Question: What do you do when the world’s largest freshwater lake freezes?
Answer: You spread a mat and do Yoga.
I was about 8 years old when we got our first refrigerator at home. It was a shining white, much taller than me and had a capacity of a hundred and sixty five liters. [It had two doors with the upper one beyond my reach and used to store chocolates and other attractions that were supposedly harmful for my teeth. It joined the family through the hands of two men struggling to carry to through the narrow doors of the house.] My mother explained to me that it was a big box that can hold ice. My mind always wondered why anyone would need a block of ice that big. A hundred and sixty five liters big!
As I got accustomed to using the refrigerator, one of my favorite things to do was to fill containers of various shapes with water, place them in the freezer and then carve out the ice frozen in the shape of the container. I fashioned myself as an expert ice sculptor. Among other things. Of course, living in tropical India, I did not see my ice sculptures last more than a few minutes.
When I first saw Lake Baikal from the air, it looked like the world’s largest refrigerator had been opened and the blocky sculpture let out to shine under the skylights of the sun. The Russian winter in Irkutsk touches temperatures that remain so low for so long that the surface of Baikal freezes over. Solid ice, for a depth of at least a meter, thick enough in places for cars to drive on. An ice sculpture that is made by the cold hands of the Northern wind and carved in the shape of the rocky rift of the earth underneath it.
The plan was not much. Finish off the work-related meetings to mutual satisfaction and travel to Baikal. But once I got there, the immensity of the landscape overwhelmed me. I couldn’t even describe what I was doing. I mean, come to think about it, wouldn’t it sound ridiculous if you said “I’m driving a car on a lake”?
The thing about Baikal is that you can walk on it once it’s completely frozen. But it does not freeze as a whole, in an instant. There are jagged ridges in the edges that look like they are the frozen remnants of waves that crashed on the coast. Looking through the ice is looking through a window into another world. There are vertical layers of ice that petal out like the pages of an open, standing book. There are frothy bubbles where snow froze with a layer of ice on top. Due to what we in school called the anomalous behavior of water, the water freezes in so many layers that looking through the ice into the depths, is looking at a mirror through a myriad of veils.
When I looked down through the glassy ice window of the lake’s surface, the layers of ice, frozen over the days and months of winter, reminded me of how our life’s memories are collected. For a moment, the brightness of the landscape dazzled me into a visual silence with my eyes blinded to all hues and shades.
An eerie calmness pervaded the very air that hung solid, frozen by the cold of the ice below it. A meditative serenity that formed the shore and bottom of this sea of tranquillity. I fished out the yoga mat I had carried in my suitcase, hoping perhaps, for just this moment.
Stepping into -22 degrees and a 10m/s wind, without a windcheater is an experience. It is as if the world has imported a pair of arms that had spent their lifetime in Pluto, and is using them to embrace you in a smothering, frigid hug.
After slowly undoing the layers I had worn to keep the blood flowing in my vessels, I began with Padmasana. After testing my balance with Vrikshasana, I let myself flow the way the Baikal would flow if it were warmer. “Be like water”, I told myself, “Take the shape of the container you are in”. So, I spread myself on the mat and let Baikal move me the way it wanted to.
As though wanting to contrast the white with the colors of the rainbow, Baikal gently bent my legs and thorax into a bow, Dhanurasana. Out of the bow, flew the pigeon in Kapotasana. Attracted by the snow, came an unlikely animal in a place with so much water, the Camel in Ushtrasana. Descending from the camel, the warrior stretched his legs in Veerabhadrasana. The stretched legs pulled the body into the wheel pose, Chakrasana. From Chakrasana, I moved into the Bhujangasana, the pose of the snake.
I wanted to wrap up the asanas, with the Bhujangasana, as the divine snake, Sesha, is what remains after everything else ceases to exist. But I found a solid block of ice, almost a perfect cuboid and almost exactly the length of my body. Unable to resist the temptation, I once again let the camel take over. As I returned from the Ushtrasana, I felt a sense of warmth flow within me. Even without the overcoat, the blood still flowed. Was this the Antaragni, the Tapas that Patanjali spoke about? Was the Bhujangasana not merely a pale imitation of Anantasesha, the endless snake, but also symbolic of the Kundalini coiled within us? With these questions, I rolled the yoga mat back into my suitcase, and bid farewell to Baikal.
Of course, my grumbling stomach told me that I had quite literally “burned” calories to keep myself warm. It was time for lunch.
