It’s Day 7 already since we arrived in India, although I have my yoga notes and Geoffrey has taken some marvelous photographs already, I’ve been probably too overwhelmed to write anything in our blog till just now! It feels as though there’s been some sort of paradigm shift in us, one has to let go and accept the loss of control to cope. Yet the feeling is very familiar too a bit like my childhood, as you never know what is going to hit you next and somehow you have no choice but to get on with it.
Ah now we have had a few treats too – we arrived in Pune via Kerala’s Fort Cochin for a stop of 3 days, and our journey here was wonderful. For a start Emirates have fab food, fab service, fab seats and we had an extremely enjoyable flight to Dubai. We’re traveling with Judith Richards a good friend and excellent senior yoga teacher so we’ve had lots of interesting conversations.
Then we were upgraded to business class for the shorter leg of the journey!! which meant full on reclining beds, plus an interesting arial view from a camera placed underneath the aircraft, and of course a personal service, a quiet touch to wake us up for breakfast served from china etc. After our upgrade and a good few hours sleep we arrived in the lovely little airport of Cochin, soft upholstered seats (rather like a nursing home) plus newspapers all around. Leaving the airport doors was a wonderful experience, our first sight of India as hundreds of people stood along the barriers in bright interesting Indian clothes and in the tropical heat – lovely.
Then followed my first experience of the Indian Roads with a hair raising trip in a taxi, I’ve never seen so many near misses! People, rickshaws, buses, animals, bicycles, motorbikes, carts, trucks, diggers weaving around, in between the biggest roadworks I’ve ever seen close up. They are constructing a metro line on stilts of concrete right down the middle of the road for 1.5 hours worth of our journey. As you know I’m a bit of a backseat driver – and then there’s the travel sickness, but Geoffrey seems ok with it all and Judith too, so I soon realised I can do absolutely nothing, so give up taking intakes of breath and got used to the speed differentials and high acceleration as the driver cut through on the inside, outside down the middle, across lanes, up one way streets, on pavements/road edges, down ruts and bumps and humps. And strangely I’ve not felt sick at all since.
We saw the Chinese fishing nets waiting to be lifted, and people selling things on bright things by the side of the road.
We’re staying at Tag Und Nacht, and it turns out to be a lovely little homestay, run by an local Indian man and his wife from Lapland and who a painter. This man does the cookings childcare and looks after us, whilst she goes out to work, and had painted the walls in orange swirls and white loops, and so we found our natural home ‘Fort Cochin’. Loads of places to hang out, wonderful dishes served on banana leaves, and all things coconut: paste, grated, milk, water, and a place full of warm sunny friendly people. Ah and great shopping: this gave me chance to get kitted out in full on Indian garb and Judith buy a lovely old carved figure. Geoffrey has bought a shawl but that is as far as he has gone so far….
Judith and I in a lovely local cafe in Fort Cochin
We fly up to Pune on the sunday evening after 3 days in Kerala, and for me certainly I rather arrived in Pune with a bump. Nothing really prepares you for a big Indian city.
We arrive at our Pune flat – sleep alludes us and we depart next morning and are all on our mats by 7.30am monday morning. The people on the bus are the ones who are booked into the institute for the whole month of december, and we find ourselves the first in the hall in time to witness the awesome gathering of Iyengar students from all over the world!
Practicing yoga here, despite the hundreds of people, we both feel good and on home ground. Yet here studying in India, it is wonderfully new. The atmosphere in the yoga hall is electric, 1200 people from 52 different countries, all held together by Geetaji and her team of senior Indian teachers, in intense concentration. The sessions go on often for about 2 – 3 hours followed by a loo break and then again for a couple more, yet she never lets our attention on the practice slip. Her eyes are everywhere, and it is as though you are the only person in the room. At any moment you might be called to the stage for her help, she describes that she is driven by compassion and that she can’t leave anyone making mistakes that might lead to their future ill health or injury.
