It’s humid, and though humidity can do wonders for your complexion and hair—moisturizing, and nourishing, and preserving youthfulness, when combined with hot-hotness and polluted urban centres it can lead to a sticky sweaty dirty existence, and the feeling that you are wallowing in your own sweaty stench. After a long day of solving all of the world’s problems—poverty, pestilence, war, misery, you know the sort, and doing so in the well ventilated, but not air-conditioned room within our former colonial office space, the sticky gets even worse commuting with 1.5-2 million other souls in traffic plagued by diesel fumes and dusty roads. As I have mentioned before the Colombo commuters are great communicators with their horns.
Beep-beep –“I’m behind you.” “I’m beside you” I’m in front of you”
Beep-beep— move out of my way/let me through.
Beep-beep—“hurry up, slow poke”
Beeeeeeep—“I’m a massive bus with too many people get the heck out of the way before I run you over”
Bip bip—“hi, cutie want to talk to me?”
Boop boop—“Look at me I’m driving through an intersection…” and on and on and on.
So imagine if you will, nearly 2 million of us filling the roads and sidewalks of measly little Colombo after the sun has beaten down over the city all day, and though the air is filled with moisture the dust and particles float among us, we are packing our sweaty bodies into buses, tri-shaws, cars, bikes, and some of us are walking. We weave in and out of traffic searching for the quickest way home or to our respective destinations.
Mine is yoga, down Havelock Road and over to Amarasekera Mawatha. It begins around 6 while the sun is still up and the commuters still raging.
I’ve arrived using several modes of transportation, after avoiding death in the streets, and often a bit anxious. Sam (my Australian-born yoga instructor) --her husband waits for us at the garage door reclining barefoot and in his lungi and directs us up the three floors to the rooftop. With each step up I can feel the intensity of the streets falling away down the stairwell. By the time I reach the open rooftop the horns and motors can still be heard, but their effects on me are greatly diminished.
The sun is slipping lower into the sky, painting it pinks and oranges and reds. The crows and daytime birds are vociferously making their way to their evening nesting places. The bats silently head southeast. Our class begins and as I stretch and glide into postures, the noises of the day slow and slip into a mellower evening hush.
The sun dips into the sea, just beyond the rooftop. Dusk passes quickly and by the time we are laying in our savasana postures, the stars have emerged and the moon lights our practice. The busy city has transformed in only a couple of hours and I find my own ‘urban peace’.
