Word: swamis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." Christopher Isherwood wrote the lines 40 years ago in his novel Goodbye to Berlin. The author is about to celebrate his 75th birthday, and he is still clicking away. His latest book, titled My Guru and His Disciple, depicts his relationship with Swami Prabhavananda, a Hindu monk Isherwood first befriended in 1939. To be published early next year, the memoir takes care of what Isherwood calls his "sacred side." He is now working on a book about his "profane side"-his years as a Hollywood scriptwriter. Obviously this cameraman is partial to self...
...trial in a Swiss federal criminal court last week, wearing a faded orange-pink robe and sandals, was a slender Indian who called himself Swami Omkarananda, a self-proclaimed teacher of mankind and head guru of a "Hindu-Christian" sect known as the Divine Light Center. The charges against the 49-year-old swami and what the prosecution called the hard core of his 80 followers ranged from theft and trespassing to attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. But most serious of all, the cultists had disturbed the peace of Winterthur...
...seems that back in the cult-happy '60s, a wealthy local matron fell under the swami's spell in India and invited him to Switzerland. Her generosity helped launch the Divine Light Center in a cluster of 15 houses, which the swami painted an offensive bright blue. Worshipful disciples pestered the neighborhood with nonstop proselytizing. From 4 in the morning on, loudspeakers bellowing holy chants echoed through the district. The stolid burghers finally lost patience and in 1975 won an official order to have the swami expelled from the country...
...that, according to the prosecution, the swami and his fold mounted a three-stage counterattack. First, voodoo dolls of the heathen neighbors were stuck with needles, and bewitched fruits were planted in their gardens. One devotee claimed she was used as a naked altar, raped, and smeared with chicken blood, to be used later to curse the foe. In the poison phase, clotheslines were doused with smallpox serum, garden tomatoes with formic acid, and doorknobs with caustic concoctions. One of the five cultists on trial with the swami admitted popping a poisoned chocolate into a victim's mouth (disliking...
Though the swami faces up to 20 years in a Swiss slammer, he is unrepentant and rejects the charges as part of the "filth spreading round the world." Whatever the law decides, placid Winterthur will not soon forget the time the cuckoos escaped from their clocks...