My name is Christi Clark, a married mother of two who is getting back into the working world slowly by turning my dance background and yoga hobby into more than just my recovery from childbirth, but my new business opportunity. I had become certified as a yoga instructor, as I had been a dance instructor, but what I wanted to target was other young mothers like myself, the urban white suburban housewives who wanted to get their body back, and who needed a way to deal with the stress and emotional drain of essentially facing motherhood's burdens unsupported.
It took a village to raise a child, it took multiple generations to be successful, but while the Hindu still lived that way, we had forsaken it for the myth of the nuclear family that served men well and left women to drown alone. I had the plan, I had the market, I needed the space. That is how I met Mr Patel.
Rajesh Patel sipped his tea and watched me do my yoga workout. Having him watch and correct me had really improved my form. I learned Yoga from other white instructors, but when I was looking for a place to host my Yoga for young mothers, helping all of us women who wanted to get back in shape and get back in touch with our feminine spiritual, active and sensual sides when motherhood has a tendency to strip those away, only Mr Patel and his Hindi Books and Tea House offered us a space. The fact that it was a temple space often used for local religious private devotionals for those too buys to make the trip out to the main temple across town was an added and deep honour.
I had expected having the pot-bellied middle aged man watching me do my workouts in skin tight yoga gear would leave me feeling either exposed or dirty, but the opposite was true. His eyes were different, his smile was different. His anger was different. When I would begin to tense up, when I would begin to think negative thoughts or begin to simply go through the motions, he would tell. He would be off his seat, and a firm slap first on my shoulder, and later on my bum when we both grew more comfortable would let me know I was not doing yoga, I was pretending. Mind body and spirit, what my other white instructors talked about but didn't teach, Mr Patel as a real and deeply committed Hindu lived.
We made a funny pair. I stand just a little shy of six feet, a tall leggy blond with perky C cup breasts on a dancer's build, blue eyes and lightly tanned skin. Mr Patel is about five eight, broad shouldered and thick in the middle, a dark skinned Hindu with laughing eyes and smiling face, but when he was displeased with something, the father in him snapped forward and suddenly the fat little shop keeper did a fair impression of an angry Lord, or maybe it was that you saw a hint that he was that Lord all the time, and the fat shopkeeper was a mask he wore, a game he played. Like a lazy lion sitting in the middle of the Savannah, letting the cubs stalk his tail.
I learned all the poses, and as a ballerina, jazz dancer and Lyrical dancer, i excelled at the form, but what i didn't learn from the videos and the books was what Mr Patel taught. Mind first, then breath, then body. Because of my breath, Mr Patel insisted i stop wearing the loose tops and switch to something where he could see me breathe. For weeks I saw improvements that advanced me years beyond what my training had given me, but then I hit a plateau.
My teaching other young mothers had shown me the difference between what I could give them, and what Mr Patel could do, so I began to ask him to sit in. Soon every one of us was falling into the pattern as if it was designed that way. I would lead the class, until Mr Patel saw something he didn't like, then he would say "Stop" all of us would freeze.
Then he would move to one of the white women, he would place his hands on her at opposing points to hold her in position, then he would snap out "Observe" and the rest of us would turn and watch. It was like watching a really good horse trainer or dog trainer. He would talk so quietly, so softly. His hands moving in gentle caresses. He would identify women who were having emotional distress, having physical limits they were ignoring, having injuries or birth damage that they hadn't healed properly from. In a minute or less he would have them smiling and moving under his hands like water. Flowing in a way we couldn't do on our own. Always he would say the same thing.
"Wonderful, you ladies are doing wonderful. You have overcome as much of the gap between your conditioning and your teachings as you can, while you still wear the chains of Christianity. You make me proud. I have done what I could, limited by what I can see" He would state with smiling benevolence.
It was true. I started to notice the less I wore, the more of my body he could see, the less I could hide from him. Mr Patel could be the way past my plateau, the way past my limit in my yoga growth. I finally brought up the nerve to ask. I knew this was a lot to ask, so when I arrived for our early session, I didn't let him fix us tea as usual, but went to fetch the tea for him. I bade him to sit as I prepared his tea as I had seen him prepare it a thousand times. His eyes measured my motions critically, so I attempted to perform the preparation of his tea as I would a dance, or a dynamic yoga movement. I tried to keep my frame, present myself with as much grace as possible as I made and offered his tea. I did so with the bow traditional in the old ballet forms of the scarf and pillow dances, old forms of reverence to the nobility that exist only in such cultural remnants as ballet.
I offered Mr Patel his tea with honey with the most gracious bow almost two decades of ballet had left me, and held the pose until his regal nod allowed me to rise. Again I fell into a ballet pose while he regarded me. He raised his head and simply stated.
"You have a request child?" He asked.
I blushed when he called me that, but when he adopted that tone, the friendly banter of the shopkeeper gone, and the priest/king mantle heavy upon his broad dark shoulders, I really felt like a child before a parent, a student or apprentice before a learned master.
"Yes sir." I replied. I had rehearsed this a hundred times in front of my mirror. Facing Mr Patel it seemed a thousand times harder.
"Mr Patel, I have been very aware and very grateful for the progress I have made under your teachings, the gap between the Yoga I was taught in the west and the understanding a true Hindu has is not one I am qualified to measure beyond noting that I can't ever move forward without your guidance. You had mentioned that you had done what you could, limited by what you could see. There is this thing I have heard about in California, naked yoga. Forgive me if this is disrespectful to your culture or to this sacred space, but would it be permissible for me to practice this way, so you could instruct me without limitations on what you can see?"
I was blushing scarlet, the last time I had been this scared had been when my husband went down on one knee and pulled out a ring box. My heart was hammering in my chest, and oddly, my nipples were rock hard and poking through my yoga top like little flags of inappropriate timing to maximize my humiliation of Mr Patel was insulted and rebuked me for being slutty in the sacred space he had graciously allowed my yoga class to use.
"Ah child, my little Christi is almost ready to grow up. You may never be free you know. Your Christianity fitted every woman with chains when they raised you, but you have at least taken those chains in your own hands. This is the first step. I don't know if you will ever be ready for the second, but you make me think you have the dedication, the spirit, the soul to transcend your origin and become worthy of true instruction. I will allow this. Your training will begin"
At times, his words bypassed my ears and wrote themselves directly into my body. This was one. I felt my tension that held me knotted tight like a cord consumed in a fire that lit my body like a candle. As I undressed for Mr Patel, I hoped he would not notice the almost aching arousal of my body. His spiritual depth was so great, it was like a magnetic field, like gravity. If he was the moon, I was a tide that was drawn towards him, reaching and yearning in ways I couldn't understand, content only to bask in his light.
