Holy Cow
Thank goodness for jetlag. This morning, I successfully arose at 4:30 to get to the yoga shala by 5. I comforted myself by remembering that it was eleven o'clock in New Zealand. It was my first day. I worried about my yoga mat. I worried about underpants showing above my yoga pants. I was ridiculously nervous; I was the new kid on her first day. I would be so obvious; I would be the new penny in the batch. I thought I would fall down and bring anyone near me with for the ride. I could seriously injure a bunch of really committed and excellent yoga students. I could ruin their chances for yoga student achievement, or whatever it is that everyone is going for. I was pretty sure that it would be horrible.
But it wasn't. Duh, you already knew that. It was just a yoga class. In fact, Pattabhi Jois is like a lot of yoga teachers I have known... maybe because they learned from him. He teased us in the poses. He made us stay longer if we moved before he told us. He told us to inhale and exhale. That's a yoga class, right?
The most discernible differences: there were about 60 people in the class, and because the woman who showed me the way wanted to sit in front, they were all breathing their yoga breath behind me; the teacher was older than any I have ever had (but only by a few years); and I finished by 7 in the morning. Boy, that certainly leaves a lot of time in the day.
To fill it, I tried to walk to Mysore but ended up somewhere suspiciously close to my original point. I got in a rickshaw with a new friend named Caroline from the US and we ended up near Gandhi Square. I was on the hunt for something to stabilize power to my laptop; she was looking to retrieve a bra she left at her previous hotel. I assured her that she would never see that undergarment again when we saw that the housekeeper was a barely post-pubescent boy. He was sheepish, but conclusory when he told us he had never seen it. Yeah. It's on his pillow.
We found the market, filled with heaps of colorful powders and fruits and incense sticks and flags and silk. Someone took my hand and demonstrated the staying power of the pink powder by drawing a flower on my hand. The flower is still there, and I have my hand back. It took quite some persuasion to regain it. On the way home, two cows nuzzled each other in the middle of the street. It doesn't cause any traffic for cows to love each other here, even when they do it on the main road. And that's nice.
I paid Pattabhi Jois for my month of practice. I had a stack of rupees almost an inch thick. He took my cash flashing the bling on his fingers and the flash Nokia phone. He put the bills in a cash counter. In thinking of this transaction and his success, I am pleased to know that some people in the world acquire the wealth they deserve for doing good work.
But it wasn't. Duh, you already knew that. It was just a yoga class. In fact, Pattabhi Jois is like a lot of yoga teachers I have known... maybe because they learned from him. He teased us in the poses. He made us stay longer if we moved before he told us. He told us to inhale and exhale. That's a yoga class, right?
The most discernible differences: there were about 60 people in the class, and because the woman who showed me the way wanted to sit in front, they were all breathing their yoga breath behind me; the teacher was older than any I have ever had (but only by a few years); and I finished by 7 in the morning. Boy, that certainly leaves a lot of time in the day.
To fill it, I tried to walk to Mysore but ended up somewhere suspiciously close to my original point. I got in a rickshaw with a new friend named Caroline from the US and we ended up near Gandhi Square. I was on the hunt for something to stabilize power to my laptop; she was looking to retrieve a bra she left at her previous hotel. I assured her that she would never see that undergarment again when we saw that the housekeeper was a barely post-pubescent boy. He was sheepish, but conclusory when he told us he had never seen it. Yeah. It's on his pillow.
We found the market, filled with heaps of colorful powders and fruits and incense sticks and flags and silk. Someone took my hand and demonstrated the staying power of the pink powder by drawing a flower on my hand. The flower is still there, and I have my hand back. It took quite some persuasion to regain it. On the way home, two cows nuzzled each other in the middle of the street. It doesn't cause any traffic for cows to love each other here, even when they do it on the main road. And that's nice.
I paid Pattabhi Jois for my month of practice. I had a stack of rupees almost an inch thick. He took my cash flashing the bling on his fingers and the flash Nokia phone. He put the bills in a cash counter. In thinking of this transaction and his success, I am pleased to know that some people in the world acquire the wealth they deserve for doing good work.
posted by your friend at Sunday, September 25, 2005
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