When you are a twenty something and newly employed by ICICI in Mumbai, life gets surprisingly exciting. To get to work in their ultra modern office in the newly built BKC, an iconic building with a state-of-the-art bank on the ground floor is no different from hitting the jackpot. Especially when your typical day starts at 6.30am when you leave home, reach your workplace, head straight to the gym, followed by steam and shower. Next, you make it to your desk by 9am and the first work you do is visit the canteen. A canteen that serves the best collection of veg, non-veg and healthy food. After what one can call eternity, you give some chance to doing real work.

To cut to the chase, corporate life did start on a good note – getting well paid, being overfed and thoroughly pampered, thus turning my maternal home into a dorm where I would retire each night only to sleep. Top this up with a young team. Ready to party and picnic. On one such occasion, we did plan a day picnic. I remember everyone being excited. All except a Parsi fellow, a Batliwala or someone, who was in his thirties then. Old and utterly boring as per my skewed lens of youth, new to the world of work. Someone I wouldn’t want to be friends with, ever. His only crime – being too boring despite all elements that had the potential to become a likeable personality – tall, lean, living in a world of his own and the proud owner of a BMW motorbike! The point here is he refuses to join us; the most fun people in the world. His reason – he has yoga on Sundays!

“So what? Can’t you miss one yoga uncleji?”

I vividly remember not being able to digest his reason at all. My friends and I happened to laugh at his lame life. Fast forward twenty years, and I can’t believe I am living proof I would live the same lame routine – Yoga Sundays!

But can I call it lame anymore? Just like 60s is the new 40s, yoga and mindfulness are in vogue. Not just in India, but across the globe. Humankind has finally figured that living it up week after week, month on month and year after year with the party mode on is not the answer to a happy happy life. The silver strands on my head have driven home the message that one needs to brace for the surprises and storms life throws at us. It is certainly not throwing lemons and making lemonade is helping no one.

That is when yoga and meditation come to rescue. A reset button that makes sure you can get past another week calm and relaxed. So I may have been a tad young and judgmental two decades ago, my bad. But I am deep enough to know how crucial that Sunday routine is. I spend my Sunday mornings at The Art of Living Center, getting all refreshed and ready to get back to the grind.

P.S. Plenty of jargon seems common these days. Like manifestation, mindfulness, self-love, self-care. I believe all of those words put together cannot achieve what yoga can – Just take a deep breath in, and breathe out to release the trash from emotional atyachaar!

My Sundays super-charge me for yet another week. How about yours?

Notes to self – Well done on the timing today. It is certainly the result of determination, or shall we say Yoga?