TRIPTIK

A debut memoir chronicles a young man’s journey to learn yoga and see the world.

Brandão was a 23-year-old yoga instructor in Brazil in 1976 when he decided to further his studies with a six-month training session at the Yoga Institute in Mumbai, India. The first part of his narrative is an atmospheric account of his voyage there on a cargo ship through rough weather—“Moving up to the top of a large wave….One has the impression that the hull will not be able to resist the impact and the ship will break in half”—and the dank monotony of maritime life. He was then bowled over by India’s color, bustle, and poverty; its chaotic streets full of vehicles and livestock; and its haughty, corrupt bureaucrats who hassled him endlessly about his travel documents. At the Yoga Institute, devoted to the teachings of founding guru Shri Yogendra, the author found an oasis of calm and learning. Brandão draws piquant thumbnails of students and teachers along with evocative scenes of yoga procedural. (“Seated on the floor with legs crossed and eyes closed, I feel my entire body expand and gain volume in an unusual way, as if I were turning into a giant that weighed tons.”) The final section of his memoir covers his ensuing overland trip by train, bus, and ferry from India to Wales, much of it an odyssey of grand sights, squalid accommodations, and gastrointestinal crises, including an emergency pit stop in Iran during which the bus drove off, leaving him stranded with no money, luggage, or passport. Writing in brisk, limpid prose based on his travel diaries, Brandão’s book keeps his picaresque adventures low-key. He’s raptly attuned to the physical and cultural adjustments he had to make as a stranger in strange lands, but he also enlarges his focus by twining in brief, digestible meditations on yogic philosophy. (“Attachment, that terrible killjoy, comes camouflaged in a great variety of guises and prevents our living to the full….We delude ourselves into believing that we are in control when, in reality, we are but passengers in transit through this life, and nothing actually belongs to us.”) The result is an exuberant and engaging fish-out-of-water story that’s a bit more thought-provoking than the norm.

A charming, knockabout travelogue and meditation on the 1970s international yoga scene.