Bad designs

Electric kettles seem to have one fundamental flaw! The cords are too short. Be it the one in the Chinese hotel or the ones you get at the local Target here, they all seem to have a cord that is at the most 18 inches long. 

This means the kettle has to be practically close to the wall or the thing doesn't sit on the base well. That also means that if someone has recently used it or if you are trying to unplug it before removing the vessel, the probability of getting burnt by the hot vessel or steam puffs still coming out every now and then is high!

My MIL has already gone through heat boils many times.. for me this is happening after a long time. 

This happened bright and early yesterday morning. So I skipped Yoga yesterday. Thought I would give it a shot today and by the time the class ended, the thing went from being flat and wrinkly to almost popping. Think by tomorrow's class it will pop and will get this over with. 

The body is amazing in the way it directs the recovery crew to a specific site and the hot room accelerates the process is my guess. 

and on a side note, given my recent realization that my bald spot is no longer a spot but more like a bald field, went for a new look. All the ladies in the house unanimously hate it. Have never managed to unite them like this on anything before! 

Life is full of little quirks.. for now I am happy to be blogging again! If any of you know why these kettles have such short power cords, let me know! 

Enna Vechchu comedy kemedy pannaliye ?! (Not making me a comedy piece right?!)

That is a popular punch line of Tamil comedian Vadivelu (one of my favorites).  That seems to have already happened to me.. have become a comedy piece, literally!

Many of my friends and family who watch Vijay TV, have told me that they have a program called Comedy Starz where they used my picture as a "prop".. 

Got the whole thing on video here..

There is some good and lot of bad in this.

Good : Yoga gets some more popularity

Bad : Yoga is still seen as some kind of magic, illusion or rope trick (you see the way the compere ends it? that is the way illusions and rope tricks are presented by street performers).

Also, there is a way to get in and out of a yoga pose. When Jim Kallet was at BYSJ to teach a special class he told the teachers "never get into the pose in the beginner class using an advanced way. I saw this teacher do it in the front row. A football player was behind her in the second row. He was new. He copied her and we literally heard his knees go pop .. pop. He permanently damaged his knee. You can mess with the gods, but you can never mess with your knees".  People do things the wrong way and Yoga gets a bad name. 

Someday will post a video of doing this toe stand, or if BYSJ has one, will link it here. 

There is another bad side to this. Everytime a photo from the blog gets used somewhere (remember 80 feet cut outs of Junior bursting fire crackers in Chennai?), the family is up in arms and wants to shut down all my social media accounts from Facebook, to the blog to twitter, etc. Some will comment and say "get some money out of those guys" to which my response is "the day Indian media companies actually pay anything to take stuff.. that day will never come". Others just go to all out fear mongering "now every terrorist knows about you and your family" to which my reponse is "so the terrorists are all going to start doing yoga? That would actually be a good thing because there won't be any terrorism after they start yoga and do it for a few months!".

If anything, Yoga helps you let go and move on.. so AaaaaUuuuuuuuMmmmmmmmm ! 

This too shall pass!

A symbolic victory?

It has been a rocky three weeks. Lots of ups and downs.. both literally and figuratively. Figuratively because we made a trip to the east coast with family for four days and visited Pittsburgh and had a really great time with family. 

Kids got a detailed education on the family tree from the fathers side during this trip. We did three road trips in three days and visited Heritage sites, national/ state parks, the temple, not to mention Niagra falls. That was the up. The down was that I had multiple international trips and was sick for the most part and flying, even with a biz class upgrade was not a pleasant experience when your ear and entire face hurts at every takeoff and landing. 

The literal part of course was the number of flights in a 20 day period. Have not had a crazier travel schedule in the last two years. 

This intense schedule has made my yoga attendance near zero. Have gone to yoga class twice in 15 days. Many times I have wanted to drag my butt to the hot room inspite of multiple systems failing but decided against it. Today was different. Decided to go and give it a shot anyways. 

You see, this is not new. Most of my friends think that I am crazy to go do Hot Yoga when I have a sinus infection, sore throat or a 101 fever. Let me tell you something though. It actually works! As long as you are confident that you won't pass out in the room and are hydrated enough before class, you come out in better shape than you went in! 

This morning I was pitting multicolored phlegm, couldn't talk above a whisper and the place behind my cheekbones felt numb after repeated attempts to clear my sinus. My ears were hurting as well since the last flight and would pop on and off for no reason. 

While I got a few weird looks from the fellow yogis in the room for repeated coughing during the initial breathing exercise, the rest of the class got better and better. In sequence :

First your lungs clear during the breathing exercise. 

Second, your sinuses drain on to your mat (which is kind of gross but totally relieving) when you do hands to feet pose and get out of the pose. 

Third and this is the best part.. you break into a sweat by the time you are doing the third pose (Eagle pose). Now this is the best part because I think (cannot prove it) that the virus or bacteria that are fighting the body kind of give up when the body breaks into a sweat. Kind of like war time where one party hoists their flag up the fort and the other guys see that as an indication and just give up. Given the body goes into a sweat when it wins the fight against intruding bacteria or virus, this is probably a fake move.. but I will take it! 

The minute you break into a sweat and shiver a little bit in a hot room, magically you feel alright! (Not sure if others have observed this, but I have at least five times so far). 

By the time you do the stretching pose with your head to the floor, anything else left in my sinus is gone! I can breathe again and for a few seconds my body tries to grapple with what just happened. In another 10-15 minutes we are on the floor and I ace this part of the class and come out of the room practically feeling like every other class! 

