TORONTO: In the times of #metoo, the American documentary Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, which premiered at the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival here, brilliantly captures the rise and fall of the famous Indian yoga guru Bikram Choudhury after a series of sexual allegations against him.
The yoga guru, who came to the US in the early 1970s and went on to build his own multi-million yoga empire, is today a fugitive from the US law.
The 86-minute documentary by LA-based Oscar-winning Australian filmmaker Eva Orner shows how the self-proclaimed `last living great yogi’ turned out to be a serial sexual predator.
It traces his journey from obscure beginnings to a Hollywood celebrity to a multimillionaire yoga master to his disgrace, encompassing glowing views of his admirers and chilling accounts of his sexual victims.
As the film opens, Kolkata-born Bikram is seen boasting about his celebrity clients, including Quincy Jones, Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine and President Richard Nixon.
“I started in the US with zero. And this is the world? I am a rapist?’’ asks Bikram.
As you listen to interviews of his followers in this film, you don’t have to guess why he chose celebrity-inhabited Beverly Hills to start his so-called `hot yoga’ in which he put his perspiring students through a series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises in 40C-degree studios.
The craze about his hot yoga spreads by word of mouth as he promised he could cure any ailment.
Bikram narrates he cured President Nixon. “I never applied for a Green Card. It was a gift from President Nixon for me.’’
Another appealing part of his brand of yoga was that there was no religion in it – no chanting of mantras or Om.
The film shows that Bikram’s boasts only mesmerized his followers – how he was handpicked by Kolkata’s known yoga master Bishnu Ghosh for training, how he became a three-time national yoga champion in India in the 1960s – when no such championship existed – and how he could have won a medal for India in gymnastic if an accident hadn’t crushed his leg.
Bikram wore only a flashy Rolex watch and a black speedo during his hot yoga, creasing his appeal to his followers who would massage his feet after strenuous yoga sessions.
As a narrator puts it, there were obvious `flashes of megalomania’ about this man. who claimed “I am the real yogi…I sleep just for one our…I sell the truth. You know the meaning of Bikram? Leech. I will suck the last drop of your blood.’’
Also `there were red flags’’ about Bikram, said, one interviewee, but his followers were so blinded that no one noticed his subtle transgressions in the “sexually charged atmosphere” in hot yoga classes.
As his flock increased, Bikram sensed a big business in his trade and launched his own Bikram `hot yoga’ studio franchise. Which brought him mega bucks and real opportunities for sexual predation. Because those – mostly women – seeking to open a franchise were required to earn a training certificate from the yoga guru.
As his victims narrate in the film, their revered yoga master would call them to meet him at odd hours at night while he watched old Bollywood movies. That’s when he preyed upon women.
The only penalty he has far paid for his predation is $7 million in civil damages to his legal advisor Micki Jafa-Bodden, with sexual lawsuits yet to decided in the US courts.
Countering the allegations, the disgraced yoga guru, who left the US in 2016, says, “Not true. I do not do that. If I want to have sex, there will be line of women….’’
In the end scenes, the documentary captures Bikram rebuilding his new yoga empire in Mexico and Spain, away from the reach of the US law.
READ ALSO: Hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury faces another sexual lawsuit
