Monthly Archives: August 2013

Daily Life, India

Yoga in India – omnipresent yet elusive

1 Comment

India is the home of yoga. People come from all over the world to study yoga here. You can’t throw a scented candle in this city without hitting an ashram or yoga center. And yet … I just couldn’t seem to find what I was looking for.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by all the mutant yoga in the States: Anusara, Yin, Slow Flow … with the hip music, clean props and blankets, gentle voices, supportive comments and eucalyptus-scented cream rubbed on my temples during savasana. I thought I would appreciate frills-free get-back-to-the-roots yoga, but apparently I like frills.

First, I enrolled in a Bikram Yoga class taught by an American instructor two evenings a week at school. I had tried Bikram before and couldn’t cope with the nonstop instructions (which I think is intentional to maintain the correct flow and timing of postures), but I figured it was better than nothing. After just a couple weeks, I bailed. The talking still annoyed me, but even more un-doable were the long days. Delhi’s heavy traffic precludes heading home after school when you know you have to return a few hours later, so I would just stay and work or socialize until 6:30 p.m. when yoga started and then get home around 8 p.m. Exhausting.

Tony and I then tried Active Yoga, which has branches all over Delhi. We were optimistic when we realized one branch was just a block from our house in the basement of an apartment building. When we entered the studio, the instructor immediately accosted us to buy a membership, but we insisted on trying a class first. He told us to set aside our yoga mats. Instead, padded mats were provided for the class, which included marching back and forth (two steps each way … weird), getting into a pose and then bouncing, running in place, and lots of push-ups. We did end in savasana, “corpse pose,” but the instructor yelled at us the whole time.

Next, I tried yoga after school with a teacher who trained in the Sivananda tradition. It was fine, but … meh … I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to return.

For awhile, two girlfriends and I practiced yoga with a popular teacher, Raju, on Sunday mornings. Quite a character, she focused extensively on breathing and getting us to activate our “urinary muscle.” It was the best instruction I’ve ever had in “mula bandha,” a fundamental technique. However, I longed for a yoga practice with a little more emphasis on the asanas, eager to stretch out my entire body.

Finally, a friend from water aerobics said, “I have a great yoga teacher.”
(a) Yes, I go to water aerobics. That’s another story.
(b) I didn’t really believe her.

Fortunately, my friend had more perseverance than I do and arranged for me to attend her private class. I met Rita, a lovely gentle woman who teaches in her tiny basement space with room for only six mats. She did the whole practice with us, unlike Stateside yoga, where teachers often roam the room while giving instructions. She also counted off every movement. “Inhale one, exhale one.” The practice felt a bit calisthenic, different from what I thought I wanted, but not in a bad way. My joints felt looser, my muscles longer, my mind calmer. At the end of the class, we all sat together and enjoyed hot tea and homemade cookies. Again, not a typical experience in Michigan.

Rita told us that she had wanted to remodel and expand her studio, but she was discouraged by none other than the Dalai Lama himself. Some of her students were U.S. diplomats hosting the Buddhist spiritual leader, so they brought him to her studio to practice yoga. “He sat here and prayed, although I couldn’t understand his language,” she said. “Afterwards, he told me to take down all the mirrors and posters. He said I shouldn’t knock down the wall because it was a healing place.” Strangely, it really does feel like a healing place with a soothing energy.

Since returning to India, Tony has also craved yoga, so I invited him to join me at a class with Rita. The two of us and an Israeli lady named Yanna practiced with Rita Saturday morning. Tony had to change spots several times or risk smacking a sconce or whacking his hands in the ceiling fan at the start of a sun salutation. However, when we headed back out into the steamy Delhi air, he said, “That was probably my favorite yoga class of all time.” Maybe because of the cookies.

It takes about 15 minutes by car to reach Rita’s home early on a Saturday, but we live on either end of the Aravalli Biodiversity Park path, so we may start walking the 2.5 kilometers through real nature (!) to reach our class each week.

When I think back to summer in Michigan with all the trails and clean air and Americanized yoga that we love so much, I realize how big this void has been in our Delhi lives. I have made a commitment to finding more balance in my life this school year, and I think Rita may just help me do that.

Namaste.

Daily Life, India

Life with cats

3 Comments

Summer vacation is always wonderful, even when it’s full of stress, so it’s always tough to leave the States and head back to work. This year was a bit easier because we knew Ella and Khushi were waiting for us in India.

We acquired the kittens in May. They liked to sleep in a little rattan tray I bought in Thailand.
P1010760

We left them in India for June and July (in the capable hands of our housekeeper, Raji, and her whole family). When we got back, we found they STILL like to sleep in the tray even though they spill out of it.
IMG_1148

These cats are living seek-and-destroy missiles.

The other day, Ella climbed up her cat tower and leapt into a wall sconce. I heard the sound of scraping on glass and turned around to see her stuck inside the light fixture. If I hadn’t rescued her, she likely would have thrashed around until the whole thing broke loose from the wall and smashed to the ground.

