Day 6 – Extreme Yoga
Wednesday, December 8th BikeShuffle: The Clash - Train in Vain Shivamoga - 06:22 I was deliberating whether to turn the television on when it became apparent that the cock outside wasn’t about to stop crowing. I’m glad I did. For the past ten minutes I’ve been riveted by some sort of mass yoga show that seems more like a cross between a Hitler youth rally and a gathering of the Branch Davidians. The guy leading it is a young bearded yogi in a tiny red dhoti, doing the moves so quickly it actually looks like he’s on fast forward. Then the camera cuts to a hall of at least a thousand poor, confused people, all dressed in white, hopelessly flapping about trying to follow him. The slow pan reveals that not a single person has a clue about what to do, or how to do it, and most people end up stopping to make adjustments to their clothing or look just around embarrassed. Some people save their energy for when the camera falls on them, and then start up with some half hearted routine based on how much of them is in shot. As most of the ‘class’ are elderly, and a little on the corpulent side, they’ve got about as much chance of doing some of these moves as I have of being clean after today's drive. Our energetic yogi has just done a roundhouse kick move that I’ve never seen attempted except in martial arts movies and break dancing videos. His class of a thousand grannies has started applauding! The next generation of aerobics has arrived, everyone. Its Yoga Fu. A quick survey of remaining channels reveals: four featuring various cricket matches, three Hindi dance routines, and three religious channels with shots of various idols having liquids poured over them. Lastly, there seems to be some sort of religious sermon in hindi from a greasy-haired Brahmin who is…