Suddenly Yoga is cool. It has become a fad. If you are not into it, you are not living. Whether you end your morning with "namaste" or dread the wayward soaring yoga mat inevitably flying towards your head when commuting to or by Metro Rail, you can't deny it : yoga is everywhere. 

Much before Yoga boutiques and YouTube tutorials were weaved into the morning rituals of millions around the world, the ancient practice promised first millennium Indians rewards far more ambitious than good health and state of mind, including flight and immortal life.

For nearly as long as yogis have been transforming their minds, bodies and spirits, artists have been documenting their achievements. While scholars debate the origins of yoga's practice, historians date it to 3000 B.C., in the archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro of the Indus River Valley civilization. 

The discipline of Yoga is widely recognized around the world as a source for health and spiritual insight. However, few are familiar with Yoga’s history. 

Yoga is connected to Religion, History, Sanskrit, Philology, Indian Culture and Art. History, which has been exploring Yoga, unearthing the many unknown traditions at one time associated with Yoga culture. Yoga is much more than any of us know. I mean, the more I learned about Yoga, the less I knew about it and the larger it became.

Even in its earliest origins, yoga was never just one thing. Some more ascetic traditions emphasised celibacy while others preferred gathering at cremation grounds to consume meat, and sexual acts. 

Bouncing between chronological, geographic and aesthetic categories, yoga from its early origins, is something quite mystical and revolutionary, very different from the widespread spiritual outlet it is today. Yoga has become a universal language of spiritual exercise throughout the world, crossing religious and cultural boundaries.

While yoga's historical variations may seem mystical, alien, erotic, scary and even savage, the discipline in its present form has morphed into something familiar, popular and widely accessible.

Countless articles about the highly lucrative and often ridiculed yoga culture begin by locating us within a spacious room with polished wood floors. On the occasion of my visit to my son Abhishek’s  Yoga space at Tolly Club around the block from my home in Lake Gardens I saw rows of Yogis practicing Yoga standing on their mat.

Yoga may have its roots as a practice largely for the benefit of men in India, but  today it buys women an entrée into a world where hips, sacrums, and elongated necks are prized, and a woman’s body is worshiped. In exchange for 90 minutes of our time, we attain a personal encounter with our inner god by pushing ourselves to reach high, dig deep, and make contact with our perineum—but often as a means of peddling a stereotype of femininity, one tied to a certain aesthetic about what a woman’s body should be.

What began as an esoteric practice tied to meditation has become an industry with a corporate studio culture and a practice built on the notion of twisting ourselves into becoming someone else. It makes sense to me that as yoga adapts to our modern needs  In yoga people sometime chant in Sanskrit, oblivious to the meaning of the words.

But many of the  Yoga Centres in Calcutta, calls it “chicked out” yoga, its classes offering a little bit of everything—a little cardio, a little weight loss, a little spirituality. They can be in gyms or in studios resembling mediation halls, the classes may be structured around sun salutations or another series of vigorous postures but what they have in common is a yoga scene that celebrates the male ideal of the feminine.

Yoga culture has found a place within the multitude of think pieces that scrutinize the most effective octave of our voices, or applauds our panache for empathy and team-building, or gauges the precise angle at which we should lean in or out. It plays to the part of us that centre on what we can we do to be happy, successful, fit, and of course, less intimidating. And like those conversations, the yoga image is constructed for and by a decidedly fit, white, upper middle class.

To be fair, for some people yoga—of any variety—offers a space for emotional release and a sense of comradeship. It's popularity, in part, speaks to the fact that there aren’t enough sacred spaces in our community. 

Such is the yoga scene that less than 20 years ago, was associated with austerity and simplicity. Classes were generally offered in mediation and holistic centers. Yoga clothes were unheard of, much less pricy, form-fitting pants. With the economic boom of the late 1990s, but more importantly in the early 21st century, yoga entered the mainstream, spawning trends like sweaty and power yoga. 

Indeed, in a culture where people would rather subject themselves to sit in front of the idiot box than sit with their own thoughts for 15 minutes, it stands to reason that a practice meant to prepare us for meditation requires a room to get us there. And even then, I invariably eye with envy the perfect round sun rising a few rows in front of me. 

Yoga is about your intimate contact with your own body and being present in your body in a very powerful way. It gives us a modicum of control and power over our body. Living a life of healthy balance requires us to shift back and forth from being the doer and recognising how much is being done for us. The way to replenish the reserves is to stop the doing and receive, and to recognise when we are receiving and let it in.

After decades of Yoga craze, it may be that the promise of yoga is the very element that often eludes us—contentment. And rather than escape to Yoga classes, yoga is best practiced by inviting the chaotic, loud, and decidedly un-yogi world to actually affect us. But happiness, as we all know, is the most desirable commodity—and in whatever form, someone somewhere is selling happiness.

Explore the endless permutations of yoga believers both human and divine. Here we have the cosmically inclined Vishnu Vishvarupa, rendered in watercolor in the 19th century that holds the sun in one eye and the moon in the other, harnessing the powers of the universe from head to toe.The Yoga Centres are marked in the body and so are the power points.