The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote a while ago for Australian Yoga Life, to celebrate Mr Iyengar’s centenary in 2018. You can download the entire article here.
“In 1918, 100 years ago, the deadly Spanish flu pandemic swept across the world, killing 30 million people, 17 million of them in India. The village of Bellur in South India was hit hard. Two who succumbed but survived were Seshamma and her newborn son Bellur Krishnamacharya Sundararaja (BKS) Iyengar. The flu left BKS Iyengar, the man who would later be called the Michelangelo of yoga, a sickly child, vulnerable to malaria, tuberculosis and
typhoid, with barely enough strength to hold up his head. Brahmin but poor, his schoolteacher father died of appendicitis when BKS was eight.”
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