Why is Ma Anand Sheela not angry?

Will Shakun Batra's Sheela match up to the hype and curiosity Wild Wild Country's Sheela drummed up? But, I am not competing, he clarifies. Can we accept a controversial figure for who she is when no one is watching, is the question he asks in a docu that traces her homecoming to India

Searching for Sheela, which dropped last week on Netflix, is a medley of parties, events, talks, and panel discussions. At all of these happenings, curious eyes and tongues, some famous too, tend to pose the same set of questions to Ma Anand Sheela, 71. Did she attempt murder and plan a bio terror attack in Oregon in 1984 in order to incapacitate the voting population of The Dalles, Oregon, so that candidates from the commune she represented would win the Wasco County Elections? And why wasn’t she furious at her mentor, soulmate and religious leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho, after he publicly blamed and rejected her, even calling her a “prostitute”? 

The Baroda-born Sheela Ambalal Patel, who is now a Swiss resident, was the chief spokesperson for the Rajneesh spiritual movement, following the leader from India to the US and playing a critical role as the commune’s power centre and his personal secretary from 1981 to 1985. In 1986, Sheela was tried for attempted murder and assault for her role in the 1984 Rajneeshee bio terror attack and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, and paroled after a year following good behaviour. 

It would seem that the director of the documentary, Shakun Batra (Kapoor & Sons), is the only one who doesn’t really care about the answers to the questions posed at Sheela, who captured global imagination with her “tough ti***ies” attitude and blasé disregard for authority, as portrayed wonderfully in the 2018 Netflix documentary, Wild Wild Country [WWC]. “What many people don’t know is that I knew of Sheela even before WWC [became a talking point]. My father used to listen to recordings of Osho’s discourses, like so many others in my family. I had met Sheela in Switzerland [where she moved in 1999, married fellow Rajneeshi Urs Birnstiel and continues to run nursing homes] before WWC. So, my head was judgment-free. I went into my film with a clean slate. Once WWC released, she was once again in the limelight after so many years. I was curious then to find out how one negotiated this journey with the weight on her shoulders. She came back to India after 35 years!” Batra’s familiarity with Sheela is evident in the way he adopts a non-obtrusive approach, revealing a softer side to the fire brand protagonist of WWC. 

Shakun Batra

A clean slate is what Sheela appears to be looking for too, as she tackles journalists and celebrities on her India trip who clamour to extract spicy details about her past. If ex-Tehelka editor Shoma Chowdhury likens her own experience with the now infamous journalist-publisher and former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, Tarun Tejpal, to Sheela’s with Osho, Barkha Dutt asks Sheela why isn’t she more angry. Sheela is calm, smiling and not willing to share any dirt, and answers the questions with remarks that seem to say, “that’s what you feel, not me”. She seems to have made her peace with the past. 

“They had so many questions for her—did you do it? How do you feel? She has lived with these questions. She has never hidden anything. In Switzerland, she often says, ‘she was living in a place where there were no opinions’. But Indians have so many opinions. It’s all about ‘cancel culture’—we decide how a person should react and what is the right reaction, and whether they deserve another chance,” Batra, 37, tells mid-day. 

It’s a different Sheela we see through his lens—the maroon Osho robe replaced by Raw Mango ensembles, but admitting that she’d rather be at home in her pyjamas. This writer’s favourite moment from the docu is when she talks to her adopted daughter on video call, and tells her about all the “mee-mees” made about her (she means memes). Age and experience has made Sheela more like the wise grandmother you approach when in trouble. The fact that she has Bollywood producer-director Karan Johar, and Delhi socialites Malini and Bina Ramani, hosting dinners for her during the trip seems like a side effect. They all appear to be looking for their own version of Sheela. “I think everyone thought she had the answer, you know. It’s the reason we read Osho; we think we will find the answer to all our problems. You think you will meet Sachin Tendulkar, and he will tell you the trick [to acing cricket]. People think ‘if I can figure out her life, and her mistakes’, I can figure out mine’. She said, ‘People want to redeem themselves through me’. But, she also says, ‘life is the biggest teacher’. You can’t learn from her—you have to go through your own journey. But what she has done [here] is share insights on how to navigate life when people are watching. How can you be yourself? Can you forget all that’s happening, and be true to who you are. She teaches you how to do that,” says Batra.

In one shot, Sheela is seated on the swing of her Baroda home, where her father would read the letters she wrote the family from prison, her eyes moist. This is the Sheela Batra was hoping to find. He wants audiences to take away their own version of the “truth”. “We are pointing at bigger things like human nature and complexity. We don’t intend to offer answers or change the narrative; for me, that was never the job. I think there is so much more to learn from a life so extraordinary.”

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