The five stages of (late-capitalist) grief

The following is a response to Ramdev: Ek Sangharsh (henceforth referred to as RES ), the Ramdev biopic TV show (produced by Ajay Devgn) currently aired on Discovery Jeet. For best results, watch the show while consuming Patanjali digestive tablets, which smell like the stuff they’re meant to hasten. This way, you’ll be given a wide berth. You’ll better appreciate the solitary struggles of our intrepid mahanayak.

Essential hagiographic brick-and-mortar; or what a ₹10,000-crore-a-year company needs to rebrand its founder as a subaltern champion. A versatile, endlessly useful arrow to possess in your quiver, especially if you claim your less-than-cardio ministrations can cure homosexuality and cancer (both are, as we know, manifestations of bad karma).

In RES , Ramkrishna, aka The Boy Who Would Be Ramdev, is punished/ cursed/ banished (at various stages of the episode, the truth alternates between these three) by the Big Bad Priest of the village, Pandit Govardhan. The crime was not even his: it was his elder brother’s, for touching a statue of Lord Krishna while being a “ neechi jaat ” boy. Never mind that Ramdev has persistently promoted a brahminical, ultra-conservative world view for close to a decade, complete with anti-minority, misogynist, homophobic rhetoric. Do the words “dalit” and “honeymoon” ring a bell, perchance?

The amorphous, red-hot part of you typically exploited by charlatans and crony capitalists. For example, a rage that you never even knew you harboured against “ videshi ” FMCG companies. That kind of road leads, inevitably, to dubious-looking karele ka ras in a small green bottle. Or worse, something called Romance Pluss Pluss or suchlike, which will be peddle-pitched to you through the worst nudge-wink routine in the world.

Baba Ramdev with actor Kranti Prakash Jha who plays him in his biopic

RES shamelessly manipulates its audiences into rage-monstering at the right moments, using what appears to be a Reema Lagoo mixtape of ‘ maa ’ music. If it’s not the aforementioned Pandit Govardhan (played by Tej Sapru, renowned rapist/ lech/ villain- ka - bhai / all of the above from ’90s masala Bollywood), it’s other heartless beasts, like the village shopkeepers who deny young Ramkrishna proteins, fresh fruits and vegetables. (They’re following the Pandit’s diktat to socially boycott Ramkrishna and his family because, otherwise, the village shall fall prey to a sarvanaash most foul.)

Actually, no, there’s no starvation. All they do is refuse to sell him Lord Krishna’s mukut on Janmashtami. But why let facts come in the way of a good temper tantrum?

Circa 2017 India, a dark art that involves intersectional wheeling-dealing across the axes of sanskaar , sensationalism and vast amounts of capital (both actual and political). If you’re skilled at this, it doesn’t matter what your company sells: you will be given thousands of crores in tax cuts, to say nothing of land at dirt cheap rates.

When we consider a show like RES , bargaining is what gets your vanity/braggadocio script an A-list producer like Ajay “Zubaan Kesri” Devgn. Ramdev wants you to believe that he’s broken some sort of glass ceiling by “defeating” the MNCs (never mind the allegations that the actual reasons for his success are predatory pricing and naked favouritism by governments state and central).

In the TV ads for RES , we see a grown-up Ramdev smashing the glass window of a skyscraper with a heroic leap.

Can’t smash a ceiling? Smash a window instead. That’s bargaining, Ramdev-style.

Can’t shame a pandit publicly? Enrol in your local pranayama competition and shame his acolytes instead. That’s bargaining, Ramkrishna-style.

When you’re dealing with someone like Ramdev, acceptance is a passive-aggressive way of repeating pet peeves, conspiracy theories and smokescreens — basically, the story that he and his powerful collaborators want you to associate with him (again, never mind that whenever any allegation of wrongdoing surfaces against him, it is swiftly met with a lawsuit, like the one filed against a journalist who wrote an unfavourable biography of him).

In the first episode of RES , we see Ramkrishna painting his face like a monkey’s and dancing around primate-like to earn pocket money. When his brother says that he’s getting sick of being ridiculed by the villagers for their tomfoolery, young Ramkrishna sighs and muses that he’s accepted his “ kaali soorat ” and, hence, all that comes with it.

Call me crazy, but I think this is referring to that hilarious Ranchi evening in 2015 when Ramdev said, in front of a packed house including Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das: “If I would have been a fair-skinned person, the Nobel Prize would have been awarded to me till now for my work in the field of yoga. But, it has been denied to me because I am black.” Words don’t mean the same things for Ramdev as they do to us: words like “black” or “denied” or, you know, “work”.

But it’s best that you accept this. It just is, don’t ask me why.

Dear readers, in late-capitalism, depression follows acceptance, not the other way round. Once you’ve accepted that a show like RES not only exists, but also airs five days a week, and has a Netflix deal done-and-dusted, what else can follow but depression?

Aditya Mani Jha is a commissioning editor with Penguin Random House

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