A western Yoga Teacher visiting India - an Experience of Sights, Massages and Prostitution

On my travels in the year 2004 and before, I always openly invited people to come to the Ashram and visit us in India. I told them about my country, town and family and always said that I would be happy to welcome new friends there. This is how people slowly got to know about our Ashram and from time to time someone made plans to travel to India and decided to come by in Vrindavan, too. In autumn or winter 2004 a yoga teacher from Europe came in whose yoga center I had given lectures and workshops when I was there. I don’t remember exactly when he came but I remember one incident during his stay very well.

He had done lots of sightseeing around Vrindavan and was eager to see some sights in Delhi, too. So Purnendu ordered a taxi and together they went to see Delhi. Purnendu showed him all the famous sights and he took lots of pictures. In the car again, he took out a newspaper cutting. It was an advertisement he had found in some tabloid paper and it invited the reader to come and get a massage in Delhi. This is where he wanted to go. He wanted to get a massage there.

Purnendu looked at the paper, then at him and carefully tried to explain him that this massage parlour may not only be a massage parlour. They may offer the usual services of a massage parlour but there are many illegal businesses in India where the masseuse offers even further services, which is obviously against the law.

Our guest however had his mind set on going there and asked the driver to take them to the address indicated. Purnendu, feeling the duty of being a good host and thinking that he might as well be mistaken, went into the massage parlour with our guest. At the reception he soon understood that they did business exactly to the customer’s requests. The European yoga teacher asked how much a massage would be and the guy behind the counter gave an accurate answer. There were different offers and charges accordingly. Half an hour would cost less than one hour of massage. And having a masseuse doing her work fully clothed would cost less than without clothes.

When hearing this information, Purnendu’s doubts were confirmed and he was about to leave but to his astonishment our guest was not any less enthusiastic about getting a massage. In fact, he ordered the most expensive version – and left Purnendu standing there, completely taken aback. What had just happened? He was a yoga teacher! That was prostitution! That was illegal and not a good place!

Purnendu did the best thing he could do: he left. One can always read in newspapers about police raids in such places and if you get found there, you are in trouble. Nobody will believe you were only sitting there, ‘waiting for a friend’. No, he did not need this kind of trouble and did not want to stay one minute longer in such a place. He took off and came straight back home to Vrindavan.

Well, you can imagine that our guest was not too happy when he came out of his ‘massage’ and saw no Purnendu and no taxi! Well, he somehow found his way back to Vrindavan. He complained but we explained him that this was not something we supported. After this incident he did not stay very long with us anymore.

The impression he left was a general surprise about his behaviour. This is not what any of us would have expected of a yoga teacher who came to India with the wish to explore country and culture. He obviously had the wish to explore women, too!