Know Your City : How Yoga guru BKS Iyengar made Pune his home and his institute a centre of global health revolution

Iyengar single-handedly popularised Yoga in the West for 50 years from the 1950s. (Express Photo)

The architectural concept of Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute set up in 1975 is based on Yoga. “According to ashtanga yoga, the body has eight limbs, so the building has eight columns. The plot was not rectangular or square but oblong, which has influenced the semi-circular design of the building, which ends in a firm wall at the back. Between the columns, the seven spaces are named after the states of consciousness. There are three tiers of ‘sadhana’ and, accordingly, the institute has three storeys,” says Prashant, who was assigned by BKS the task of teaching Yoga to his disciples after the institute came up.

BKS had then taken the role of a mentor and delegated teaching jobs to his son and others.

After a renovation 10 years ago, the institute can now house as many as 150 students. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

Classes were held on the upper floors that could accommodate 50 persons at a time. After a renovation 10 years ago, the institute can now house as many as 150 students.

Guruji was born in Bellur, Karnataka, on December 14, 1918, as the eighth child to his parents and had 10 siblings – four sisters and six brothers. His father was a school teacher and mother a homemaker.

As a child, BKS was thin, weak and frequently ill, having suffered tuberculosis, typhoid and malaria. His stomach was distended in a way that made it impossible for him to lift his head which, according to ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ “made him a laughingstock among his peers, and his friendlessness hindered his academic achievement”.

Yoga guru BKS Iyengar’s Hare Krishna yoga Institute in Pune. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

Though BKS had property in Bengaluru as well as a centre in his native village, which ran a number of social uplift projects, he spent his last days in Pune.

“During his last months, in 2013, we had wanted to paint this house and carry out some repair work. I said that he should go to his native village. He could stay in the guest house. Finally, he preferred to go to Bengaluru and stayed there for a while— but returned to Pune. It was here that he passed away in August 2014,” says Prashant. When he died at the age of 96, Guruji was given a befitting farewell by students, thousands of whom travelled to Pune. The momentum that he had given to Yoga continues to this day.

BKS would say, “By persistent and sustained practice, anyone and everyone can take the Yoga journey and reach the goal of illumination and freedom”.

Yoga guru BKS Iyengar’s Hare Krishna yoga Institute in Pune. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

When BKS was 16 years old, he was taken to Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, one of his brothers-in-law, who was a legendary teacher and healer. Krishnamacharya is considered the father of contemporary yoga and ran a school under the patronage of the then Maharaja of Mysore. The Yoga asanas were painful for BKS but the student practised diligently—and began to recover. Two years later, he was chosen to accompany his Krishnamacharya to Mumbai to conduct a lecture-demonstration session on yoga.

“Dr. VB Gokhale, who was the civil surgeon of Pune, saw the yoga demonstration and was impressed. He asked Guruji’s guruji, ‘Why don’t you depute someone to come to Pune so that we can also be trained in Yoga.’ He thought about my father, who could speak some broken English,” says Prashant. From Mumbai BKS did not even go home to Karnataka and came directly to Pune.

The Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute is still the heart of Iyengar’s hatha yoga movement and bustles with people of various nationalities. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

He began to teach Gokhale and his circle of medico friends and their families. Gokhale arranged some classes in Deccan Gymkhana as well. “My father had no job back home, and Pune offered him the opportunity to earn money. He decided to stay here. He also did not have a house to go back to in the village as his mother was then living with his brothers. Maybe, if he had a house in Karnataka he would have returned,” says Prashant. In Pune, BKS gave private tuition, mostly to the old Parsi families of the city.

It wasn’t a smooth road. The teenager from Bellur with a sandalwood paste on his forehead and a tuft of hair on his head, “faced discrimination”. In his biography, Guruji mentioned that when he was going to teach at Deccan Gymkhana a lot of people were unhappy that a south Indian was trying to gain a foothold. “They burnt the mats that were used for classes and took out a funeral procession. It was their way of telling my father to get out,” says Prashant. “But, then, some people like Gokhale intervened and said that my father should be allowed to teach and there should be no hostility against him. They also connected him to schools and colleges, where he began to conduct Yoga classes,” he adds.

