Taro, Pregnancy and learning- all in a days routine..

Think of two things you would not naturally connect, type them in the search box in this blog and there is probably a post about those two things.

What has Taro root got to do with Pregnancy and learning? Here is the story...

Earlier today we visited friends for lunch at their new place. There were lots of dishes, all safe items given they knew my allergy history. There was this one curry in particular that was extremely yummy. While I sat there figuring out if it was potato, plaintain or what.. she said "it is Taro.. what you call Seppan kazhangu".

I was baffled. Having had Taro all my life, especially as Taro roast, it was difficult to believe that what we were eating was actually Taro. It was crisp, had sharp outlines and the texture was as good as a potato roast. Okay, if you are not south Indian, you might be wondering what all the big fuss is about.. 

So we deviate for a little cooking lesson. Taro, is a root and when we get it from the market there is a lot of mud and dirt still on the root. My mother taught me (her mom probably taught her) that the right way to prepare Taro was to first wash the thing, put it in a pressure cooker with some salt and cook it, then remove the skin, wash again, then cut into little pieces and do the roasting with seasoning in slight oil (or if you are a roast fan like me, lot of oil). My MIL does it the same way as well! The real issue is that when you pressure cook it and remove the skin, usually the first few millimeters of the Taro is all mushy! My kids don't like to peel off the skin off boiled Taro unlike Potato because they think it is "slimy and Yukkie". 

So how did this girl, who is almost half my age, manage this miracle of sharp cut Taro pieces in a roast that was cooked yet not the slightest bit soggy? I said "Impossible! how did you manage it?" and they both say "we got tired of the slimy stuff.. so we decided to peel the Taro first, then cut it into nice pieces, then we slow cooked it in a covered pan for a long time.. much the same way we make potato roast!"

The simplicity of this approach was impresive. But have you seen Taro fresh from the Indian grocery store? Peeling it is the equivalent of giving the Yeti a haircut! you cannot even hold it in your hand right.. then there is all the mud, roots sticking out.. nevertheless, they managed it. So I have to try it now!

Humbled by this new learning and leaving their house as though we had just been to the Twilight zone, came home and quickly went to Yoga class. Our hosts and my ever supportive family were laughing when I said "have to go yoga this evening" because they were not sure how much Yoga a guy can do after eating 3 pounds of rice with two lbs of Taro and some nice dessert to top things off. 

Still, off I went with the idea that if things got too difficult, would take a kneel. That is when the second surprise hit me. The instructor for the class was pregnant. Not early pregrant.. Her due date is less than 2 weeks away and this was her last class before delivery. 

Trust me, there is nothing more scary than a very pregant woman on the podium shouting "stretch you hands to the right, your knees to the left, come down and push, Push, PUSH!" 

and there is nothing more embarassing than you looking equally pregnant with Taro, unable to execute the PUSH instruction! 

When you have an instructor who is so inspiring, you have no excuses for slacking off. So after that, did the rest of the class giving it my 120%. That room was hot and there were 5 newbies in there who needed to be watched and she taught with as much attention to detail as any other teacher. Truly amazing and inspiring! If you need a visual, here she is in a class as student in another class earlier this week.

So there you have it.. Taro, pregnancy and learning.. all in a days routine! 

On a funny note, a conversation with Jr. earlier today:

Jr.: Appa I am sweaty. It is so hot in our bedroom. Can you put the fan on?

Me : really? (Touch her forehead and neck). yes! you are sweaty.. you know what that means?

Jr.: (thinks for a second) and goes "Oh NO! you are going to make me come to regular yoga class with you?! it is going to be 90 degrees for 90 mintues!"

Me : yes and no. Yes, because you can sweat now and that means you can come to yoga class with me. No because it is not 90 degrees for 90 minutes.. it is 105 degrees for 90 mintues.. welcome to the torture chamber!

She is thinking of finding other excuses to bail on the promise.. We will see about that!

Daddy gets a trophy.. among other things!

The blog has seen a long break. It has been a rollercoaster ride for the Traveling Narayanan's if we can say that.

First we had a nice Saturday evening last week with dressing up and going to a temple. Even clicked a gorgeous snap of the little one as she was shy and blushing when I complimented her on her paavaadai (frock).

Then like San says "Don't cast your admiring eyes on her.. bad things happen!" (what she says in Tamil is "kuzhandhaikku un kanne pattudum") and who knows maybe that is true.

San left on a business trip to China the very next morning and she pretty much took the family luck with her. The house has been seeing things like never before to the point where we look like the Indian village after the Sankara stones were stolen from it in the Indiana Jones movie! We need our Sangeetha stone back.. We demand it!

The little one came home Monday with a 103 fever and missed school for most of last week. She also passed on a cold and sore throat to daddy and grandma. Fortunately Jr. avoided her little sister for as much as she could and that saved her.  

