Simply Bangalore

ARNAV MEDHI

This MBA graduate-turned-spiritual guru practices healing through gems, mantras and yoga. From prescribing special gems that have healing powers to working within limits defined by the scriptures, Amav has everyone from young IT professionals to senior citizens as his clients. He is also on a personal mission to establish and create space where spiritual gurus and people can come and work together.

Across town, 35-year-old MBA graduate Amav Medhi is a new-age guru oven if his practice of healing with mantras, gems and yogi is centuries old. He claims to "work with God and with people". Something of a child prodigy, he wrote on the liberalisation of India's economy while he was still in school. "Though I followed the spiritual path from the age of 14, it was only after I went to the UK and the US when I was 20-somcthlng that I realised that materialistic pleasures meant nothing to me." Arnav came back to India to pursue his spiritual quest about 10 years ago. Today, not only is Arnav a spiritual healer and advisor, he is also on a personal mission to create a space where spiritual gurus and people can come together to work. "For every problem there is a solution but you need to open your eyes to see what is available. It could be something from Brazil that we didn't even know existed," he says.

A firm advocate of science and technology, Arnav believes that it has become convenient to write off anything spiritual as non-scientific. "It is mostly done by people who more often than not don't have any idea. In my opinion, you have to study and understand a practice before condemning or ridiculing It." From prescribing special gems that have healing powers to working within limits defined by the scriptures, Arnav has everyone from young IT professionals to senior citizens as clients. "All IT professionals want to know is how to optimise their life and career. This usually means they don't know what they want," says Arnav.

While sceptics may dismiss the concept of spiritual healing as unscientific, there is no denying that many of the the city's youth, coping with work-related stress and turbo-charged lifestyles, seem to have found a solution in the power of holistic healing. Juggling their iPods and mobiles in one hand and moonstone charms given by their gurus in the other, they arc flocking to healers and therapists like never before. Probably because, as Arnav says, "No one has all the answers. The more we seek, the more we learn." Clearly, the benefits are far more rewarding than the sceptics think. 

By Nirmala Ravichandran