First of all many thanks to all readers who gave me feedback on my “Pune Impressions” article in the last issue. It was nice to hear from so many of you.

I just love the Internet and the worldwide connections it makes possible. A doctor in Durban, South Africa, ordered all of Osho’s Sufi books. A seaman in Trinidad wanted many Osho tapes and was happy to hear that Prem Joshua and Manish will be playing a concert there this November. We shipped several Osho books to Mohamed in Jordan, and he told us that he now sends e-mails with Osho’s words to all his friends. Yara wrote from Safita in Syria, “I could finally reach the inner peace by reading Osho and find out the most important discovery is man discovering himself.” Marcin, a composer and professor at the Fréderic Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, told us that he has already read 93 of Osho’s books and intends to read all the rest, too. He has the largest collection of Osho books in Poland.

The Sound of Music: This fall/winter will be a fantastic concert season for the US, with many of our wonderful musicians heading over here: Milarepa, Prem Joshua and Manish, Miten and Premal, and Devakant.

News from Down Under: Ma Anand Rasa and Sw. Nishant in Byron Bay are offering satsang in their house Thursday nights. (Contact rasadover@iprimus.com.au for details.) This is in addition to the already quite lively meditation/celebration schedule offered by the Mevlana, Gondwana, and Samaya Osho centers. Rasa recently moved back to the Byron Bay Area after 13 years in Japan. Nishant, who divides his time between Byron and his off-the-grid house between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, tells us he is writing a book, Autobiography of a Harlem Firefighter and His Adventures with Osho, which should be an interesting read.

Talking of books, Satya Puja’s book, The Heart of Tantric Sex (available from Viha, of course), has been translated into Spanish, German, and most recently even into Chinese. And I am happy to announce that we are now selling Ma Devika’s book, One Quest, Many Meetings, which Yogananda reviewed in our last issue. I look forward to your orders. I was glad to read in the latest Yoga Journal a very positive review of Madhukar’s book, The Odyssey of Enlightenment.

Personals: Happy belated 76th Birthday to Ma Jeevan, the amazingly energetic editor of the Osho Times Asia edition!... Prembandhu has the longest work commute that I know of: 2,400 miles. He and Madiro used to live here in Marin, but a few years ago they moved to Boulder, Colorado, where housing is more affordable. Every few months PB drives here to work and then returns home to Boulder a couple of weeks later.

SARS in Pune? In late April the AP reported that three people in Pune were diagnosed with the dangerous virus. The patients included a bride who was allowed to go ahead with her wedding, although she and her mother were hospitalized with symptoms of SARS. Her brother, who flew home from Indonesia via Singapore, was confirmed as infected before the April 21 ceremony, but canceling the wedding would have brought shame on the bride’s family. “Shops all over Pune sold at least 10,000 masks in one day,” after the news of the three SARS patients was announced, said Satyanarayan Mundada, president of the Pune Chemist Association. On April 30, 20 cases of SARS were reported from India, but a day later the World Health Organization (WHO) declared India SARS free. “India has no cases that fit the SARS definition,” Dr. S.J. Habayeb, the WHO representative to India, told a news conference and added that laboratory tests for SARS are not reliable. Health Minister Sushma Swaraj said happily that the government had been “very, very cautious and that today the WHO is giving us this certificate.”

I loved another (pre-) Monsoon Wedding story from India that made the front cover of the New York Times under the heading “Dowry Too High. Lose Bride and Go to Jail.” Musicians were already playing, 2,000 guests were dining, the Hindu priest was preparing the ceremony, and the bride was dressed in the traditional red, her hands and feet festively painted. Then the groom’s family announced more dowry demands: In addition to the two televisions, two home theater sets, two air-conditioners, and one car, they wanted $25,000 in rupees, now, under the wedding tent. This is when the bride, Nisha Sharma, a 21-year-old computer student, put her foot down. From her cell phone she called the police and thus sent her potential groom to jail. Illegal for many decades, dowries are now often disguised by families as gifts to the newlyweds to start a new life, but this groom’s family pushed it too far. The groom is now in jail for 14 days, pending formal charges of violating India’s laws against dowries. India’s new 24-hour news stations have propelled Ms. Sharma to Hindi stardom. One TV station set up a service allowing viewers to “send a message to Nisha,” and in the first two days, 1,500 messages came in, mostly praising her for her brave act. She has also received a flurry of marriage proposals. You go, girl!

Lately I have read many articles about Indian workers in India replacing American labor. From accounting firms to Oakland’s Kaiser Permanente to New Jersey’s Department of Human Services to American Express, more and more corporations are “outsourcing” service or knowledge-intensive jobs to India with its large pool of English-speakers and more than two million college graduates every year. So when, for example, an American welfare recipient dials a toll-free number to check on his or her next infusion of funds, it may be somebody in Bombay answering the call. Doing a tax return in India brings savings as high as 50 percent, said the president of Outsource Partners International, which has its headquarters in New York, but had about 10,000 American tax returns prepared in Bangalore this year. Half the Fortune 500 is said to make use of India’s well-educated and significantly lower-paid workforce.

“Mansions of Meditation” was the catchy header of an extensive article in the San Francisco Chronicle of May 10. Unfortunately, it wasn’t about Osho centers, but about the 200 “Peace Palaces” that devoted followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi are hoping to build across the US in an attempt to lower crime rates, improve the economy, and enrich everyone’s quality of life. Each building will have about 12,000 square feet of space that will include meeting rooms, day spas, and small stores. “The people who are practicing [Transcendental Meditation] in groups will be purifying the collective consciousness…so the quality of life for everyone will improve.” Sounds great to me, except, of course, that Osho said TM is neither meditation nor transcendental, but a good tranquillizer. Still, good luck to them!

And finally, another bumper sticker seen in Marin: “We need chocolate. Let’s invade Switzerland.”

oshoviha@oshoviha.org