by Anne Cushman
I went around to the side of the house and stepped through a screen door into a dark basement room—already getting hot, although it was only five in the morning. The room smelled of sweat and the rotten-egg smell of hing, an Indian spice. The breathing washed over me: a rhythmic puffing, as if from a dozen differently pitched steam trains. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that the room was packed with wall-to-wall yoga students, their mats lined up touching each other, flowing at their own pace through a series of poses they all apparently knew by heart. The men were stripped to the waist; the women were in shorts and tiny tank tops. After traveling through India, it was startling to see so much bare skin, as if they were practicing in their underwear. They glistened with sweat; they erupted in an occasional grunt or groan. In the corner, a young woman with tattoos lacing her arms was balanced in a handstand. Near my feet, a man tucked his legs into full Lotus, folded forward, and snarled.
In the back was a man I knew must be Mr. Kapoor. As far as I could tell, he was the only Indian in the room. He was a stocky, barrel-chested man with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair, every muscle in his abdomen chiseled. He was holding a balding man with a gray ponytail at the hips as the man dropped over backward. The student’s face was contorted with terror and ecstasy in a way that looked familiar. It took me a minute to realize where I’d just seen that expression: on the dog I had just chased away.
Without saying anything, Mr. Kapoor looked up at me and wagged his head in a gesture of invitation. I picked my way through the students and found a place where there was a tiny bit of room to spread out my mat. The woman next to me shot me a baleful glance and scooted over three inches. I stepped to the front of my mat and swept my hands overhead, folding into my first Sun Salutation. I’d gone through this sequence a thousand times back at The Blissful Body. For the first time since I’d been in India, I actually felt like I knew what I was doing.
The physical feelings were so intense that for a while, they drowned out all thoughts, leaving nothing but the burn of muscle, the whistle of breath, the metronome count of the increasingly grueling poses. I’d do a thousand Sun Salutations, if I could just sweat Matt right out of my system. After yoga class, in the old days, I used to go over to his house. We’d roll around on his futon. He’d lick the sweat off my neck. I’d bite his arm. Upward Dog. Downward Dog. Breathe. Focus.
A shadow fell over me, and I opened my eyes. Mr. Kapoor was getting down on his knees behind the young woman to my right, who was folded over her legs in a seated forward bend. He straddled her and sat down, thrusting his groin against the base of her spine, then draped the whole length of his body against her sweat-soaked back. She let out a low, throaty moan, a strange mingling of pain and pleasure, like someone having an orgasm while lying on a bed of red-hot nails.
“MINIMUM STAY IS one month,” Mr. Kapoor said flatly.
Class was finished, and we were sitting in a pair of flowered armchairs in his tiny upstairs living room, where I’d come to register and explain my mission. Both of us were sipping chai, milky and sweet, from china cups. I was nibbling on a lump of butter and sugar that tasted as if it had been soaked in formaldehyde. Mr. Kapoor had changed into a traditional Indian kurta, but his barrel chest still swelled powerfully; he seemed too large for his chair. The teacup looked absurdly fragile in his immense hand. On the wall behind him was a framed picture of himself standing with his arm around—could that possibly be Paris Hilton?
“But Sir, I can’t stay for one month. That’s what I’ve been saying. I can only stay for a couple of weeks. I have to go to many places researching spiritual teachings. This is just one of them.”
He set down his cup and glowered at me. “You are like a man looking for water in the desert. He digs one hole here, six inches deep. No water. Digs over there, six inches, no water. He digs many, many, many holes and never finds water. He dies thirsty.”
I nodded, panic welling up inside me. “But…I am making a map so other people can find water.”
“Oh! You are a mapmaker! So you will die thirsty, but your map—all done. It is for this you have traveled twelve thousand miles?” He slammed his hand against the table so hard the teacups rattled in their saucers. “Last week, I asked a yoga student why she had come to India. To know God, she told me. I asked a few more questions and she told me that her boyfriend had broken up with her. So now she is in India, with the mala beads around her neck. As soon as she has a new boyfriend, pah! The search for God will be over. I ask you—is that how it is for you, too?”
