Shiv Sena leader makes film ‘Satya Sai Baba’

Baba Sathya Sai – stills

UP-DATE: What must be very near to being India’s least successful film in recent years is the long heralded  ‘Satya Sai Baba’ by Atman Films with Anup Jalota as a self-satisfied Bollywood and bowdlerised version of Sathya Sai Baba’s life and message. It appeared as a trailer review (8 mins. 15 secs, which was more than enough. Videos were to be found with  ‘First Look Launch’ of the film, and it was claimed that  in May 2014. Who knows where? Two years later, we are now told by The Asian Age that it will be released shortly. What the right-wing fanatical Shiv Sena has to do with it is anybody’s guess. Perhaps they bought it for a song. Previously I wrote:-

The Sai Baba imitator Anup Jalota talks in Hindi  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LcCF0ZiGcI and apparently says “We made this film with zero percent pressure. I’ve known Baba for 50 years, I saw him, met him, went with him, I was so happy to make it with Baba’s blessings, I didn’t act, the director didn’t direct, it was all Baba; this film is like a meditation, we made a beautiful film…”  It is of poor technical quality with major dropouts of colouring and missing sound track problems. As a former follower, I am almost sorry for the remaining devotees that their god should be so thoroughly destroyed filmatically. While Hollywood could distort reality and over-romanticise everything, this film has managed to pervert the “godman’s” extraordinary life and times into a gaping emptiness of false sentiment, ham acting, cloying schmaltz and superficial portrayal. The main actor Jalota looks like a pakora-fed version of Sai Baba with nothing much else but similar gestures, a somewhat dead presence with a voice (speaking Hindi rather than Telugu) hardly reminiscent of Sai Baba’s high-pitched tones. Some short clips of dancing with rows of houri like ‘devotees’ lined up before the Avatar – artificial and pseudo-sexy – in my time there could well have got them rounded up in the proper and correct ashram and hounded out unmercifully… at least during my times there up to 1998.

Former privileged long-term Prashanthi resident but now totally disaffected US devotee, Eileen Weed, comments on the film::-

“Wow – what hilarity! It is a wonder that this film was made with such a low budget that the ‘special effect’ miracles are laughably pathetic! The acting is stiff, the dancing weird, the dialogue necessarily full of cliches. Furthermore, the sound of the trailer seems to go out at 2:22 until the end. Where was the Trust with their massive finances to make it a testament to Divinity?” The actions of the ‘sb’ cannot help but show closely what sb did in real life: wave his hands to pretend to create objects, bless people, speak spiritual clichés, and not much else.”

That such commercial interests, totally unconvincing as regards spirituality should release this, is akin to tramping on the grave of Sai Baba. No doubt, Bollywood false acting has its many adherents among Indians nonetheless,  but those who may like this live in a bubble of unreality far removed from the message Sathya Sai Baba said he wanted to convey. Judging by the trailer, to say that this film is a wooden turkey would be to show disrespect to the entire species of wooden turkey films. Sathya as a child is unconvincing and his mother is far too glam. The travesty continues with overacted parts as devotees. With all respects, had Sathya Sai Baba been so dull as shown, he could never have attracted anyone, at least certainly not from abroad. The only bits that ring true are the short clips taken from films and videos of the actual Sai Baba and devotees, mixed in to help out. Interestingly, only three Western devotees appear on the trailer – shown in the front row at darsan;  all three Norwegian ladies who as leader in Norway I knew well for years, and all of whom left Sathya Sai Baba around year 2000 in sheer disgust due to his sex abuses!

The immediate mid-air materialisation miracles during the Vedic yagna ritual as contrived on film were never witnessed as such in the real events – sheer invention! Some outward shows of emotional ‘spirituality’ – beloved of so many Indians – could not even be compared to a Disney fantasy on a truly awful day. Fake wigs are in evidence – but then Sai Baba sometimes wore then too.

Not unexpectedly the film avoids the many hidden truths about the real Sathya Sai Baba and the gruesome and humiliating aspects of end of his life, drugged, starved down to ca. 30 kgs, kept alive on life support until satisfactory for propaganda and security.  The trailer is now to be seen on YouTube (http://youtu.be/n_5QIyjCa6U?list=PLjLZwhxKjNfYMohlf09nZ3P-P0o6kglgI).

The film is not for foreign release, the paucity of non-ethnic foreigners ensures that. And where is the confabulating ex-millionaire Isaac Tigrett? Where is the Prashanthi Christmas procession and choir, or the classical David Bailey. What became of the armed security guards and their metal detector entrance gates? Guess why there is no mention of the great devotees Idi Amin, Bettino Craxi, Rolf Harris and other famous criminals? And are even the all-dancing-all-singing Professors Anil Kumar and G. Venkataraman missing? We shall see whether the film eventually becomes a roaring hit in India… in which case it would forever warn any normal person off the self-proclaimed Creator of the Universe and Deity of All Deities to reconsider his claimed omnipotence yet again.

A genuine and live film which shows Prashanthi Nilayam and Sathya Sai properly was the BBC’s documentary ‘The Secret Swami’ (see overview here and watch on-line here)

‘Baba Satya Sai’ film demotes the swami to a ‘Demigod’
Baba Satya Sai film portrays Sai Baba’s mother
Sathya Sai Baba film (shooting in Parthi)

Baba Satya Sai film portrays Sai Baba’s mother

 

The lower part of the image in bold text is from another source than Times of India

It would now appear that the coming release of the film ‘Baba Sathya Sai’ is to be in Telugu. Whether it will be shown on any circuit in English is doubtful, since it seems to be advertised as freely downloadable.

