August 10, 2010

It is Friday August 6th as I am writing and Oscar and I just returned from the first real foray into the depths and diversity of Pune. I have been happy to go to and from class, practice, eat and rest but eventually exploring and shopping calls. Oscar had an individual excursion in the city on Wednesday and was gone most of the day meeting with the psychiatrist that he made contact with before leaving Canada.

The Pune Guide, put together by the New York Iyengar Association, recommends an auto-rickshaw driver named Naana as guide, chauffeur and general assistant. We booked him for Friday and he arrived early to pick us. We had an unorthodox tour of Pune, starting at a large temple, where we climbed steps to the sanctuary and an amazing view of the city at the top.

The temple was interesting. People, mostly women, were carrying plates of food as offerings and some were kneeling and touching the steps at the top. Oscar and I went in and it was one of the moments when I felt very foreign. I didn’t understand the rituals and felt conspicuously non-Indian. It is challenging to make sense of this country and my connection to it as a yoga student. There are moments when I feel very at home and then others when I feel very alien. It is interesting to note what makes me feel like a foreigner in a strange land. For example, I struggle to wear the masks that we brought when in the auto-rickshaws. They are recommended because of the pollution, but I have only seen one other person wearing one. More people pull a scarf up over their mouth and nose when on mopeds, motorcycles or in the rickshaws. I think I would be more comfortable with that option, but I don’t really have anything that would work as well as the mask does.

From the temple, Naana took us to a handmade paper institute (truly beautiful paper which is ridiculously cheaper than what we would find in Canada), a statuette store (seems expensive but we don’t have anything to compare it to yet) and a batik t-shirt shop. It was a good first exploration of the shopping opportunities here. It also highlighted the struggle to shop in a new land. Where to go, what to buy, etc?

The real adventure though is the driving around Pune in the auto-rickshaw. I find the chaos and the closeness of all the other vehicles exhilarating in a particular way – although that may be from the gas fumes-they do make you a bit high! It is noisy, polluted and confusing. Naana was definitely an expert at driving, keeping up an engaging banter, which sometimes I worried distracted him from the road ahead and at finding the little shops in seemingly completely obscure places. He has promised more next week – jewelry, perfume … :)

For this adventure, I chose to skip the open practice at the Institute. I have not gone to any of these yet, preferring to practice in the quiet apartment, which has a well-equipped designated yoga space. When I arrived at class on Friday night, however, I heard that the morning practice had been taken over by a film crew. They were interviewing Guruji as part of the preparation for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Mr. Iyengar had senior students demonstrating very advanced poses and sequences and then he used students and props to show how the props can aid in opening and preparing the body for the asanas. As you can imagine, I’m disappointed that I missed this very special event and the people who had been there were abuzz with what they saw.

Class on Friday was a definite highlight. The teacher was an Indian woman, not part of the Iyengar family, but a senior teacher. She was great! Dynamic, funny, challenging, truly all one wants in a teacher. That helped make up for the news of the morning’s lost experience. I am sure that there will be many other moments that I will miss in making choices. Such is this kind of an experience.