Priya slips into the passenger seat and settles in, spine tall, shoulders loose. A long braid sways as she shakes her head, and a gold stud at her nose flashes briefly in the morning light.
‘One session,’ she says. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’
Manoj catches his reflection in the rear-view mirror, seeing glimpses of his father in the set of his jaw, the hardening around eyes the dull brown of over-steeped tea. He snorts. ‘Just because I’m Indian, doesn’t mean this is for me.’
‘It is for you,’ she shoots back. ‘You barely sleep, you drink like a fish, you smoke like a chimney, and you’re angry all the time.’
‘Funny,’ he retorts. ‘That’s exactly how every well-adjusted adult I know lives.’
Priya doesn’t match his grin. Instead, she exhales slowly through her nose, the way she does when she’s a half step from giving up on the conversation. ‘Last week, you yelled at Sanaa for finishing your ice cream. You scared her. And you scared me too.’
His daughter’s face flashes—wide eyes, trembling lips, near tears. Priya had pulled him aside afterward. This isn’t who I married!
Priya edges away, enough for him to feel the distance, and stares vacantly out the window. In this bleak silence, Manoj starts the car and pulls out of the driveway. He clings to one consolation: his golf shoes and clubs are in the trunk. If he plays this right, he can make the back nine with Ajeet.
*
A lotus unfurls across the front door of the Essential Wellness Center. Manoj snickers. Of course. Nothing says inner peace like a flower that grows out of mud.
As he steps inside, a low, shimmering hum spills from a Tibetan singing bowl, the sound lingering. In a corner, an altar the size of a bedside table glows with framed gods, flickering diyas, and a small Buddha. Passing by it, he’s struck with the impulse to apologize for the chaos rattling around in his head.
He slips off his loafers and, at the request of a pastel-colored sign, deposits his phone in a basket. The moment it leaves his hand, a mild strand of panic ripples across him, like he’s surrendered the one thing tethering him to the world he understands.
A staff member directs him into a sage-green studio painted with swooping murals of trees. The air smells heavily of sandalwood and citrus—Priya’s idea of heaven. Mats rustle. Soft voices murmur.
Kathy King enters barefoot in loose cotton pants, gray-streaked hair waterfalling to her shoulders. Manoj watches her glide across the floor. To his surprise, her toenails are painted a defiant red—like embers that would set this tranquil place ablaze. Her smile warms the room. He mutters a ‘hello’ and flumps his mat onto the bamboo floor.
A part of him envies people who walk in here unguarded—people built for calm. There was a time when he was one of them, in the days when silence between him and Priya meant comfort, not distance.
Manoj counts. Eight other people, all women. It’s like he wandered into a book club he wasn’t invited to. They offer polite glances, but he senses their curiosity—the lone man, the skeptic, the one who looks like he’s passing a kidney stone.
He lowers himself onto the mat. It squeaks, embarrassingly loud. Each woman sits erect, hands folded neatly in her lap, appearing as if she’d received a yoga instruction manual at birth. Manoj tries to mirror them, but within seconds, a dull ache blooms in his lower back.
He fights the urge to topple sideways. Kathy spots this. ‘It’s not necessary to have a perfect posture,’ she coos. ‘Whatever’s comfortable.’
Manoj slouches into a more bearable position. Kathy’s eyes sweep the circle. An easy, practiced affection coats her voice. ‘Good morning, everyone. I’m so glad you’re here. For the next thirty minutes, we’re going to allow the body to settle, and let stillness rise on its own.’
He resists the urge to roll his eyes. Stillness. That’s Priya’s territory. I used to meet her there.
‘We’ll begin with guided breathing to help ground the body and quiet the mind. Remember, there’s nothing to fix. No one to impress. You don’t need to be ‘good’ at this. You only need to be willing to show up just as you are.’
Just as I am? That can’t be right. But fine. I’m here.
‘Let’s begin. Close your eyes—’
Suddenly, Kathy whips her head and sneezes into her elbow. The sound cracks through the hush. Manoj almost smiles. Finally one flawed thing in a space trying too hard to be holy.
‘Close your eyes, or lower your gaze if that’s more comfortable. Take a deep inhale… and then gently exhale. Let your breath flow naturally, not forcing anything.’
