Things go wrong for Mr P on the yoga mat

Shavasana - Image via Wikipedia

Mr P liked yoga. He could go on and on about the delights of yoga. Like most yogis, he also liked talking about the goodness of being a vegetarian. And if you ask me if Mr P is a vegetarian I would have to say yes.....when there is no non vegetarian food available. Mr P justified himself that though he craved to be a vegetarian, “the spirit was willing, but the flesh made him weak!!!” One can only wonder whether Mr P saw the pun here when he slightly misquoted the original saying.

Anyway, coming back to the topic of yoga, Mr P had a yoga teaching certificate under his belt. He had obtained it from Shivananda Ashram probably when they were going through a period of severe shortage of students learning how to teach yoga. Still, it was a Yoga Shiromani certificate giving him the eligibility to teach yoga.  After obtaining the qualification, Mr P used to do yoga once in a while. Whenever he noted that his physique was expanding much faster than the progression of his spirit, he would turn to yoga. The Asana that Mr P liked best was Shavasana or corpse posture where one lies flat on the back with arms and legs kept straight and relaxed and eyes closed. And of course Mr P fell asleep quite often while doing this posture. Mat time was nap time for Mr P. He would wake up finally and look at his watch and be happy to see that he had spent at least two hours doing yoga! He was very puzzled why the girth of his waist never seemed to decrease!

It was while thinking about focussing more on yoga that Mr P had the brilliant idea of starting a yoga class. He believed that if he taught yoga, he would be doing all the postures with the students rather than just fall asleep on Shavasana. So Mr P spread the word around and soon had a class started. There were five students on the first day. Mr P started with his favourite posture - the Shavasana. He demonstrated it for his students.

Lying flat on his back on the yoga mat spread on the floor he began with “Relax your toes.”

More than any yoga stretches, what Mr P was good at stretching was the word "relax". He believed that stretching it out was an integral part of yoga and so he said "Relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax your toes!"

“Relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax your feet,” followed after a while. “Relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax your thighs, stomach, chest, hands, face, eyes,” and so on he went upward slowly in a gentle, sombre voice.

When he woke up, he saw that his students were sitting up politely waiting for him. Someone mumbled about Mr P’s snoring being so noisy that they just could not relax. To cover up his embarrassment Mr P gave them a pep talk on the importance of listening to the instructor absolutely. He had not asked them to get up from the Shavasana pose, then why did they?

The next day there were three students in the class. Mr P began with some breathing exercises. When he said “Inhale”, the students had to breathe in deeply and hold their breaths. They were to breathe out when Mr P said “Exhale!” Things were going fine and Mr P had just said an “Inhale” when Mr P’s mobile phone beeped indicating that a message had arrived. He got the phone out of his pocket and checked it. The message was from a friend about a dinner date. He texted his reply back and then turned his attention back on his students. They were red and blue in the face and seemed to be struggling. Can you guess why?

He had not asked them to exhale yet!

In the next class Mr P started with his favourite Shavasana posture, and slept off like usual because .................... he was all by himself on the yoga mat once again!

Pitfalls of cooking and Mr P : Things get more slippery!

You may recall from the earlier post that Mr P had wanted to cook some Dahl for his guest ( http://avatarofmrbean.com/2012/03/28/pitfalls-of-cooking-and-mr-p-the-saga-continues/ ). The way Mr P prepares Dahl is quite easy. You just have to pressure cook lentils (either green gram which is also known as moong dal or red gram or Pigeon pea which is also known as tur dal) in water with a pinch of turmeric powder until they form a nice soup. Then you heat two tablespoons of oil in a pot and add half a teaspoonful of mustard seeds, cumin seeds and a couple of red chillies. You add the cooked lentils into the pot when the mustard starts popping. Into the liquid you can now add salt to taste, a bit of garlic paste and a very tiny pinch of ground cumin and optionally a pinch of garam masala. Green chillies, onion and one or two tomatoes may also be added. The Dahl is ready when the soup boils for a few minutes.

Image via Wikipedia

Just as Mr P was about to start preparing lunch he realized that he had run out of dish washing liquid and cooking oil. So he brought out the bottles of Canola oil and Sunlight dish wash he had bought earlier in the week and placed one by the stove and the other by the sink. Mr P then cooked some lentils in the pressure cooker and nodded off in the kitchen chair reading the day’s newspaper. The cooker's whistle woke him up when the lentils were thoroughly cooked into a soup. Mr P poured two generous tablespoons of oil into a pot heating up on the stove. He was in a hurry because he had spent time reading the newspaper (he definitely would not admit to napping) when he should have been doing other things to get lunch ready for his guest G who was soon to return from shopping. He did not wait for the oil to get really hot before he added the mustard seeds, the cumin seeds and the pieces of red chili peppers. He was in so much of a hurry that he did not wait for the mustard seeds to pop before he dumped the cooked lentils into the pot with some water and added the garlic paste, cumin and the garam masala powder. He left the pot to boil on the stove and scurried to the kitchen sink to do the breakfast dishes. He opened the tap, stoppered the sink and poured a generous amount of the new dish washing liquid into the basin.

"This is one funny dish washing liquid", thought Mr P. "Looks like someone has invented a non sudsy detergent!".
He put the dishes in to wash. As he tried to rinse the plates, he noticed something strange. The dishes had turned very slick and greasy and no amount of rinsing with fresh water could make them clean. They had tiny globules of something like oil all over them.

His hands also felt very oily. He smelled his hands and the plate he was trying hard to clean. Instead of the lemony smell of the dish wash, he smelled something very different.

“If it feels like oil, smells like oil and looks like oil, it must be oil,” he decided and checked the bottle that he had put by the side of the sink. It said “Pure Canola Oil”.

Mr P groaned. He was in for a big job now to get the dishes oil free. However, he had not yet realized that he was in Double trouble with Bubble trouble. Have you?

A lemony smell was wafting from the pot on the stove. Mr P rushed to check his Dahl. Something strange was happening to it. It was all frothy, sudsy and lathering up!!!