Sharath Jois 1971-2024

This is my personal recollection. It’s not meant to stand for anything other than that. However, it has somewhat helped me come to terms with the sudden shock of Sharathji’s death, and, along with it, many of my still unreconciled thoughts about practicing in Mysore and modern ashtanga.

I remember the first time I saw you. A very skinny young guy in a vest and a lungi beside your grandfather in Brick Lane, London, after a workshop. Everyone buzzing around your grandfather after the class as you watched smiling that faintly distant smile.

I was 25 and coincidentally working as a chef in a restaurant opposite the venue. I went back to work that day with that picture of you in my mind, your lightness, shyness, open gaze. Until I met you in Mysore a few years later, I used to watch videos on YouTube of you practicing before my practice. I idealised you.

When I finally first met you in Mysore it was 2007. The family had recently moved into the ‘new old shala’ in Gokulum. It was the time when your grandfather was getting old and yet you seemed reluctant to take over. Only when he fell asleep counting a class, you’d step in stepping in to take over.

It didn’t seem as if you wanted to take over. People said you wanted to be a wildlife photographer and only came back from university in Bangalore because your mum asked you to help your grandfather.

Due to Theresa hosting you at Purple Valley, you invited us upstairs for the privileged coffee to meet your grandfather. I remember you sitting cross legged on the balcony talking to one of the workers as we sat on the sofa talking to your mum and your grandfather wondered in and out.

But, that first month in Mysore I was dissatisfied with, you as many are on their first time, and was to become a theme. I came and went in practice unnoticed, with no postures and the only instruction given to close my mouth when dropping back (which was, in fact, reasonable to be honest!).

I left, none the wiser really, generally underwhelmed. The only strange occurrence being that you also told me to put my hands through my legs in Garba Pindasana, which I wasn’t doing at that point as I’d had knee surgery (torn meniscus) a few months back. But, in front of everyone in a led class I did it, and, funnily enough from this moment on my knee made a full recovery where it hadn’t previously.

However, it was when you came to Purple Valley that I finally got the chance to talk to you in person. Mainly you would ask me to make you watermelon juices which I felt honoured to do. But, at the end of your retreat, sitting on the terrace just you and I, you said I could come to Mysore any time, just turn up.

So, next month I took some time off the Goa retreat and came again to Mysore for a month. You let me in, but then, roundly ignored me for the month. I got one posture, pasasana, in few days of my trip. Again, I was underwhelmed. And, of course, disappointed with you. I thought you had invited me personally.

I decided I might not come back again just to practice primary, when, after all, I was doing advanced in my own practice at home. How little I understood at the time. It was only a few years later when your grandfather had just died, that I started to realise that there was a quality in practicing in Mysore which was generally missing in my practice. Fairly, intangible, the best way I could describe it would be stability.

So, Theresa and I decided to start visiting Mysore more regularly, for 3 months every year as at that time that was the norm for committed students of yours. This time from the first weeks a very strange thing happened; inexplainable to this day; you let me go through the whole of Intermediate and invited me to the led Intermediate class that Sunday.

This was both very unusual as a precedent, as well as very surprising to me personally, as prior to this, I’d gone utterly unnoticed to you I thought. On the other hand, everything changed when you saw I couldn’t come up from karandavasana one day but had been going down only so far and come straight up before I fell.

Then you roundly announced that I wouldn’t get any more postures until I could do this (although didn’t take any off me either) or, somehow, every day was at my mat at the very time the posture came around. But, in that first 3 months stay I just couldn’t get it. Indeed, I had always fairly skipped over it feeling that my body just wouldn’t have the capacity to do something involving so much strength.

Nevertheless, not wanting to disappoint you, I went home after every failure in class and practiced the posture until my elbows bled and I had to plaster up the raw skin to not bleed everywhere in class. After three months however I could almost do it.

So, I started believing that there was an unusual quality in the teaching relationship with you worth pursuing, for this had changed a whole narrative I had about myself and my body. It was indeed a kind of tough love you taught with, but it worked with me – and I also noticed you didn’t push everyone like this.

It seemed that I had started to recognise the benefit in the kind of stricture you taught with in Mysore, and, consequentially, you’d started then to show an interest in my because I’d understood the point. I went back and set up a Mysore program as you wanted us to do at that time in my hometown of London ready to come back the next year for 3 months.

