I do yoga once in a while. Julie says
she has done yoga basically every day for the last year. We are in
India. If one is going to do yoga, this is the place to do it.
Yesterday, two weeks in to our stay
here, we finally made it to a yoga class. Julie and Kalden found it;
a little studio called Universal Yoga that involves following a
series of handwritten signs down a few flights of steps and through a
dark hallway or two into a seedy-looking residential building. If I
had been in the US in a place like this, I would have turned around
and gone home. But this is India. It's just the way places look here.
We got there a little early and there
was a Vinyasa class still in session. We were asked to remove our
shoes outside the studio room, and then we were allowed to sit
quietly while the other class finished up, since there was no
electricity in the hallway outside and it was a little dark and
scary.
The Vinyasa class was taught by a tall,
dark yogi who spoke as though he, too, was right from the States. He
seemed like a good teacher, but I admit I was a little bit
disappointed; where were the Indian yogis? Seriously, I travel to the
other side of the globe and attend a yoga class in the country that
invented the practice, and I find an American instructor?
Their class ended and the students for
the next class started trickling in. Julie and I rolled out our mats
near the front of the room; it was a good thing we got there early,
because we ran out of space. There must have been about 15 or 20 of
us; there were a few people who couldn't fit their mats into the room
and didn't get to do the class.
A lanky, dark Indian man who looked to
be in his mid-twenties took a spot at one of the mats at the front of
the room and started leading us in a warm-up. It took me a few
minutes, but I eventually decided that his very unexpected,
just-thick-enough-to-be-distracting accent was Scottish. It was...
well ok, it was just plain weird. Kind of cool, though, too.
He finished with the warm-up and a
different instructor stepped in. Let me tell you, THIS guy was the
sort of person you'd expect to find teaching yoga in India. Super
thin and all muscle, you could tell he'd been doing this for a while.
Periodically he would instruct us to do “comfortable Vinyasa” --
which Julie later informed me means a sequence of moves that involves
being up, down, and eventually coming to rest – and he himself
would do this elaborate series of handstands and the splits and other
such feats of balance and strength, and all I could think was “I'm
in India... doing yoga... with Dhalsim from Street Fighter.”
 |
| Accurate representation of my first yoga instructor in India. |
There were a handful of young (in their
20s) Indians assisting in the class, adjusting us students when we
weren't doing an asana quite correctly. They had clearly been doing
this for some time, because they nudged just enough to put you in the
right spot and then deftly moved down the line to the next students.
At the end of class, during the
relaxation period, Dhalsim began chanting in this slow, deliberate
way that reverberated through the room and my body, and it really was
extremely relaxing. I've never been to a yoga class where that was
done before. It became so easy to really let go of the distractions
and chill for a while. When we came out of Shavasana, he bowed to
each of us in turn and thanked us for coming to class.
I dunno, I thought it was pretty cool.
Apparently it's one of the best yoga studios in the area as far as
cost/quality ratio.
On our way out we met Rico, one of the
many hipster-ish Caucasians in the class. Almost everyone there was
western, or at least they looked western. Tattooed, unshaven, and
muscular, Rico had the look of a wanderer, which he later confirmed
in his answer to my question of where he was from (“I don't even
know anymore. I spent a while in Boulder...”). He seemed like a
nice enough guy. He and Julie discussed tattoos for a bit, he asked
what we were doing in Dharamsala, and he invited us out for dinner.
We declined because we already had plans, but told him we'd be at the
Green Hotel tomorrow afternoon giving English lessons to our monk
friend, Palsang. I'll also be Skyping with my parents and hopefully
my sister. We'll see if our new yoga buddy shows up.
