Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Ruth Barati is surrounded by memories of her family.

Towering Giants

Redwood sculpture will honor Maestro George Barati and Ruth Barati

By Ann Lencioni

Never before, in all her years as a teacher of yoga, had she fallen out of a position--especially during a class. It stunned her, and it stunned her students at the Los Gatos- Saratoga Recreation Center on that June night in 1996. With uncharacteristic frustration, Ruth Barati recovered and concluded her class.

At that very moment and not far away, her husband of 50 years, the highly acclaimed composer/conductor George Barati, was sustaining a blow to the head that a few days later would cost him his life. On leaving Los Gatos High School, where for the past two years he had taught a class in classical music appreciation, he had fallen in the street--or had been made to fall--under circumstances not yet fully determined.

Barati believes that the two events were interrelated.

That experience of spiritual connection was not an isolated incident in Barati's life. The same mindful awareness that--in a sense--allowed her to be at her husband's side in some mysterious way when he sustained the fatal blow has been a part of her being for many years. She attributes this to yoga, the Hindu discipline that trains the consciousness for a state of perfect spiritual insight with the practice of various movements and postures.

Barati was introduced to yoga in the 1950s, when she and her husband lived in Hawaii. "George arranged for two dancers from India to come for a concert one summer," she recalls. "They were fabulously beautiful, and they kept talking about yoga. I wanted to know what it was." They would have daily lessons, and she became enchanted with it. "I fell in love with it at the first stretch," she says.

When she and her family moved to the mainland in 1968, Barati began formal training in yoga. "Suddenly, there were all these classes--I went crazy," she remembers. Over the years, she studied with the great teachers Indra Devi, B.K.S. Iyengar, Sujata, Asoka and others. For 25 years, she taught yoga for the Los Gatos-Saratoga Department of Community Education and Recreation.

In the recently published book by Suza Francina, The New Yoga for People Over 50, Barati talks about the place that yoga holds in her life:

For over 40 years, yoga has been my constant companion, my source, my solace, my gateway to joy. What began as a pleasant diversion became a discipline for growth, an ongoing apprenticeship in awareness, attention, mindful observation and commitment.

Its physical, ethical and philosophic foundation allows me ... to wake up each day feeling vital and vibrant, supple and strong ...

And she is that. At the age of 81, Barati moves with the posture and purpose of one much younger. She casts a kind of radiance, and there is an inner peace about her that is enviable--even contagious. She is effervescent and graceful, and even a short conversation with her reveals an extraordinarily open mind. Saratoga resident Lynda Sayre, a friend and longtime student of Barati's, comments that perhaps what is most remarkable about Ruth Barati is that she maintains the mind of a beginner: "She knows so much--music, art, yoga, health--but lives her life as if she knew nothing."

More than once in her life, though, Barati has known the greatest pain. A few years ago, she lost a daughter who was in the prime of her life. "When Lorna died, my husband and I were totally devastated. His way of handling it was to write an orchestral work for her entitled Chant of Darkness. I kept sane by teaching yoga." She never taught better than she did after her daughter died. She never wrote the concepts that she writes for each class better. "Yoga was my savior, my therapy. Yoga and my husband kept me sane," she recalls.

Now, a year and a half after the tragic death of her husband, she calls upon the spiritual strength learned over many years to keep her going.

But Barati has been unable to teach since that cruel night. "To teach, you have to be whole," she says. "You have to be whole and centered." She admits her husband's death has put her off balance, but believes that there are moments like this in everyone's life and that she will regain her center. "Yoga is in the person," she claims. "Whether you do the postures or not, it's in you, for your whole life. It never goes away."

Neither have her many students, who are also her friends, gone away. Over the years, she developed personal and close connections to many of them, men and women of all ages. She says teaching has been an awesome and humbling privilege. "In class [we] journey together into the frontiers of our bodies, minds, and spirits," she says, adding that her students' insights and wisdom are priceless gifts, as "moment by moment, they teach me."

Barati recalls that at one time her husband envied her close relationship with her students. He was a distinguished composer/conductor who lectured in different languages to audiences all over the world. It was difficult for him to cultivate personal relationships at that level. But the classes that he taught at Los Gatos High School were small and intimate. His students had an opportunity to get to know him. Many of his students said that he taught them how to listen and that after his classes they never were able to listen to music the way they had before. "Those classes--even though they lasted only about two years--gave him more joy than almost anything he did, besides composition," she recalls. "In those classes, his students had a chance to fall in love with him."

The rare love and respect that so many people feel for these two inspirational teachers is now finding expression in the form of a sculpture in their honor, which will be placed in the lawn area in front of the Town Library. The tribute is the result of a collaboration by friends and students of both the late Maestro Barati and Ruth Barati--in recognition of, and gratitude for, their contribution to the community in music and appreciation of art and yoga.

The sculpture itself is a piece of polished redwood, abstract in shape and about 6 feet tall, that will rest on a rock pedestal. It was designed and sculpted by Paul Wilson, an artist and physician who practiced in Los Gatos for many years and who now lives in Carmel. The project, funded by The Barati Tribute Fund, is being headed by Elaine Bainbridge, a Los Gatan who was enriched by both the maestro's music classes and Ruth's inspirational teachings in yoga. Bainbridge says that contributions have been made by friends and students and by the Los Gatos-Saratoga Department of Community Education and Recreation. It has been approved by the Los Gatos Arts Commission and is awaiting final approval by the Art Selection Committee. It is anticipated that the sculpture will be in place sometime in the spring.

When Ruth Barati was contacted for this interview, her initial reaction was "Why?" She lived with a giant for 50 years. Though she was never in his shadow, he was still imposing--a celebrity of world class. Of their very special relationship, Barati says that there was "George" and there was "Ruth," but beyond that, there was something greater that could be described only as "George/Ruth." So she questions the notion of a story solely about her and not about her illustrious partner of so many years. Even as she asks the question, though, she seems to know the answer: She must now find her own way, alone.

Part of that new journey has to do with the search for a new identity. Barati confesses she feels like someone who has been forced to go to another country and learn a new life--a new language, even. "I'd been a wife; I am now a widow. It had been our house; now it's my house," she says. "Before, I had George--now I have an attorney, a publicist, an accountant, a lawyer and, a few months ago, even a personal trainer. Some say I have become an 81-year-old yuppie!"

But even as she speaks in humor, her words have a profundity about them. And around her is the unmistakable aura of enlightenment. Ruth Barati, at once young and eager and old and wise, inspirational teacher of yoga or octogenarian yuppie, could well be a new-millenium embodiment of an ancient philosophy.

On Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. the late Maestro Barati's work, "Trio Profundo." will be performed in Davies Hall in the San Francisco Symphony Chamber series. For more information about the Barati Tribute Fund, contact Elaine Bainbridge at 356-6766.

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