Kuttan Nair, Swami Vishnudevananda – a.k.a. the Parakkum Swami
Some years ago, I wrote about GP Nair who took off from a British airport in 1937 and met an untimely demise, but what was unique was that he was one of the first licensed (licensed in 1931), perhaps the very first Malayali pilot. Murkoth Ramunni, an eminent pilot who flew for the RAF was licensed in 1941. But continuing with the topic of aviation, there was another, a Malayali yogi, who in the 60’s and 70’s took to making peace flights all over the globe, earning himself the title “The Flying Swami” and who was instrumental in propagating the concepts of Yoga to the peoples of the West.
Kuttan Nair who hailed from Nemmara, just a few miles away
from our little village Pallavur in Palghat, and one who later taught at the
Kunisseri high school, was this bloke. I still recall somebody, perhaps a
cousin or an uncle telling me, when we spied a single prop plane
flying over our village many a year ago, that it was probably the Flying Swami
doing his bit (that was nonsense of course). In those days the only planes that
ever landed in Malabar were the ones at the Calicut airstrip delivering
newspapers and mail. Sure, before all that we did have one which crashed in the
neighborhood, a B24 liberator bomber and I had written about that too some
months ago. How on earth did a fella from the neighboring village end up flying
around in his own plane? Who would have imagined that Kuttan Nair, who was
just a school teacher at a Pallavur school would one day be in the news, doing
all kinds of hair-raising things such as being arrested in Egypt as a spy, or
flying back and forth across the Berlin Wall, by himself? That too in the cold war era? It is an absorbing
tale and the story of an enterprising individual.
Sometimes I wonder if such stories are meant to tell you
that borders exist only in your mind and you can always do what you want, if
only you try! Perhaps! Would you believe it if I told you that the very same
Kuttan Nair was instrumental in getting the Beatles interested in Yoga and
India?
The story of Kuttan Nair is a bit convoluted and takes you
through his journey, experiments with yoga, propagating the Sivananda yoga
system, fights with authorities, and finally his own fight with disease and
death. Regrettably, after his death some allegations of misconduct at his
ashram (still under investigation) have popped up, soiling what could have been
a legacy to be proud of. But the journey of this man from an obscure village to
limelight is a tale that needs to be retold sans all the hyperbole and flowery
prose you can find in numerous yoga magazines.
Near Nemmara in Palghat, in Valia Peechankurichy Veedu, at a
place called Kanimangalam, Chattu Panikkar and Devaki Amma were blessed with
a child in 1927. Swamikuttan or Thankswamy as he was named at Palani, spent his
younger years in his father’s farmhouse at Kumaranputhur near Pallavur where
Panikkar apparently possessed some paddy fields as well as coconut plantations.
Kuttan’s primary school days were spent first at the small school in Pallavur, then
the Nemmara school system.
The dejected boy was slinking away when another boy accosted
him and suggested they go to Madras and appear at the army recruitment center
there. As the story goes, he got selected into the engineering corps. While
clerking for the army unit at Jalandhar later, he chanced on a brochure titled Sadhana
Tattwa in the waste paper basket, featuring some teachings of one Swami
Sivananda. Intrigued, he checked out the ashram at Rishikesh first in 1945 and a second time
in 1946, just before leaving back for Palghat.
As days went by and the war dragged along, Kuttan Nair decided
to become a Sanyasi, but his parents, aghast at the thought, would not agree and
the tug of war continued till Nair left the army. Kuttan left the army in 1946, returning home to Nemmara, after which he became a school teacher at
the Kunissery high school.
Kuttan Nair says - One fine morning in August 1947, the
postman brought the call from the Himalayas in the form of an invitation to the
Diamond Jubilee Celebration of Sri Gurudev's birthday. I knew that I had to go;
it was the Divine Message for which I had been waiting. Though I planned to go
for only a few days, as I took leave from my mother at the bus, I heard a voice
saying that I would not be returning. I tried to still the voice, but could
not. Realizing that sanyasa and being with Sivananda was his true calling, and
after finally obtaining permission from his parents to go, Kuttan Nair traveled
to Rishikesh and joined the Sivananda ashram.
A little bit about Sivananda - Swami Sivanada a.k.a
Kuppuswami Iyer from Pattamadai, South India, was originally a doctor who practiced
in Malaysia, also publishing Ambrosia, a medical journal. Kuppuswami's ascetic leaning
took him to Rishikesh in 1924, where he was initiated into yoga and sanyasa by
one Swami Viswananda Saraswati. In 1933 Sivananda founded his Swargashram Sadhu
Sanga, and later in 1939 the Divine Life Society, which was where Kuttan Nair
was headed to.
