A gentle sea breeze. Two or three kinds of birds chirping. The distinct sound of a two-stroke-engine Chennai auto. I take in deep gulps of air, drifting into a world that is at once current, with all its concerns; about the future, full of plans; and is as wont for me, in the past.
It’s been a couple of years since I discovered a charming pattern to my train of thought during yoga practice. While the early minutes of practice are about the day’s pressing matters, and I desperately try to merely observe the thoughts and not hop on to the train, twenty minutes into the practice, I’m in a beautiful state of mindlessness and mindfulness. My body, automatically it would seem, does the asanas. The mind shows me flashes of random memories from years ago, even as it settles with my body into position. I’m at peace, allowing my mind to travel to vague, hazy images from the past.
When I do the surya namaskar, I almost always remember something to do with Sri Lanka. I fight the impulse to laugh, because I’m amused that the mind remembers obscure moments from my trip, things that I do not remember recording consciously – on camera or in the mind. Sometimes, it’s the image of the place I stayed in in Kalkudah, with a few silent signs of devastation from the tsunami. At other times it’s the image of my friends walking ahead by a meadow in Nuwara Eliya, me trailing behind. A few times I remember scaling the steep steps of Sigiriya Rock. With each memory, I wonder why this connection exists, pushing myself to focus on my breath instead – which succeeds for a few seconds, until random memories resurface. The only connection I have made is that when I was in Sri Lanka, VK was in a yoga centre in Kerala. I still don’t get it.
But my most common, recurring memories are from my college campus in Singapore. As I stretch to reach my toes and straighten my back in the paschimutthana asana, I always remember the large, grey pipes and cables that run overhead as one walks from the North to the South spine. I remember queueing up in the Indian stall of Canteen A, looking at each of the dishes made for the day, wondering which one to have. I imagine walking past the Quad, which was a “posh” spot for a meal in my third or fourth year. As I go farther away from my life in that city, beginning to wonder if it really happened or I just made it all up, these snatches during yoga give me a calming reassurance that even as memories fade, there is something indelible, almost visceral, about some life experiences. They are coded in you and manifest themselves in moments when you’re with yourself, in calm and quiet.
For a few days in the recent past, doing yoga on an apartment terrace in Chennai, I had the privilege of opening my eyes after shavasana to a bright, beautiful blue sky, sometimes with wispy, pillowy clouds. A gift from Chennai, a rare sight in Delhi. I wonder if this image will ever join the list of random things my mind remembers during yoga.