When Meena awoke around 1 a.m., she thought she had fallen asleep on the couch again, with Netflix still playing on her TV. But the voice she heard was coming from right next to her. It was her husband, Mukund, talking in his sleep again.
“When is it going to end?” he said. “When is it going to end?”
“When is what going to end?” Meena asked.
To her surprise, Mukund responded: “The Trump presidency. When is it going to end?”
“You’re awake, Mook?”
“I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about the way Trump talked to Zelensky. I don’t even talk to your ex-boyfriend like that.”
Meena chuckled and squeezed Mook’s hand. “Do you actually talk to him?”
“Now and then, just a few words. I try to be cordial.”
Meena smiled. She tried to picture Mook and Ralph talking to each other at one of the department socials at Purdue University. What would they talk about? They were both professors, of course, but their subject areas were so different. Ralph was in supply chain management and Mook was in human resources. Meena had dated Ralph for almost a year while earning her master’s degree, but their relationship fell apart when Meena borrowed Ralph’s laptop one day, looked at his browsing history and discovered, to her utter horror, that he had been visiting FoxNews.com.
“That’s nice, Mook. But you’re a good man. You would not have called Zelensky a dictator or sided with Russia or freed the Tate brothers from Romania.”
Mook shook his head. “Every day, it’s a new low for America. When is it going to end?”
“It just started, Mook. Only one month has gone by. One down, 47 to go.”
“Shoot me now! Just shoot me now!”
“You need to stop watching the news. Turn it all off. Pretend we live in a country with a decent, honorable leader.”
“I tried that in 2016. It didn’t work.”
Mook had indeed tried it during the first Trump presidency. He got himself a VPN (virtual private network) and pretended he lived in Australia. But that depressed him even more — learning about all the good weather Australians were enjoying.
“Then what about yoga? Why don’t you join me? It will help relax you and keep you calm.”
It took a few minutes of persuasion to get Mook to agree. Just six hours later, at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, they were seated on their living room floor, legs crossed, taking deep breaths while facing the yoga instructor, a thirty-something woman named Vandhana, who was peering at them through the screen of Meena’s laptop. From her home in Chennai, she was instructing students all over the world, even one who appeared to be sitting on the deck of a cruise ship.
Vandhana was excited to see Mook. “Thank you, Meena, for expanding my class. I will send you a discounted rate for him.”
“One-day free trial,” Mook said, causing Vandhana and others to laugh. He liked free trials, but he never anticipated what a trial this would be for him.
The warm-up exercises were fairly easy, as were some of the initial yoga poses. Mook wasn’t able to touch his toes while standing, but at least he could touch his knees. He also enjoyed the happy baby pose and wished he could just hold that for the rest of the session. But the poses gradually got harder and Vandhana gradually transformed herself into a drill sergeant. She was barking instructions to students as though they were new recruits, and Mook kept hearing his name: “Mukund, keep your back straight.” “Mukund, your right leg should be perpendicular to your body.” “Mukund, no leaning against the wall!”
Meena herself was struggling to hold some of the poses, grunting and grimacing but somehow persevering. About 75 minutes into the session, as she was stretching her shoulders, she heard a loud sigh and turned her head toward Mook.
“When is it going to end?” he asked. “When is it going to end?”
“Very soon, Mook. We are in the cool-down phase now.”
“No, the Trump presidency. When is it going to end?”
Meena shook her head and smiled. Mook would need more than just yoga, apparently, to get his mind off Trump. Perhaps transcendental meditation would help.
