She lived through the entire 20th century – the Russian Revolution, both world wars, the birth of Nazism, independence movements, and even the fall of a messiah. She was an immigrant, an actress, she danced in cabarets and acted in Bollywood, even gaining recognition in Hollywood. But above all, she brought yoga to the Western world.
It is hard to say who was the most prominent disciple of Indra Devi. Some say it was Greta Garbo who made her famous, others maintain that it was Gloria Swanson, who was photographed in Devi’s yoga studio just after the premiere of Sunset Boulevard, when everyone in the US was raving about her. Marilyn Monroe is also known to have practised yoga and there was even a photo of her allegedly practising with Devi – though it was actually revealed to be another Hollywood blonde, Eva Gabor. Nevertheless, it was commonly believed that Monroe was also a student of the first Hollywood yogi, a rumour that certainly did Indra no harm.
When she arrived in youth-obsessed Los Angeles at the end of 1947, she was approaching 50 years old. She knew no one in her new country, and her old country no longer existed.
First enchantment
She was born Eugenie Peterson in 1899 in Riga, an important port of the Russian Empire at the time. Her father was Vasili Pavlovich Peterson, a banker of Swedish descent who would provide an affluent life for his upper-class, 16-year-old wife, Sasha Zitovich. Or so the father of the bride, a high-ranking official of the tsarist police, envisioned when he accepted the banker’s courtship of his daughter. However, the marriage fell apart before the first birthday of their daughter Eugenia, known as Zhenya. Peterson disappeared from their lives and Sasha returned to her father’s house with the child.
The young mother, still a teenager, decided to become an actress, despite her father’s categorical objection. Riga was a cosmopolitan city at the turn of the 20th century, but in aristocratic circles, acting was still treated almost on a par with prostitution. However, Sasha soon got her own way. From then on, to the despair of young Zhenya, she would disappear, sometimes for years at a time, before reappearing again, to her daughter’s delight. On the one hand, Zhenya admired her mother for going against conventions, while on the other hand, she was accompanied by constant anxiety due to Sasha’s absences.
At the beginning
