The End of Yogercize

Dear dedicated reader,

I present to you the following image from the end of my yoga class:

Myself in the center of a wildly dancing crowd of middle aged Indians in saris and kurtas chanting “Western dancing! Western dancing!” while techno music blares from a large speaker set on the temple floor. Given the situation, I did what anyone in the same circumstance would have done: I taught them to do ‘the robot.’ Also, ‘the shopping cart.’ But ‘the robot’ was more popular.

But, Cat, I hear you ask, what series of events could possibly have led to such a circumstance?

I have been asking myself the same question. As my one friend remarked, “Cat, Indian yoga is freakin’ weird.”

After my last installment, I seriously considered quitting yoga altogether. However, I was convinced by Melissa, a much more devout yogi than myself, to stick with it, at least for one more day. I was pleased that I did: our eye-shadowed, Pol-pot-esque instructor must have decided that we had mastered so-hum, because we were permitted to move on to what the average, uninformed westerner regards as yoga. The following three classes were much more enjoyable.

On what we believed as to be our last day of the class, Melissa and I began our Sunday morning as we usually do: We had some tea, I went for a run. Just as I returned, red-faced and disgusting, from running circles around the school courtyard, Sejalben, looking perfect in her sari, came walking up the path to our house.

“You are going to yoga class today?” She asked me, eyeing my disheveled state.

“Definitely,” I replied.

“Well, it’s going on right now,” she informed me.

“Uh, what?”

We discovered, after a rushed 15 minutes of showering, dressing, and running hurriedly to the temple, that the yoga class had been going on since dawn. We arrived at approximately 10:30 am. As we entered the hall, we joined a large circle which had been formed by the class participants. It was clear that we had interrupted some kind of group activity.

The directions were explained to us as follows: “Ego? You know ego? That is what we are doing,” our instructor told us matter-of-factly.

Right. Of course.

She called a number of people up to the front by name. They were told (I assume) to line up and face the circle. They then conducted a series of short breaths, and she then gave an instruction that was unintelligible to me in Gujarati. Everyone began to laugh, and the people at the front looked at eachother, embarrassed. They then began to roam around the hall, pretending to attack people, drooling, and one of the men even pulled his shirt off over his head (exposing, unfortunately for the class, his generous belly and hanes underwear) and wandered around, eyes unfocused and glazed.

I looked confusedly at the woman sitting next to me. “Crazy,” she explained with a nod, then pointed to them, “They are crazy.” I then realized the purpose of the activity: to make a fool out of yourself in front of the whole class.

Great, I thought. That’s practically a daily routine for us.

This went on for some time. Each time, the instructor called someone or a few people up to the front and they had to do something new to embarrass themselves. She had people leapfrog and shake their butts in saris, pretend to be monkeys, writhe on the floor. I avoided her eyes, hoping that by pretending not to understand the directions I could avoid the inevitable. It was not to be.

“MELISHA! KETRIN! COME!” The chubby, eye-shadowed buddha summoned us to the front. I looked at Melissa, and pushed myself up from my sitting position.

As I stood at the front of the room, I eyed the crowd. They looked up at us, unblinking, intrigued. The laughter which had filled the hall a moment ago was gone as they wait to see what she would give the clueless Americans.

“Breathe,” she instructed. We did the series of short breaths we had seen the others do so many times.

At the end, I opened my eyes and held my breath, waiting for the pronouncement to come.

“Dance,” she said simply.

I froze. “Dance?” I repeated, turning around to look back at her.

“Dance!” She cried and motioned for me to turn around and face the expected audience.

There was a long pause, before my brain caught up with my body and I started to do that swimming dance, you know, the one where you put one arm in front, then the other, like you are doing the crawl? Melissa joined in and the two of us shook our thang in the middle of the circle.

The instructor must have switched on some music, because all of a sudden the hall was filled with upbeat Indian dance music. Melissa and I grabbed each others hands and started to awkwardly swing dance in time to the music, twirling each other and laughing.

Since we were the last ones to go, the rest of the circle joined in (after giving a glance to make sure it was sanctioned by the instructor) and the hall soon became the site of wild frolicking. Melissa and I tried to copy their trademark Indian dance moves, but soon were surrounded on all sides with clapping and calls for Western dancing.

And that, my friends, is how the spiritual crowd in Kadod learned to do the robot.

Best,Cat

P.S. They also gave us our money back for the class. Something about being their guests. Karma?