64. DESIS AND YOGA

There are benefits to working from home. My attire of sweat pants saves on dry cleaning. Since I don’t apply make-up daily, my skin will thank me in the future. Setting my hours has pluses and minuses. The former being I can meet Meera for an afternoon yoga class in Chelsea. The latter is I sit in front of the computer for 12 hours a time.

Meera and I meet in the lobby of Integral Yoga Institute. She cited the store Shoegasm as a landmark. Is New York great or what? Yoga and shoes in the same sentence?

We walk to our classroom and I find the yoga studio’s silence unnerving. I’m a chatty girl living in a LOUD City, so where exactly did the honking cars and rumbling buses go? As Meera and I set up our mats I feel like a cliché, a desi girl doing yoga. Will coordination and flexibility be expected because I am Indian? Perhaps the residual effects of growing up brown in homogenous state where I served as the local Indian expert never really go away.

When the class starts the instructor asks us to clear our minds of thoughts and meditate. Do I do this? No. Instead, I AGAIN obsess about the QUIET. You can forget me mastering breathing because my mind is assembling a grocery list. Oohh and the memory of those pink and white shoes in the Shoegasm window come back to me. I hope they’re on sale!

Eventually I submit to the practice and forget the shoes and groceries. My body moves through foreign but soothing poses. Ninety minutes later the class ends and tears sting my eyes. For a few moments I experience something new, peace. In this serene moment I let go and my soul tingles.


I get home and sip some wine. I check my cell phone message and nothing from Reindeer. So sad. I wander into the bedroom and plop onto the bed. I call Abby (a college chum) from the land line. Since we’re girls, we squeal about my perfect Reindeer date. After Abby and I finish a 52 minute conversation I go back to the living room, and see a missed call. Reindeer! I hit the voicemail and listen. “Last night the restaurant and company were lovely. Why don’t you call me when you have a chance?”

Of course, I do! And we chat until 11 pm! WAAAAY beyond his bedtime! So he MUST like me right?