SPECIAL SECTION ON GEETA’S PASSING
Your Practice Brings the Secrets to You REFLECTIONS ON GEETAJI’S SHRADDHANJALI BY AMITA BHAGAT
The manner in which they integrated us, their students, into the family life was generous and deeply meaningful to us all.
The platform at the front of the main practice hall
On the day of Geetaji’s Shraddhanjali, Dec. 28, 2018, the Iyengar family kindly opened the Institute for practice to those students who were in Pune. There was a puja going on inside the house, and the sounds of the mantras being chanted floated up to the main practice hall, which was being adorned with flowers for the function to be held that evening. We were invited for lunch on behalf of the Iyengar family, and so we went into the house where the puja—which Prashantji had sat for—had just finished. We bowed down and paid our respects to Geetaji’s picture and also to Prashantji. Lunch included different types of rice, curd, vegetable dishes, papad, sweets—all the six tastes—and was served on giant leaves. We were given prasad, blessed food, and also a 10-rupee note and were told that a guest could not leave empty-handed. The hospitality of the Iyengar family throughout this time after Geetaji passed away was abundant: from the invitation to come into their family home and go to the cremation grounds on the day she passed, to opening the Institute for practice during the 13th-day mourning period to speaking to every single person at the lunch. The manner in which they integrated us, their students, into the family life was generous and deeply meaningful to us all. 18
That evening, we gathered for Geetaji’s Shraddhanjali, which is a tribute to someone who has passed, a memorial service remembering them and their life. This ceremony is held after a 13-day mourning period, which all Hindus follow when someone dies. A few of us were still in Pune following the December celebrations, and more people flew in from other cities in India and abroad. Geetaji’s picture was set against Patanjali with flowers adorning her photo and a small diya (oil lamp). Another picture was up on the platform with the quote, “It is your practice that brings the secrets to you. No teacher can give you the secrets.” Sunita Iyengar explained to us that today Geetaji had reached Vaikuntha, the abode of Vishnu, and the suffering she had to go through to get to the doors of Vaikuntha were over. Abhijata opened the evening by leading us in chanting the invocation to Patanjali. Prashantji, now the senior-most Iyengar Yoga teacher, presided first, telling us stories from Geetaji’s childhood and how her life had been laid out on the path of yoga. He recounted her life from childhood and told us how, in the 1960s, she became a yoga teacher when Guruji started going abroad. He left her in charge of teaching at the Gujurati school where there was a public class. Others contributed to the evening with stories, reflections, and memories of Geetaji as well. Nawaz Kamdin, a senior teacher at RIMYI and lifelong student and friend of Guruji and Geetaji, shared how life was not easy for the Iyengar family in the beginning. Geetaji, she said, had to travel around by bicycle to people’s houses to promote her lessons and propagate yoga. “[Geeta’s] perseverance as a teacher could be experienced in the medical classes, where she left no stone unturned.” Yoga Samachar Spring | Summer 2019
