THE PREDATOR’S POSE
A new Netflix documentary shows how yoga guru Bikram Choudhury got away with sexual assault
ong before #MeToo, a series of sexual assault allegations erupted against California-based yoga guru Bikram Choudhury. He was eventually tried and convicted in a civil case brought against him by a former legal adviser. He fled the US. Australian filmmaker Eva Orner’s engaging new documentary, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, charts the astronomic rise and gradual fall of the once wildly popular Kolkata-born immigrant who brought what he claimed was a revolutionary new form of yoga to Americans. The film, which premiered on Netflix on November 20, is a tightly told story of the man, his cultish followers and his misdeeds.
“Despite news coverage of the story over the years, I felt [it] had never been told in its entirety and what made it interesting to me was that Bikram, despite everything, has gotten away with it,” says Orner, by email. “I felt it was relevant and worthy of making and then during production #MeToo occurred, which I thought made it even more relevant.” The form of “hot yoga” that he popularised involved a series of poses he claimed as his own, all done in an overheated environment of sweating and pain. In fitness-crazy, celebrity-driven Los Angeles, he was unorthodox, but also undeniably popular. “Bikram stood out. He was Indian, appealing, cheeky, different and he told people the truth about their bodies and their lifestyles even if people didn’t want to hear it,” says Orner. “…. And they got results.”
Lurking behind the flashy lifestyle of Rolex watches and Rolls Royces, however, Bikram turned out to be that old stereotype: a powerful man with a predatory urge. “He would focus on women who were very young. They very much looked up to him…,” says Orner, who won a Best Documentary Feature Oscar as producer in 2008. “He often held the keys to their livelihood and careers and could determine their status as teachers within the Bikram world.” Eventually, victims began to come forward and speak about the harassment and assault.
Initially, the close-knit world of Bikram followers was not familiar to Orner; getting people to talk was itself a challenge. “This story was explosive and had divided a community, so many people I approached were very suspicious of my motives,” she says. Neither Bikram nor anyone from his camp would speak to Orner, so his side of the story is told almost entirely through archival material, news interviews and courtroom footage. Bikram comes across as a ribald, charismatic and ultimately buffoonish figure.
The movie draws strength from the victims’ clear-eyed narrations—women who came forward, like so many women do, only years later. And in a different time. “You have to remember the women in this story...didn’t have the support of a movement,” says Orner. “They were alone and lost everything... They were vilified and excommunicated and, in the end, he got away with it.” ■
Shut Up Sona is among the handful of Indian documentaries about contemporary musicians. The film is based around singer Sona Mohapatra’s frequent battles with patriarchy, manifested in such sundry forms as male-skewed music festival line-ups and litigious religious groups with a misguided sense of morality. Mohapatra talked to us about the making of the self-produced film, which has been directed by her close friend, cinematographer Deepti Gupta. Edited excerpts:
Q. What made you want to make a documentary?
People love my music and show up [for] concerts. But somehow the industry didn’t have any place for me. The few opportunities [I’d get were] with too many gaps. One [option] is to keep feeling isolated, the other is to say I’ll make my own opportunities and my own film that will trace my inspirations and my love for roots and folk music. There’s no better way to share your journey as an artist than with a film.
Q. In the film, we see you get quite emotional
about not being programmed as a solo artist at IIT Bombay’s Mood Indigo festival. You’ve achieved considerable success. Why did the festival committee’s actions affect you so much?
Because it matters for the collective. I have gone through the route of writing IIT JEE. I’m an engineer. [I know how people] aspire to be in these institutions. The future CEOs and leaders of industry [come] from [them]. If, even without realising it, they’re seeing women as second-class [citizens] or not under the spotlight, it’s sending out a very, very deep message and it shows up in the workspace. I’ve worked as a professional.
The best of people carry a lot of deep-rooted prejudices because of what they’ve experienced and nowhere more so than on a cultural stage where you assume that all the hip and cool stuff is done by men.
