Aparita Bhandari

It is his duty as a Brahmin, a member of the Hindu priestly caste, invested unto him when he received his sacred thread and the sacred Gayatri mantra (the 24-syllable Vedic mantra for spiritual evolution and liberation) from his father. As a child, I was fascinated by my father’s morning ritual. My father made my sister and me study in front of him while he carried out his prayers. In between memorising multiplication charts and figuring out algebraic equations,

I got to know the rhythm of the ritual. Occasionally, I felt the spray of water as he sprinkled it about himself. Yet I never quite understood the meaning of it all. Both my parents tried their hand at teaching me to meditate during my adolescence. I think their aim was to calm my raging teenage hormones. My mother started on her path as a yoga teacher with me and my sister. We were reluctant students.

Despite my teenage resistance to instruction from a parent, the yogic asanas (postures) were kind of fun. It was almost a challenge to see how flexible my body was. While I never did well in gymnastics at school, such as handstands or cartwheels, I could hold a yoga posture pretty decently. The meditation portion of mum’s mandatory yoga classes was boring. She tried her best to get us to sit cross-legged, ideally in the lotus position, concentrate, clear our minds, and think of nothing as we intoned Aum, the most supreme and sacred syllables of Hinduism. — Beliefnet.com