Tanu — The Body

In Jyotish, the first house is called Tanu Bhava — the house of the body, the house of the self. When I began exploring my own chart house by house, starting from the head and moving slowly toward the feet, I realised something uncomfortable: this was not territory I had spent much time in. Not really. I have lived in this body for over four decades, and for most of that time, I treated it the way you treat a vehicle you didn't pay for — grateful in a vague, unexamined way, but not particularly careful.

So this is me, making a start.

The Careless Tenant

For most of my life, my relationship with my body was one of strategic neglect. If I took a shower, I would step out and wear whatever was visible on the top of the shelf. No thought given to it. Grooming was something other people did. I would cheerfully buy my partner what she needed, pick up things for my mother, spend without hesitation on my children — but buying something for myself felt, and sometimes still feels, oddly foreign. There is probably a self-love thread in there worth pulling. But I also think part of it was this: somewhere along the way, I had come to regard the body not as something to cherish, but as an instrument. A vehicle for a larger experiment. Which sounds noble, and perhaps sometimes was. But it also became a quiet excuse to not show up for myself.

The price of that attitude was paid in small ways. As a kid playing around, I was always smashing my head somewhere — a carelessness about space that I have carried into adulthood and am only now, consciously, trying to slow down. I walk fast. I think fast. I move through rooms like I am perpetually late for something. The body, meanwhile, has been asking me to slow down for years.

What I See When I Actually Look

I am 183 centimetres tall. Six feet, if you prefer. I have a broad forehead — my wife tells me it is beautiful, and I am only now, reluctantly, beginning to believe her. I have curly hair, naturally so. I had long hair for a long time, until a Holi celebration with my nephew resulted in a rather dramatic haircut. It has not grown back the same since. Age, I suppose. If it is possible, I will grow it long again. We shall see.

My eyebrows have their own natural shape — I have never had a facial, never had any procedure done on this body, and I intend to keep it that way. My nose, I think, is decent. My teeth are naturally aligned — no braces, which means they are not perfectly straight, but the result is that most people think I am smiling even when I am not. I have decided this is a gift, not a flaw. It is too late for braces anyway; that experiment belongs to another lifetime.

I have a long neck, which comes with the height. A broad chest — not something I was born with, but something that arrived through years of Surya Namaskar, specifically from holding plank in between rounds. Something about that posture quietly builds the shoulders and the chest. I was a yoga trainer for a period. That fact still surprises people.

For the longest stretch of my adult life, I had a flat stomach. Then work became consuming, children arrived, and for roughly five years the body was the lowest item on the priority list. At forty, something shifted. The walking started. The yoga resumed. A personal trainer appeared in 2023 and then disappeared when the old pattern — the lethargy, the slow drift back — returned. It is still a work in progress.

Below the waist, I feel reasonably fit. My legs carry me well. I can walk for a long time without tiring — friends like Griselda, Rajesh, and Wen would confirm this. The Equal Experts Walkathon, which Thomas and Kathleen have led for years, has been a quiet anchor for that habit. Sumit, my old neighbour, took me to the Annapurna Base Camp — and that journey remains one of my most important physical memories: the understanding that if the body is maintained, it will take you to places that words cannot describe.

The Beard, the Ears, and the Salt and Pepper

I have a long beard. My preferred style, when I can find a skilled enough barber to execute it, is a box beard — clean lines, structured, intentional. I keep searching for the right stylist. The search continues.

Recently, a stylist looked at me and said: "Your salt and pepper look is amazing on you." I noted that receiving that compliment was difficult. Not unpleasant — difficult. There is a difference. To be seen, to be told you are beautiful, to have someone say: this is working — that requires a kind of openness I have not always had. That I am writing about it here feels like movement.

My ears are pierced. This came through a spiritual lineage — in Jyotish, the right ear carries the energy of the Sun, the left of the Moon. The Sun is the soul; the Moon is the mind and emotions. To pierce the ears is to activate both, to open a channel. Whether this is literal or metaphorical, I cannot say with certainty. What I can say is that it has felt, in some way I cannot fully articulate, like it has worked in my favour.

The Colors of the Days

One of the more unexpected gifts of studying Vedic astrology has been learning to dress with intention. My wife is an image consultant — she has always known what colors work, what structures suit which color palettes. I had no framework for any of this until Jyotish gave me one.

Each day of the week carries the energy of a planet, and each planet carries a color:

I understand this can sound like superstition to some. I would have thought the same, not long ago. But I have stopped framing it that way. What I find, instead, is that choosing a color consciously — even briefly pausing to ask: what day is it today, who governs this day, is there a deity whose energy I can acknowledge — is simply an act of presence. You are not just grabbing a t-shirt. You are pausing. You are connecting, however briefly, to something larger than the morning rush. And in that connection, you invite the energy of that presence into your day.

That is enough reason for me.

From the Head to the Feet

Since moving from Bangalore to Auroville, something small but significant has changed. I spend more time barefoot now. I see my feet. I feel the earth. For most of my adult urban life, feet were just the things that went inside socks and shoes — functional, invisible, unacknowledged. Here, they are present.

I have always cringed at the idea of a pedicure or manicure. I am beginning to understand that this cringe is not virtue. It is just old resistance dressed up as preference. There is nothing unnatural about caring for yourself. The natural world is constantly tending to itself. I am learning to do the same.

A Work in Progress

I will not claim to have arrived anywhere. I am not awakened. I am, at best, aware of my ignorance — which, I am told, is where most good things begin.

The body has carried me faithfully through forty-something years of being taken for granted. It has walked me up mountains, held me through illness, laughed with me, stressed with me, grown children with me, built software with me, practised yoga with me. It has a long beard and a broad forehead and curly hair and a smile that apparently looks permanent. It is, if I am honest with it for once, quite remarkable.

I am grateful to every coach, every teacher, every walking companion, every partner who has gently, patiently tried to bring me down from my head into my heart — into this body, this vessel, this first house.

Tanu Bhava. The house of the self.

I am, slowly, moving in.