Yoga guru BKS Iyengar’s Hare Krishna yoga Institute in Pune. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

BKS was also in search of a place to live, shifting always from one rented lodging to another. One of his residences was on MG Road which happened to be a haunted house. Nobody wanted to live there and few people passed that way. “My father had no fear so told the landlord, ‘Let me see how the ghost is’. In the months he stayed at the house, no supernatural being made an appearance,” says Prashant. BKS also stayed at a lodging house Rasta Path for some time and made friends with south Indians who resided in the area.

Finally, BKS came to Subhas Nagar, where he settled with his family at a rent of Rs 11 per month. The house had two rooms and a kitchen and bathroom. BKS would conduct classes in one of the rooms. This is where he and his wife, Ramamani Iyengar lived with their six children till 1974.

By then BKS had developed a sizeable number of supporters for Yoga. His friends in Pune had introduced him to people in Mumbai who were curious about the old Indian fitness method. People reported how they or their family members had been cured of ailments and recommended others to BKS. Doctors started sending patients to him. Among BKS’s students were freedom fighters and the philosopher J Krishnamurti.

Yoga guru BKS Iyengar’s photograph with former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

In 1952, Menuhin was visiting Mumbai and BKS went to meet him.It is said that the renowned violinist was tired and said he had only five minutes to give to BKS. The Yoga teacher used the time to guide Menuhin through an asana that got him into a deep sleep. When Menuhin woke up an hour later, he was ready to become a devotee of BKS. A few years later, BKS was Menuhin’s guest in Switzerland! Despite facing racism, BKS went on to set up Yoga training centres in several countries to spread the knowledge of the Indian fitness system to generations of students.

“There were offers for him to live in other bigger cities of India or even move abroad but Pune was his ‘karmabhoomi’. My father felt deeply indebted to the city that had become his launchpad. Some people said that he would have better prospects in Mumbai,” says Prashant. At one instance, Menuhin had asked him to shift to Switzerland, and BKS said that he was willing to travel to teach students but would never leave India, and Pune. His was the generation that had seen the freedom movement and he had a deep sense of respect for their country, recalls Prashant.

In 1973, BKS bought a 10,000 sq ft land in Shivajinagar, with donations from his students, to set up the main institute and his home. “Since Guruji was going abroad every year, he had a lot of foreign students. Many of them wanted to come to Pune as well so we needed a place. Before this centre came up, we had conducted sessions for a large South African group at a school,” says Prashant.

During his bachelor days, BKS did not want to get married, at least for a couple of years. His parents had tried to find a suitable bride for him but in vain. Once when BKS came to Karnataka his parents had invited a girl’s family to come over. BKS was home when Ramamani’s family arrived with her. The talks went off well among the elderly but BKS said that he needed time to think. “In the evening, he went out with his brother to buy groceries and my mother, who was around 14 at the time, was there bargaining with the shopkeeper. My father came back home and said that the girl was alright since she was practical about money,” smiles Prashant.

Ramamani never came into Yoga. Before the wedding, she had asked her brother about the work of her husband-to-be. “Her brother sat on the floor and stretched out his legs and said this is what Yoga was,” says Prashant. What Ramamani knew was that she would have to go far away to Pune. After moving to the city Ramamani, a proficient musician picked up Marathi language in a few months and became friends with the women in the neighbourhood. The children went to Marathi-medium schools. At home, the family followed Kannada traditions.

Pune was a cycle city at the time and BKS, too, would cycle 20-30 km daily to give Yoga lessons. It was exhausting, so he mechanised the cycle and used that to traverse the city. A year later, a disciple gifted BKS a moped.

The Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute is still the heart of Iyengar’s hatha yoga movement and bustles with people of various nationalities. Speaking in many accents, the disciples come seeking a greater understanding of the self as well as healthier bodies and minds. At the entrance two busts of Yogacharya Guruji BKS and his wife, Yoga Prerini Tapaswini Sow are installed.