Healthy Happy Holy

• Miri Piri Academy is a school exclusively for Sikhs of foreign origin
  
• Its 100-odd students, from across the world, spend 9 months every year to train in the faith of their parents
  
• It was founded by Harbhajan Singh (aka Yogi Bhajan) 11 years ago for foreign devotees who wanted to bring up their children as staunch Sikhs
  
• The academy's punishing schedule begins at 3 am and ends at 10 pm. It includes martial arts, sports, prayers and meditation, kirtan-singing, kundalini yoga sessions, and the international baccalaureate curriculum

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his frenetic pace is an essential part of the philosophy of the Miri Piri Academy, designed to keep students constantly brimming with positive energy. Explains school principal Sada Anand Kaur (Armenia-born, Los Angeles-raised): "Our kids are so radiant and shiny, they can be picked out from a line-up. As Yogiji used to say, 'Put so much pressure that they become sparkly like diamonds'!"

Harbhajan Singh, the Yogiji in question, founded the Miri Piri Academy 11 years ago. And the worldwide community of foreign Sikhs—now nearly 10,000 strong—can be traced back to him. In the hedonistic days of the '60s hippie movement, Singh (later called Siri Singh Sahib or Yogi Bhajan) went to America to train kundalini yoga teachers. Though conversions were never on his agenda, his disciples were eager to adopt his faith, and formed the 3HO (Healthy Happy Holy) movement, under his guidance. Primarily through kundalini yoga camps, this movement spread across 13 countries in the Americas, Europe and Southeast Asia. Miri Piri Academy was established so that the children of these disciples—second generation white Sikhs—fully understood and immersed themselves into the faith their parents had adopted.

But Miri Piri Academy's atmosphere of austerity and discipline also makes it a popular—and effective, by most accounts—recourse for the parents of wayward children. Jagat Guru, the imposing director of spiritual studies, whose parents in New Mexico were among Yogi Bhajan's first adherents, says, "It's a Sikh school, but with a strong emphasis on discipline—which makes it like a military school! Students have to stand to attention in 'formation' eight times a day, to ensure punctuality. And if they are late or skip something, they are punished by being made to run, or stand on the field in the evening for half an hour." There are also strict rules of behaviour, so students aren't likely to earn themselves the diplomas-in-debauchery so often associated with Indian international schools. "No drugs, no meat, no smoking, no drinking, no cutting hair, and no dating," intones Jagat Guru sternly.

Nevertheless, Miri Piri students aren't complaining—at least, not publicly. The combination of intense spirituality, austerity and friendships they form here seem to provide intoxication enough.

Hargobind, 15, finds he's outgrown the typical preoccupations of high school kids in the US. "I went back to school in Boston after being here for sometime," he muses, nudging a football cleat into the grass, "and my friends were just not deep enough—all they could talk about was fun, parties and movies." Fellow Bostonian, the blonde and blue-eyed Atma Kaur, also says she's grown too wise and spiritual for her friends back home to understand. "They're in awe of me. They tell me about their problems, and find me uplifting." Akaljeet, 17, recalls how she "fell in love" with the Golden Temple at first sight, and now feels so "completely at home" there that her earlier life, growing up in a Catholic family in Mexico, seems very far away.

But are they really 'Sikh'? Their yoga-practising, intensely-meditating brand of faith, with even the women wearing turbans, does seem to bewilder and enthral the home-grown Sikh folk of Amritsar. Akaljeet once found her tranquil prayer session beneath a tree interrupted by a fluttering sensation on her toes. "I opened my eyes to find an old lady kissing my feet!" she exclaims, laughing. "We're really not as strange or exotic as people think," protests Atma. Tell that to the elderly pilgrim at the Golden Temple, who lets forth a startled "Oye aaki hoya!" at his first glimpse of the Miri Piri girls.