Nair would spend the next 10 years there, mastering the
asanas and the spiritual side of his teacher’s style, himself becoming a
teacher of Hatha yoga, at Sivananda’s Yoga Vedanata forest academy. It was
during this period that he assumed the name Swami Vishnudevananda, ordained on
him by his teacher Sivananda in 1948. Years later, his mother also joined up at
the Ashram to become a sanyasini.
After his tenure at Rishikesh, Kuttan traveled around India with
Sivananda, as his masters assistant, demonstrating asanas until 1953. As Yoga
was becoming popular in the west and upon encouragement from his teacher, Nair decided
to leave the Indian shores, armed with just a passport, Rs 10/- and a huge
vision. Embarking on a teaching tour, sustaining himself with the tuition fees
so received, and after traversing Ceylon, Singapore, Hongkong, Indonesia,
Australia and Hawaii, he took the final jump to San Francisco, in Dec 1957.
In Ceylon he was hosted by one Swami Satchinananda, in
Singapore, it was the divine life society. From there he went to Malaya and
then to Hong Kong where Paula and Louis Modic arranged for his visit to the
USA. It was the Indonesian police chief, after his team were given yoga
instructions by Nair, and learning that the young boy was headed to the US, who
got him a driver’s license, since as he narrated, everybody drove cars in
America. From there Nair went to Australia, teaching at Melbourne and Perth,
thence to Hawaii and later to San Francisco.
Arriving at San Francisco, staying with the Mc Rury’s, he
earned some money first teaching yoga to some curious souls. Along the way, he learned
driving after purchasing a jalopy and drove off to Los Angeles, where he
earned $50 per day becoming a subject for various scientific tests. Hooked up
to various instruments they had him do pranayama (a breathing regimen) and
other asanas while his muscle strength and capacities were tested. His next acquisition
was a 1952 Packard car.
In 1958, he decided to move to New York and set up his
headquarters at Broadway. A $200 advance he received to write his illustrated
book was according to him, the jumping board to creating all the Sivananda
centers later.
But he soon realized that he would not be able to clear US
immigration procedures and decided to switch to Canada. Aided perhaps by the
daughter of the Canadian Governor-general who was his student, he became a
landed immigrant and moved to Montreal, establishing his own ashram at Val
Morin, some 50 miles North of Montreal, starting the concept of yoga camps,
retreats and vacations for those interested. In 1960 he published his “Complete
illustrated book of Yoga”. The book was one of the first three reference works
on asanas (yoga postures) in the development of yoga as an exercise in the
mid-20th century, the first illustrated work by an Indian in English.
A few years later, in 1963, his guru Sivananda passed away
and soon after, Nair established ashrams in New York and later at Bahamas just
as the cold war was biting in and the Beatles were taking off on their flight
to fame. And well, our man Kuttan Nair was at the Bahamas as the Beatles went
to Nassau in 1965 to make their second movie.
George Harrison, “the quiet Beatle”, was to celebrate his
22nd birthday at ‘The Balmoral’ where they stayed. The morning before his
birthday party, while filming on Paradise Island, the Fab Four were approached
by Swami Vishnu Devananda (riding a bicycle). He handed each band member a
signed copy of his work, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, the first
definitive instruction book on Hatha Yoga published in the West. After setting
the book aside for a couple of years, Harrison would pick it up again when he
developed a genuine interest in Yoga and was astonished to find that Swami
Vishnu Devananda was one of the preeminent Yoga instructors in the world.”
(Quoted from Dawn of Indian music in the West – Lavazzoli).
George Harrison, fascinated by the book began studying yoga
and Eastern religion. A year later, Harrison journeyed to India to study sitar,
a type of stringed instrument, under the master Ravi Shankar and later
associate with Mahesh Yogi. And well, you can also read about the way he got
them all to stand on their head years later at the LA airport after Ringo
Starr quipped “I can’t even stand on my feet, how shall I get onto my head?”
Meanwhile, Nair had learned to pilot small airplanes. Those
days were a little different and there was much freedom to do things in
America and Nair decided to learn flying, realizing that it was far cheaper and
faster traveling in your own plane. His later acquisition, the Piper Apache was
to get featured all over as it flew across the Atlantic, through Europe and Asia when
Nair decided to do his peace missions.
Nair was apparently perturbed by all the violence and sorrow
around the world and decided to start various peace missions. It was in 1969 he
met John Lennon again, with John's wife Yoko Ono, during their bed-in to
campaign for peace in Montreal. In this meeting, Swami Vishnudevananda
introduced them to his movement, T.W.O (True World Order), which aimed at
promoting world peace and understanding, and some believe that all that ethos perhaps
influenced the iconic Lennon - Yoko Ono number ‘Imagine’.
