Doing Yoga
On yoga and its interlocutors.
I frequent the yoga studio in town, but not often enough. I don’t have a membership but I attempt to frequent as much I can; any opportunity my middle-class morale lets me, because I learnt whenever I attend these classes, that the activity of going back to the core of your soul, and practising the art of moving through your body and being part of a commune that practices this, here, is exclusive. At least it is what they make it to be at the yoga studio in question; attended by white expatriates, the ones with large shiny leather bags and logo-less sports attire, seven-dollar artisanal coffee is usually on them after class where everyone insists on paying for everyone — and these classes to them is a part of their weekly sacred rituals. Despite all that this activity fulfils me; I move in poses I would never think of and laze on my mat by the end of it; I find it a sacred activity for the body as I move through a rhythm that brings me back to its centre. The club is equipped with a holistic instructor who guides and accepts wherever my body lands in each pose and regards each breath his students take. He is American. When he sees me join his crowd he welcomes me, his voice is deep and friendly and comes from the depth of his core; welcoming me with bravado, his r’s are rhotic and his vowels are rounded and smooth; ‘Welcome. Prop your mat next to her, cross your legs and breathe with us for a while as we wait for a few more others to join us.’ The ‘her’ in question is Edna. She is there whenever I join the class and her blonde bob is always neat; she is cross-legged and British, joined by her other British, expatriate friends from work I assumed at first, only confirmed after I joined them for coffee the first time. A full class means twelve students, and this is usually achieved for every session — and without exception, I am the only coloured student for every class, amongst a significantly homogenous crowd of yogis; the colour of my skin makes it feel like I am doing something wrong in each pose.
After these classes, over coffee or the occasional açai bowl, I am invited to join their crowd. We sit over a round wooden oak table and my skin matches the colour of the furniture, but their skin still stands out. I am surrounded by their perfectly rounded vowels and well-placed consonants; their tongues know where to land to produce their accents and they speak so eloquently of their inconsequential issues that would fade as they leave the country. I sit amongst them. When they speak to me I cannot help but adjust my voice. My intonation suddenly somehow matches theirs; I let it, I try not to stress it or I will mess up — but my vowels are now rounded and my consonants lay gently as I articulate my words and our voices become one; I pull this voice from the back of my throat, I summoned a ghost from inside of me; to join the crowd of these lettered people and I no longer view the crowd as ‘them’ but ‘us’ and we suddenly all speak in unison. What did it take?
I try to bend over with my language the way I am told to in achieving a yoga pose — to bend over and place my consonants and orbit my vowels the way they do — be flexible with my language when I speak with them, the way I try in yoga. Sitting amongst them I think: Am I flexible in yoga the way I am with my language?
..
Abed is the studio’s housekeeper. He is of south asian descent. I was told once over coffee that he is from Bengaluru. He greets us with a smile whenever we enter the studio as he finishes up cleaning and dons the same obedient navy uniform that exclaims the logo of his employment agency. Sometimes mid-yoga pose I see him peek through the shiny glass walls he cleaned and wonder about him — I wonder if he practices Hinduism as a religion; and if he does, I wonder if he would report to his Hindu community of these people he cleans for. And then I wonder if we are offending him: Is this offensive? Are we finding his religion through yoga? Is this okay?
One of the only times we communicate is when he reports to me about the towels he prepared for us in the dressing room. His voice is soft and slow, slightly high pitched and always modest. His demeanour doesn’t suit his young age and he shies a smile whenever I face him. “Your towels, Sir, are ready, Sir.” His vowels are shortened and consonants curled.
I thank him but I no longer find the need to use the ghost in my mouth from before; the ghost climbs back inside me. In the warmth of the privacy the dressing room holds and Abed, packing his cart to leave, I welcome my old ghost to conquer my tongue again. But the old ghost brings with it a depth of shame and anger towards the ghost with the lettered voice for taking charge of me.
“What’s to become of me?” Eliza Doolittle would exclaim; it is an absurd phenomenon that I don’t let people tune in with the native, ethnically authentic true variety of language I have to offer; but that I have two different voices I can pull out to benefit me whenever I have to, like a fraud.
It is difficult to imagine the normal mundane life free of ‘them’ — a benchmark or standard untouched, a communicative measure observed, a practice untainted — by their ventures onto native ground. That I ache to converge in their culture to reach a certain satisfaction shames me when I ponder about this; that I feel like a fraud with two voices, that I tuck a ghost behind my throat which I let control me and obey the movements of an Anglo-altered practice. I wonder if Abed feels any shame for us too, when he sees foreign expatriates capitalise off a practice that is native to him — now estranged and made foreign by expatriates on native land.
..
It was another Saturday morning my middle class morale let me attend another yoga session. ‘Good morning, Sir’ greeted Abed modestly behind his housekeeping cart. I smiled and returned his greeting.
‘Towels, I will renew after this, Sir,’ to which I thanked him. Had I already summoned the ghost to take over my voice, I wasn’t sure, but speaking to Abed already welcomed that discomfort of shame I was familiar with. I entered the studio to the class breathing almost in unison; I was the last to arrive.
‘Remember to inhale and exhale slowly with each movement’ was the constant reminder from the American instructor in between poses; ‘land wherever your body lets you.’ I knew, like the voice in my mouth that day, that my rhythm was off. I switched my focus from the mat and looked forward and outside, through the clean glossy glass walls, outside where Abed was; watching us from behind his cart. He didn’t notice my gaze but instead looked into the studio as a whole.
Is there a language to capture my position without portraying me as complicit? Complicit of enabling a culture that enables a clear power dynamic; one where Abed plays the ‘foreigner’ and the Anglo yogi-classmates the ‘expatriates’? That there is guilt in adhering to the ‘expatriate’ standards but shame in being the outcast and sticking to a brown identity.
The dogma I endure through my attending these yoga classes is that we will bend over like a pose to how Anglo-expatriate groups have set their standards — both in language and yoga practice. That we have access to an Anglo commune enables us to merge into them and eventually become part of the homogeneous; you’re the token brown individual and represent something or nothing at all.
I realised that I strayed completely from the yoga class — my breathing wasn’t in unison anymore. I’d strayed from the ‘us’ and joined the ‘other’ — the line between these identities further blurred and made unclear; but I glanced over to Abed watching us through the glass, passively performing his tasks, whether he looked at me — the only brown-skinned student — with shame I wasn’t sure, but I was sure there was a definite emotion of judgement, one I wholeheartedly knew I deserved. I exhaled.
