Strange are the ways of the world.

English: Downward-Facing-Dog Български: Адхо Мукха Шванасана/Куче с муцуната надолу (Photo credit: Wikipedia

In my attempt to contain those creeping kilos, I have tried many things right from zipping my lips to moving my hips. Walking, running, dancing, gyming, I seem to have done it all. My last and latest shot at this losing battle of the bulge was yoga . With traffic being the way it is, the main reason to choose a Yoga class like the one at Home Villa was its proximity to home.

The simple modern exterior of the building didn’t prepare me for the class which was reminiscent of a torture chamber in a medieval castle with hooks on the ceiling and ropes suspended from rings on the walls. There were wooden racks to arch your back on,bolsters to hoist your hips,  parallel bars to raise your legs higher and belts and bricks to align the pose. Luckily there were also mats on which we could relax and do our final stretch.

Ours was a mixed class with students of all ages, sizes and proficiency doing exactly the same pose in rows along opposite walls with our instructor strategically placed in the centre to observe and prod and poke our bodies into perfect poses. The instructors were generally unkind and rough, not bothering about niceties but the results they produced were dramatic. So despite the fact that my instructor would happily exhort everyone in class to appreciate  my kilos of Porbunder ghee (ay joni, asli Porbunder nu ghee) as he grabbed and jabbed my flaccid upper arm, I endured it all. I endured the holier than thou posturing that many yoga practitioners somehow assumed in class, the deathly still silence that we had to observe till  class began, the rush for the yoga mats, the spine twisting poses that left me aching all day and gradually  began enjoying it all.My Suryanamaskars became more fluid and my headstands more firm but after two years of class, I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.  I wondered what it was  – the mat? the bolster? I couldn’t help feeling some eyes other than that of the instructor peering at me,a stare that bore right through pose after pose. I looked around surreptitiously trying to find the culprit till one day I caught him looking at me. It was the creepy looking guy who somehow always managed to stand on the opposite wall exactly opposite me. I got out of the Trikonasana disturbed by the thought but dismissed it as something that could very well be accidental.

From time to time I observed his strange behaviour and started doing Yoga in a different place each time. For a while I thought I had beaten him at his game till one day when we were bent over in the Downward Facing Dog, our hands to the wall and butts up in the air,  I caught him looking at me and then, before I could look away, he winked. I almost yelped in fright when I saw that distinct movement.Yes, it wasn’t a blink, it was a wink – a lewd wink, the kind that suggested “let’s meet up after class”. Needless to say, that was my last class at Home Villa.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.