Quoting from the Independent newspaper article (Aug 14, 2014)
- Sellers and Lennon both took spiritual guidance from the jet-setting Swami
Vishnudevananda, and, in 1971, the actor and the mystic took off from Dublin to
fly over Belfast. The Associated Press reported: "An Indian yogi from the
Montreal area and movie actor Peter Sellers swooped down from the clouds in a
multi-colored plane today to 'bomb' Belfast - with peace leaflets. The most
unlikely pair to arrive on a peace mission to the battle-scarred Northern
Ireland capital, they circled overhead in the yogi's two-seater aircraft before
touching down. They then set off to sing peace chants in the riot-torn Roman
Catholic Falls Road district.
He was an astute businessman by now, investing in St Patrick’s
island near Ireland, establishing many ashrams all over the world, going on
vows of silence and whatnot, getting featured for his high-profile friendship with
Peter Sellers and the Beatles, before embarking on another flight over the Berlin
wall during the late ’70s. Around this time, he organized the first of the yoga
festivals (at a time when rock festivals were in vogue) where Ravi Shankar, Ali
Akbar Khan, and S Balachander performed. Realizing the need for some show, he
even had all the students of his teacher's training class, do a firewalk on
burning coals.
An outspoken man, he can be seen decrying Rajneesh in a TV
interview, and earlier called Mahesh Yogi a stupid boy in another interview,
but seems to have been a very popular media figure all his life. At his Val
Morin Ashram, he drove around in a Lincoln continental, kept a pet goat, loved
ice cream, and lived in a plush home surrounded by electronics and a whiteboard
where he was working out or tabulating the cash flow of his many ashrams around
the world. I had to smile, reading the account of a visitor from Kerala to
Montreal for the Olympics, who was greeted by Nair ( I am from Palghat) and
provided a fresh plate of Idli Sambar, at Val Morin.
In Marci Macdonald’s 1974 Macleans interview, we hear of an
amusing mention of a visitor from New York stating “If I had a Lincoln
continental, a cabin cruiser, a plane, a house in every country, I’d renounce
my worldly goods too”! By 1977 Kuttan Nair had opened more ashrams in Kerala;
Woodbourne, New York; Grass Valley, California; and Nassau in the Bahamas, the birthplace
of the yoga vacation.
The ’80s were turbulent, moving to India to popularize Yoga,
he even attempted to negotiate between the Sikhs and the Indian government, moving
on to meditate at Gangotri, only to suffer from frostbites and other complications
from diabetes. As the story goes, in 1984, he outfitted a London double-decker
and drove out (for details of the overlanders read my previous article) through
Europe, Turkey, and Iran into Punjab, just as hell was breaking loose at
Amritsar with Operation Blue Star.
By the early ’90s, his health started to fail and in 91, he suffered
a stroke and partial paralysis, followed by kidney failure and dialysis
treatments and a move back to Val Morin in Canada. In 1993, he was back in
India, but wheelchair-bound and breathed his last at Manipal later in November.
An interesting man, Nair was the person responsible for
opening the oldest continually operating yoga center (since 1959 at Val Morin)
and creating a huge yoga organization across the world (30 centers, 10 ashrams),
and training the most yoga teachers (over 43,000 to date). After his passing,
allegations of Nair’s high handedness and alleged misconduct have surfaced and
are under investigation. True or false, it is bound to have an impact on this gent’s
legacy.
It was not my intention to glorify the deeds of a swami or
write about his failings. All I intended to do was trace the path of a village
boy from among the paddy fields in Palghat and trace his global travels culminating
in becoming a well-known figure, a pioneer in many areas. Like Nair said, barriers
lie only in your mind and if you wanted to, one could achieve a lot.
In conclusion, I found this bit from one of his many quotes
interesting - Even if everything collapses tomorrow you will still have your
clothes. If you have that, you are richer than a billionaire. With all the
money they have, they cannot buy the peace you have, the freedom you have, the
inner strength you have. You don't have to run for the tranquilizers, sleeping
pills, and wake-up pills – or fight alcoholism. How free you are. Understand
this freedom you have, which you cannot buy.
I have nothing, even so, with only this pair of clothes,
I can go anywhere in the world.
I guess he did….
References
Meditation and Mantras - Vishnu Devananda
The Yogi – Gopala Krishna
The Flying Swami – E Ambujakshan (Illustrated weekly Jan
1972)
Swami Vishnu-Devananda is not like you and me – Marci
Macdonald, Maclean's Dec 74.
Sivanada Yoga life, commemorative issue – Spring 94