My earliest memory of practicing yoga ripples into my consciousness like the Teesta river itself. Born in the frozen Pauhunri mountains of the eastern Himalayas, the sparkling river of my childhood barrels through Northeastern Sikkim with abandon. The river knows no stopping. Paving its singular path through miles of rocky terrain and green hills alike, at dawn it greets Jalpaiguri, a sleepy town nestled in the foothills of North Bengal, India, where I wait for Mr. Chaudhury. My yoga teacher arrives, clad in a starched white kurta and slacks. He is a sinewy man in his sixties, with a full head of gray hair and a sprightly temperament.
My parents, my ten year-old sister, and I have lined up on yoga mats in our verandah overlooking the river. At eight years old, I have a slight chip in my front upper tooth from a recent fall, face down, on this very verandah. The chip has happened not on one of my remaining milk teeth but on a supposedly permanent incisor that, when I graze the serrated edge of with the tip of my tongue, will plant me right back in these coordinates decades later. But, now, at eight, I am prone to daydreaming, to feeling like an old soul tasked with resolving the open wounds and wonders of a heart-achingly beautiful world.
A breeze flows toward us between the verandah’s pillars, weaving through the balustrade. The river murmurs along, glistening in the early morning sun. Far out in the distance, well beyond the river, the air clears and makes way, and the great Himalayas levitate in the blue sky. As for the four of us and our yoga teacher, seated cross-legged in Padmasana, or lotus pose, we prepare for an ascent of our own.
Mr. Chaudhury guides us through a short meditation. My sister and I catch each other opening our eyes at regular intervals, with a precision that comes effortlessly to a pair of mind-melded siblings, stifle a giggle, and squeeze our eyelids shut to invoke some seriousness. Pranayama, a set of breathing exercises, follows. We inhale air rinsed clean by the mahoganies and ashoka trees encircling our house, and exhale as one collective lung. Then, in obeisance to the resplendent sun, we begin our asana sequence with surya namaskar or sun salutation. Our teacher gives us crisp instructions and practices along with us. Our bones are warmed, our bodies limber. For the next hour, connecting breath to movement, intent on finding the right alignment, we flow through our yoga practice. Flexibility comes naturally to the bendy eight year-old as I twist and fold and reach my toes effortlessly. To a child, this simple act of practicing something wholesome together as a tight-knit family is more than a fuzzy memory in the making. It is a direct experience of being a microcosm in harmony.
From a distance the Teesta appears flat and still, as if Jalpaiguri might be its final resting place. But up close, the trunk of the restless river is undeniably in flux. The water moves in annual rings, fanning out, flowing onward past the town I have called home for a little over a year. I am set to journey beyond, too.
The three-hour drive from Jalpaiguri to Kurseong winds up through the hills as it gains a nearly ten-fold elevation. Roses, orchids and chrysanthemums adorn the front porch of bright little houses dotting the slopes. Groups of small children, around my age or younger, standing outside looking perfectly sanguine and wholly interested in perfectly timing an exchange of cheery waves with me, and with the waves of travelers before and after me that zip past them. For a significant portion of the journey, the slopes are cradled by the hills on the left and a rolling Teesta to the right. The river travels downhill, but we are moving against its currents, through the pine-infused air, into the future.
My sister and I will spend the next academic year at a boarding school in the picturesque town of Kurseong renowned for its education. As is customary during long drives, we keep busy with chatter and riddles, and singing songs whose lyrics we don’t fully know or understand only to make up our own mondegreens on the go. The upcoming year at school will teach a great many things to a fifth-grader, though as if retracing the river to get closer to its source is time itself rolling back, it will reabsorb something from my field of experience too: the ritual of gathering in the mornings on the verandah of our red-brick home to practice yoga.
I am no stranger to change. My father is a career bureaucrat in the Indian government and his work requires us to move often. Until this point, I have changed a few schools already. And after one year in Kurseong, we will move to Calcutta for a year, before moving again. Traveling through various parts of India, and starting over with a regularity that I am still wrapping my head around, I will not resume yoga with any consistency for at least another decade. To a growing child occupied primarily with adapting to everything new, the grounding ritual of my past will collapse into a crumbling yellow road-sign made of concrete, simply serving to mark the road that I once crossed. In geography classes, I will trace on maps the great rivers and tributaries of the Indian subcontinent and beyond. I will memorize facts and learn topography. I will travel along the path to becoming worldly while the modest river of my childhood will quietly recede into an unmapped interior wilderness.