The India-Rubber Man

THE world map seems to recontour itself at Pune's legendary yoga institute. Almost every nation is represented as more than 1,500 disciples await their turn for tokens—a smile, a pranam, a word, often a joke—evoking cherished moments of a special guru-shishya relationship forged by Padamshri Yogacharya B.K.Sundaraja iyengar. All souvenirs celebrating one who defied fate. Of one who was not expected to survive child-birth but who has lived to be 80 today. Of one reviled as student but rising to become yoga's greatest living teachers.

As his students crowd him, eager to touch and be touched by him, merging of cultures goes beyond the symbolic Nehru jacket on a white torso or a salwar kameez on a black one. Like the symbolism of pouring gangajal in France's Garonne river to honour Iyengar, his "feel-good" yoga has melted the barriers of culture, caste and complexion.

As mobile-wielding pujaris crack jokes over the crackling fire, the rigours of the Shanti Homam pooja turn into a revelry feting his spirit. This ordeal of love—poojas, celebrations—will continue through the yoga fest from December 1 (his birthday as per the Tamil calendar) to December 14 (as per the English one). Iyengar, no prey to "false modesty", rightly exults: "I, who was branded a madcap, may be pardoned if today I am the proudest man on earth for carrying yoga to millions the globe over."

 "Madcap" was the mildest drubbing he received. When the "punychested" child fumbled with the asanas, his own brother-in-law and guruji, Yogacharya T. Krishnamacharya, rejected him as "anadhikarin" (one not privileged to learn). Iyengar, born during the 1918 influenza epidemic in Karnataka's Belur village, was battered throughout childhood by malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid. "I looked sickly, with thin limbs, a protruding stomach, heavy head. I felt like committing suicide, never played, had no books to read. My body was stiff since I had been bed-ridden. My arms barely reached my knees when bending down." The teenager, bulldozed by his guruji into teaching a clutch of mocking collegians, faced their searing sarcasm: "I weighed about 32 kg, my chest measured 22-inches only." The foreigners' ignorance was as demeaning—even in the '80s he had to debunk their expectations of him as a fire-eating conjurer of rope-tricks. But today America salutes him by naming a star in the northern hemisphere after him; Cambridge's International Biographical Centre stars him in their constellation of 20th century's 2,000 outstanding persons. Students included J. Krishnamurthi, Jay-aprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Acharya Atre, Aldous Huxley. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, whose creative neurosis Iyengar reined in with Shanmukhi Mudra, praises him as my "best violin teacher". While Menuhin thrust him on to the world stage, Iyengar's will vaulted him from being pauper to a teacher of princes. His first royal disciple, the Queen mother of Belgium, tried the intricate and daunting head stand, Sirsasana, when she was 83! And the one who barely survived by earning six annas per demonstration is now the why-and-wherefore of 180 centres worldwide, even as 500 certified instructors teach the Iyengar school of yoga.

Raves French disciple Faeq Biria: "There are 8.4 million yoga asanas. Gur-uji has, like a scientist, computed all the missing links in the pyramid of asanas, condensed these into a list of 10,000 asanas, further reduced them to 1,000 and finally 200, always innovating. If there is any experiment concerning the human body, Guruji has surely done it."

Even today he practices six hours daily, flagging only slightly from the tortuous 10 hours he used to earlier when "I was tossed about, as sometimes my body and at times the mind refused to cooperate". Traumatised by insomnia, a fretful spirit trapped in an impoverished body which often dragged itself for several days on just cups of tea. Without any guidance Iyengar blundered along on a thorny, lonely self-taught path.His indifferent guruji exploited him only when his other favoured pupil Keshavmurthy ran away. His guruji, who had relied on Keshavmurthy for a demo, shoved 16-year-old Iyengar on stage, having taught him advanced asanas in just three days.

Once on stage, Iyengar contorted himself through the complex Hanumana-sana and Vrschikasana without being taught them, merely following guruji's instructions in public. On one such mission he tore his hamstrings and was laid up for two years. His taskmaster made him take a six-mile route, though his yogashala was just five minutes off his school; or punished him by forcing him into the arduous Kapotasana for over 20 minutes. "His hits on my back were like iron rods and his words were like heated iron rods. Yet there was an inner tie," recalls Iyengar. His daughter Geeta (who, with brother Prashant from among Iyengar offspring, teaches yoga) observes the guru-shishya tie was stronger than the family one, though it was strained briefly due to J. Krishnamurthi attempting to create a rift. Even when 60, her father would "do every little thing for his guru, like a small shishya". But it was this discipline branded into Iyengar that hauled him from the brink of physical disasters. "In 1958 I lost my grip on postures. Even forward bends were painful. But after a three-year effort I regained control. In 1979, I met with two scooter accidents immediately after Shashthipoorti. I had to start as a beginner. All my old aches reappeared. It took me eight years to regain control."

MARVELS disciple Rajvi Mehta, a gynaecologist: "Guruji could, even from a distance, spot a student's physical ailment. Five years ago he had casually advised eye exercises. I ignored it, now I'm short-sighted." Hrishikesh Yoga Centre chief Rudra Dev sees in him an "incarnation whose knowledge complements all his actions"; TVjournalist Noako Yagyu of Japan credits him with supplanting the cosmetic Oki yoga of her country with one that "went beyond the self". For several, like American instructors Patricia Walden and Manouso Manos, he's a saviour. Shobana Chellaram (of the cloth merchant family) was referred to him with a gunshot wound in her. "I suffered from every imaginable ailment, was suicidal. He saved my life. Can you even guess my age?" asks the glowing 49-year-old who looks 30.

Iyengar transported yoga from the physical plane to the spiritual. While he recreates his own "intellectually intoxicated" guru Krish-namacharya as superhuman (with pranayama he could reportedly stop and control his heartbeat; non-surgically mended a fractured hip when 96; and lived to be 108 years old!) his own contribution, he says, was no mere "interpretation, but an inter-penetration" of the physicality of his guruji's Vinayasa Yoga. His prodigious, India-rubber contortions in the biographical docu Samadhi evoke jaw-dropping wonder. His body, balled into a tight knot, defies gravity, being held up by just the rim of his lips, or the fragile support of his big toe. The sickly "back-bencher" has shot to the forefront as "the oldest living practitioner today", imbibing early on mahaguru Patanjali's lesson that of the 13 blights on a human, only two were physical. The mind-body synchronicity can, believes Iyengar, stem all physical rot—from asthma, ulcer, spondilytis, even drug addiction to AIDS. No wonder his disciples smile with admiration, even pleasure, as he (in the docu) leaps and hops over their bent bodies that weakly attempt to imitate his tremendous skill. He prods with his foot, kicking their recalcitrant limbs into obeying his message—of stilling the mind through the discipline of the physique.

 However, frets he, though he has webbed the world with yoga in India "we neglect it, thinking it is in our blood". Also, while San Francisco University prepares a four-year syllabus of his life's love, chosen city Pune has rejected his proposal. He rues, too, that there is no one who comes closer to his practice.

But beyond the past and the future, he can look in the present to say: "I'm still experiencing new feelings and new lights even though age's telling upon me. I live in my cells and in my heart." Also, in those millions of disciples who daily breathe his message.