Johnny warrior

It is 6.30 am. Students belonging to different age groups are getting ready for their daily yoga and martial arts training at Turning Point in Panampilly Nagar, under the guidance of Master Johnny Jose. The session begins with the chanting of Om and continues with yoga poses and martial arts steps. Some get tired in the midst while others go on in their stride till the session concludes. They sweat to a healthy day. We settle for a chat and Johnny Jose begins, “Our aim is to spread classical yoga and traditional martial arts,” says Johnny, an economics graduate who has retired from Port Trust as Deputy Chief Accountant.  More than that, he is an athlete and has mastered yoga and different martial arts including karate, aikido and Tai Chi.

“You may find different kinds of yoga these days as part of commercialisation. That destroys the purity of the traditional yoga, which has a certain set of rules. Wrong practices will bring adverse effects,” he adds. The venture that will be inaugurated on January 26 is done by five friends – Johnny, Vincent, film director Rosshan Andrrews, film director  and producer Vinod Vijayan and Navas. “After retirement, my son had asked me to stay with them in Scotland. But, I preferred to be here. This idea struck us then. I knew Rosshan since his childhood. I have been living in Kochi for the past 35 years and Roshan was my student. The connection was lost as both of us got busy with our own lives. We met again at a wedding and Rosshan had put on weight by that time. I brought him back to exercise. He shed many kilos after that,” says Johnny, who was a state champion in Karate for eight years. He was national champion for two years and represented the nation in Germany and Japan.

Johnny Jose training Rosshan Andrews

“I learnt Karate from Sensei Kuppusamy who came here in 1977 to spread karate. In 1980, I took the first-degree black belt, which was the first black belt from Kerala,” he recalls. Johnny’s quest to learn didn’t stop. In 1986, he went to Sree Ramakrishnasramam to learn Yoga and underwent teacher’s training in Yoga later on from Shivananda Ashram. Then, he took a diploma in Yoga and right now he is pursuing MSc in Yogic Science in Annamalai University. His aim is to take a doctorate in Yoga. But Johnny would not have become a champion if he had not taken a bold step in his young days. He had a problem with his heart’s valve and was not allowed to play. “I did my studies at Sacred Heart College, Thevara. I loved sports and hence I started playing football without informing my parents. But I had to tell my mother when I got into the Kerala University team. The truth is that going out onto the ground healed me,” he smiles. He became the captain of the team in the final year of the degree.

But, Johnny’s tale of grit won’t be complete without narrating how he fought paralysis and coma and returned to life. “It was in 1985. I was infected with jaundice after going out for a championship. I had intermittent fever, back pain and nausea. The doctor I consulted asked me to do a blood test, but said there was no sign of jaundice. He diagnosed it as typhoid and started medication. Then I got drug allergy and things got worse. Eventually, Dr Mahadevan Pillai at the Port Hospital recognised that I was suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome. My muscles went weak and I went into coma. I was shuttling between hospitals and soon, there was no hope of returning to life,” he recounts.

During this time, one day, Johnny regained consciousness. His body was full of tubes and he couldn’t recollect the past. “Finally, I was brought to the City Hospital and my wife was pregnant when all these happened. She was due and only two of my students remained with me. I had the spirit of a warrior; I vowed to myself that I would either come back to life or die. I couldn’t starve to death as they supplied food through tubes. The only way was to come back,” he says. “I couldn’t communicate. My lips were twitched to one side. My first attempt was to correct that. When I succeeded in that, I realised I could come back. Slowly, my hands started functioning and I could sit. The tubes were removed and I could move one leg. With proper exercises, my other leg too started functioning and in a year and a half, I was up. It was a miracle.” Through Turning Point, he intends to share this knowledge with others. That makes him a happy person.