World Yoga Day - What's the Fuss?

From the last few weeks there have been quite an uproar about the international yoga day. The news have been literally all over the place starting from my morning newspaper to the late night television ad,  from the banners at the shopping mall to the whatsapp forwards, from the overly enthusiastic posts from the social networking websites to the sms campaigns filling my phone inbox each day.

The news had such a curious effect on the media. The Lalit Modi Sushma Swaraj friendship went almost unnoticed - the government wanted it to go unnoticed perhaps though. India lost to Bangladesh in a cricket match and almost no one was running after Dhoni's head. Truly incredible.

That's all fine. But I am at a complete loss to understand the hype behind this hue and cry of Yoga Day. Sorry, the International Yoga Day. Why is it celebrated? Well the intention is all very good. People should go and practice yoga no issues. But what is really achieved of it if thousands do Yoga for just a single day? We have already seen the farce behind the "Good Governance Day". Are we really focusing on the 'yoga' part of the 'world yoga day'? Or do we want to concentrate on the word 'world'? That's a million dollar question. The way our prime minister is upbeat about uploading pictures a new yoga posture everyday on Twitter, should make anyone think about whether he wants to showcase his own live for the yoga to everyone. Why do we all need to love Yoga all on a sudden? We were not pestered so much even when the yoga maestro (BKS Iyengar) was alive, which could have made much more sense. Now we want to show the world that how much we loved him so that we like to dedicate a whole day to him. Yes we would like to show the world what we are capable of. We would fill one of our most important street of our capital with hordes of yoga lovers from the city. And from all over the world. With all forms and variants of the yoga. How many of them do practice yoga each and everyday?

How much worth of yoga gears are sold? How much worth of business the hotels ran to accommodate the guests? How much did the airlines earn? And how much would the earning by the government be from the corporate taxes? How much did it cost to the government from the taxpayer's hard earned money for marketing, for spending on merchandises such as yoga kits and dvds which are sent to the babus?Can we get a statistics on these? Surely we will not get to know the trivial facts. Rather we will be duly reminded how much successful the event was. And the PM would post another posture of him surrounded by the crowd and the loyal followers.

My housing society is arranging a yoga class by a renowned guru free of cost only for this day and no one must miss out on this golden opportunity. They kept on sending proactive texts and emails to all the residents. They are the same bunch of health-loving people who despite repeated requests from the residents did not agree with us to renovate the gym because of cost. The analogy looks quite familiar with our government I think.

152 countries the yoga day was celebrated in apart from India, arranged by the Indian Embassy. In Delhi around 200 delegates of several countries gathered around 'Yogpath' to follow the great Yoga guru, the honorable prime minister. All in all, it was a grand success. It is proved to the whole world that India too can command respect. We have stamped our authority of being a true superpower of the galaxy. And we have achieved the goal of what can be described as a truly successful marketing.

For me I am not going to attend this publicity stunt. If it is a sunny day I will perhaps enjoy a day out with my family. Even if it is a rainy day I would still enjoy with my family. After all this is also the International Father's Day which is more meaningful to my child rather than her dad going out on a freak show where a bunch of one day yoga specialists would display their skills. So no pranayam for me, not even a tiny bit of surya namaskar.  Oh yes. There is no directive from the government to celebrate the father's day.  Perhaps not even our culture, eh?

So what's next India? International Kama Sutra day? Goes with our heritage I would say. And we are really good at it I guess,  going by the rising population.