“Oh no! Not at all! Of course I’ll stay for a month!”
“Pah! You can stay for three weeks, not one day more than that. This is a place for people who want to find God in their bodies! It is not for people who want to put God in their books!” He leaned back in his chair and regarded me fiercely from under his bushy white eyebrows. “But—you will pay for one month. Be grateful that I do not charge you double.”
Oh well, I could stay; that was the important thing. I pulled out my daypack and handed over a wad of rupees. Maybe he really was the richest man in the city.
When I stepped out into the street, the sun hit me like a furnace. I blinked in the glare. My muscles were already starting to throb; I’d be sore this afternoon. A cow was dozing in the shade of the building with a crow on its back, pecking at bugs on its skin; another crow hopped by its face, feeding on something in its nostril. A third was roosting on its head, but every time it pecked, the cow gracefully inclined its head forward, like royalty bowing to the populace, and the bird fluttered off.
As I started down the street, I heard a whimper and looked down to see the dog, trotting after me in a cloud of dust. I turned around. It sat down and gave me an ingratiating grin, its tongue lolling out.
I thought of the dogs I used to walk back at Doggie Day Care—locked alone all day in luxury apartments, except for the brief, ecstatic hour that I’d take them out to chase balls at the park. One guilty owner had bought his dog a special DVD that he left running all day on a widescreen HDTV, featuring a rotating series of shows oriented for canine pleasure: Let’s Go Rabbit Hunting. Chasing Frisbees with Bob and Sue.
Why did this little dog tug at my heart more than all the maimed beggars I’d tromped past, eyes averted, in the last couple of weeks? The toothless old women stretching out shriveled hands, the men with stumps of arms, the big-eyed children who banged on the windows of the taxi, pleading with me to roll down the window? Maybe it was because this was a manageable suffering—a problem I might actually be able to do something about.
I pictured myself bringing the dog back to my hut with me: washing it, treating its eye with antibiotics, fattening it up on scraps from my meals. I’d smuggle it into ashrams and temples. I’d fly it home to San Francisco, where I’d throw balls for it in Golden Gate Park.
Remember, Amanda. You’ve got a job to do here. I reached into my daypack, pulled out a packet of sugar biscuits, and emptied the whole thing onto the road. “I’m sorry,” I told the dog, as it hungrily gobbled them up. “But that’s the best I can do.” Then I walked away fast, trying to get away before it came after me.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
So who is this Devi Das guy? This isn’t going to be one of your weird little flings, is it? He sounds like he might have serious psychological problems. I know it’s hard to be all on your own but you don’t want to get all entangled with someone who doesn’t even have a last name, let alone a job.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Amanda, Production is pressing me about art and design so I’m hoping I can get some sample chapters from you soon. If you haven’t found enlightenment yet just leave that part blank, we’ll dummy something in until you get it.
“ROLL YOUR FEMUR OUT!” Mr. Kapoor’s voice boomed through the studio as he strode up and down the military rows of sweating students. His massive chest, covered with a pelt of gray hair, swelle
d over his shorts. “Now, from the head of the femur, draw the skin of the inner thigh down, down, down!”
After lunch, an exhausted nap back at my hotel room, and a brief visit to the Krishna Cyber Chai House to check my email, I’d returned to Mr. Kapoor’s studio for the late afternoon session. No more sweaty, flowing practice; now we were dissecting each pose like a laboratory frog. I drove my feet hard into my mat, my arms and legs spread wide in the muscular geometry of Triangle Pose.
“Roll the right side of the navel to the right and move the left side of the navel toward the navel’s center. Drive the armpit of the groin deep into the inner wall of the sacrum!”
Oh damn. Could I have heard that right? Where was the armpit of my groin? Was I the only one who didn’t know? I closed my eyes and silently chanted a mantra: Please don’t let me screw up. Please don’t let me screw up. I was back in sixth-grade PE, flat-chested and scrawny-thighed, a phalanx of boys watching contemptuously as Mr. Hittle shouted at me to run faster in the fifty-yard dash. Mr. Spittle, we’d called him. No matter where you were injured—a sprained wrist, a bloody nose—he put ice on your crotch, a phenomenon we were all afraid to comment on lest he ice it again.
