A miniature bronze sculpture based on Mullah Nasuruddin, a character Osho Rajneesh referred to in his discourses. Meditation robes and scarves with Osho's paintings. A silver-copper diya collection named after sufi saint Mevlana.
All this and many such bric -a-brac is available at Delhi's Osho World. The store cum meditation centre was set up with the intention of "testing meditation in the marketplace", says Swami Chaitanya Keerti, spokesperson of the Osho World Foundation. "And a shopping mall was the perfect place to test its validity," he adds.
Three years down the line, the shop, which has been drawing a discerning clientele, is set to expand its presence in the country. It will open at the Forum shopping mall in Kolkata as well as move into smaller towns like Rishikesh and Bhopal.
"The stores will be set up by Osho devotees or admirers who will sell his books and CDs. That will be the primary motive," says Keerti.
According to Osho World's creative director Arun Gupta, the store is rooted in the ABC of Osho philosophy. ABC here stands for aesthetics, beauty and creativity. "Osho focused on creativity and talked about living as aesthetically as possible," says Gupta.
Currently, the store, which is funded by furnishings exporter and Osho devotee, Atul Anand, has three ranges: the Basho art collection, a creative wing named after the Japanese haiku master, the Mevlana range and Haiku, its meditative clothes line. Most of the products are designed in-house by its staff of 25 people and sourced from different places.
If sculptor Radhakrishna does its bronze sculpture, the foundation has hired textile designer Charu Gupta to design garments for its Haiku line. For the Mevlana range, it appointed Delhi-based silver house I-K Jewellers to execute the products. Osho World will launch its black and white range in pottery and candles called Equinox next month.
The products, however, don't exactly come cheap: a robe will cost anywhere between Rs 400 and Rs 4,000 and a silver-copper candle could cost anywhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs 6,000. The shop also organises weeks dedicated to mystics and publishes a monthly magazine called Osho Times in English, Hindi and Tamil.
"Spiritualism may be a big business, but to think of it as business is not our business. Osho never condemned business but he laid emphasis on sharing it. This is just one of the ways to make Osho available to the world," says Keerti.
