23/04/2020
Story of a prisoner
My name is Surendra Mohan Singh and I started yoga from a young age. Even inside the closed prison, I continued with yoga. -
An IPS officer named Arshad Ali became fascinated with this and asked me to go to a centre and teach some ministers. I obliged. All high-profile ministers referred to me as their ‘yoga-guru’. Now that I am inside the open prison in Sanganer, I go to a park and teach 30-40 people, including 6 foreigners. -
Sometimes I take care of the shoes in Guru Nanak Gurudwara in Raja Park.If you go there and enquire about me, everyone knows me by my name.Oopar waale ka karam, God has been kind. -
Every morning, I give my attendance and leave for home. I try to help my family in whatever way I can – pressing the clothes, cooking food or paying telephone and electricity bills. When I am finished with all this work, I go out and do ghumna-phirna (roaming around). When my son was young, I used to make him sit in front of me on a bike. Now, he makes me roam about in his gaddi (car). It feels like the circle has been completed. -
The reason why I believe that open prisons are important is because it gives people like me a chance at redemption.
Every morning when I wake up,I go through the newspaper to see if there are any exhibitions happening around the city. There are times when I even submit my paintings to these exhibitions. Last month itself, one of my paintings got sold for Rs. 10,000.