THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:“It’s like a hidden personality,” confesses theatre artist Munshi Baiju as he ambles up the steps of the Kanakakunnu Palace grounds. “Most people know me just as a theatre personality,” he adds. His is a name quite synonymous with the theatre, but not many are aware of this other side of his which he has kept under the wraps.
Fondly referred to as Munshi Baiju for having essayed the role of the bald man who carries the rooster in the television satire ‘Munshi’, Baiju is one of the senior most teachers at the highly-acclaimed yoga centre Sivananda Yoga.
As the day broke on Thursday, a sense of frenzied excitement cloaked the city. People could be seen toting yoga mats and sauntering through the palace grounds. It has only been a few years since yoga became the new fad. But Baiju is one of the old timers. His initiation into yoga happened decades ago, in the early 1980s. “Just like theatre, yoga just happened,” he smiles.
He was just 12 when he, along with two friends, chanced upon a book on yoga at a friend’s home. The different postures intrigued them and they started trying out the postures. “We would circulate the book amongst ourselves and try to learn from it,” he says. It went on for quite some time. But it was only when he hit the age of 19 that he was initiated into the yogic way of life by yoga teacher Padmanabha Pillai.
He openly expresses his disappointment about how yoga is now being made into a lucrative business and how it is being appropriated by some religious sects. “Sadly it is being politicised and given a communal colour. There is Suryanamaskar, but how can one community claim it. Can you claim the sun?” he asks. “Those who follow the essence of yoga are hard to find. It has turned into a business. Take the case of the synthetic mats. One shouldn’t do yoga in it. Use a grass mat or use a cloth on the synthetic ones,” says Baiju.He explains how Yoga has helped him in theatre. “Sometimes I get anxious before a play. So 20 minutes before a play is set to begin, I do yoga and it helps in relaxation,” he says.
Being happy is one of the rules of the yogic life, he says. “But not many are aware of it,” he says as he leafs through a book on yoga and nods at a posture of a man in a seated yoga posture. “How can one get angry while resting in this pose. You can’t, there is total alignment here, a balance. You are at peace,” he says. “There is nothing to lose if you do yoga,” he says. “Yoga helps in your spiritual, intellectual, mental, and physical health. The medical benefits are aplenty,” he admits. But he feels yoga is more than that.
“Most people do not know why they are doing yoga. One needn’t stay in a contorted posture for merely health benefits. You have clinical facilities for that. I think it was my destiny that I should take up yoga. I feel that yoga is for self-realisation,” he says, with a conviction which can only be matched by someone who has understood the true spirit of yoga.