The appearance of Jayapradha is so far removed from that of the figure she is to portray, Sai Baba’s mother Eashwaramma, as to be a laughable caricature. The film will certainly create another set of false perceptions of Sai Baba, and the true story will be clinically cleaned-up beyond all recognition to those who met him, knew about him, worked in his organisation and discovered his diverse criminal activities for which he was saved from prosecution by a series of Indian Prime Minister and President devotees.

If there are to be any scenes showing of Eashwaramma’s circumstances  when she was rejected by her husband for a mistress, then one can be sure they will not show the grinding poverty in which she lived with very little help from her rich and famous son. See
Easwaramma – the chosen mother in poverty, scorned by her husband!

Other aspects of her life as a poor, ignorant villager and oppressed female are kept well under the carpet, but have been recorded properly for those who dare to learn about it. Not to mention  the greatest cover-up in modern India, the criminal activities and deceits of her in famous son.

‘Baba Satya Sai’ film demotes the swami to a ‘Demigod’

Two Sai Baba films to compete against BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’?

Sai Baba exposé film wins docu. award in US

 

Two Sai Baba films to compete against BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’?

LATEST NEWS: The announcement was made by the makers of the film Baba Sathya Sai  (Director: Kodi Ramakrishna Actors: Dileep as Sathya Sai Baba“ is shelved:-

“Our readers are aware that Veteran director Kodi Rama Krishna had started a movie on God man Satya Sai Baba after his demise. During that time, some big names cropped for the roles The movie was thought to be made simultaneously in Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam but looks like the movie is now shelved even before going to sets. Kodi had been resting for the last few months after a bypass surgery.

And now it is told that he is going to begin the shooting of a new project titled ‘Rani Ranamma’ starring Lakshmi Rai and Arjun in the lead roles. The movie will also be a graphical extravaganza like his earlier movies Ammoru and Arundathi. The formal muhurath of the movie will take place on April 15th and will be made in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada.”

The other film on Sai Baba that was supposed to have been released on August 15th this year, Sathya Sai Baba with Anup Jalota as Sathya Sai Baba and directed by Vicky Ranawat Sathya Sai Baba, has not surfaced so far. Filming had been underway in Prashanthi Nilayam with Anup Jalota as Sai Baba.

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Film 1 Name: Sathya Sai Baba Director: Vicky Ranawat Actors: Anup Jalota as sb  Produced By: A One Creations Music: Anchal Talesra Written: Sachindra Sharma

Film 2  Name: Baba Sathya Sai  Director: Kodi Ramakrishna Actors: Dileep as sb Producer: Karatam Rambabu. Music: Ilayaraja Quotes: “The film will begin shooting right after Guru Purnima 2011”; “We are planning to begin the shoot from January 2013.”

Aiming for the big time, a godfather story with sex, violence, lies and murders omitted!

Misbegotten casting of Dileep as Sathya Sai Baba

This other fictional film about Sathya Sai Baba – no doubt pretending to be based on fact – was initiated with a Hindu ritual (inauguration at an auspicious time – most likely including private prayers to Sai Baba for big box office returns?). We can be confident that the film will be just another whitewash propaganda product, spreading the myth of Sai Baba’s Divine Father and Motherhood. It may be popular in rural India, but for the people all over the world who are outside the Sai movement, it will appear as fanciful and mendaciously censored to hide all the abuses and deceptions that have been so fully exposed elsewhere. The two films in pipeline are allegedly based on biographical fact and will compete with one another at the box office. The investors in these monumental misrepresentations of a widely accused pedophile and murder accomplice seem to imagine that Sai Baba still has the fairly unblemished reputation he had in the 1980s, before which few of his deceptions and abuses had been challenged. These Sai Baba devoted films already have a forerunner with which they would like to compete, the BBC’s very revealing documentary ‘The Secret Swami’. 

It seems that there will be Bollywood-style music, which will be most incongruous compared to the chaste but boring and repetitive bhajans that Sai Baba ‘sang’ in his uninspiring hermaphrodite’s voice (neither he not any Sai bhajan recording ever had a single hit on any known music chart, for reasons obvious to all music lovers).

Sathya Sai Baba claimed he was God the Father (and Mother!) and he came to rule clandestinely over a mini-empire, especially in India and the Indian diaspora. He behaved like a godfather too, but the takings for these films will be like a tiny drop in the ocean of the takings of Mario Puzo’s vastly acclaimed exposure of the Mafia culture in ‘The Godfather’. Like a mafia godfather, Sathya Sai Baba ruled a fiefdom where he let others do any killing that was required (as the Puttaparthi police did for him in 1993), but was himself deeply involved in sexual activities… a fact which no one who looks at the evidence can possibly doubt. But the directors of the films about Sai Baba will drop every account of sexual abuse and murders, fraud and lies, which will make these films totally unsuccessful in the cinema ( again, compare to ‘The Godfather’). It is easy to realise that none of these films will get anything like the world-wide airing of the BBC’s excellent ‘The Secret Swami’, a genuine documentary which put paid to the Sai Baba mythology in the minds of many millions.