“Now draw back the left armpit groin toward the tailbone to rotate the legs in the other direction!” I turned my feet, hoping my armpit groin was doing the right thing. The tiny studio was sweltering, despite the two standing fans that blew a current of steamy air across it. Nausea rolled through me. Heat is good. Back in the States, you pay extra for hot yoga. I could smell the armpits of the man next to me, the chilies on his breath. My stomach heaved. Oh, God. I’m going to throw up. I lifted halfway out of the pose, willing my stomach to stay steady, praying for invisibility. But in a flash Mr. Kapoor was beside me.
“Why are you stopping the yoga pose? Did I give instructions to stop the yoga pose?”
“No. I’m sorry.” I stood all the way up, nausea drowned out by sheer terror. “I was just feeling a little sick.”
“‘Just’ is incorrect understanding!” he roared. “If you are yogi, you understand this: Everything is karma. Every action has a consequence. You must pay attention!” He pointed at my stomach. “This nausea—this is simply your lack of attention, your ignorance, taking physical form. This is what karma is. Mind goes dull, actions go dull, bad food gets eaten, poses are practiced incorrectly, stomach gets sick. You understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” I said, faintly.
He looked at me, then shook his head. “You understand nothing.” He gestured to the wall of props. “Go get two wooden blocks, a sandbag, a strap, and a bolster. Healing the stomach can happen in a couple of hours. Maybe in forty or fifty years, your mind will heal, too.”
* * *
Enlightenment for Idiots: Sample Chapter Draft
If you’re lucky enough to find your way to a class with Mr. Vikas Kapoor—the rising yoga star who’s been turning heads from Hollywood to the Upper East Side—congratulations! Located in the heart of a charming modern city in beautiful southwestern India, the Kapoor Institute is just the place to get your quest for enlightenment off to a rousing start!
Virtually unknown in the Western yoga world until recently, Mr. Kapoor claims on his website, www.topyogamaster.com, that his years of teaching delinquent boys have uniquely prepared him for the challenges of teaching Western yoga students. Although some may find his personal style over-bearing
If you’re having difficulty achieving an enlightened armpit
I can’t believe Matt hasn’t emailed me yet. I know this is what we decided, but still I thought
[REST OF PAGE ILLEGIBLE DUE TO CHAI SPILLED ON NOTEBOOK.]
* * *
“I THINK MY kundalini woke up this morning in Urdhva Dhanurasana,” said the slim blonde woman in the red thong bikini.
“How could you tell?” asked the guy in the Speedo who was rubbing coconut sunscreen on her back.
“I felt this throbbing, this intense throbbing, right here.” She touched the base of her sacrum, just between the perfect globes of her buttocks. “And then it ran up my spine like electricity—like, oh God. And all day long, I’ve just been in this state of total bliss.”
I was lying with five or six yoga students on the warm cement by the swimming pool in back of the Ashok Hotel, the most expensive hotel in the city, favored by international business travelers. Few of the yoga students stayed here, but it was a ritual to come here every afternoon, order Coke or lemonade, and cool off in the pool until it was time to go back for the afternoon yoga session. A green lawn surrounded the pool. Parasols shaded tables from the blazing sun. The concrete was baking hot, the water cool and blue. By the water’s edge sat two Japanese men in navy-blue swim trunks, talking on cell phones. The only Indians in evidence were the waiters, waiting discreetly in the shadows in white cotton uniforms.