To top things off, daddy went to the dentist with pain for the black tooth and ended with a double root canal and a bad prognosis for both front tooth. Apparently the last root canal was not sealed off properly and the black tooth was not black because it was dead. When my local dentist removed the plug, everyone pretty much reeled back from the rotten smell that came out of the tooth, except for me as I was in the chair and could not move my nose away from my open mouth! It was a small logistics problem that no yoga pose can accomplish. There is a 50/50 chance that I will lose both my front teeth in six months or so I am told. If things work out, the tooth will survive and hang in there.

Dentures at 40?! Not so looking forward to that. Again, we need our Lucky girl to come back from China..

Every morning the scene in the bedroom looks like this..

That and a big pile of blankets and comforters that need to be laundered, if the little one decided to throw up her dinner in the middle of the night. I figured that it was better to leave them in a balled up pile and do laundry in the morning than do 3AM laundry. Just got tired of it.. and believe me when I say this.. we do a lot of laundry in this house. Every week we wash 35 towels just for Yoga!

Finally we got to the weekend after making it on a one day at a time mode during the week and there was one bright spot. Yesterday, it was time for Daddy to go get his 60 day Challenge trophy! That was for doing 60 yoga classes in 60 days in Jan, Feb and early March. 

Daddy did make it to almost 73+ classes in 73 days and then it stopped early this week. Well, it will start again.

Jr. took this photo after the little one suggested "Appa, you got a tropy. But you should put a picture of you doing yoga now and show people how well you are doing, before putting the trophy picture". Well, have definitely redistributed weight around, a lot of fat is gone and new muscle is there. I am reasonably sure that if it were not for the Yoga marathon, would have fallen ill a lot more what with all the sickness going around in the house and everywhere in the bay area in general. At one point 8 kids were out sick in the little one's class including her.

Definitely recommend the 60 day challenge to all Bikram Yoga practitioners. We spent Saturday evening listening to the stories of all the folks who finished the challenge and it was truly inspiring. Daddy got to say his story also and he pretty much stopped short of doing a demo, throwing the little one in the air and catching her. There is still a lot to improve if you look at the picture above. Yes, the hamstrings and core are strong enough to lift the body off the ankle, but if you see the symmetry in the shoulders and the legs, it is clear that there is a lot of compensation going on to keep the balance. Well there is a lifetime of yoga left to correct these things. . .

 After we listened to everyone tell their story, there was a raffle and guess what? The kids won the raffle. I say the kids because at one point my MIL was worried about the kids going to bed late and the little one falling sick again.  They both insisted they stay for the raffle and I quote the little one "I think today my luck is going to change. I am sick but we are going to win!" and Jr.'s ticket was the winning ticket! We got a bunch of Yoga goodies as part of the raffle. The shirt which two years earlier would have been two sizes too small.. fits daddy perfectly! 

We really missed Sangeetha at this Challenge party. There was no trophy, if she had not pushed me to go. Three days into the challenge she even said "are you just going there and sitting down for a lot of poses or are you doing your very best?". While she was only kidding, that gave me the idea to track down how many poses I actually miss in the Challenge and was planning on doing one extra class for every 26 missed.  She also took a lot of the pick up drop off duty on days where my resolve was wearing down a bit so I could switch to evening classes instead of morning for a full week.  So technically she gets a tropy for supporting it.

We are just a couple of days away from Mommy's return trip back home.

On a funny note one of her co-workers asked her "I heard you are a vegetable. Is that true?" and she knew the co-worker meant "vegetarian" but was not sure how to answer.

Later in the week when she found out that the little one was sick, she went to some local Lama temple as part of sightseeing and prayed to the local god..

I am reasonably sure that her prayer went something like this "Dear Lama god, please make sure my little one stops throwing up fast. she has been throwing up too long" and the Lama god went "okay.. I got this one. Let me stop. You want the little one to throw up long and fast.. Done!"

It might have done us some good if she had a translator before she went into the temple.

Well, we are counting days and that is all there is to it. Our luck will change when she is back. We know it!

New Year Resolution

Do Yoga at least sixty days (or times) in the first 10 weeks of the year!

Not easy. Not impossible given there are 70 days in the first 10 weeks and we did go 91/100 days in 2011 March-May.

Also very measurable!

Will let you know Mid march if the new year resolution was met...

Learning

Yesterday I was trying to teach the little one Chess after she saw me playing a game with Jr. 

So we tried to start with placing the pieces on the board. Before the first sentence was out of my mouth, she said "I Know daddy. I know.." and started placing the pawns in a row.. after that she was stuck. 

Jr. does the same thing. She knows everything! If they do not listen to any instruction completely how will they ever learn anythign?

The google generation defintely has a challenge when it comes to developing listening skills! 

