IN THE NEWS, PART ERADU






Don't walk but run out to get the current issue of Eddie Stern's Namarupa magazine, a copy of which Miss Y presented to me when I walked in to take over her Mysore class yesterday (I was coming from a private lesson at the Chicago Yoga Center, where she was going for Richard Freeman's week-long intensive). So far the mag is worth reading from cover to cover and includes the photo essay of BKS Iyengar's trip to see Pattabhi Jois shortly after his birthday (they hadn't seen each other in, like, SIXTY-FIVE YEARS). There's an excerpt from Suketu Metha's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, many spiritual articles and photo essays as well as interviews with the next generation of the Krishamacharya legacy: Sharath Rangaswamy (who apparently is now officially the co-director of the AYRI), Kausthub Desikachar and Prashant Iyengar. They were all asked the same questions, and the answers are fascinating, to say the least. Suffice to say I couldn't put it down at the chiro's yesterday. Unfortunately there's no interview with BKS's daugther, Geetha Iyengar. Sisters may be doing it, yes, and doing it well -- but does anyone really give a toss?





More annoying is this brief Life magazine story about Mr. BKS Iyengar (for a legible view, click here ):







Some tit bits:

The first line: "Yoga was unknown in America in August 1956..."

Um, what about Vivekanada's speech at the Parliament of World Relgions in Chicago, in 1893? And Paramahansa Yogananda's famous 1946 book (still in print!), Autobiography of a Yogi? And his Self-Realization Fellowship?

And from Mr. Iyengar (regarding when he began teaching in 1937):

"There were 10 teachers in the whole of India. I was my own guru."

For those keeping score, the BKS stands for Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja. In the Namarupa piece, Guruji refers to him as Sundararaja (they also recall that Krisnamacharya's famous first female student, Indra Devi, got that name after leaving India).