Q. A large part of the film sees you visiting the places where Krishna, Meera and Amir Khusrau lived.
[They] have consistently been my heroes since childhood. I always talk [about Meera] and do an ode to her in my shows. Everything we knew about her when we were young, a lot of it was institutionalised information. In my teenage [years], I discovered she had written a lot of erotic poetry [which] would have ticked off the patriarchy at that time. So [it was] suppressed. Kabir, Meera, Khusrau, they’re all rock stars. They’re the ones who’ve shown us how to be artists, create things of beauty, and yet be subversive, constantly press buttons to make us think. For it to show up in the film was only natural. ■
EEver since its YouTube premiere on October 11, the 12th season of Coke Studio Pakistan has seemed too identifiable to be foreign. Atif Aslam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, one of the first performers on the show, had, until recently, featured on several of our film soundtracks, packing our halls and stadiums periodically. The Punjabi that one hears in songs like ‘Dhola’ is familiar. In Episode 4, Ali Sethi adapts Mehdi Hassan’s ‘Gulon Mein Rang Bhare’, a ghazal Arijit Singh had memorably rendered in Haider (2014). In 1995, Abrar-ul-Haq had released the runaway hit ‘Billo’, a song that he masterfully reprises in the second episode of Coke Studio. Indians, of course, would first think of ‘Kammo’ when listening to the tune. The makers of Ziddi (1997), a Sunny Deol-starrer, had lifted the song only to mangle it.
Finding India connects, though, might well be doing Pakistan a disservice. Coke Studio, if nothing else, proves that the country must for once be freed of the hyphen (Indo-Pak) that continues to oppress it. Indians tried their hand at Coke Studio but none of our collaborations felt as seamless as theirs, none as clear-sighted, and more importantly, our fun wasn’t half as contagious.
Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad have now been part of almost every Coke Studio line-up. Ayaz sings his qawwali while chewing paan, getting carried away with the beat of the dhol or with Muhammad’s interventions. Their set usually ends in rapture. Performing ‘Aadam’ this year, the duo monopolised our attention for a full 12 minutes. Marked by an utter lack of dissonance, the house band did not alter the purity of their form or vocals. If anything, the guitars and drums only made their faith more accessible. There’s always been
something deeply secular about Coke Studio’s invocations.
For each of its acts, Coke Studio releases an accompanying behind-the-scenes (BTS) video. You’re immediately struck by the camaraderie of musicians who seem only too happy jamming with artists they admire. In the ‘Gulon Mein Rang’ BTS, a guitarist talks about not wanting to disturb the song’s original Jhinjhoti composition. Salima Hashmi, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s daughter, says, “Every generation has the right to feel one’s way around one’s inheritance, and to make it contemporary. Only then do you know that time is moving forward.” ‘Gulon...’ makes Faiz relevant, yes, but also more lucid.
With Coke Studio Pakistan having started to imitate its Indian
counterpart in recent years, it seems clear that 2019 marks a return to form. The reason for this might be simple. Rohail Hyatt, the producer responsible for having first conceived the show, has returned to its helm after five years. Unlike India, where Bollywood appropriates everything independent, Hyatt brings together bands and artists that sound disparate and then gives them an idiom they can collectively interpret. In the third episode, when Atif Aslam adds Punjabi lyrics to a Baloch composition, it doesn’t sound superfluous. Having recorded ‘Mubarik’, a Balochi musician says he has never been happier. You immediately believe him.
When our nationalism was less fragile, the Pakistani cricket team was welcome on our pitches, Fawad Khan acted in our movies and Abida Parveen performed freely across the country. Politics and borders always left us divided, but our culture was something we together delighted in. With all channels of “soft diplomacy” now officially clogged, it has become the task of Coke Studio to demonstrate that the Pakistanis we so love to lampoon and dismiss are also human like us in the end. ■
—Shreevatsa Nevatia
Coke Studio, if nothing else, proves that Pakistan must for once be freed of the hyphen (Indo-Pak) that continues to oppress it