Ode to Sarasvati

This is late in coming but I’ve found it rather difficult to do any sort of personal writing these last few months. Many discoveries I’ve made and things I’ve learned (and there have been many) haven’t been for public consumption. I do however want to make public my gratitude toward Saraswati Rangaswamy, who, more than most others, has shown her tireless strength in continuously giving to her students. Despite her age (approx. 70), she is constantly getting up and down off the floor six to eight hours a day, sitting cross-legged, giving students tight and hard adjustments, doing serious backbend work daily with hundreds of students, even doing the students that Sharath and the assistants pussy out of doing, and doing it without complaining about her sore back, which students, assistants and people half her age do. And let’s face it, we know she has a sore back, because even you do as you’re comfortably reading this while seated, and you’re probably not 70. How can the woman so continuously, day in and day out, be “at work” already at 5.15 am and still not finish the afternoon the shift til after 5 or sometimes 6 pm? If you’ve ever practiced in the shala, you’re probably familiar with the feeling of exhaustion, but can you imagine working with literally 100s of students every day, year after year after year, with those hours, and at least six and often seven days a week (her students still come on Saturday, the day that Sharath gets off)? And she never complains of familial duties and responsibilities like Sharath does, which she obviously has and had in abundance, raising a larger family in a previous era in India with much less wealth and fewer conveniences than Sharath’s family enjoys now.
I know she had a lot of the responsibility and care for Guruji before he died, having two complete years of sleepless nights, attending him and sleeping on the floor by his bedside in case he needed anything in the night. And then she’d get up in the morning after little or no sleep and get cleaned up and do her chants and by 5.15, the woman would be doing adjustments and backbends in the hundreds. My first trip to Mysore, when there were about 350 people who had come for Guruji’s last birthday, I remember counting the number of people’s backbends she would do and Sharath would do in the same amount of time, and being astonished by the woman. And this was after her sleepless, aching nights.
This winter, one rough Sunday morning led class, I remember being tired, or maybe just not quite awake (although I had been fully awake at 3.15 am when I woke up, I’d gotten sleepy again by 5.30 or 6 am) and I, in a down dog, I looked up and back into Saraswati’s office where she was doing her morning chants from her prayer book as she starts the day every morning, and she was fast asleep on her arms and book on the desk, just as an elementary or middle school kid falls asleep on his books (I’m very familiar with this pose). The poor woman really needed a break and a rest, but there she was at 5.30, doing her prayers before having to do Sharath’s second led class of the day. Later she woke up and continued her recitations. I realized my momentary tiredness was nothing like this woman’s exhaustion and the load she bears every day, and which she does willingly and with never a negative word or showing her tiredness ever. She does it because it’s the fortune she was given and the tradition and family she was lucky enough to be born into and be part of (and she knows it) and she does it out of love for yoga and her father. She embodies yoga and has so much of Guruji.
She is so underappreciated but she is the one who has carried the torch all along, and continued the line from her father. Fittingly, the goddess Sarasvati, the goddess of worldly knowledge, is named for the flow and fluidity which she embodies (Saras + vati = “the one with flow/having flow” in Sanskrit). This flow includes the flow of knowledge from teacher to student and the flow of knowledge from one generation to the next, so there is no stagnation or blockage in the flow and in learning, creating knowledge by destroying ignorance. The goddess Sarasvati ensures that knowledge is transmitted from one generation to the next, something which the worldly woman Saraswati Rangaswamy does every day of her life (and which is primarily a motherly role and responsibility anyway).
This woman is the rock of Gibraltar and you know what? I just want to tell you that, until reaching Rolf’s studio here in Goa, she is the yoga teacher who has believed in me and my abilities more than any other teacher has except Nick Evans. She had faith in me the whole time and from day one, and had faith in my abilities even when I had lost faith in what I could do and was feeling so small and feeble (Feb. and part of March). This is a strong woman. When I was totally lost and had given up on myself (although I may have still looked externally strong, as well as sweaty), she was standing in front of me saying, “You do! You can!!” And I realized this woman’s strength (of mind and will as well as physical) and that she was transmitting it as only the best yoga teachers do, but that she wasn’t doing it through fancy language or subtle tricks to convince the mind of the student before her. From that day I’ve been regaining faith in myself and my abilities and have decided “there’s no more saying no”, no more “not today”, no holds barred in life, yoga and the pursuit of everything.
Did you think this was going to be about Hindu mythology? I’m sorry. I can’t express my gratitude to this lady enough.