Speaking the Language

My mother asked me a million times if I'd be able to speak the language here, and I said yes, they'd be using English. That's mostly true at the Institute, but far less true at shops or when catching a rickshaw. Today on the street two teenage girls said "hello" in the biggest, friendliest way, so I stopped and chatted with them. They clearly wanted to have an exchange of some kind. Very sweet.

At the Institute, most of the instruction is given in English, but there's a steady stream of Marathi, as well. Prashant drops into it when he's making a joke to the locals, it seems, and Geeta uses it when she wants to get one of the teaching assistants to do something differently (that's putting it mildly). Today during the practice session Geeta, Raya, and Abhi had a long conversation in Marathi that sounded a lot like an argument, with several people talking at once, but by the end everyone was laughing and smiling. It would be great to know what they were talking about.

Later there was yet more filming going on, and Geeta gave another interview (in Marathi) while we were all in Savasana. Later Raya gave us a little synopsis. He said that Geeta told the interviewer that designating June 21 as International Yoga Day was a nice recognition of this now popular endeavor, but real yoga is done regularly, consistently, over a long period of time, not just one day a year.