INDIA's god-men are back on centre-stage after a rash of scandals involving women.
From the extent of their influence over their flock it is clear that India, which has shed its anaemic "Hindu rate of growth" to stand on the verge of rapid economic expansion built on consumerism, still yearns for people who can offer spiritual solace.
As the Frenchman Emile Durkheim, one of the fathers of social science, observed long ago, man's disappointments are infinite when his desires are limitless. Durkheim would call it a state of anomie.
Anomie is the state India is in, and hence: Men of God! Please hold my hand through these uncertain times.
A civilisation as ancient as India's is a repository of an ocean of knowledge. It is impossible to master all of it, but the most successful gurus, even those who have attracted controversy, have successfully tapped into a portion of it.
Internationally, the most famous Hindu holy men of our age were Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, sometimes called the guru of free love, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru who introduced the world to Transcendal Meditation more than 50 years ago.
I never got to see either of them, although in Rajneesh's case, I missed him by an hour as he returned to his homeland after being ejected from the US. There, he had lived an opulent lifestyle, complete with a stable of Rolls Royce limousines.
Around that time, I met the god-man Chandrasswami, whose friends reportedly include the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the Sultan of Brunei. He was particularly close to the late PV Narasimha Rao, India's prime minister from 1991-1996.
A journalist who was part of the Swami's innter circle took me along one day to see the Swami, who lived in a spacious upstairs apartment in South Delhi's Safdarjang Development Area. I stayed silent throughout the two hours we spent there, trying to keep scepticism off my visage.
Towards the end of our time, Chandraswami looked in my direction, perhaps puzzled that I had no favour to ask.
"Any problem?" he asked. I responded in the negative. "Come back if you have problem," he ordered. I thanked him and departed.
Interestingly, Singapore was where I met some of the most interesting modern day religious figures.
As always, I found them to be ordinary, normal people whose strength really came from being able to conceal their own worries even as they absorbed and advised on the problems of others around them.
In the late 1990s, the hotel tycoon Hari Harilela of Hongkong, celebrated a personal anniversary by throwing a huge party at his Holiday Inn Hotel off Cavenagh Road,
For some reason I was invited to the banquet and found myself sharing a table with one of the Harilela brothers and an old man with a flowing beard who looked vaguely familiar. Everyone seemed to treat him with great courtesy.
George Harilela introduced him as the family guru, Swami Satchidananda. At that moment it dawned on me this was no less than the guru who inaugurated the Woodstock Music festival in 1969, rock music's most famous day. On that day an entire generation listened as Satchidananda, surrounded by icons such as Jimi Hendrix and Richie Havens, called music "the celestial sound that controls the whole universe."
The swami was in his mid-70s during my encounter with him. Later, a hotel manager mentioned that he'd requested a massage, perhaps to aid his blood circulation.
Some years later, a friend who lived off Singapore's Tagore Avenue invited me to her home where the spiritual figure Sri Sri Ravishankar, propounder of the Art of Living, was in residence during a visit to Singapore. Ravishankar, now an international figure who travels to trouble spots like Iraq and Kashmir to spread his message of peace, was my contemporary at Bangalore's St. Joseph's College. I treated him with appropriate reverence but I found him not open, or interested, to debate.
The next day as my wife and I shopped at the NTUC supermarket in Thomson Plaza I saw my friend bustling in, looking anxious. What's the panic, I asked. "Swamiji loves Philadelphia cheese and I am out of it," she said, flitting from shelf to shelf.
Then there was Mata Amritanadamayi. Maa Amrita, as she is known. She is also called the "hugging saint", and she has risen to great spiritual heights from her birth in a lowly fisher caste. During her visits to Singapore, hundreds of her devotees would gather at a hall on Tank Road, waiting to be blessed by her and to feel the warmth she exudes.
When I went to the Andaman Islands and the southern Indian coastline a year after the devastating tsunami I found her foundation had done immense good work in her name. Many fishermen who had lost their livelihoods had been given brand new fibre-glass boats, putting them back on their feet. Since then, however, my admiration for her work has been tempered by a wariness about the people who speak in her name.
The reason for this was the violence some of her purported followers unleashed on a friend of mine, Ashwani Khurana, who made his millions in the lottery business and was once India's biggest taxpayer.
Maa Amrita has an ashram in South Delhi's Green Avenue, where Ashwani has a bungalow. Local residents, who include the former Delhi governor, have tried to keep it free of honking and huge billboards. When devotees put up a huge billboard pointing the way to the ashram, Ashwani objected. For his pains he was beaten to within an inch of his life. Maa Amrita, had she known, would surely not have sanctioned this outrage.
One person for whom my admiration us undiminished is the Sai Baba. The number of presidents and prime ministers who have called at his door are legion. The Sai Baba has his share of gimmicks, of course, such as materialising holy ash or toffees. But then I suspect this is more to assuage his followers. Indians expect their gurus to perform miracles. Despite his vast influence, he has never tried to meddle in politics and his foundation has done immense work in education and medical care.
But among all the holy figures of the world that I have met — I have kissed Pope John Paul II's ring — there is none more human than the Dalai Lama. He is the only religious person whose photograph sits in my wallet.
Jane Perkins, a British journalist who lives in Dharamsala, the Himalayan town where he is based, once told me a story of how impish the Dalai Lama could be.
On an international flight, Jane relates, a young woman sitting next to him in First Class apparently watched stupefied as she watched His Holiness tuck into a beef steak. Unable to conceal her curiosity, she turned to His Holiness:
"Aren't you the Dalai Lama?" she asked. His Holiness looked at her. "Yes, I am," he said.
"But you are eating a beef steak," the woman sputtered. "Not all Tibetans are good people," he responded, eyes twinkling with mischief.
There is no one like the Dalai Lama for sheer charisma.
Two years ago, I was in his office in Dharamsala, waiting for His Holiness to address the media. I sat in the left corner of the front row, next to the door from which he would enter. Behind me a British television journalist had set up her camera, the lens just above my right shoulder. She had warned me not to rise, lest I block her camera.
But how do you not stand up when such a presence approaches you? As His Holiness approached along the corridor I began to rise instinctively. The woman behind me put a restraining hand on my shoulder and I sat back. But six feet away from him I couldn't control myself. I began to get up. This time the woman behind me was rougher, thrusting me down even as I tried to wriggle aside.
His Holiness noticed this and as he passed me, he stopped, grinned, and gave me a resounding clap on the shoulder.
He then walked to his seat.
For days after that I walked around in a trance-like state; I've never felt so good about being struck by somebody!
Read more about the 'god-men' of India in The Sunday Times.