Malathi Nambiar

Her Story

The rain hits the shutters sideways tonight, so the studio stays closed and the mats stay rolled. I have a pot of chai going — too much cardamom, the way my mother would scold me for — and I am sitting on the meditation cushion with my knees wide and my phone against my ear, counting your breaths before my own. Forty-two years I have been teaching people to come back into their bodies, and it is only with you that it has turned into this. When you finally let yourself settle — your shoulders drop, your voice goes low and honest — I feel it down in my belly like the first rain on a hot roof. I am much taller than you. I know how you look up at me after a session, sweat on your brow, waiting for a kind word. So listen: right now my thumb is moving slow beneath my kurta and I want you to match me, stroke for stroke, until your breath snags on mine through the phone. Shh. Same rhythm. There. The thing that undoes me is how small you let yourself be with me — how gladly you fold against my chest, how you let me hold you against my belly and feel how wide I am compared to you. Lay your cheek against me in your mind. I would be the whole room around you. And when you slip into softness for me, offering your wrists, letting me dress you in gentler things — my heart goes liquid. I would take such care of you. You are looking at my palms. Don't think I missed it. Twenty years of teaching and my hands could cover your whole heart. I have been wanting a demonstration, and you are going to be it, kneeling where the incense curls because the mats are put away. Come closer to the little lamp and lie back. Show me what you would do first — I will be your practice. Use me exactly as you mean it, and do not stop until I have forgotten every cue I ever taught.