Travelling to Kovalam

Saturday (24) - guruji's family tree
On Saturday morning some students actually did get up early to practice by themselves because they felt that because Monday was a moon-day (no practice), that they wanted to get another practice in. I took it easy and after breakfast Ellen showed me her new electrical Shruti box, which Dena Kinsberg, who was here before Nancy, uses in her Ashtanga classes apparently. Then I packed and waited for the taxi, which had been ordered by Linda who was also going to the airport today. Linda is from Sweden, but lives in Bangalore now and we had an interesting chat.
First we chatted about the Jois family tree. Sri K Pattabhi Jois had two sons and a daughter, namely Manju, who now lives and teaches in the USA, Saraswathi, who had two children, Sharath and Sharmilla who now lives and teaches in Bangalore, and another son who killed himself. I found out later from Lino that guruji actually stopped practicing the physical asanas after his son committed suicide. This is an interesting fact to know, because people tend to compare BKS Iyengar, who still practices asanas, with guruji, as they are only about a year apart in age and both were taught by Krishnamacharya, but they have followed two very different styles of doing asana practice.
Apparently suicide is quite common in India, because people are not scared of death. They will be reincarnated anyway, so it is an easy way of escaping debt or a bad marriage, which are often still arranged marriages.

At the airport, we split up, as I was flying to Trivandrum via Chennai (Madras is the old name) on Paramount airways, and she was flying back to Bangalore. Chennai is on the east coast of India and Goa and Trivandrum are both on the west coast of India, so I was flying across the country twice in order to get to my destination, however, the trip would have taken days by train, and I could not find a direct flight to Trivandrum. Paramount Airways is a relatively new airline in India, (there are many airlines here, Jet Airways, Kingfisher Red, Deccan, IndiGo, SpiceJet to name a few) that currently only operates in the south of India, and it is based in Chennai. I had an hour flight to Chennai, 45 minute stopover, and another hour to Trivandrum. As we were coming in to land in Trivandrum, I saw the Lighthouse and surrounding beaches of Kovalam. This is where I would spend the next week.

Once I got my luggage, I did not get a prepaid taxi for about Rs 330; instead I walked all the way out of the parking lot and asked the first Rickshaw driver for a price, who quoted me Rs 200. I got him down to Rs 150 for the half hour trip back to Kovalam. The taxi driver did not speak much English and he wanted the business, but as I suspected, he took me to the wrong beach and did not know where the Peacock Hotel was. He then asked me for more money, which I flatly refused. To the Indian people, it seems to be a game to try and get the most money they can out of you. Somebody actually told me to look at it as a game, which helps not to get upset with it. So I try to smile from now on, when they begin with their tactics. Eventually he dropped me off near a sign pointing to the hotel and I had to walk down a steep hill to the hotel as the sun was setting and people were starting to light fires for cooking dinner.

Lino runs his yoga retreat from the roof of the hotel, which is why I asked to come here. I intended to find a hotel close by, but as it happened, the hotel did have a very cheap room available. It was dark, and there was no electricity, which was a daily half hour occurrence around this time, so I did not feel like searching for a better deal. I dumped my stuff and explored the waterfront, which is a very loud, busy area, with lots of inflated prices at restaurants and hotels serving western food. The fish is apparently supposed to be very good here, but I was going to stick to my vegetarian diet while in India.

Who is Lino Miele?
Let me start this post by explaining why I chose to practice with Lino Miele. As you can read in my posts about my previous trip to India for yoga, I became really passionate about Ashtanga Yoga after doing Michael Gannon's workshops in SA and then coming to India to practice with him and join him to Mysore. Michael Gannon is a student of Lino Miele. Lino Miele has been practicing since 1984 or 1988? and started teaching in 1994. He is Italian and has opened up schools in Rome, Finland and Denmark. He is opening a new school in Italy in March this year.

Lino also wrote the book "Ashtanga Yoga", which Lino himself jokingly refers to as The Bible. In the book he explains how guruji became his teacher, and the book seems to have been a close collaboration with guruji and Sharath. There are many many good Ashtanga instructors, but I think none have the kind of relationship with guruji that Lino has. Lino is in his 50's I think, but is still like a naughty child and has the ability to make you like him straight away and apparently he and guruji are quite close. Lino still visits guruji every year and will again this year after his workshop finishes on the 13th of February. Lino has this workshop in Kovalam, India, every year for 12 weeks, from November. (Guruji has been in and out of hospital regularly over the past year.)