Sri Chinmoy's World PR Run

File under: The Siddhi of PR

Sri Chinmoy's World Harmony Run has made its way from New York City to Philadelpha in the last week. The annual torch relay is slated to cover 25,000 miles in 70 countries. "Running under the hot sun is a great feeling, especially when you're doing something really big for the world. There's an intense energy," enthused one of the torch-bearers. That sounds vaguely sexy to us—in a pound-nails-into-your-skull sort of way.

While we'd like to think the World Harmony Run will actually result in some world harmony, we're a bit more realistic than the idealistic runners. What is certain to result is Chinmoy getting mentioned in most of the local papers of the towns the run passes through. That's quite a PR harvest for the muscle-head guru this year.

And Lord knows he needs it. With an active anti-Chinmoy community sharing his penchant for special workouts with female devotees, Chinmoy needs to do a lot more than fake an association with the U.N. and get some photo-ops with the pope to shave off that bad PR shadow of his.