This is a photograph on Day 1 of Geeta Iyengar arriving to teach us. She is 70 next week and she isn’t well, but her energy to teach is extra-ordinary. We keep finding some discovery or other, re-search, a journey, and it feels incredibly important, vital and alive. Just today, Widening the back of the thighs in Tadasana, Virabhadrasana 111, and Prasaritta Padottanasana, lifting the inner upper arms to lift the chest in Urdhva Hastasana, spreading the back ribs and taking them towards the skin in Pranayama. It’s particularly wonderful as she is teaching us the absolute basic principles as people with only 3 years of experience have been allowed to come, so the physical practice is deeply connected to the breath. We learn how to prepare our bodies for it; opening the chest and rib cage through the extension of the arms, whilst grounding the soles of our feet, gripping our legs and hips we find a multidimensional extension of the body.
Each day we shift around clockwise a notch in the enormous sports hall, according to our colour boxes, we are pale bluey green. Each colour goes with our country of origin, although we are in the Malaysian and Californian camp not with the other British students because we were late in deciding whether to go to this event or stay at the institute. We’re really happy we decided to participate: loads of room, lovely prop kits, changing areas, great visibility, great sound and we have 2 or 3 senior Indian teachers looking after the people in each colour group. We have Sonita BKS Iyengar’s other daughter, and Zubin who we know as we looked after him whilst he ran a wonderful convention in Nottingham, we also have another excellent teacher assisting us too who keeps a close eye on our back bodies. And there’s Geetaji who must be the most marvelous teacher I have every met.
Each day Geeta is breaking down Sirsasana in such a way that we are all learning to move the dorsal spine in properly before going up. We’ve spent the last 3 days working carefully with Eka Pada (one leg raised up) practicing many times on both sides. Some days we haven’t gone up into the actual pose, no swinging or kicking up even for people at the wall – and this fundamental work is really excellent.
Our day starts at 6am and I’m always slow to climb out from under our mosquito net. Geoffrey prepares a small bowl of our home made muesli, with a little local yoghurt and a cup of redbush tea and we leave our flat around 6.40am, walking a few yards up past the Ramamami Iyengar Yoga Memorial Institute, and onto the bus to Balewadi Stadium. The buses remind me a little of the old Barton Bus we used to take to visit my grandmother back in in the 1960’s, but much older and more rickity. These are complete bone shakers and puff out lots of smoke. But each interior is hand painted in Blue and reds, and they always have a little statue at the front of something like Ganesh – an elephant who is the remover of obstacles plus incense. The seat frames are metal and old corduroy type fabric, Geoffrey tears his trouzers on the blunt corner of our metal seat, it’s like that. We get there early so that I can sit up at the front of the bus (I’m not the best of bus travelers!) but the door doesn’t fit too well and the smog and fumes roll in through the door as we head up the busy roads out to Balewadi.
I’m writing a yoga diary each day of teaching points etc, which I’ve not included here, but here are a couple of excerpts from something I wrote at lunchtime on our first day and on arriving back in the evening that day.
1st Dec 12.30pm
” we’ve just finished classes for today and we’re standing outside waiting for lunch before afternoon lectures. In the distance we can see a freshly prepared and delicious looking Indian tali meal. The heat steams down, it’s that time of year when the orange hibiscus flowers blossom is out and the orange flame tree is in full bloom, a warm breeze moves the grasses as we stand outside in a queue of a 1000 yogis. Noticeably, I’m not the only one to have attired in Indian clothes now, and it’s a real pleasure to see so many dressed in vibrant colors. A pile of coconuts lie on the ground and a man with a machete slices the top away, we drink the juice gratefully”
1st Dec 18.02pm
“We’ve only just returned from Balewadi and it’s just gone 6pm and I sit here on our balcony overlooking trees, the crows are roosting in large numbers,and the bats are heading in just over head. It’s hard to describe on words this din, as these big black silhouettes fill the sky, Pune is hitting rush hour, so I decide to record it instead.