On his first inhale, Manoj’s chest rises too sharply, the air catching on a jagged corner inside him. On the exhale, he feels a stubborn grip around his breath, like he’s bracing for a blow he can’t see.
He holds in the next gulp of air, unsure of the rhythm, until breath sputters out of his lungs. Thoughts ricochet—golf, his inbox, Sanaa’s frightened face, Priya’s stare out the car window.
Out of nowhere, his father’s voice echoes: Weakness invites disrespect.
Manoj stiffens. He imagines himself standing up and racing out of the room while muttering some excuse.
But not wanting to face Priya’s wrath, he stays. He breathes in… and out. After what is to him an eternity, he feels stress uncoiling, thread by thread—a misfire in the machinery of his resistance. Rather than disappear, the noise in his head finds a rhythm he can follow.
Kathy’s voice drifts to him. ‘Bring attention to your body. Feel the mat beneath you. Let yourself soften into that support.’
Soften? I'm about as pliable as a cinder block.
‘Feel the top of your head.’ Manoj searches for sensation, but finds only static.
‘The forehead… the eyes… the jaw… notice if you’re holding tension.’
He realizes his jaw is clenched as if bracing for impact. The awareness alone makes the tightness untenable, and his jaw slackens, like a muscle waking from a long sleep.
Manoj peeks open his eyes to see Kathy watching him. ‘The shoulders,’ she continues, seeming to speak to him directly. ‘Are they creeping upward? Let them relax.’
Having put himself in obedience mode, Manoj drops his shoulders. How long have I been wound like a spring? No, don’t read into it. This proves nothing.
Yet the slight relief is undeniable.
‘The belly… the hips… the legs… see if you can sense what’s present.’
He senses plenty: a throb in his hips, a tingling in his right foot, a tender spot beneath his ribs. His back still aches, but the pain has a shape now—a thin line to the left of his spine instead of a fog obscuring the whole. And underneath all that, the mat is more solid, the floor supporting him in a way he didn’t expect. Even the air feels less cloying.
After she reaches the feet, Kathy pauses. ‘Again, I invite you to sit comfortably and close your eyes. Your hands should rest where they want to rest.’
Manoj lays his hands on his thighs and drums his fingers reflexively before taking note and stopping.
‘Let the breath lead the mind. Every inhale anchors you, and every exhale makes a little more space inside. Follow the breathing. Nothing to fix. Just notice the coolness of the air as it enters the nose…’
He sucks in air. Okay, maybe a little cool. Hardly a revelation.
‘…the warmth as it leaves.’
Hadn’t thought about that before. When was the last time I noticed anything this ordinary?
‘The rise and fall of your chest. The belly expanding.’
Manoj draws in a longer pull of air. Under his sternum, there’s a sensation like a latch giving way.
‘If your mind wanders, which it will, that’s okay. Gently guide your attention back to your breath. Just try. There’s no gold medal for meditation.’
His mind is wandering. To what’s for lunch. To the idiot who left his footprints in a bunker last week. To the client emails he’s been avoiding. To how ridiculous he probably looks sitting here like a confused tourist.
‘Always come home to the breath.’
Come home to the breath? What would it feel like to be at home in something so basic?
A quiet settles like a thin layer of frost. A throat clears. Someone shifts. Manoj exhales, and his ribs widen more than he expected. There’s a hint of warmth under his skin like someone cupping a match to shield it from wind, a tingle in his fingertips like the return of circulation.
‘Inhale peace, exhale tension.’
Peace? Manoj almost shakes his head. Sanaa’s recoil replays in his mind—her shoulders lifting like she was bracing for impact. He recalls how she had stopped greeting him at the door every evening.
Another inhale. He pictures Ajeet teeing off with Raj, a new club member whose middle name is Obnoxious. Ajeet wouldn’t think twice about it. He never thinks twice about anything. Manoj wonders when he started needing the distraction more than the friendship. He returns to the simple rhythm— in, out, in, out—because it’s the only thing that isn’t pulling away from him.
A car horn blares outside, sharp enough to make Manoj’s shoulders flinch. ‘If a sound arises,’ Kathy instructs, ‘let it pass through you like wind moving through a curtain. No judgment. Just sound. Presence.’
Time ambles on—thick, syrupy—until Kathy’s voice surfaces again. ‘Send kindness and love to yourself. Then extend it to others. Even those who have hurt you. Even those you struggle to love.’
