The one thing I enjoyed most during my brief vacation in Rio de Janeiro, in the late spring of 2001, was the jogging I did every morning on the world-famous Copacabana beach. The beauty of the beach certainly had a lot to do with it. And the beauty of seminude women, most of them just basking in the morning sun and others playing volleyball, also had something to do with it. But there were also other things that made my morning run a memorable experience.

            One day, a karate class being conducted on the beach caught my attention. It was conducted not by an Oriental, but by a Brazilian. The class had 20 students, men and women, young and old, some very old. The very old, I noticed, were of Japanese or Chinese origin. Their dedication and concentration would make any jogger stop and watch. I was intently watching them when a fellow-jogger, bare-chested, maybe in his sixties, stopped and walked toward me. "Don’t you have such things in your country?" he asked, smilingly.

            "Which country are you talking about?" I asked, also smilingly. It was meant to be a quiz, and I was glad that he took it as such without any explaining on my part.

            "India, of course," he said, "it is writ large on your face."

            A German native, he was at the time living in Rio de Janeiro. He said he had been to India several times and gave me the long list of the places he had visited. "I loved the Pink City," he said.

            I told him, shame-facedly, that I hadn’t seen as much of India as he had. "The Pink City is one of the places I always wanted to visit but haven’t got down do doing it so far," I told him.

           The Pink City is the nickname given to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan founded by Maharaja Jai Singh II in 1727, because of the pink color of most of its buildings. A pink wash periodically given to those buildings still preserves that color. The maharaja himself planned and oversaw the building of Jaipur, which literally means the city of victory.

            After sharing a bit of history of the city with my newly-acquired German friend, I told him I was originally from Kerala, now living in New York. "Kerala is one of the places I always wanted to visit but never got down to doing it," he said, mimicking what I said about Jaipur, but with a winning smile. We chatted for a while, exchanged our addresses and parted company.

Brazilian Who Wants to Meet Vishwanathan Anand

            The following day, I had another equally enjoyable experience. An elderly Brazilian jogger, while overtaking me, looked back and shouted, "I am sure you can do faster than that."

            I laughed. He slowed down to keep pace with me. I knew he wanted to start a conversation. "Do you know Vishwanathan Anand?" he asked.

            "I will answer that question," I said. "But before that, you could answer this question: why you are so sure that I am not a Bangladeshi or Pakistani," I said.

            "That would have been my third and fourth guesses. Not even second. According to my second guess, you would be a Sri Lankan," he said.

            I told him that I was really impressed. "Your placement of a person’s national origin from his physical features is remarkable," I told him.

            He was a widely-traveled Brazilian and an avid chess player. He said he had participated in many international chess tournaments and played with many world champions, including Kasparov and Karpov. "I always lose to these guys in the first round itself. But that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that I never had a chance to play against this child prodigy from India, Vishwanathan Anand. I hope it happens one day before I die," he said.

            "I hope, too," I told him. "And I pray to God that it happens soon."

            I wanted it to happen soon. Vishwanathan Anand earned the reputation as a child prodigy in the world of chess when he began winning major titles at the age of 15. Now he is on top of the world in his game. Though not a child anymore (he was born in 1969), he may be around to enjoy many more decades of fame. The lovable Brazilian I had just met appeared to be in his late sixties or early seventies. Hence my prayer that his wish to play against the Indian chess champion be granted pretty soon.

            Unexpected encounters and conversations like these made my visit to Rio an experience I would reminisce all my life. But none would surpass the experience I had on the very last day. On that day, my jogging came to a sudden stop when I saw a group of devout people practicing yoga on the beach. "India meets Brazil on the sands of Copacabana," I said to myself and watched them with a lot of pride and admiration.

            It was an unusually bright day. The yogis were in the lotus position, in deep meditation. The morning Brazilian sun that fell on their faces made them look blissful. According to the brochure handed out by an aide to the young, pretty yoga instructress, the beach session was part of the classes conducted by Uni-Yoga, a private yoga school with branches all over Rio de Janeiro.

            When the teacher and the disciples were still in meditation, I engaged the aide, who spoke some English, in a brief conversation. He told me his name, which sounded like Iago. I asked whether the teacher was from India. (She looked strikingly Indian. Could pass for a Maharashtrian.) He said no. She was Brazilian Indian, the local variant of American Indians.

            Then he asked me whether I was from India. "Your face shows it," he said, when I told him yes.

            "What is your name?" he asked. I said it, of course, with my usual, hackneyed preface: "It is too long, you won't be able to pronounce it."

            I was to learn, soon, that I was being supercilious. The preface, usually reserved for foreigners, was being wasted on this foreigner. I had to say my name only once and he repeated it, with the right emphasis on each syllable: "Pra bha ka ran."

            With the next question, he not only struck me as a person of intellectual curiosity, but also endeared himself to me: "What does that name mean?"

            Pointing to the sun, I said: "It means him."

            "Oh, you are Surya!" he exclaimed, using the Sanskrit word for the sun. That nearly floored me. I felt ashamed of myself for having underestimated him. I apologized and he dismissed it with a childlike smile.

Shortcut to Nirvana

            By then, the class had come out of the meditative posture. He rushed to the yoga teacher and said something. From the admiring way the teacher looked at me I figured out that what he said was something good.

            Suddenly, I began to get nervous. "What, if the teacher thinks that, being Indian, I may know a lot about yoga? What, if she thinks that it would be a treat to her students, if an Indian demonstrates a few yogic postures to them? They get something from the horse’s mouth." Thoughts like these crossed my mind in split seconds. I waved "bye, bye" to them and resumed my jogging, not wanting to embarrass me, India and that venerable discipline called yoga.

            More thoughts crossed my mind, as I ran: "Do the yoga teacher and her aide know that this Indian knew very little yoga and that what little he knew was self-taught? More important, do they know that, long ago, this Indian had taught himself a shortcut to nirvana, which was three pegs of whiskey?"

            I ran faster. But I made sure that my feet were firmly on the ground and my head far below the clouds. The young Brazilian assistant to the yoga teacher had already taught me the importance of that.

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