directly to her eyes. My eyes involuntarily watered thinking about it.

‘I can't tell you to recommend this to your patients in the West,' he told us, clapping his hands together and laughing with a donkey wheeze. ‘Over there, they'd
sue
you! So perhaps you can “recommend” it to them, but don't “tell” them to do it! And don't tell them
I
told you!'