I noticed a sign at our hotel offering yoga lessons and told Sholeh, “Let’s sign up.” I had been practicing at home and was determined to take yoga in India, the place where it all began.
We changed into our sweats and went to meet our instructor, a young man in his early twenties, lanky and big-eyed. He led us to a room that looked like a dining hall, but the tables and chairs had been pushed against the walls. He instructed us to lie down on the concrete floor. The air outside was hot and thick, but inside, the air conditioner hummed from a wall unit in the corner, circulating cold air with a hint of cardamom, lemon polish, and mop water.
We were his only students.
“Do we get mats?” I asked.
“This is real yoga. No mats.”
Determined to do real yoga, I followed his instructions.
“The floor’s a little cold,” Sholeh said.
“You will become warm,” our teacher told us. He went over to turn off the air conditioner and opened the window. The brackish, humid air pushed into the dining-hall yoga studio.
Our instructor then came back over, kneeled down on the floor between us, and yanked on my leg. “I must pull your leg this way,” he told me, “to stretch it.”
“What about the asanas?” I asked. “Don’t we do the poses ourselves?”
“Don’t you want to do Indian yoga?” He left me and edged over to Sholeh. He sat down cross-legged next to her, rubbing her arm.
“It just seems strange,” I said. “It’s not like at home. Not even a little bit.”
“Have you done yoga in India before?” he asked. He had me there. I admitted that I had not.
“Well, this is real yoga.” He progressed from massaging Sholeh’s arm to tugging on it, as if trying to dislodge the arm from its socket so he could bring it home with him.
“Ouch,” Sholeh said, so he went back to a slow caress.
“My teacher at home studied in India,” I tried. “And we don’t do it this way. What about sun salutations?”
“But this is India, a twenty-five-thousand-year tradition. Do you argue with that? Things are very different in India.” He reluctantly left Sholeh’s arm and instructed her to lie in Savasana until he could return to her. He then came over to me and wrenched my leg with vigor.
“That’s too hard.”
“You have children?” He continued his stretching work.
“No. Ouch. Why?”
“And your friend?” He pointed to Sholeh.
“I have two children,” she said, still in corpse pose.
“Well, the reason you are inflexible,” our teacher told me as he jerked at my leg, “is that you have too much thigh fat.”
“Thigh fat?”
“Yes. You have thigh fat and that’s why you don’t stretch. And no children?” He shook his head with disdain. “Your friend, she has an excuse—two children. But you . . . ?” He wagged his finger at me. “You have no reason and even more thigh fat than your friend with the two children. You have no excuse whatsoever.” He yanked on my leg, nearly succeeding in popping it from the cradle of my hip.
Our instructor finally left me and my thigh fat and walked back over to Sholeh, who looked like she might have gone to sleep. He called to me, “You can do your sun salutations now if you want.”
I got busy with my sun salutations, thinking about how I knew this wasn’t right, knew that just because this was India, that didn’t make it real yoga. Then I thought about how during yoga, I should notice my thoughts and let them go rather than engage in internal arguments. I tried to concentrate on my breathing, wondering what would come next and if my ideas about yoga had been wrong all along. Maybe after years of practicing at home, I didn’t know what yoga really was. I tried, without success, to still my mind.
A couple weeks earlier, Sholeh and I had arrived at the Jagat Palace in Pushkar, a marble-domed hotel overlooking the Thar Desert, Snake Mountain, and a scattering of tents in the field where the drivers stayed. I looked out the window of my marble palace, knowing our driver Sharma was camped out there somewhere. I turned from that window and made our spa appointments for Ayurvedic massage. And I would get exactly what I deserved.
Two Indian women, one stout, the other spindly as the stem of a daisy, arrived at our room with a male translator. He explained to us that we would follow the women to the spa, where we would enjoy Ayurvedic massage. “Do you think they have a steam room at the spa?” I asked Sholeh. “Or a Jacuzzi?”
The translator left us, and we followed the two women. They were both dressed in simple saris with their black hair in tight buns. They knew two English words between them, which was two more than the number of Hindi words I knew.
Sholeh disappeared into a room with the willowy masseuse, and I followed the stout one into a dimly lit closet that held brooms and cleaning supplies. A wooden table, covered with a plastic tarp, stood in the corner. The drafty space smelled of ammonia and moth balls. My therapist pointed to the table, and I hesitated for a minute before I began to disrobe. Then through the thin walls, I heard Sholeh’s voice: “Oh my God. I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t. Really, I’m very sorry.”
Within seconds, Sholeh pushed open the door to my “treatment room” and blew in, her skinny masseuse trailing her. My therapist’s face squeezed into a wrinkle when she saw them. Sholeh said, “She brought me to a restroom. A men’s bathroom. She wanted me to lie down on the floor. Under the urinal.”
