BackIndia’s top four letter word—yoga
Yoga has got a new currency; will it translate to sustained interest?
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Outside the Duomo di Milano, the cathedral church of Milan, sat two sadhus in the lotus position, eyes closed, in saffron robes and rudraksh strings. One was perched on the circumference of a short wooden pole held in one hand by the other. It was a snapshot from the now laboured but stereotypical idea of India—snake charmers-sadhus-elephants.
All the same it was visually striking. My first reflex was to suspect gimmickry as these two men were engaged in a seemingly impossible physical feat. Then I heard the words “oh look, yogae," (yoga) uttered by a middle-aged European couple.
They were struck by what they saw. So were many others. The crowd around the sadhus kept growing by the minute, peeling away from other street performers outside the cathedral—a modern dancer as frothy and flexible as gelled silicon and a glamourous young girl with tri-coloured hair singing a peppy Italian number with a guitar.
But this is not yoga, I was tempted to say, while realizing that it wouldn’t matter. After the images of 21st June, International Yoga Day, showing the Indian Prime Minister and thousands of others doing yoga at Rajpath beamed out on global television screens, an old penny had dropped on the world as a new one. By simple deduction, what else could anybody who sat with legs folded, eyes closed, in a meditative pose wearing saffron robes be doing after all? Yoga, right?
I wore a black sari that day—and in the usual order of reactions that the sari evokes abroad, a couple of Europeans asked me questions about the drape. One of them was: can you do yoga in a sari? This was the first time I have been asked this question. Yoga was clearly the Indian flavour of the day/week.
Just a day before that, on the International Day of Yoga, in fact, I had made a trip to Lake Como—a beautiful destination just an hour’s train ride from Milan. When I got off the train, I realized it was at the wrong station and I was lost. A young college student who spoke halting English offered to help me, saying she and her mother would take me to my hotel in their car. Much obliged, I fished out my visiting card as soon as I got into the backseat and said, please let me know if you come to India and need any help. “Oh, thank you so much," said the girl, “will you tell me where I can learn yogae in India? Do you know yoga?"
So at the Gucci menswear show in Milan which I attended shortly after stumbling into the sadhu feat outside the Duomo, Italy’s second largest cathedral, next only to Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, when I was asked by the person sitting next to me: “so how was yoga day?", I had an answer ready.
“Oh, I miss yoga so much," I said a bit theatrically, by now eager to ride the wave. Yoga was the topping on all kinds of conversations held with Indians abroad, never mind that it was seen as a much politicized event back home.
The thing is that as seen on TV, yoga looks like anyone can do it. Large numbers of people sitting in lotus poses sensitively holding their noses and breathing deeply makes peace look like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked and had. There is little doubt that the ancient physical and spiritual discipline has been re-noticed in a big way as an exciting and buyable display in India’s current shopping window, but I wonder if those who haven’t tried it realize all that it entails. Unless you start practising yoga regularly and stay long enough with a rigorous routine, pushing your body and mind through pain and penance to experience the fascinating changes it brings, it seems enticing and easy. It is certainly not easy, I can tell you that as a regular and long-time practitioner.
So while the Indian government has successfully managed to sell itself as an ambassador of yoga and evoke interest in it among a global audience more attuned and attracted to New Age practices than ever before, it may also want ask “what later" after the dust settles on the yoga mat? Will India offer yogic education to foreigners as part of Incredible India? Can students pursue a Ph.D in yoga in an Indian university under competent academics? Will there be international yoga conferences with demonstrations and keynote addresses by experts—including a plethora of young yoga gurus from India now being eagerly profiled and photographed by glitzy magazines?
As a footnote, it must be said that the PM’s white outfit offset by a tri-coloured crushed stole was photogenic but inappropriate. You don’t wear a stole when doing yogic asanas—it can curtail free and flexible movement. Worse, it can get wrapped around the neck and choke you.
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