Yoga Mama. That’s what my daughter used to call him.
Santhanam, as he liked to be called, was a yoga guru and the uncle of my flautist friend Shriram.
In 2015, I was hosting a two-day wellness fest and wanted to open each day with yoga. Santhanam was visiting India from Peru, and Shriram suggested him. That’s how we met. From the first moment, he felt like an old blood relative I was reconnecting with.
Yoga Mama at the WOW wellness fest, 2015.
Of everyone in my family, he grew closest to the youngest: my three-year-old daughter. She called him Yoga Mama. When they met, he would drop into a yoga pose to tease her, and she would show off her own moves. They shared only a handful of moments, but the laughter, the little challenges, and the stories made him her favorite uncle. And ours.
The last time we spoke was in 2024, from Canada. He was always jovial, a little pompous, full of childlike energy. The moment he picked up the phone, it cheered me up: that celebratory “Hello,” the raised eyebrows and wrinkled forehead, the deep eyes full of wisdom and love.
He was witty. He found humour in everything, not because he tried to be funny, but because he had seen life and boiled it down to something simple. He made fun of himself constantly: his age, his chores, his work, his problems. All of it softened with a laugh.
His yoga worked the same way. He had trained for 40 years under a master, H.S. Arun of Prashanth Yogashraya in Bangalore, in the most advanced and intense forms. Yet when he taught, he kept it simple. Get into the pose. Stretch. Hold it. Feel it by just being there.
His wisdom was no different. I leaned on it the most. It comforted me when life was hardest. He listened in a way where he could feel what you said. I watched him move with me through my pain, my thoughts, and my confusion, just by being there, holding my words and simplifying them with a single question.
It was all one thing. A joke, a yoga pose, or my own tangled mind: he met each the same way. He made it simple, then asked you to stay there and feel it.
For the first time in all the years I knew him, he made me cry. He transitioned this morning. Even then, he simplified it once more, and through my tears made me feel his presence, his impact, his love, and his care.
Thank you, Yoga Mama. Thank you for blessing our lives: my daughter, my wife, my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, your yoga family, your loved ones, Shriram, and all the countless souls you touched.
We will hold you in our hearts forever.
