All is coming... including the mosquitos

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Following on from my last entry, this next bit is from my first day at the Sivananda ashram in Kerala.

A loud gong being pounded over and over woke me at 5.15. It was still dark outside and the ceiling fans were whirring so the power must have come back on at some point.
“Om Nama Shivaya! Good morning! Time to wake up!” Neesha’s voice boomed through the dorm as she went around clicking on lights and turning off ceiling fans. I saw her poking her head underneath people’s mosquito nets and singing “Om Nama Shivaya!” individually to each person and I jumped out of bed quickly before she got to me.

I stumbled down to the trough sinks at the end of the dorm, to clean my teeth. A big line of ants was crawling through the wall above them, and down into the sink. I decided to brush my teeth in the shower instead, and went into one of the bathrooms. Two big lines of ants were crawling through the walls and down them. I turned on the shower. I knew they were cold water showers but it didn’t prepare me for the shock of how cold, in a damp, dark bathroom at 5.30 in the morning. The ants started crawling over my towel, where I’d hung it up.

At 6, everyone trooped down to the meditation hall again. This time a man was sitting on the stage. I hadn’t seen him around yesterday. He was wearing orange robes, glasses and had a short beard. He looked to be in his early forties, and was western. He was the Swami, and was thankfully just known as Swamiji, because his name as he introduced it was totally unpronounceable and seemed to have about 156 letters in it.

The procedure was the same as last night had been: meditation, the unending rendition of ‘Jaya Ganesha’ accompanied by orange tambourines, lots of other chanting; then he spoke.
“Om Nama Shivaya.” (there was that phrase again). “Good morning.” Swamiji looked around the room. I looked round at everyone else, not sure if we were supposed to say, “Good morning, Swamiji, good morning, everybody,” like you used to do in assembly at school. But everyone sat silently, just the odd tinkle of a tambourine as people shuffled around.
He went on to give a reading from a book, then said which yoga class would be in which hall, and then there was the final chant again, before the chai break.

The chai was served under the big tree just outside the meditation and yoga halls. Now it was daylight, I could see how beautiful the surroundings were. Huge palms made umbrella shades all across the area. Big bright butterflies, in yellow, pink, purple and blue fluttered around the green foliage and palms. I took a stainless steel cup full of chai. It was hot, sweet and milky and the most comforting few moments I'd had since getting to India. Remembering we weren't eating till 10, I managed to gulp down another cup before going to the hall for Asana class.

I hadn’t yet got a yoga mat, and had wanted to buy one from the ashram shop but it hadn’t been open last night (Neesha: “we have very good mats in the shop, good quality, very good for your asana poses. Also yoga pants, very good quality too, just 200 rupees. And also tiger balm and mosquito repellent. And pens and paper, also cards and books - you must get the Sivananda handbook, it is excellent. Also stamps and incense. Also shampoo and soap and toothpaste. We have everything you need, and all good quality, all good price. And specially the yoga mat which you must buy and never leave lying in the hall, because someone will take it. Don’t trust anybody.”)


Neesha laid her mat next to the straw mat I was using in the meantime and smiled at me in a motherly way.
“I’ll show you what you must do,” she whispered loudly, pinning her hair up, “Just watch, and all is coming. You haven’t done asana before? Oh. You have. Still you watch me because always there is more to learn, more to conquer. All is coming.”

A young man stood at the front of the hall, in a yellow shirt and black trousers, with a headset microphone on. Everyone lay on their mats in Savasana, corpse pose, on their backs, arms and legs spread out. After a few minutes, we all had to sit up, and another chant was done.

The asana teacher walked up and down the middle of the hall, leading Pranama, one of the breathing exercises, then stepped up the pace guiding the ‘breath of fire’, where you squeeze your abdomen in sharply on the out breath, as he marched up and down, chanting through his mouthpiece: “HUUH two! HUUH two! HUUH two! HUUH two!” It felt more like being in the army than the ashram. Just when I thought it was over, then there was breath holding, which was preceded by a few rounds of “Inhale deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeply!; exhale compleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetely!” I found myself running out of breath halfway through the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeply and compleeeeeeeeeeeeeetely, which I knew was not going to bode well for the next bit: “Now inhale deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeply!, and hold,- for 60 seconds!” 60 seconds??? Maybe for those who’d managed to continue breathing in through all the e’s of deeply, but not me. I was going blue after 20, and after 35 (or something like that - by that time my brain was too deprived of oxygen to be able to calculate properly), I caved, and collapsed back on the mat, gasping.

The programme was gruelling: six or seven rounds of sun salutations, then leg raises that went on for ever, headstand (attempted, that is): Neesha leant her formidable chest towards me and whispered,
“When you master the headstand, you master everything. Everything, ” she hissed,
“Then you will be able to do anything. The power!” She returned delightedly to her headstand, leaving me still trying to find the right part of my head to place down on the mat, which seemed to be as far as I was going to get. I was just going into an internal crisis over how un-masterful and powerless this meant I was, when it was time to move on; to shoulder stands, ploughs, bridges and wheels, sitting leg stretches, cobras, locusts, a near impossible balancing pose, ‘crow’, and standing triangle poses.

We grunted and groaned through the postures, following the teacher’s regimented monologue, of “Inhale, exhale, legs up, inhale, down, exhale,” and then peppered with: “Up, up up!”, “Now lift and ho-oold. Breathe in deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeply!- and relax” and “Balance! Balance! Holdholdholdholdhold!” ; until finally, two agonising hours later, it was time for Savasana again, the final relaxation. Thank god. Maybe I would have a little nap.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeee,” came a sound just by my ear. I opened my eyes and caught a flash of mosquito-looking legs in the air.
“Eeeeeeeeeeee.” I flicked it away. “Eeeeeeeeeeee.” I felt a tickle on my arm and jerked my arm up. Then on my foot. Then on my face. In fact, far from this being the final relaxation, everyone in the room seemed to be jerking limbs as if they were having convulsions, sitting up suddenly and clapping the air; even a few “F*** off!”s, or so it sounded like, were hissing round the room. Clearly the local mosquitos knew they were on to a good thing here. They probably buzzed around outside every day waiting for this moment to pounce.

“Remember this is relaxation,” the teacher interrupted. “We don’t worry anything. Not outside sound, not thoughts. Not even mosquito. We can just lie peacefully and all is coming. Just peacefully,” he repeated, running over and grabbing the raised arm of a woman at the back of the room, as she lunged furiously after something in the air in front of her, and put it back down for her by her side. She convulsed a few more times as he walked away, then lay still. He didn’t seem to have done it roughly, but it looked to me like he might have killed her. Maybe lying just peacefully had its price.

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