“I’ll switch with you,” I said. “You can have my broom closet.”
“No, no. I’m not doing this. There was a bug this big,” Sholeh showed me with her thumb and index finger. “It crawled right over the mat on the floor. Right where she wanted me to lie down. On the floor. You’re not going in there either.”
Sholeh stuffed a few rupees in the palm of the confused woman, saying, “Here’s your tip. I’m very sorry, but I just can’t.” Sholeh turned and left, disappearing into the misty courtyard. The two Indian massage therapists conferred with one another. My woman looked angry and said something I imagined went like this: “Spoiled princesses.” She then looked at me, and I gave her a look of resolution; I was more determined than ever to have the massage. Ayurveda had been around for five thousand years—who was I to complain because my treatment was happening in a supply closet?
Sholeh’s masseuse walked out the door into the dark, and that’s when mine pointed to my panties and insisted, “Off, off, off.” She tugged at the corner of my underwear and then motioned toward the wooden table.
I did as I was told.
Later Sholeh would ask me, “Why didn’t you just say no?” and the only answer I could come up with was that I was too embarrassed not to take them off. I put myself in this situation, after all. Here I was, across the world, standing naked in a cold broom closet with a woman I could not talk to. Maybe this was standard fare. How did I know? I didn’t have the words to ask. And it wasn’t this woman’s fault, so rather than decline, I disrobed.
I lay face down on the hard tarp-covered wooden table, and the masseuse made a motion with her index finger to flip over, face up like an egg. I anticipated some sort of privacy towel, but none appeared. I motioned to the women with my arms that I was freezing. “Brrrr,” I said, hoping this was the international word for “cold,” and I crossed my arms over my breasts in an attempt to hide something. Of course, my crotch remained exposed, sunny-side up.
She disappeared for a minute and then returned with a small space heater, which she plugged in next to my feet. Within a minute, my feet began to blister while the rest of me shivered. The woman got to work. First, a healthy dose of oil was poured onto my entire body, and the woman rubbed me up and down like she was pushing a rolling pin over raw dough. She went up over my pubic bones and breasts, as if they were bubbles in dough in serious need of flattening. Then she set about cracking my toes with one loud pop after another, which was even worse than it sounds. When she was satisfied that I was fully slickened with oil, she motioned for me to turn over. This seemed like a blessing, but really it meant more oil, more steamrolling over the body. I glistened like a seal.
I prayed it would be over quickly.
At last she motioned for me to stand up. Just when I thought my treatment had finally—mercifully—ended, she pulled a metal folding chair into the center of the room and pushed me onto it. The other word in her English-language repertoire was “sit.”
There I was, following directions, my naked butt against the cold metal, my bare feet on the concrete. She stood behind me and poured more oil into my hair until it dripped down into my ears. I closed my eyes, letting it slide past them and over my nose and lips. Once I was doused, she scratched the oil into my scalp with vigorous glee.
And at last, the grand finale: karate chops to the head, the hard edges of her palms pounding my skull. I sat there, trying to touch the cold floor with only the tips of my toes while enduring a jarring assault from above.
My masseuse finally motioned for me to put my clothes back onto my oil-slicked body. Once again, I did as I was told, and I followed her out of the broom closet. She put out her hand, and into it I folded her generous tip and uttered the commonly used Sanskrit word “Namaste.”
I would later learn I had received Abhyanga, the Cadillac of Ayurvedic massage, the ultimate spa experience.
And perhaps this was real yoga. What did I know? After ten sun salutations, I practiced my ujjayi pranayama breathing in downward-facing dog. I stared at my thigh fat, mad at myself for not lying to the instructor about having children. Maybe I could tell him that I had three or four at home that I’d forgotten about. Three children would be enough to justify my thigh fat, wouldn’t they?
Our yoga instructor continued to pull at Sholeh’s arm while she rested in corpse pose. She opened her eyes and said, “I think I’ve done enough Indian yoga for now.”
As we were leaving, he said, “I can come to your room for private lessons. For yoga. Or for massage. And I’ll give you a very good discount.”
We told him we’d already had our Indian massages, tipped him, and waved good-bye.
“That was strange,” I told Sholeh as we followed the grassy path back to our room. “I mean, have you ever done yoga like that?”
“I’ve told you before,” she said. “To enjoy India, you must let go of your expectations.”
Was I annoyed that Sholeh was always right?
I wasn’t. Instead I congratulated myself for choosing such a smart and sensible travel partner once again—a girlfriend who never let me down and helped me navigate the way. I couldn’t deny that my three imaginary children and I needed her.