I believe it was the second time that you had just started having assistants to help in the room. This was a huge step for us as no Westerner had ever been allowed to teach In Mysore. I happened to be asked, and on the first day somehow turned up a half an hour late. As I walked in, you turned to look at that clock that hung over the entrance pointedly.

Keeping to our times (15 early on shala time) was always very important with you. Even so, in this great oversight of mine, you weren’t angry. I used to see sternness from you but can’t ever remember anger. And there were lots of reasons everyday why you might be as all kinds of people came and went with all kinds of crazy behaviour.

In fact, you could be surprisingly light-hearted and funny. I remember when assisting you, you running to the bathroom one day, laughing and saying that last night you’d eaten out at the Mall of Mysore.

But the one thing I never understood was your instance in the room on making people catch. I remember you making sure that I’d got the bigger, stiffer guys to catch, and I felt conflicted as I didn’t like having to do so – it seemed to be a movement inappropriate for their bodies that was hurting them.

Still, much of our relationship was awkward and a little strange. I wanted recognition and was roundly in awe of you and that wasn’t really your thing You gave me a lot of postures, but still never seemed impressed with me.

I remember when I finally completed advanced A on my third trip. On the last day you let me do the final posture, but when I came to the office to say goodbye, you simply told me that many things were not correct with what I was doing without saying what.

And that was almost the last time we talked. The last time was in a week in London when finally, I did touch your feet like I’d seen others doing. But it didn’t really seem to work I felt. It just wasn’t our relationship.

Our relationship was economical in this sense, mostly based on you asking me where Theresa was if she didn’t come to practice. And, then, sometimes pointing out the flaws in my postures; point your toe, catch here, straight you leg, lift up..

The only time I almost impressed you was when Laksmish told you I had memorised many of the mantras we said in the latterly established chanting classes. One day in the office when we were saying goodbye to leave at the end of the second trip you mentioned that he’d told you I’d memorised the mantras and asked me to chant a particular one. Which, sadly, I fluffed, going totally blank.

This was often the case in front of you. I remember waiting on the steps outside the shala before the Sunday led Intermediate class. These were some of the most nerve-wracking moments of my life strangely, as around 20 -30 of us at that time went in to be scrutinised in every posture. Somehow, not that you asked for it, but the pressure was immense.

Now looking back, I see that so many of the experiences I had with you were simply what your presence drew out of me, through the kind of reverence and veneration I held you in at the time.

In recent years I’ve felt conflicted. As it is with many people I think, I felt that you and I had some unfinished business somehow. I wasn’t planning on going back again, but also lacked any clear resolution to the kind of profoundly intense experiences I’d had with you in Mysore. But sadly, I never got to see you and talk again.

Then, more recently, I became somewhat popular on social media. Not least, for looking more objectively on my experiences in and with your ashtanga and critiquing them for better and worse.

But you may have noticed, I never spoke ill of you (did you ever notice?). I always appreciated my time practicing with you so would never have said a word against you. Despite all the pressure around you, the adulation and everyone wanting something from you, although I never considered you in truth to be my guru, I was always impressed with you and the way you held up.

I did criticise Mysore though, and some of the rules and things that went on there. I tried to be respectful, but I always wondered if you ever read anything I wrote and hoped, really, you hadn’t.

I also didn’t like the size of your new place, your blown-up photos on the walls, and the whole ‘paramguru’ thing. But I still would never mention anything overtly although I did worry latterly over the direction in which things were going. More recently, from some of the pragmatic changes I heard you were making in Mysore, and, of course, with the Active Series, I was hopeful.

I feel you’ve had a hard life. For many years having to stand by and watch your grandfathers’ inappropriate behaviour, trying to say something in vain. Then, when he died, all the adulation passed to you and must have weighed heavy. I saw you age quickly, imagined you trapped in your house a lot of the time not wanting to go out and face the students and your fame amongst the locals.

I felt for you again when the Me-Too stuff came out. Although I fully endorsed it, I still felt sorry for the memory of your grandfather I know you still held in high esteem.

And, finally, I wonder, deep down, what you really made of it all? What you thought of lifting and dropping back so many sweaty Westerners every day for so many years, their pushing and striving for postures you full well led nowhere and had only broken you, as your grandfather had pushed you the hardest in them to be the best for so many years to cement thr family legacy.

I wonder if you made peace with it all? You seemed to cope in the light of everything remarkably well, but I wonder what was going on inside.