Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga

Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga by Sarah-Kate Lynch

Random House Books (Black Swan);  RRP $37.99

When her art-director-husband put the phone down and announced she needed to pack her bags for Mumbai (“India, isn’t it?), little did she know what a blessing it would be.

Not only would our beloved author Sarah-Kate Lynch fall instantly in love with “big, smelly, dirty and scary” Mumbai, she was also to set Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga — her new novel — there.

“The moment I ‘popped’ out from the airport, after being detained for hours in Immigration due to a slight visa hiccup, I fell in love with Mumbai,” says Sarah-Kate.

“I thought I’d be assaulted by hordes of thieving beggars — but it was the colour, the light, the food and the people who instantly struck me.

“I got up the next day and started writing my new novel. The first 30,000 words of the book poured out of me which completely took me surprise.

“Although I love to write, normally I have to think about it for about ten years before I actually sit down and do any typing. But empty-nester Annie, one of my central characters, must have been hiding in my luggage because she arrived in Mumbai at the same time as I did.”

Within a few days Lynch said her other characters also presented themselves to her: a   guru-like woman who ran a laughing yoga school and a taxi driver.

“I was lucky that I discovered a real taxi driver early on called Pinto, who was amazing. He became a really helpful guide and spoke extremely good English so over the next month I sucked every detail out of the poor guy — about him and the city itself, which was to become another character in the novel.

“Pinto was a typical example of many. He’d come from Kashmir when he was just 10 to be a Bollywood actor.  But, he didn’t know where Bollywood was and he didn’t know so many other boys were also looking for it. He ended up living rough for years but eventually got together enough funds for his taxi licence fee.

“Because I got to spend so much time with Pinto, I got to see Mumbai through his  eyes. I was curious to see the things that distressed me didn’t distress him at all. So all the fears I thought I would have weren’t there. All I felt was wonder.

“Before I left New Zealand, Peta Mathias had given me a wonderful guidebook which mentioned laughing yoga. I’m hopeless at yoga but I can laugh. So off I went one morning at 6am to Chowpatty Beach and there was this group of women in saris and men in board shorts doing laughing exercises in the open air as the sun rose.

“What an amazing way to start a morning, I thought and, as I stuck with the classes, I realised this is my book. I’ve got my empty nester, I’ve got my amazing setting, I’ve got my taxi driver and now I’ve got a guru-like teacher who is going to help heal Annie through laughter.

“I felt truly blessed to be there. To see all that colour, to meet so many people and eat all of that delicious ghee. And what I did with all of these things was apply them to my characters. Apart from the ghee — I used that to put on three kilos.”

Enduring themes for this beloved novelist have been loneliness and love, usually dished up in equal measure and both run through Heavenly Hirani. A wonderful read that almost makes me want to visit Mumbai !

About the author

SARAH-KATE LYNCH (right-photo by Gil Hanly) is one of New Zealand’s most successful novelists and a much-loved magazine columnist. Reading ‘Date with Sarah-Kate’ in Woman’s Day is like catching up with her every week for a coffee — something it can be hard to do in real life, given that she’s also the magazine’s travel editor. This means she’s often abandoning the dog and her husband, film production designer and art director Mark Robins, and fleeing solo to foreign parts. In the case of Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga, however, it was Mark who did the fleeing — although Sarah-Kate refused to be abandoned, so she went too. The dog was not so lucky. 

You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or find all of the above at her website: sarah-katelynch.com.