Merrin Muxlow is traveling India for the next few months and will be providing us with a glimpse of her experiences on her blog Yoga for Unicorns. One of her first posts highlights the city she is staying in, and what goes on during her typical day there.
Hello, Mysore. It’s so nice to be back.
This is my Facebook cover now. Yeah, I am one of those people.
We’re staying in an area called Gokalum, which feels like a rapidly gentrifying “ethnic” neighborhood. Except instead of hipsters moving in, it’s yoga people.
Spotted on a tree on the “main road.”
Yep, yoga people. You know the kind of person who you can tell grew up in Illinois or Wisconsin as Heather or Andy, but earnestly introduces themselves as Laxmi or Hanuman? Who wears mala beads everywhere and drops random Sanskrit into conversations? That person might be the mayor of Gokalum.
“This book totally reminds me of a line from that amazing Kirtan last night…”
Since Gokalum is jam packed with us (the yoga people), every daily activity revolves around “the practice.” You eat dinner at 4pm and go to bed at 8 because you need to be mat-ready at 5:30 the next morning, and then attack a plate of something-on-toast at Vivian’s or Santosha at brunchtime because all you’ve consumed in the past 14 hours is a raw coconut.
Raw Coconut from this guy: a must after practice.
Then you take rest for the remainder of the day, because, you know, you have to practice tomorrow.
“The Practice” is, of course, the same Ashtanga poses you ostensibly do back at home five or six days a week. Here, though, it takes on an almost holy significance, because it is the only thing you have to do all day long. Regular tasks, like re-upping your cell phone minutes or calling your mom, take about twenty times longer to complete than they should. Sometimes days pass telling yourself that it’s okay that you “just didn’t get around to it.”
In fact, we have a term for it: One Task Per Day. Partly because it’s India and administrative things work differently here, but mostly because the days are just so lush and languid when there’s nothing to do but go to yoga. It’s exactly like Betty Friedan said about housework in The Feminine Mystique: tasks expand to the amount of time you have to do them. If you’re all done with your (compulsory) day by 7:45 in the morning, it’s entirely reasonable for breakfast to take four hours. It’s okay that they have to call your dad or your husband (to verify that neither are Pakistani) to get a working cell phone.* You’ve got all the time in the world.
Since the yogis have descended upon Gokalum in recent years, the whole town has gotten in on the game.
You can find vegan, “organic”, raw snacks everywhere. Every store sells this book about Moola Bandha. Weird signs like this are everywhere:
Not really sure what to make of this one…
There’s an Osho Meditation center across the street from our house. And did I already mention those coconuts?
People have been known to have up to 11 a day.
It’s like yogi heaven.
More on Gokalum later, but this about sums it up:
These stickers are everywhere, especially at the epicenter of YogaTown, right outside the AYRI main shala.
*Yep, this really happens.
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