Yogi

Ruban A., 25, is from Chennai, over on the east coast. He studied accounting but wants to make a living teaching yoga, which he loves. He is a slight, wiry man with southern Indian angular cheekbones and immense dark eyes. It is those eyes that help make Indians seem so fully "present" when you engage them. Intelligence is also part of that presence, often, and Ruban's comes out in his way of seeking harmony between traditional India---the world of Aryuvedic yoga, meditation and healing---and a modern existence that will include, he hopes, a succesful yoga center to support him and his family comfortably.

Ruban is also modern in the way he relates to his wife of four months, Maraya, who is 24. While theirs was a family-arranged marriage, in the half hour we spent with them together they seemed wonderfully fond of each other. Nor has she taken his family name, as is the old custom. They have combined their names, like the up-to-date youngsters on The New York Times weddings-and-unions page. Maraya's father is an Aryuvedic practitioner in Chennai, Ruban told us, with a "gift from God" for both healing and locating underground water. Members of Ruban's family are all Roman Catholic, which they appear to fold into traditional Indian spirituality with no apparent hitches.

Maraya teaches chemistry in Chennai. Yesterday she was visiting her new husband in his windowless rented room, a five-minute walk from Sevas. A small, genial woman in a sari of many shades of purple and blue, Maraya served Joe and me sliced "chick-oo," a fruit that seemed to be a cross between a date and an overripe plum. While Ruban hopped on his bicycle and checked on a client he was seeing later in the day, Maraya told us about the charms of Chennai (formerly Madras) and invited us for a visit the next time we're in India. Ruban's elderly landlord and landlady poked their heads in, perhaps to see who Maraya's foreign male visitors might be.

The hour-and-fifteen-minute yoga session, our first ever, took place outside on the canopied patio. Cows stood just beyond the palm-frond fencing. Chickens clucked. A grey cat sleeping on a stone opened its eyes from time to time, as the three of us lowered ourselves onto straw mats, Joe and I facing Ruban, obediently and expectantly.

We both liked it. A number of our friends at home do yoga, and now we know why. It's a way of both slowing down and stretching out. It's calming, and yet it heightens awarenes of one's physical self and its best functioning. It also heightens awareness of one's physical limitations. Joe, 49, was much more limber than I was at 69. During one exercise, Joe could wrap his legs around his head four times, just like Ruban. I could only do it once. Also, I don't think you're supposed to get winded doing yoga---not a good sign. I should have quit smoking in 1965 instead of 1985.

We liked Ruban's pleasing manner---the sing-song-y low chant (in Tamil, we think) with which he opened and closed the session, and the long, soothing OMMMMMMMMM we all crooned together.

The yoga sesion cost $13 for the two of us, a good deal. Joe photographed Ruban afterwards; when Ruban saw Joe's camera he asked him for pictures to be used in brochures and on "banners" he is planning, and Joe was happy to help.

Tomorrow we leave sweet Palolem for Mumbai. We're flying up on something called Spice Airways. I have sometimes wondered where I was supposed to place my long legs on these cramped, no-frills airlines. Now I know.