Mysore – My Sort of Life

3:30am, my eyes open after six and a half hours of sleep. I still have an hour till my alarm will go, but I get up. I want to type a few words while I have my neighbor’s power cord. Mine smoked yesterday as I plugged it to the socket at the Internet café. Normally getting up at 4:00 or 4:30 I have an hour to get ready, meditate and walk over to the shala for morning Mysore practice.

The Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute Shala

The shala holds around 60-70 students practicing with Sharat and Saraswati, the grandson and the daughter of Pattabhi Jois. The students here seem to be mostly teachers when not in Mysore. The level of practice here is very high, at least from the Asana (posture) perspective.

Some pretty amazing things happening in that large room, twisting and bending. All of them involve strength and concentration. The room is filled with strong energies.

As I finish my practice and walk out of the shala, which is on the first floor of their house, the street is quiet. The sound of students talking about their Kapotasana (a crazy backbend) while sipping on coconut water fills the morning air.

It is already 7:30 and the sun is out. Like going to the movies but reversed. You enter in the dark and leave when it’s light. I sip my first coconut and ask for the second with ganji, coconut meat. He cracks the green nut open and hands it to me with fresh white coconut flesh sitting on a spoon made from a chopped piece of my coconut.

Breakfast

Off to my room to refresh and then breakfast. Either at home with some curd, banana and muesli or at one of the nice places around. We are surely spoiled here. I love Tina’s place with steamed spinach and sesame seeds, her fenugreek leaf (fresh leaves) rotis (flat bread, like a thin pita), that are served with splendid tomato chutney, along with boiled eggs and a papaya mint juice. At any one of the few “westernized” breakfast places you can find many other yogis, talking about their lives or the meaning of life. Discussing a book or making plans for the day. 

Yoga Philosophy

I hop on my motorcycle and head downtown. Driving through the Indian madness I reach the home where Narasimha teaches philosophy, the yoga sutras and much more. Narasimha has vast knowledge, from science to philosophy, from the Sutras to the Vedas.

Narasimha is a medium sized man with white hair jumping around, a white cloth around his waist and a white undershirt to cover his chest and belly. A red line is drawn on his forehead from the hair towards his third eye. He sits on a small bed crossed legged, as we cover the straw mats placed on the floor in the small room.

All around us are books. It can almost remind one of the little study rooms that the orthodox Jews in Jerusalem study in, maybe even more simple and basic. He is surely a manifestation of his teachings. It’s beautiful to see someone who lives his own dogma.

The motorcycle ride

Returning home to Gokulam, the neighborhood of the shala, I give Lisa and Stephanie a ride. Motorcycles here and even scooters have amazing capabilities. Small engines, tiny bikes, yet a whole family of 5 can easily fit on. Sometimes it can be many sacks of potatoes; so much as you can’t really see the scooter or driver. A huge part of a banana tree, a passenger holding a TV box or anything else that might need to be shipped. Well, it was my last threesome on a bike as we did get stopped. After bargaining with the police, we agreed on 300 rupees fine (about $7). They asked for 700rp, and the real fine is probably around 40rp.

Lunch

“Civediamo a green leaf?” asks Elena, and I set out to meet her for lunch at the huge restaurant where mostly you find Indians eating a classic tali; a large stainless steel plate with many little bowls that contain heavily cooked veggies, dhal, curd and sauces, a bowl of rice, some bread like a chapatti or roti and if its fancy, even a small desert.

Elena orders noodles (she is Italian after all), and paneer 555, a fantastic Indian cheese fried in a way that I would rather not know to transform it to become Chinese, but has some what of a tikka flavor, a yummy satisfying dish that is not swimming in a curry like most other Indian dishes. Recognizing your veggies as separate pieces, or having them not so cooked and with no sauce is rare. Raw salads are not common either.

Lunch and dinner many times merge into one meal, as we tend to go to sleep pretty early. Dinner is usually light, maybe a rav idly (a nice light cutlet made of fermented rice/dhal flour with hint of veggies), a dosa (large, thin paper like dough rolled with a potato curry in its center), or if I’m at the internet cafe, then maybe one of Anu’s famous smoothies, a bowl of frozen banana yogurt with optional dates and nuts, real yummy.

Evening

At the end of the day I try to keep quiet, read, and meditate, take a walk in the park in front of my house and maybe some body cleaning (with a bucket and cup, very economical and ecological too).

I am working on a photography show I’ll open next month here in Mysore at India song house. It will include two outdoor large screen projections, and some prints hanging like laundry in the main gallery space. For those that never saw my work, some can be viewed at here. The opening shall be at the night of the new moon, candlelight and images floating through space.

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Come and visit us at the Doron Yoga & Zen Center for a retreat or teacher training course to get a feel for how we do it in Guatemala!

Blissful Living,

Doron