The last thing I expected to find in India was a guru. I try to avoid cliches in my life as I would in my writing, and with a few exceptions (publishing a campus coming-of-age novel; liking baseball; marrying my college sweetheart) I think I have done a decent job. But the guy who teaches yoga every morning in our building's community room was just too real to resist. His name is Guru Navajeevan Viswakarma. He is a fifty year old vegetarian Hindu from Bihar, a predominantly rural state in the north. He moved to Hyderabad half a dozen years ago with his wife and daughter, and now travels around the city's western edge on his motorscooter, teaching yoga wherever he is called. As another famous guru once said, "Where two or more are gathered, there you will find me..." Okay, he will do one-on-one lessons also, but you have to pay more! I have been taking his class for about three months, and on Saturday I finally remembered to bring my camera downstairs. Guruji graciously agreed to sit for a portrait.
We chant a prayer at the beginning of each class. It is in Sanskrit, but the basic idea is, "God, grant us peace, and let us not hate each other." Then we rub our hands together to produce fiction, and we transfer the heat on our eyes, neck, arms, feet, and so forth. Namaskaar, class can now begin.
I tell people that Guruji is both more and less spiritual than any of my previous yoga teachers. He is more, because, well, he is Indian, and he wears a starched white kurta, and he understands the names of the poses. He even pronounces them correctly. (Note to American yogis: in Sanskrit, you don't pronounce the last "a" in "asana.") I also sincerely believe that he channels something, some god-force, when he does his om-chanting. His eyes roll back in his head as the lids remain open, so that you see two little crescents of eye-white. It is spooky, but very spiritual. On the other hand, he takes cell phone calls during class and occasionally slaps a student's errant hand or foot into the proper position. He is somewhat money-grubbing, for a yoga teacher, but that makes sense when you consider that he is making his living teaching these classes (we pay approximately US$2.00 per head per class). I don't think any of my previous yoga teachers made their living solely through yoga. To give you an idea, our last teacher in Menlo Park drove a Bentley--not bought with yoga fees, I assure you.
Because he has trouble with the short "i" sound, he calls me "Neck." Like this: "Neckji! Find your balance! Why you not find your balance before touch your heels?" I doubt he has any formal training in English, and his self-taught dialect contains all the charming malapropisms you'd expect. For example, when we are lying on our backs in savasana ("corpse pose"), he tells us, "lose your back, lose your shoulders, lose your neck, lose your head. Lose your stomach, lose your hip, lose your nezzer regions..." He means "loosen," not "lose." Some of the women in my class have asked him to improve his English, but I hope he never does. I am a fiction writer; characters like Guruji are my bread and butter.
Here are some of my other favorite lines: "Neckji! Look me!" (ie, watch me demonstrate the pose); "Apart your legs!" (slap!) When he wants me to remember to breathe, he approaches me on all fours and starts sniffing like a bloodhound. You have to understand that he is not trying to be funny. This is all deadly serious to him. He also burps and farts without shame, which Violet loves. She and her friend Avisha, whose mother also takes Guruji's class, have created a dance routine where they giggle and recite some of the guru's most famous lines.
A few weeks ago, he approached us after a Saturday morning class. "Jessica!" he called with a blazing grin on his face. "Madam, I want to make more people to this class. I need...marketing!" He asked me to create a poster for him on my computer. So I sat and took down the benefits of his style of yoga. According to him, they include stomach disorders, thyroid problems, constipation, and piles. When I asked if he was sure about these claims, he asked if I had spelled "thyroid" correctly. Then, a few days later he called to check on the status of the poster. "Neck!" said the voice in my cellphone. "Neck, it is your master. Hello!"