Given that, seriously think that teaching Yoga to this generation will be a lot more challenging than teaching the previous one.. and that in itself is a challenge. 

A yoga teacher knows what his brain is telling his body to do and how it reacts. Given every body is different slightly but has the same features, he has to take that thought and transfer it into your head so it can make your body to the exact same thing.

In geek terms, this is like taking a piece of code on a windows machine and putting it in a Mac which has almost the same processors, memory, logic etc.. and making that code do a similar thing on a different machine.

The instruction has to be very clear and specific. As in an earlier post Jim Kallet managed to pull this off for me. 

Also there is a picture on the BYSJ site. Someone had taken a cell phone photo. Thank you! 

Somehow my body trusted his words better than it trusted my own brain and that is interesting. Why? 

Will figure it out in time!

Had signed up for six months of Unlimited visits. Today is the last day of the six month period. My attendance was not that great for the last six months. 64 classes here and 7 in Austin. That is 40% attendance. The travels continue with the new job and manage to go 4 times a week these days. 

Have never been able to beat the attendance that my MIL and me had last year. We went 91 days in the first 100. 

All said and done the deal with San to renew the commit was "at least 50 classes in 6 months" to keep this going. Passed that test!

Guru

The word Guru means "remover of darkness", someone who lights you up with knowledge. The darkness in this case does not mean literal darkness but the lack of knowledge!

If you go to Wiki, you see that Westerners manage to take a very important word and associate a negative connotation to it. That is really sad!

In days when word of mouth was the only way knowledge was transmitted from teacher to student for generations, a guru was everything to a student. We are taught at an early age in India "Maata, Pitha, Guru, Deivam" or  "Mother, Father, Guru, God" to put things in perspective for kids. We are also taught

Guru Brahma, Gurur Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwaraha

Guru Shakshat para Bramha Thasmaye Shri Gurave Namaha

which means "I salute my guru who is the embodiment of the Trinity of Creater, preserver and destroyer (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva)"

Most kids in India that I grew up with would treat our teachers with deference. Teachers word was gods word. That helped a lot till the Ph.D started, at which point my thesis advisor promptly said "I am not always right. You seem to agree with everything I say. Your job is to question me and come up with answers on your own!" 

That was enlightening in its own way. Be your own guru?! Was that the message?

Once that phase was over and a new balance was achieved in taking your teachers word as gods word with an amendment  that said "the guru is always right except when the guru says otherwise"!

My teachers appreciate me obeying them implicitly when they give instructions that are to be followed as part of the learning process. Be it my Guitar teacher or a teacher in any training class or Yoga class!

Bikram yoga works using a dialogue. It is called a dialogue because the teacher talks and your body does what the teacher asks you to do with your body. It is a dialogue between the teachers voice and your body. So if there is one thing that is still pretty much following an oral tradition of teaching, it is Yoga. 

This weekend some of us got an amazing treat. A chance to spend the entire day with Jim Kallett, a senior Bikram Yoga practitioner and teacher who actually does the Teacher training. 

This is like meeting your thesis advisors advisors advisor! It was an amazing experience as he shared his experiences of learning Yoga from Bikram, his wisdom and "trusting the process". 

He took apart every posture in the series with clinical precision and helped those in the room  one by one! After doing Yoga for almost two years, I finally learned what the dialogue "relax your shoulders" meant. 

One thing with the oral tradition is that the teacher says something, your ear hears it, your brain processes it based on the sum total of its vocabulary and experience and different people will still "interpret" the dialog. 

Jim pushed, pulled and stood on people (yes, at one point he stood on my back to prove that my body could do a pose with external help and it was up to my mind to get there on my own.. wish I had a picture of that) to make folks realize one very important thing..

Your body is capable of doing things that you cannot realize are possible. Everything is in your mind!

Now there are pages of notes from the all day yoga session, little reminders that go a long way in improving the practice. Based on what Jim said, in another 4-5 years, things should be a lot better! 

The whole day was truly enlightening, a series of light bulb moments. For many of the questions his answer was " I am not here to give you permission to take the easy way out. If that is why you are asking the question, do not even bother! You do what it says in the dialogue, no more, no less and that is the only way!"

At the end of the day, after talking and demonstrating non stop, he got up and taught a class! Do not know how he has that kind of energy. He said after a few years of practice I will also have that energy and that is good to know.

Jim Kallett is a Guru in the true sense of the word. 

He did an awkward pose where he stood on the tips of his toes. I can stand on my toe and was proud of the accomplishment till I saw him stand on the tips of his toes.

Apparently that is what the dialogue says! Nothing more, nothing less.. 

When we were done for the day, I instinctively touched his feet to take his blessing. He smiled and said "Good luck to you and your family!". That made my day!

Now Jim has piqued my interest in meeting his thesis advisor, Bikram Choudhury! Who knows, that also happen one day..