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you could never get the votes. Nobody is going to support his name. I have read all these books, and most probably EVERY Nobel prize winner has read all these books, but nobody will mention his name. It is dangerous to be associated with him, to be so deeply associated that you propose his name for the Nobel prize."
He was shocked. He said to me, "I could not believe my own ears. And all joy that I had because I had become a Nobel prize-winning economist disappeared. It was sheer politics; there was no question of judging quality. The whole question was how it was going to affect the political atmosphere. And the president said to me, `That man is dangerous. You should not mention his name; otherwise you will be condemned.'"
So one goes on accumulating fictions about and around. That's why you want to do something, something special. People have been doing that kind of thing for thousands of years.
Somebody is standing naked in the cold, snow falling, and he becomes well known. I know one man who used to stand in the river, the water up to his neck; he has broken all records -- for seventy-two hours continuously he stood there. I asked him, "But what is the point? How is the world better because you stood in the river for seventy-two hours? Have you made the world a little more beautiful, a little more juicy? Have you brought a little more song and dance to the world?"
He said, "Who cares about the world? As far as I am concerned now I am the most famous man around this area, and that was my purpose."
Every twelve years in Prayag we have a great gathering of people, perhaps the biggest gathering in the world, Kumbha Mehla. Thousands of naked Hindu monks march towards the Ganges. At the right moment, determined by the astrologers, they have the traditional right to enter into the Ganges; they have to be the first.
I was surprised by one fact -- because these thousands of naked monks who come to the gathering at Prayag are never seen again. I had been searching for where these thousands of people disappeared to, and I was in for a surprise. The surprise was that they live in temples, in ashramas, but there they use clothes.
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