/4 - Rishi in Rishikesh
Motorbikes, monkeys, the Ganga, terrace, my grandmother & yoga
I pulled my Royal Enfield over and killed the engine. Across the Ganga the evening aarti was in full swing. The February air was crisp enough that the heat from the brass fire bowls never reached me. Half a dozen priests, with heads shaved clean, were chanting to the river.
Rishikesh straddles the Ganga and changes its personality based on which side you’re on. I was on the quieter side, where no motor vehicles are allowed. Somehow I had smuggled this one in.
Standing with the heavy motorbike squeezed between my legs, my vision cut by the helmet, I didn’t know then that I’d keep returning to my namesake city.
But wait, we need to roll back.
Earlier that day I’d landed in Dehradun, two hours from Rishikesh. Drifting between cities for months, I had now come to visit my friend in his hometown. I’d had my motorcycle license for less than a year. So when my friend arranged this light blue Bullet from a local shop, I was stoked to finally ride.
My friend rode ahead and coached me through my earbuds on how not to die. We threaded half-paved mountain roads and edged past troops of monkeys, who sat in the middle of the asphalt like they owned it.
By the time we hit the city traffic, it was already late evening. The streets barely had any light on them. Each vehicle fought to grab an extra inch of space. The smoke, dust and all the crowd chaos made me question what was so special about this city and why my friend had even suggested coming here. We pushed through the traffic, crossed the narrow and shaky Ram Jhula bridge, and arrived in the quiet of the Tapovan area.
When I pulled my motorbike over and killed the engine to watch the aarti, the same one that I opened this essay with, I remembered the sight instantly.
The darkness of the water only illuminated by the diyas floating through, the brass fire bowls, the chhing sound from the finger cymbals — I had been at this river before.
When I was around ten, a tiny kid, I had traveled here with my mother and grandparents. My grandmother had bought a diya for that little kid because he had whined over it the entire trip. Her warm wrinkly hands had cupped his, as they both lit the paper lantern and set it free, floating away in the darkness.
I hadn’t thought about that trip in decades.
My friend left after a couple of days, but I decided to stay on. Rishikesh’s stillness was rubbing off on me, and I wanted to sketch out my internet business. My current hostel bunk just didn’t feel inspiring enough.
A quick search on Airbnb and I found something more decent. Hoping to get an in-person discount, I called the host asking if I could visit the place. Look — I’m an Indian. I wasn’t going to pay foreigner prices.
I walked down the road from my hostel to the address and came across an unassuming sign: ‘Vedic Yoga and Ayurvedic Retreat Center’.
I entered the gate and walked up the steep alley, looking for the reception. The place was deserted. But it was not dead. There was something oddly peaceful and alive about the property.
A door opened somewhere and a bald middle-aged man dressed in an Indian kurta came out and asked what I wanted. I told him I’d spoken to someone on the phone and wanted a room.
He squinted, scanned me up and down and said, “We only give rooms to yogis, a lot of people come simply to soak in the environment and we don’t want that”.
Maybe it was the leather jacket. Or my Mumbai-Atlanta-California accent. Or that the only yoga I’d done was the California hot-yoga kind, which we can all agree doesn’t count.
So I said what any sane person would.
“Oh yeah, I am totally into yoga and I want to learn more”.
He paused for what felt like an eternity, and then his face relaxed.
“Thik hai, if my brother told you to come then it should be fine. I’ll show you the rooms, one comes with a really nice terrace, follow me”.
We walked three flights of stairs together. The first floor had a yoga hall with the daily schedule written in chalk on a notice board. The second floor had some more rooms. And then finally we reached the floor with my room.
“Please let me know if you need any help. I recommend walking down to the riverbank in the morning. You can just splash some water on your face. Don’t think too much about it, just experience, it’ll feel good”. And then he left me with myself.
I dropped my things in the room and walked barefoot to the edge of the terrace. Savoring the coldness of the stone floor, I placed my hands on the parapet and leaned against it. My shoulders dropped, like they always did at the end of a long action-filled day.
An expansive view of the Ganga was in front of me. The foothills of the Himalayas behind me. Chants somewhere in the background, coming from any of the dozen temples in my view.
Purple night sky. Thin crescent moon in the corner.
Then it hit me.
It started in my chest, moved up my throat to my sinuses and in the end reached my eyes.
I could have gone to see my grandmother when I got the call that she was dying. The same grandmother who had brought me to this city for the first time.
I had chosen not to.
Maybe I should go attend the yoga class tomorrow and not be a complete con artist.
From the tall windows of the yoga hall, I could see the early sun’s light sneak up on the horizon. I had found a spot at the back of the room and sat cross-legged on a blue-black cloth mat. The girl in front of me was breathing loudly with her eyes closed. There was a thin bearded guy to her left, who kept wiggling his toes and trying to stretch his spine.
The yoga teacher, who tried to kick me off his property the day before, walked in and the session immediately began. “The thing about the mind is that it wants to be either in the past or the future, it doesn’t like being in the present.”
Who were these people and how were they so alive at seven in the morning. I was barely sitting straight.
I inhaled from one nostril and exhaled from the other for ten minutes. Then I locked my breath and bounced up and down on my buttocks. Later I tried different poses and twisted my spine from every angle imaginable, activating ligaments in my body that I didn’t know existed.
My grandmother kept showing up, as if she was in the room with me.
She’d leave, I’d stand up to balance on my toes and imagine what I’d eat for breakfast after the session was over. I’d close my eyes, place my hands on my chest and hum. And then immediately panic that I had no clue how my business would get built.
Holy shit, my mind really doesn’t like staying in the present.
I returned to that yoga hall for a week.
Same blue-black yoga mat, seven in the morning. Each day the exercises were slightly different, but the pattern kept repeating. More stuff would surface mid-pose. There was guilt from the times that I brushed off people simply trying to get close to me. Rage from times — now inconsequential — when people got in the way of new projects and promotions.
I stayed in the poses and breathed through it. And almost by magic, little by little, all this built-up intensity kept losing its charge.
On my last morning I skipped the class and walked back to the terrace to take in the view. I’d had enough. Rafters floated in the Ganga, their shouts echoed and died out. Some monkeys swung across the bridge.
The breeze felt good on my skin.
For the first time in a while, my mind had nowhere else to go.