Yesterday, I was working at the dining room table when I looked up to see Ella perched on a basket, stretched up to where my Chinese calligraphy brushes hang from a framed set of photos. She had the bristles of one brush in her mouth, and she was tugging on it so the whole display lurched off balance and threatened to fall. I jumped up to save it and then moved the basket, but they will inevitably find another way to stalk and kill those brushes.

One or both of them knocked down my world map, which is mounted on fun-to-chew foamboard. They routinely climb the drying rack to fling all the laundry on the floor.

They also share our enthusiasm for Turkish carpets, which they demonstrate by attacking the fringe and wrestling on the kilims until the rugs ball up into a pile. So much for home decorating…

I made the mistake of showing them a cat app on my iPad. A laser-like red dot zings around the screen, and pops with a “ding” when they tap it. Unfortunately, that means we now have to use our iPads covertly if we don’t want cat heads blocking the screen. Similarly, they sit mere centimeters from the iMac screen when we try to watch movies or TV shows on hulu, so we have to keep getting up to move them.
cat app

Last spring, I bought some dishes from a departing expat. I finally got around to unpacking them this weekend. I could have saved a lot of money at PetSmart this summer if I’d remembered how much cats enjoy playing with newspapers, cardboard boxes and dangling strips of packing tape.

Despite their destructive nature, Ella and Khushi are both loving and cuddly. They purr incessantly and beg to be petted. So far, they don’t bite or scratch or tear up the furniture. And they make us laugh every day.

So, who needs a stylish home when you have that?
P1020483

Daily Life, Teaching

What’s your favorite color?

1 Comment

Disclaimer: I wrote this at 3:30 a.m. Stupid jetlag!

As an elementary school teacher, I’ve had the “favorite color” conversation millions of times. Ask a first grader what his favorite color is, and he’ll respond with the confidence of someone who has given it great thought. “Blue,” he’ll say confidently and then add with equal commitment, “No, purple.”

You can gamble on pink with little girls, which I can only attribute to TV commercials. In many Asian countries, pink is considered a masculine color, so my students in China – boys and girls alike – often expressed love for pink. However, it was an American school, and it didn’t take long for the color bullies of the west to convince the Korean and Taiwanese boys that “pink stinks.”

And then there are the little rebels who say their favorite color is black. The other kids get upset and argue that black isn’t a pretty color or it’s not a color at all, while Smug Rebel Child happily colors black rainbows.

By third grade, children have seen the big box of Crayola crayons. They have mixed paint in art class. They have learned the more esoteric names of hues and tints, exploding their favorite-color options to almost unimaginable dimensions. “I used to like teal best, but now I’m really into periwinkle,” one little girl told me.

I am equally fickle on this question. You would think having answered “What’s your favorite color?” at least weekly for 12 years, I might have formed an opinion, or at least developed a well-crafted answer. Instead, I fumble. “Do you mean, like, to wear? Or to eat? Or to paint – and would that be interior or exterior paint? Hair color? Eye color? Skin color? Or my favorite color existing in nature?”

My brain hits “play” on this internal monologue every time an innocent kid poses that confusing question: My “Color Me Beautiful” consultation in the 80s determined I was a “spring,” so I know I look good in peach, gray and some shades of coral. But I’ve opted for red hair in recent decades, which I like to accessorize with autumn tones. Favorite edible color? My friend Tarren loves to eat blue things, and I think she’s on to something. Sno-cones doused with electric azure syrup are pretty awesome. Interior paint colors are overwhelming, but I lean toward bold deep shades of red, brown and green. Exterior? Tony and I both loved a cottage we saw painted a dark charcoal with white trim. As for human coloration, how can you narrow down the infinite combinations that result in beauty?”

Now, my favorite color existing in nature is easy. Green. It’s kind of a cheat, though, in that green is really the chameleon of the color world. Driving from Stratford, Ontario, back to Michigan a few weeks ago, I challenged Tony to see who could spot the most shades of green. (There’s not much else to do as you roll through the farmland …) Newly fallen rain and the morning sun fighting through dark clouds created a rich color-saturated landscape with green’s lusty palette dominating in all directions.

Green’s power over me is global. From Canada’s farmland to Michigan’s meadows and woodsy bike trails. From Borneo’s wild rain forests to Bali’s sculpted rice terraces. From southern Turkey’s scrubby wild sage to the pine-scented hikes in Bavaria. After a 2009 bike ride in Laos, I blogged this:

The rainy season’s gift of green in every hue includes the crackling fronds of the coconut trees, the nearly teal floating pads of the water lilies, the waxy dark leaves of the magnolias, the yellow-tipped fluorescence of the rice plants, the seafoam-colored potted plants with twisted prickly stalks, and the bright tufts of doomed little weeds in fields where oxen graze.

So, here I am in Delhi, along with around 20 million other people. Sometimes the brown and gray overwhelm the green so much that I really do feel blue. But this city has a surprising commitment to its green spaces, and for that I am deeply grateful. Here’s an interesting article about Delhi’s battle between urbanization and environmental conservation.

School starts next week, and that inevitable question will arise. “What’s your favorite color?” Maybe I’ll just keep it simple this time.

Blue. No, purple.