Padma Shri awardee V. Nanammal was India’s oldest yoga teacher. Popularly known as ‘yoga grandma,’ she could do more than 50 yoga poses, including the sirshasana (headstand), the paschimottanasana (seated forward bend) and the mayurasana (peacock pose), all in her usual attire —a simple pink saree. She taught the art to lakhs of students, some of whom went on to become instructors around the world.
Nanammal died at the age of 99, three months short of 100 years, on 26 October 2019. She was bedridden after suffering a fall. Speaking to ThePrint, her son V. Balakrishnan said, “Mother taught yoga to over 100 students daily at our centre till the day she was bedridden. In fact, at 99, she travelled with me to Malaysia, Singapore, and Muscat and performed yoga”.
“She had an excellent memory and eyesight till the day she died. She made it a point to practise sirshasana every day — this is what kept her healthy,” he added. Nanammal had even attempted the Guinness Book of Records by teaching yoga to 20,000 students in Coimbatore.
V. Nanammal and her family had started the Ozone Yoga centre in 1972. Balakrishnan said that the centre teaches yoga in around 980 schools in Tamil Nadu and also teaches Silambam martial arts, where the yoga guru dedicates two hours during the day for this purpose.
Nanammal is famous among naturopathy followers and also popular on YouTube. She won the Nari Shakti Puraskar award on International Women’s Day in 2016, and the Karnataka government awarded her the Yoga Ratna in 2017. In total, she had won 150 awards and six gold medals at the national level.
When she won the Padma Shri in 2018, the yoga enthusiast told TOI that she was “more happy that this recognition had come for making all those she teaches yoga remain healthy.”
“I started practising yoga when I was eight. I learned yoga from my father, who was a martial artist. I never stopped practising yoga at any point in my life. That’s the secret of my health,” Nanammal had told Deccan Chronicle two years earlier. At present, at least 63 members of her family are now yoga teachers and enthusiasts.
Also read: Jalal Agha, the star kid who was averse to nepotism
‘Yoga roots’ from childhood
Born in February 1920, in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, the ‘yoga grandma’ started with a routine at the age of 10 that remained the same for the rest of her life — waking up at 5 am, using a neem stick to brush her teeth, practising yoga, followed by a breakfast consisting of kanji (a rich, water-based liquid diet). She wasn’t a fan of white sugar and instead relied on jaggery for her diet. She was a strict vegetarian and ate different vegetables every day for lunch. At night, V. Balakrishnan said that his mother ate only fruits and drank a glass of milk. Now, her entire family follows the same diet.
V. Nanammal started her yoga journey when she was just eight years old, learning the basics from her father. Her grandparents also practised yoga regularly, in the evening, after returning home from the farms. Born to an agricultural family based at Zamin Kaliyapuram, she moved to Periya Negamam after her marriage to a Siddha practitioner and finally settled down in Ganapathy.
Her first student, Balakrishnan said, was her mother-in-law, following her marriage at the age of 18 years. “She suffered from serious back pain, she was her first patient. Over time, the mother-in-law recovered,” he said.
The 99-year-old Nanammal had predicted her demise and died eight days earlier than the prophesied date, reports from the time said. Her family had related that nearly 40 days before, she had assembled her six children — 12 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren — on her husband’s death anniversary and informed them about her life getting over.
The oldest to live in the family, however, was Nanammal’s mother who died at the age of 107.
Also read: Shilpa Shetty tells how to deal with menstrual cramps through yoga
Nanammal in popular culture
Over the years, V. Nanammal’s expertise on yoga garnered immense social media attention. One can find many videos of her performing yoga, including news reports that talk about her 91-year journey in the world of yoga. On Instagram as well, there is a hashtag on her name that opens up hundreds of posts of yoga practitioners. On YouTube, there also is a Tamil short film written and directed by T. Ravi Kumar named Nanammal (2017).
In the film, Nanammal is seen coming down to meet her grandson who taunts her that she doesn’t have any time for them. A confrontation takes place between him and another relative, and he leaves for work. Before leaving, the relative asks him to drop ‘grandma’ at the town hall for some work. He refuses and asks Nanammal why she wants to go out in this old age, adding that he has to leave for an important function. Incidentally, Nanammal is the chief guest at the event, and as she performs her headstand along with other asanas, the audience cheers and gives her a standing ovation. The grandson looks at her and clicks her photo as she is hailed by the crowd.
(Edited by Sukriti Vats)