I will be really surprised if any school or public institution in India will ever introduce a course in such “exotic” disciplines such as Art of Living. Sadly, the media in India, and the political parties would want to make us believe that giving prominence to anything that is considered “Indian” is akin to blatant promotion of Hinduism, to the detriment of “minorities”. This, to me, is absolutely ridiculous, but then that is the way the media and polity in India act today.

I just now returned from a 10 day trip to Beijing/ Hongkong with my family. We had a rollicking time climbing the Great Wall, something that I will write about, separately. The new airport terminal 3 in Beijing is a masterpiece by itself… huge, dragonshaped, and perhaps about 20 times the size of the “state of the art” airport which we claim to have in Bangalore now. Even as one deplanes, the first things that strike are two mammoth paintings, each about 25 metres long and about 3 metres wide. On these paintings, are intricate depictions of the ancient Chinese way of life .. a village on a riverside, replete with a teacher ( like Confucius) teaching an attentive audience of students, attired in traditional Chinese dress… and then people working away in Smithy’s, weavers, farmers, fishermen etc etc… in India, if one were to try putting up a statue of Gomateshwara in the new Bangalore airport, it would provoke immediate rebuke from the likes of Karat& Co. Similar “religious” depictions/ statues can be seen at the airports in Bangkok and Jakarta… in fact, the most astonishing thing is, in Bangkok, one can actually see a huge statue of the Devas and Asuras using Vasuki the snake as rope and tying to whip up Paarkadal… a scene from the Dasavatharam… no kidding guys.. you can go to the new Suvarnabhumi airport to see this.. Can we imagine this in India? No way.. we would rather be “secular” and have Annadurai or Karl Marx… because they are the true representations of ancient India, you see!!!! God bless us!!!