In other news, a few of you have been
asking what you can send me to make my stay in India more homey. I
have begun compiling a list, though I want to stress that NONE OF
THIS IS NECESSARY – we are surviving just fine (and more or less
comfortably, really) on what we can get here. These are simply things
that would be nice to have, should you feel the urge to send them our
way:
Protein bars. I like Lara bars,
especially the chocolate and/or peanut butter ones (obviously). Some
Luna bars are good too (Nutz Over Chocolate... I'm sensing a theme
here...). If you find a different brand I'm down for trying something
new, please just make sure it doesn't have any high-fructose corn
syrup in it. Some of 'em will surprise you, like GeniSoy. :(
Oskri also makes delicious coconut
bars... they come in a few different flavors, all of which are great,
and look like this:
 |
| I would like to have more of these plzthx. |
Dried papaya, pineapple, and/or apples.
In that order.
Seeds, like pumpkin or sunflower seeds.
Nuts are easy to find here but I don't see many seeds. They make for
good snackletons.
Licorice. Panda makes “sticks” that
would be perfect. Any flavor is welcome, but especially the regular black kind.
Turkey, veg, or ostrich jerky (pepper
Ostrim is pretty tasty). I can't remember what the turkey jerky I had
on the plane was, but I got it at Fruitful Yield in Joliet and it
comes in packs of 2 sticks. I think it was on the top shelf.
Good Q-tips. Here I've only seen the
crappy ones that have hardly any cotton on the ends and cause you to
always poke the inside if your ears up. You have to take small
victories where you can get them.
GameBoy Advance games. I brought my
system and three games: the original Super Mario Bros, Phantasy Star
Collection (which includes I, II, and III), and Harvest Moon: Friends
of Mineral Town. Some Zelda would be cool, or Phantasy Star IV. Or
whatever else, we'll take it all. Don't spend a lot of $$ on 'em,
though.. only send them if a) they are mine to begin with (lol...
this means you, Dad and Lonnie), b) they are yours and you won't play
them anyway, or c) you get them super cheap, like on eBay or at a
garage sale.
Drawing pencils, chalk pastels, or
charcoal. I have access to sketchbooks.
Those small packages of Kleenex, the
travel size ones that have like 20 in each thing. I found a 3-pack at
Target for a couple bucks (at home... there are no Targets here).
A size 3 circular knitting needle,
preferably 40” long but I can work with shorter if I need to. I'm
already roughing it so I would even appreciate a 16” metal
circular, or DPNs... Lindsey and Casey will probably be the only ones
who (might) get the humor in this; it's hilarious, I promise. (Seriously
though, wooden 29” or 36” would be awesome. Knit Picks will hook
you up.)
Photos of you! Facebook is slow here,
so send me a couple of real photos for me to decorate my room. I
brought a small collection with me but I can always use more.
Flash cards or greeting cards that have
art on them. The Art Institute usually sells sets of them, and I'm
sure Amazon does, too. They are good for passing out to students and
having them describe the painting/picture/photo to each other.
Books of exercises for ESL classes. I
can't remember the titles of any of them off the top of my head (and
the internet is too slow to do a good search), but look for ones
involving phrases like “5-minute warm-ups.”
A USB stick filled with movies that use
simple English. It's good for students to have a variety of sources
to listen to. Specifically, I'd like to request Toy Story.
An emergency phone backup battery
thing. It holds a charge so when your phone dies right before you
need to make a Very Important Call you can hook it up and take care
of business, like a boss. This is also by no means necessary, but if you can find
one that's not expensive and feel like passing it along I will
totally make use of it.
And finally, plastic bags. I cannot
stress enough that I do not want a lot of them, but if you have space
to fill in a package and want to throw a few intact plastic bags in
for cushioning, we could use them for trash bags. Plastic bags were
outlawed in Dharamsala (which is awesome for the most part) which
means you don't find them floating around in the street, but it also
makes it a little tricky finding something to put your garbage in.
My address is:
Magda Ksiazak
c/o Tibet Charity
Below Temple Road
McLeod Ganj, 176219
Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India
Please only nice presents. :)
Thanks everybody! <3