Have a Listen here:
Crows and Bats 6pm 4th Dec 141204_01
It’s usual to sound your horn to indicate your presence on the road, and again it’s impossible to describe how it feels to be in the midst of it. Geoffrey took a little film from inside our Tuc Tuc ( see photo at the top) which I’ll upload next time. It gives you a sense of the diversity, movement, people and sheer complexity of sound.
The last 7 days have been tough, the yoga wonderful an oasis, but Pune is taking some adjusting to. Lots of smog as it’s winter and the cold air holds the smog in, apparently and so much traffic. The daily journey, the long day and return at dusk catching the rush 3 hours both ways, it’s challenging, so we’re glad we came prepared with smog masks, antiseptic wash when the water doesn’t work and crocs to walk along the gutters. They have dug up the pavements to install new gas pipes in the road, although we hear that they already did this last year and are doing it again only to earn money because of council quotas! We see men working after dark by dim torch light in the trenches – incredible! And of course the traffic is going in literally every direction and I’m slow to catch onto the drill – one must walk out slowly, keep moving with confidence, not make eye contact with drivers and trust they will move around you. I’ve yet to trust, Geoffrey seems much better at it. Rubbish is piled everywhere, and grey smoke goes up from little piles burning. In the morning people who live on the street or in the make shift tents adjacent, light fires to boil water but often try to burn plastic as there is no wood to burn, the trees have been felled, apparently Pune was once full of woods and open fields. There is so much wealth here hidden behind walls and electric gates and in the expensive cars, but the streets are another matter. Women crack the rocks by hand to make hard core for these pipe works, and all along the way women sweep the dust and rubbish from ‘a’ to ‘b’ trying to make a clean patch outside their make shift dwelling or shop. It certainly makes one despise governments, policy and the fat cats, who get rich on the back of such cheap manual labor. There is no welfare state of course, so nowhere for disabled people or people who are old or ill. I consider what would have happened to my father here who was blind from birth, and what would have happened to us. This sounds like a cliche but it really makes one realise how luck we are, so I’m trying not to complain too much.
To get the picture somehow one needs to imagine the juxtaposition of polar opposites: We’ve seen a lot of giant advertising posters for new estates of houses they are building, getting across an appealing image of space, greenery and peace. These houses that appear to separate oneself from these streets seem even more ostentatious with swimming pools. But we know there is a severe water shortage, at the sports hall they have to bring in water by tankard and one realises that flushing the loo uses so much.
Anyway this poster image is of 2 lifts side by side.
The first lift is packed full of people
The second lift has only 2 people in it with a big space between them – they are their mobile phones.
The ad reads
Which would you want?
(1st lift image) (2nd lift Image)
Clutter vs Clutter Free
The idea that people are clutter is an awful one, and yet the poster is somehow made appealing as the houses depicted appear to separate oneself from these streets seeming attractive like posh villas in Palma De Majorca. But then down here on the streets, a beautiful young man and wife with baby sell fresh vegetables to us from a wooden wheeled barrow. Geoffrey has bough spices and read up a few recipes so we’ve had some nice home cooked food with these vegetables. Re cutlery – we seem to be provided with spoons, but I’m trying to learn how to break a piece of Nan bread with only my right hand – pretty tricky.
From the cab of a rickshaw one comes up against inequality, and the selfishness of us human beings up close. To have everything and somehow square it with oneself by not actually looking at the fallout of our wealth. It seems particularly powerful here. A common sight is gold dripping from someones arm inside a spacious white leather clad air-conditioned car, side by side with a young small child who is walking amongst the traffic trying to sell nodding dogs. Some electric car windows roll down but most stay shut as we wait at traffic lights. There is the most horrendous hardship here.
I think finally we are adjusting to Pune, one has to sort of hand oneself over to the experience and be as relaxed as possible to cope, relinquishing power has got to be good!!