I have managed to yell at Jr. once for not coming to eat lunch with us and the little one for picking up silly fights with her sister. They are both happy that daddy is getting back to normal and is yelling at them as usual. That also means that daddy is now responding when they try to push my buttons as opposed to "I don't care anymore as I am sick". Girls can be cruel that way. They cannot handle it when  you leave them alone. 

Anyways, now that I am getting my voice back and my breathing is back, going to start working again and process the hundreds of photographs still to be downloaded! 

One has to be blessed to be able to go do Yoga.. for those of you who have the luxury of a fixed time job with no travel, you have no idea how much I envy you! 

On a side note, a friend asked "how come you do yoga so regularly and yet you fall sick?"

My response ? "Sure my immunity is better but I am constantly traveling and picking up germs. If I had a routine between work, yoga and home, I do much better!" and that is true. 

Have you ever tried to wipe the tray table, arm rest, window and monitor with a wet wipe before the flight takes off? It will become black! That is how much crap is there on planes and they don't clean them anymore. 

Enough with the rant. On with life. Photoshop and powerpoint beckon...as do the kids!

A few words..

After the last Asia trip, I came home okay. Then we ate at an Indian restaurant, which we have only visited once before more than a year ago and both me and MIL ended up with food poisoning. Wife and kids did not get hit although the little one complained of tummy pain, went into a fart spree and then declared herself okay. MIL and me were not that lucky. She was throwing up and I was feeling like an over pressurized cannister that did not know how and when it was going to explode for most of the weekend. 

So my yoga attendance in the last 5 days has been spotty at best. Finally made it back to class this evening. Walked in with low expectations but as usual there is the "now that I have made it past that door, better make the most of it" philosophy that kicked in and started doing the best I could.

It was almost the end of the class and we were doing the final stretching pose on the floor when the teacher mentions my name and says "pull your little thighs just above your knees up and towards each other and then stretch"!

Was trying to process that on the fly, given I have never heard anyone say that to me or another student before. 

The first question was "what are little thighs?" then my brain went "it is something between your real thighs and it is above your knees.. so even if we don't know what that is, just pull whatever muscle you can pull up and towards each other in that region!" 

So I tried to locally clench something in that area upwards and inwards and sure enough, like magic, my body went down a good six inches lower and towards my feet! It was MAGIC !

When we got a chance to do the second set, gave those "little thighs" a big inward curl and was able to repeat the stretch!

Have been doing this for 5 plus years. All it takes is a few words to click at the right time in the right way and there is a world of a difference in the result. 

Have come to the conclusion that teaching yoga cannot be an easy thing. Even if a person can do the poses and internalize how to use their anatomy to make changes, it is very difficult to communicate that cause and effect to another person using mere words. 

For all I know, what was moved may not be little thighs, but the learning continues. 

The adventures of Sundar, Episode 435: starring Pukelady and YogaYoda

The last two weeks have been interesting to say the least. Went to Asia for yet another business trip. Everything was same old same old. Yet another Uber driver who has fled the middle east gave me his story as we went to the airport on an early Sunday morning. Made it through the trip. Then San requested some urgent support back home. So I moved my confimed biz upgrade seat to an earlier flight in economy class. That was a mistake.

Just like in T20 cricket when you get someone out on a "no ball" and the guy comes back and hammers you for a six on the free hit, I got a double whammy. There was a lady on the flight who decided to throw up an hour after the flight started. Now, throw up may not be the right way to decribe it. She more like "sprayed up". The rest of the 10 hours was spent smelling puke and just taking sips of air to be able to breathe but not get too much into my lungs.  All that breath control from years of yoga practice, didn't work! 80/20 breathing vs. pukelady wasn't even a close contest. End result was that I was going through flu like symptoms within 24 hours after landing. 

Last weekend and the early part of this week were a blur. My wife decided to not say a single word throughout this. Usually she goes on a rant. This time she was all TLC. Someone must have taught her that this tactic might produce more guilt/hour than the lecture and sure enough, they were right. 

Stuff at home and work took a hit because my voice was gone. The last three four days have seen me steadily improve, spending more time at work and being more active at home. So it is natural to want to get back to the Yoga room as well to speed up the recovery. 

The plan was simple. Start in the last row and keep moving up as I feel better. Did start in the last row and moved up last two days. 

Went to yoga class this morning with the MIL. It was taught by the YogaYoda, Jim Kallet. Decided that this would be a good class to graduate from second row to the front row.. yes. why not pick the hottest spot in the room to check if you have fully recovered from the flu?!  Guess I did not think this one through.

While Jim did say the usual "you should know how much to push yourself. this is going to be a slightly longer class. so pace yourself. Sit down if you feel dizzy. Take a break and get back".. I took it the way my mother tells me "if that is what you want to do, please go ahead".. which usually translates to "if you want to call yourself my son, don't even think about it". 

Now, don't laugh. Every one of my Yoga teachers bears a close mental resemblence to my mother. They have eyes in the back of their head and can know if I am even thinking of giving up on some pose, even if they are in some other part of the room, much like how my mom can remotely control my emotions from the other side of the planet. So it was natural for me to take it that way.. 

It was a great class. Did struggle through the middle of the class, because I did not pace myself. 

Jim continued to amaze with his words of wisdom. When you are that experienced, it shows! 

My MIL has never met Jim and was telling one of the teachers before class "I am already past 60. getting old. so some of this is getting difficult" and the teacher told her "the guy who is going to teach this class is older than you!"

Wrote this about Jim's all day class from four five years ago.. he is doing another such class tomorrow. Not sure what shape I will be in to go. Right now, just happy that I got to take his regular class!

It is an experience not to be missed.