Medha Shri Dahiya (HINDUSTAN TIMES; December 22, 2019)

Ma Anand Sheela or Sheela Biernstiel is one of the most popular millennial icons of our times. In the series Wild, Wild Country, she comes across as a redoubtable stateswoman who kicked up a storm in the media with her witty and provocative one-liners. But when you meet her, her warmth, calmness and soft words melt you. In the ’80s, she had the media chasing her. Cut to today, you have filmmakers wanting to make films on her. But what does she want? Here’s what the 70-year-old has to say:

We heard you want Alia Bhatt to portray you on screen. Have you seen any of her films?
I saw bits of a film that my sister was watching, and I thought I looked like her when I was young. I asked my sister, ‘Did I look like her when I was young? Do you remember’? And she said, ‘Yes, you do’. I feel she has the spunk in her that I had. Spunk is very necessary and it is very natural, it is not artificial, not cosmetic, it is genuine.

After Priyanka Chopra Jonas announced that she’d star in a biopic on you, you sent her a legal notice. Is that true?
I told her I do not give her permission to do [the] film because I have not chosen her... In Switzerland, we send legal notices very simply. I sent her an email which is accepted there as legal.

Have you heard back from Priyanka or team on that?
No, never. Not even a courtesy letter that they received my notice but that’s not an issue, maybe she never had the opportunity to meet me or make time to meet me and it is no big issue... not everybody has the time to meet me.
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Ma Anand Sheela, who lives in Switzerland, visited India after 34 years. And one has to be living under a rock to not know who she is. The Vadodara-born was spiritual guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, or Osho’s, personal secretary and the brain behind the ambitious Rajneeshpuram, a commune established in the 1980s in Oregon, USA, by and for his followers. It’s impressive to note that even in the ’80s, she had the guts to live life as she wanted to and totally own her story with all its vagaries including prison time and controversies.

“You all have to create your story and you have many ways to create it,” says Sheela, who was in India for Sipping Thoughts and the NGO Humans for Humanity. But living life on one’s own terms is not easy, is it? “Not easy is not a good excuse either... To not live life on your own terms is a very cowardly way to live. I know millennials are not cowards,” says the 70-year-old with conviction, adding, “Life is tough, baby. Life’s not easy. You have to go through your crisis, don’t look for easy, don’t make it easy for yourself. Easy is for cowards. Be brave. What you have to do, you must do — easy or different. Whatever difficulty comes, say, ‘Ah! I can do it’.”

But how does one stay calm in the midst of a storm, how did she manage it? “I don’t blame my crisis and catastrophes onto others. I take responsibility of my crisis, I try to analyse it, understand it, and I don’t put my burden on others,” she says. And if given a choice, would she change anything about her life? “No” she says, “I can tell you I love my life.”

Oh! We have to ask her, why is she not on Twitter? After the series, everyone tried to connect with her, and look her up on social media. She shares, “I belong to the old generation, I don’t understand this social media, I don’t understand computer even today.”