Love myself? I’m not sure I even like myself.
Manoj’s mind slips unbidden to Mumbai, to monsoon rain rattling on the tin awning of his childhood home, a thick earthy smell wafting from the cracked courtyard. He sees a boy with knobby knees and perpetually filthy feet, dashing headlong into puddles as if joy were a thing he could outrun and catch. Where did that kid go?
Pressure builds behind his eyes, and tears form. His throat tightens, the swallow catching halfway down.
Minutes trickle by. A thin flow of awareness moves through him, a breeze waking dust in a forgotten corner. He blows out air even more slowly. It loosens the slivers of regret and hurt he’s kept cemented in place. He wants to push them down, burying them under noise and sarcasm. But there’s nowhere to hide.
Kathy rises, dimming the high hats until the studio melts into a pewter gray. ‘Now visualize the golden light within you. It’s there, no matter how deeply hidden. See it radiating from your heart, expanding outward.’
The instinct to clamp down and armor up flares automatically. But the silence grows roots. And as Manoj breathes, the stubborn resistance in him continues to erode.
Barely noticeable at first, tremor travels from his fingertips up his forearms, and into his chest. The more he focuses, the more it grows—ribs slackening, throat unhooking. The light brushes against resentments he pretends aren’t there, fears he won’t name. For the first time in years, his breath arrives whole, unbroken.
‘Imagine this golden light filling your body with calm.’
The light swells, and with it comes the memory of his mother’s hand moving slowly over his hair, the steady rhythm she used when he came home bruised or humiliated. He smells cardamom and onions clinging to her sari, the warmth of the kitchen still on her clothes. ‘Bas,’ she would murmur. ‘Enough. You’re safe.’
The comfort presses into him—clashing with a hardness sealed inside, grief he’s kept locked away for years. He flinches, instinctively pulling back. But the light doesn’t recede. It stays, patient and unmoving, waiting for him to settle.
The light pulses again. Sanaa climbs onto his lap without hesitation, her delicate hands gripping his shirt.
The glow expands, opening rooms inside him he hasn’t entered in years. His father stands there—arms folded, eyes appraising—approval measured and scarce, disappointment swift. The old lesson hums beneath it all: endure without complaint or be diminished.
‘Stay with the light. Stay with the breath. Stay with this moment.’
Illumination throbs like a second heartbeat. Priya rises once more in his mind. The early years of their marriage, when she tucked homemade lunches into his briefcase every day. How she would—
‘Bring alertness to your body.’ Kathy’s voice slips in, gentle but firm. Notice any sensations. Notice the air on your skin.’
More time slips by, but now the minutes aren't long. ‘When you’re ready, gently wiggle your fingers and toes. Take one final deep breath… and as you exhale, slowly open your eyes.’
When Manoj lets his eyelids flutter open, his gaze meets Kathy’s. She smiles knowingly. ‘Carry this peace with you. Even in the busiest moments, know that this stillness is always available.’
A final, mellow chime from the singing bowl reverberates. Kathy bows her head and presses her palms together in front of her heart. ‘Thank you for practicing today,’ she whispers. ‘Namaste.’
‘Namaste,’ the class murmurs back.
*
After a few beats of silence, there's the shuffle of mats being rolled up and bare feet padding out of the studio. Manoj lingers, feeling fundamentally different. Even his thoughts move more slowly, no longer tripping over one another for attention.
The reflex to dismiss it—placebo, temporary, nonsense—flares automatically. But the calm doesn’t retreat. It stays with him as he steps into the hallway, where Priya waits with arms folded, bracing for whatever version of him will emerge.
‘How was it?’
Easy responses float to the surface— some dry joke, an aimless shrug meant to keep everything shallow. He suppresses them. The words aren’t ready, so he reaches for her hand instead. Her fingers tense on contact as her eyes search his face. Then her hand relaxes, a cautious unspooling of hope.
As they walk outside, golden sunlight pools around them. Priya nods toward the car. ‘Drop me off at home before you head to the course?’
The familiar escape tugs at him. Instead, he draws in a deep breath, letting it expand within him, and gives Priya’s hand a squeeze. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
About the author
Jeff Ingber is the author of books, short stories, and screenplays, for which he has won numerous awards. He’s had his short stories published in various journals and magazines. You can learn more about his works at jeffingber.com.
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