Behind the smiling bearded frontage and impressive contortions of his body, not many people know about the struggles of Baba Ramdev. By his own admission, the yoga guru has escaped death, not once or twice, but seven times. Narrating his tale of persistence and determination, Baba Ramdev said that he has seen death too closely and that's why he believes that the human body is perishable.
His first encounter with death happened when he was just 3-4 months old and had a severe paralytic attack on one side of the face. Next, he was severely injured when he fell from a 25 feet tall building and had to get seven stitches on his forehead. Once he was grazing buffaloes; holding on to the tail of a buffalo, he went into a pond. "I did not even know that i would drown. Somebody from the village saved me. He turned me upside down to bring out the water."
As he grew older, he couldn't tolerate the cruelty meted out to his mother by his relatives. Seeing his resentment, they tried to kill him while he was ploughing the fields. Once the situation became so intense that the saffron clad guru had to raise his wooden slippers in his defence. After he moved to Haridwar, a mob of 50 people surrounded him, planning to kill him.
In another incident, he was experimenting with arsenic for treatment of asthma and by mistake used the same vessel for boiling milk. Arsenic went inside his body and soon he started vomiting. He had to be admitted to the hospital, and that has the last hospitalisation incident for him so far. "I stopped experimenting with arsenic after that and had to take ayurvedic treatment to take out the poison", said Ramdev. He did not elaborate about the Ramlila Maidan incident saying that it is already well known.
He was narrating these incidents at the launch of a TV series based on his life, to be aired on Discovery Jeet, a new channel by Discovery group. The show is co-produced by Ajay Devgn Film Productions and Watergate Production.
Bhojpuri actor Kranti Prakash Jha will essay the role of the self-styled godman, and what he went through before becoming a self-proclaimed global icon. Jha rose to prominence after his role of Santosh Lal in M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story in 2016.
Recently, Ramdev's consumer venture Patanjali forayed into online world and announced the online presence of Patanjali products on top e-commerce websites. The entire range of Patanjali products is now available on Amazon, Grofers, Shopclues, Flipkart, BigBasket, 1mg, Paytm Mall and Netmeds. With this tie-up, the e-commerce firms will be able to source the products directly from the warehouses of Patanjali.
