Can Ramdev cure my liberal fever?

Thinking is an affliction. I really don’t know how I picked it up and when. Now that thinking independently and using your mind without following the narratives of one group or the other is being seen as a problem by the "keepers of our conscience", I would really like to be cured. Lest I am branded an anti-national. It is not a pleasant qualification.

I have been watching the news and reading the papers, and getting infuriated. That’s really bad for health and causes me great stress. It adds to the stress that I already have to go through - that of surviving in a really expensive city like Mumbai, characterised by its hectic living.

Also, last week, because of this terrible liberal fever, I was so ill that I spent hours on the phone talking to my friends from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and calling others to figure out how to help the students and the arrested JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, because I couldn’t stand the thought of them being harassed and bullied for being students and doing what students do.

Also read: Our Left-liberals are a figment of imagination

This damn disease has really affected my work as well. I missed a major deadline on Friday because of all the phone calls and stress.

This has been happening a lot in the last 20 months. First, it happened during the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) fiasco, then the Dadri lynching and the subsequent debate over beef consumption, and so on. I just can’t help but react. It’s horrible. It’s out of my control. It's like an epileptic fit.

I have recently started thinking of ways to stop being liberal. There has to be a way. Another three years of this will be absolutely debilitating. I will have no work and no family.

Also read: The free speech hypocrisy in JNU debate

A lobotomy doesn’t seem like an option mainly because I can’t afford it. Moreover, I would probably take too long to recover and won't be able to send my kid to school.

Another option is to just not watch the news or read the papers. But having been a journalist in the past, that’s impossible. It’s like taking BJP president Amit Shah away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It would absolutely crush me. I don’t have the strength to let the habit go.

Another option I thought would really help is embracing yoga. I thought the flow of blood into my heart and brain might make me less liberal. I have been doing the surya namaskar for a few weeks now, but it’s really not helping. My impulses are still liberal. I still feel angry and upset by what is happening. I did lose my paunch though.

Then I had the most brilliant idea of all. I decided to hoist a 35kg flag from my balcony. Surely this would fix me. I stared at it for a few hours, for a couple of days. It’s really quite a nice flag. But alas, that too did not help.

My only hope now is Baba Ramdev. I believe he can even cure homosexuality. That’s amazing. All journalists, students, artists, intellectuals and anyone with a touch of sense, please reach out to him and ask him to find a cure for this acute problem of our times. It would really be useful to many who are afflicted.

It would save people their careers and their sanity.

I am waiting. And hoping that this is the solution.