The Kool-Aid in Koregaon Park
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Rajneesh movement
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The article centers on a visit to the Osho ashram and references the cult's history, but doesn't explain the movement's full theological foundations, organizational structure, or global spread - context that would deepen understanding of why the resort operates as it does today
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1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
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The article mentions Ma Anand Sheela's 'bioterrorism attack' in passing but doesn't explain that this was the largest biological terrorism attack in U.S. history, involving deliberate salmonella contamination of restaurant salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon
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Human Potential Movement
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The article references 'intense encounter-group therapies' and Dynamic Meditation without explaining their roots in the broader 1960s-70s human potential movement that Rajneesh drew from and commercialized - understanding this context illuminates how the ashram blended Eastern spirituality with Western therapeutic practices
The grift begins at nine
The Welcome Centre at the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune is an open-air affair, a series of low wooden benches, arranged in lines as at a bus station, besides a little manmade pond on the edge of which sits a Buddha statue, mute, still, and beatific. When I arrived a little before nine in the morning, only two other men, both Indian, were waiting. The three of us wore civilian garb. It was clear from the outset that the resort is something of an oasis, even in Koregaon Park, which is itself something of an oasis in the broader context of Pune. The word that came to mind, as I looked beyond the pond through the trees at the figures milling about in maroon robes, was lush, or, perhaps, moneyed.
One of my fellow would-be sannyasins made the mistake of taking a photograph of the pond. Moments later, a blonde Dutchwoman, somewhere in her early sixties and dressed entirely in maroon, appeared out of nowhere and asked him, not so politely, to delete it. Then she turned to me.
I was there to do research for the novel. One of my three protagonists, Catherine, comes to Pune after attending a hen’s party in Goa and gets her arm bent into visiting the ashram. But when the woman, Vayu, asked me what I was doing there, I simply said that I wanted a day pass, which was also true. She asked if I had ever meditated before and I said that I hadn’t, but that I had seen some of the Osho meditations online. This was also true, but only in a vague sense. I had seen some of the more confrontational passages from Wolfgang Dobrowolny’s Ashram in Poona, which are excerpted in Maclain and Chapman Way’s Wild, Wild Country, as well as some more genteel stuff on the ashram-turned-resort’s Instagram account.
Vayu, which is obviously not her real or legal name, led me to a computer and began the registration process. My photo was taken the way photos are taken at passport control the world over, and, indeed, I did feel a little, in that moment, as though I were entering a sovereign microstate. Once upon a time, this process included an HIV test. I’m not sure whether this has been discontinued, or whether it’s no longer required for day-tripping rubberneckers like
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