“Does it strike you as at all odd that we’re drinking sodas and swimming in a pool, while just outside those gates people are dying because they don’t have enough to eat?” I asked the woman in the red bikini. I was trying to force myself to gather material for my book, when really my whole body yearned just to lie in the shade and sleep. I wondered where Devi Das was. He left me alone most of the days—to focus on my work, he said. “Yoga class is not really our scene, anyway,” he said cheerfully. “There is a yogi living under a tree a few miles away who can drag a jeep twenty feet using just a rope tied around his penis. We find that more accessible.” I was beginning to worry that this wasn’t my scene, either. Many of these people had been here for months, even for years. By comparison, I was a dilettante, a window shopper not worth investing time in. My bathing suit, borrowed from the yoga student in the hut next to mine, made it clear that I was bulgy in places that shouldn’t bulge and not bulgy in places that should. I had forgotten to bring a razor, and curly strands of hair hung out along my bikini line. Somehow I hadn’t envisioned bikini-line maintenance being part of my spiritual pilgrimage.
“Karma,” the woman said. “It’s all karma.” She rolled over on her back, lifted a long, brown leg into the air, drew it behind her head, and rested her neck in the crook of her knee. “I spent many lifetimes serving others. This is the life where I get to focus on my own spiritual development.”
The heavyset woman on the other side of me looked at her with hostility badly disguised as admiration. “Jesus, I wish I could do that. I’ll never be able to do that.”
She smiled reassuringly and hooked the other leg behind her neck: Supta Kurmasana, Reclining Tortoise Pose. “Not in this lifetime, maybe. But it’s like Sir says. ‘Keep doing your practice, and all doors will open.’”
I envied her clarity that this was the right path, that there was no other. I had never been that certain about anything in my life, and—lying here by the swimming pool, sucking on ice cubes—I wanted to be. Maxine, I’ve been in India three weeks and I’ve already found the true path. Please send the rest of my advance. I will be staying here at the Ashok Hotel, drinking lemon Cokes and writing my bestselling guidebook.
I closed my eyes, feeling sick again. I didn’t have the right clothes to be here. I didn’t have the right attitude. I didn’t even have the right yoga props. All the other yogis had given up their American latex sticky mats and were practicing on scratchy blankets woven out of jute fiber. “I’ve been meaning to ask.” I summoned the courage to break into the conversation. “Where do you all get those wonderful yoga blankets?”
“Aren’t they fabulous?” the blonde responded. “They only cost a couple of dollars. We get them at the jail downtown. The prisoners weave them.”
IN. OUT. In the dim dawn practice room—already hot—the sound of my breath whistled in my ears, joining the other yogis in their sibilant chorus. I spread my legs wide and folded forward between them, hooking my legs over my shoulders. Kurmasana: Tortoise Pose. It had always been a struggle for me before. But the heat and the punishing workouts seemed to be paying off. My body was melting like butter.
I was halfway through my second week with Mr. Kapoor, and I was having the best yoga session of my life. Waves of pleasure rippled up my spine. There was nothing in my mind but the hum of the breath, the quivering animal sensation of muscles stretching and flexing. Every nerve quivered with bliss. This is it. I’m finally getting it. The yogis are right—it’s beyond words. I can’t wait to write about it.
In, out. Breathe. Flow. I folded one leg up on my thigh into half lotus, then crossed the other one over it. I reached around behind my back, crossing one arm over the other, straining to reach my toes. I’d never been able to do it before. But now it was almost within my grasp. Almost there, almost there…“Lower!” cracked Mr. Kapoor’s voice in my ear. “Your legs must go lower. Your legs must touch the ground.” He sat behind my back and leaned his chest against my spine. His hands pushed down, hard, on my knees.
Aaaaaa. I yelped, involuntarily, as pain sliced through my left knee, with an audible pop. Mr. Kapoor gave my arms a tug and my hands clasped around my feet. Got it! “Now you are master of your body,” he said, triumphant. He moved on. I straightened out my leg, feeling the pain radiate through it. When I stood up, it buckled beneath me.
BACK AT THE swimming pool, the consensus was clear: “If you are injured, it’s not the fault of the practice. It’s your own karma from previous lives.”
“You should be grateful,” said the blonde woman, whose name, I had learned, was Claire. She rolled over onto her back and pulled the straps of her swimsuit down to tan her cleavage. “Your impurities are coming to the surface. That means they’re on their way out.”