Prolog

After writing a couple of things and mailing them to some of you, I decided to follow my brother’s advice and start a blog. That way the initiative stays on the readers’ side: you know the address, of you’re interested, read it, if you aren’t, don’t. I don’t expect to post more often than once a week, but who knows. One more thing: I do not carry a dictionary with me, so please disregard any spelling, grammar or vocabulary mistakes.

A blog by any other name…
A Sadhu is a wondering, ash smeared and mostly naked Hindu ascetic. Not exactly the crowd I feel kinship to here in India. Sadhu also means something like “well said” in Pali, language of the ancient Buddhist scriptures. Electric may refer to my former profession. The name was actually inspired by The Electric Monk, a character in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:

"The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."

I changed Monk into Sadhu to give it an Indian aroma, but also because the name Electric Monk was already taken by another blog.

Playing the Electric Monk
One of the things I knew I’d have to put up with here is the New Age. Spirituality is the bread and butter (or daal and roti) of western tourists in India, and anything goes: Hinduism and Buddhism, naturally, but also Ayurvedic medicine, Reiki, Palmistry, Astrology and much more. The silliest thing I encountered was The Mayan Calendar. A nice Israeli guy who spoke of little else introduced it to me.

It’s more exact, you see, because every year has 13 months of 20 days each.
So?
So the astrology is more scientific, you understand.

The Mayan Calendar is supposedly based on archeological findings in Yukatan, but in order to make it “cooler” and more “21st century” it contains many pseudo-scientific words such as “magnetic” and “galactic”, along side the collection of wizards, warriors and beasts you usually find in this kind of things. The calendar also prophesizes the world as we know it will end on December 21, 2012. To give you a gist of it, here’s my own Mayan horoscope, supplied by a keen devotee. Draw your own conclusions.

June 15, 1976: Crystal moon day 17, year of the White Solar Wizard
I am a White Galactic Mirror
I harmonize in order to Reflect, modeling Order.
I seal the Matrix of Endlessness with the Galactic tone of Integrity.
I am guided by the power of Spirit.

New Age people consider themselves open-minded and tolerant. Anything goes, anything but skepticism. To doubt anything, preposterous as it may be, to say “that doesn’t make any sense to me” or more honestly “I think that’s utter nonsense” is to be considered narrow minded and even rude. I was once declared “spiritually challenged” by someone. Atheism, of course, is regarded as blindness at best, outright madness at worst.
So, many times I prefer playing the Electric Monk, saying “I believe you”, hoping this will bring the discussion to an end.