‘Friends, it’s me from Shimla…’

Kuldeep Chauhan in Shimla

Unlike familiar yoga practitioners and spiritual inquisitors, they thrive in the thick of city life, chatting about their friends and laughingly inquiring about adding more chelas (followers/fans) to their tribe in a kind of newfound liveliness of the yoga gospel. 

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“I rise early to be able to stretch myself and meditate before I start my routine,” says Dr Mamta Mokta, professor and director, Center for Women Studies, HPU. She is also the president of resident welfare association in New Shimla. “We conduct cleanliness and green drives on the campus and streets”, she says. 

“Yoga and meditation is something I never skip in my routine,” says Balwant Dutta, an apple orchardist in Kalgaon village, Rohru in Shimla. “You feel inclined towards helping others. I have a group of 7 residents. We laugh and talk to each other about our well-being,” he says.

Tripta, a government school teacher, has been doing yoga for 16 years. “You get to know fellow yoga practitioners, gradually a bond develops, it becomes more than just bending and straightening one’s body,” she says.

With mobile phones, laptops, tablets and pan drives containing bhajans and devotional songs, these groups also interact on social media. 

“It is a pleasure to meet lively friends chatting and sharing their experience on WhatsApp or in yoga sessions sharing various things of life,” says Rahul Lodta, who attends various sessions organised by different organisations.