March 2008 Edition
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T K V Desikachar took over from his legendary father,
T Krishnamacharya. Now he, his wife Menaka and their children teach yoga in its purest form at their Mandiram in Chennai
Samita Rathor
Chennai
EVERYBODY is teaching yoga these days: from swamis in flowing robes to sexy gym trainers. Everybody is doing yoga too: svelte models, overweight housewives, stressed out executives. You see swarms of people in parks and auditoriums chanting Om, reorganising arms and legs into asanas while a sonorous ‘guru’ doles out instructions.
“This is not yoga,” TKV Desikachar, founder of the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (KYM) in Chennai, will tell you. Desikachar practises and teaches yoga in its purest form, like his father, the legendary T Krishnamacharya. Yoga for them is a science that heals mind and body.
Today yoga has blossomed. The best hospitals in the world recommend it. People acknowledge its healing benefits. But yoga’s popularity has also become its bane. Most practitioners do not understand its philosophy and teach it as mere group exercise. The science and philosophy of yoga has been lost sight of. Desikachar has spread yoga in its true form in India, the US and Europe. Some of the world’s best minds, like Jiddu Krishnamurti, sought a cure from his father and him. The finest yoga teachers began their yoga journey under their watchful guidance.
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Umesh Anand
IS yoga’s popularity becoming its undoing? It probably is. The fact that more people are exercising today than in the past is a good thing. But the possibility that they could be getting wrong or incomplete instruction in a scientific discipline like yoga should also be areason to feel concerned. Much like those Ayurvedic tonics that flood the shelves of pharmacies, yoga is acquiring a mass appeal, but the sad truth is that numbers and efficacy may not be related.
Desikachar’s Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai sets important standards for yoga at a time when its growing popularity gives it a new lease of life but tends to rob it of its essence. Desikachar learnt from his father. The Mandiram has the involvement of Desikachar’s wife and children. Together they are truly the first family of yoga. In Desikachar’s approach is the message that traditional medicine is at its core customised and personalised through the bond between the teacher and student, physician and patient. It is an elliptical equation that relies on the reading of the pulse, judging of the body type and so on.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
ONE man’s crusade has resulted in what should
be a national model for providing justice to
people who fall prey to occupational diseases.
In 2001, SA Azad, a school teacher, was shocked
to discover that villagers of Lal Kuan, a derelict village
in south-east Delhi, were dying of silicosis.
Silicosis is a death sentence. It is an incurable
lung disease caused by breathing dust containing
free crystalline silica.
Over exposure to silica reduces the ability of the lungs to absorb oxygen. The people of Lal Kuan got this disease from working in stone quarries located here. Subsequently, in 1992, the quarries were ordered closed by the Supreme Court in the famous MC Mehta vs Union of India case. The quarries relocated to Pali in Haryana. The workers left behind lost their livelihood and health. Azad found men and women bone thin and desperately poor. Some were taking medicines for TB, instead of silicosis. Without nutrition, they were on death row. Azad and his small NGO, Prasar (People’s Rights and Social Reseach
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Civil Society News
Bangalore
Why not grow your own medicine instead of buying pills and potions from some chemist? Your terrace, verandah or that tiny patch in your backyard will do just fine. All you need is a bunch of the right plants and some sage advice. You can get both on the verdantcampus of the Foundation for the Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) in the outskirts of Bangalore.
A leaf from history will tell you Indians have always used plants for ailments. Much of this knowledge is fast fading. The best way to revive it is to start using plants for health once again. It’s easy and inexpensive. Also plants add colour to your home, improving décor. Long before Bangalore sank into urban chaos it was known as India’s garden city and you could help revive the city’s sullied green reputation.
FRLHT has an exotic ethno-medicinal garden, the Amruth Vana, with 800 species of tropical Indian medicinal plants. The garden has been pieced together with great care by Dr K Haridasan, one of India’s leading botanists, assisted by Ganesh Babu. Haridasan is an expert on the northeast and there are plants here from places as far away as Arunachal Pradesh. Botanists from FRLHT trudge through mountains and inhospitable terrain to find such rare plants.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
IT is tough finding employment for the disabled. Ask Absalom David of the Blind Relief Association in Delhi. A decade of trying to persuade employers has provided just about 300 jobs for people with defective vision. But on the other hand a little unconventional thinking can deliver justthe right results. Once again, ask David. A suggestion four years ago that blind people could earn from massage led to the setting up of a training facility in 2003 at the premises of the association where 187 men and women have been taught how to pummel and knead muscles and 100 of them are actually earning a living for themselves.
Shyam Kishore, 28 and visually impaired since an early age, now has clients across Delhi to whose homes he goes. Learning massage has made it possible for him to look after his two sisters and meet his own expenses. He has also teamed up with Asha, a fellow student, and what they earn together will perhaps be enough for them to set up home. Sunita, a blind woman from Manipur, did her training in Delhi and went back to Imphal. She has set up a massage parlour of her own. She identified three blind boys and sent them to Delhi for training. She now employs them. There are other such success stories, some of them difficult to track. But the massage skills of these people are prominently on display at the Diwali fair that the association holds each year. It is here that they meet up with clients who then call them to their homes.
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Irene Khan
London
ACROSS South Asia, with the exception of India and Bhutan, the army plays a prominent role in national life. In Sri Lanka, during over two decades of military campaigns against Tamil separatists, the army brass has acquired a powerful position. In Nepal, after a decade-long conflict with Marxist rebels, the army is formally taking a backseat as a political solution is forged between various parties under civilian leadership but remains a significant player in the transition.
In Bangladesh, the army's role remains unclear, mired in speculation and suspicion, some projecting the army as a midwife to democracy:helping the Caretaker Government to deliver free and fair elections- while others claim that it is trying to doctor, rather than deliver, democracy. In Myanmar, on the other hand, there has never been any doubt about the military junta's determination to hold on to power, despite international condemnation and internal uprising, most recently by peace-loving monks.
In each of these countries, no matter what the ambition or intention of the army, the international community has been clear that it wants to see democracy, human rights and the rule of law prevail....
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