Inner-City Yoga

By the end of it all, I was scattered nerves.

Scattered nerves!

Chill dude I was, what I love to call, the ultimate Asicran (the smooth Asian-American type). I am the fusion — the perfect blend of my two worlds. Notorious for high end assumptions, I could have been just a wee bit off this time around, in set-ups this far out of my familiar zone.

“Girrrrlll this ain’t some borin’ cardio. This is hot yoga an’ by end of it all you be smoking hot. If not, you gettn’ your bucks back. U getin’ cutie?”

And with a wild thrust of her feminine qualifiers — the prudish me still blushes using the “b” words —I was ushered in.

Now this got to be some cool routine to get my mind singing and dancing in celestial harmony and just having that umbilical connection — sharing the same nationality — I got a natural jumpstart. Was I excited? You bet.

With Yoga for Dummies tucked under my arms, I entered the turf with sobriety and a demure ponytail in anticipation of seeing those faces, with that other-world effulgence. Didn’t quite know what I was trying to seek, but it got to be in the realm of abstentions, abstractions, meditation, liberation, or some other cool things of that genre, to pack that extra punch.

After all, Suite-C demanded much more than a techie. You got to be cool, hip and happening and yoga seemed as a good, and sometimes the only, hip and happening in town.

Having undertaken a hard and arduous journey from the Himalayan ranges, crossing the mountains and seas, facing rejection as Hippie culture, yoga had finally arrived breaking through the glass walls of corporate America. The starry late-nights and socialite evenings would remain woefully incomplete without a word or two on Patanjali and Hatha Yoga. I had to — absolutely had to — get on the bandwagon, before it was too late. I plunged headlong.

Skimming through yellow pages, I finally zeroed on a school that sounded as exotic as the kriyas (tough routines) it taught: Discover the other self. Holy kamoly! This had to be it.

In one brilliant move, I ensured my next three promotions, and the accompanying huge increments. Beating the Indian clock, I arrived sharp.

The other self, the lady hardly looks herself. In scorching pink halters, dark blue sweat-pants, and that coarse hair, highlighted blonde, she answered the bell, huffing and puffing. Sweat beads trickled down her temple on to the podgy shoulder giving her skin the so-not-needed sheen and of course a pugnacious odor. With a mid-riff that could have easily been confused for a truck tire, I was ushered in by this not-so-promising lady.

Keep yourself together; many times great things start out little shaky.

“What type y’wanna start with?”

Ah! So you got choices. I knew this was “the” place.

I am in a dingy room, fogged with incense smoke. I had to squint hard to look around. A fairly tolerable background score filled the air till one “aaahhhh” followed in chorus by many “aaahhhs” — both male and female — punctured the music.

“Sex’em-up yoga. This is, you know, for those who like some exo with a lot of ero.”

Exo with ero?

Yea baby, shortie for exotic and erotic.

Ah! So those unnerving grunts were actually for….

Of course, the big O.

With those raunchy, straight out of Kama Sutra, images on the walls, I should have known better

Girl this one a darn hit class. You sure u ain’t…anyway….

“Shake hard and harder….

Thrust and move.…

Stick it in now.

Com’on faster and faster….”

Next up: Jazz up your Booties.

In that smoldering class, with that bile-raising stench filling the room, the teacher did everything — shake your boobies, jiggle your booties — but find the mind-soul coordinates. Most seemed hard pressed at sculpting basic body co-ordinates, never mind mind-soul and the rest.

But Miss R., what about the body-mind tuning? I mean, you know the Kundilini-awakening type.

“What yoga?”

Oh never mind now. We are in the business of selling inner-city yoga not some Himalayan jig. Got it missy. Now if you don’t mind, got some other clients….

Well, got to accept that even in this land of plenty there are things money simply cannot buy. But what it cannot, it sure can concoct into a heady adaptation of the original.

No doubt, Patanjali has got to be turning in his grave with this new rendition of the inner-city yoga.