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Showing posts from May 3, 2008


French Born Businessman who is now an Avadhuta (Naked Sadhu) and a CEO

A French man by birth and the CEO of $300 million Fashions International Company based in Chennai, Swami Pranavananda Brahmendra Avadhuta has made India his home since 1971 and lives in a hermitage in Kolli Hills, Tamil Nadu, India . An Avadhuta is one who has no possessions and roams around naked. Of course when you are a CEO, you have to respect social norms and therefore Swami Pranavananda when dealing with business in his office in Chennai wears a grab of Sanyasi otherwise he spends much of his time in the nude. Before he was given Sanyas Diksha in 1988, Swami Pranavananda was Christian Fabre. He arrived in Madras in 1971 as an executive in a French trading house along with his wife and a young child. In the early 1980s, his marriage broke and soon business collapsed. Devastated, Christian Fabre, who once wished to be a Roman Catholic priest, stumbled on a man who despite crippling leprosy was full of joy. Eric Ellis writes in The Sydney Morning Herald Devastated,