Wende and the Chutneys

We call ourselves the Chutneys.

We meet several times a year, taking turns hosting, each of us arriving with a curry, a story, and an appetite—for food, yes, but also for one another. In the beginning, we gathered at a restaurant on Broadway in Vancouver called the Chutney Villa. Before long, we decided we could do better. We moved into our homes, into something more intimate, more revealing.

We are all retired now: a gardener, a teacher, a lawyer, a nutritionist, and a family doctor. These titles once defined us. Over basmati rice and richly spiced dishes, we have spent nearly two decades discovering how little they do.

Our common denominator is Wende.

We began meeting because of her. We continued after she was gone.

Wende was our yoga instructor, trained in the Iyengar tradition by Maureen and Bruce Carruthers, who brought the discipline to Vancouver from its source in Pune, India.

She was instantly recognizable: snow-white hair, coal-black eyebrows, luminous skin untouched by makeup. Her features were small and precise, her smile unexpectedly radiant. When she laughed—and she did, often—she would throw her head back, revealing a gold molar that caught the light. Her laugh lingered, delicate and musical, like a song thrush repeating its call.

When I first met her, her hair stood out in all directions, like a dandelion gone to seed. Over the years, it changed constantly- cropped, grown, reshaped, reinvented. At her celebration of life, her friends assembled a sequence of photographs documenting these transformations and set them to music. It was both playful and reverent, awesome.

Wende’s teaching departed from the austerity of traditional Iyengar practice. She asked us to partner, to use one another as props—to hold, support, and align each other’s bodies. Before we knew one another’s histories, we knew each other’s limitations: the stiff shoulder, the guarded hip, the imbalance, the strength. Intimacy came first through the body, and only later through words.

There were moments—small, revealing—that captured her essence.

One Saturday morning, she abruptly instructed us to turn away from the studio windows and face the wall for a spinal stretch. Only later did we learn that someone outside had been exposing himself. With characteristic efficiency, she had spared us the distraction without a word of alarm.

Another day, Marie arrived late, arms full—mat, books, flowers—everything slipping from her grasp as she rushed in. A packet of cigarettes fell at Wende’s feet. Without hesitation, Wende bent—spine perfectly aligned—retrieved them, and handed them back as though nothing were amiss. No glance, no judgment. The moment passed, but the lesson remained.

The morning everything changed was impossibly clear, one of those Vancouver autumn days that feels sharpened at the edges.

Class began as usual: child’s pose, the gentle rhythm of cat and cow, then standing postures. Trikonasana—right side. Virabhadrasana II—right side.

And then she moved on.

There was a flicker of confusion among us. The left side remained untouched. We trusted her. There was always a reason.

After class, I approached her. She looked disoriented, her composure fractured.

“I have a strong headache,” she said. Tears slipped down her face.

“I’m taking you to the emergency room,” I told her.

As a physician, something had already aligned in my mind: the missed left side, the imbalance, the subtle neglect. Even before the diagnosis, I knew.

She had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Within hours, she was unconscious. Within days, we were told she would not recover.

What followed was a kind of quiet, collective devotion.

Her communities mobilized with remarkable precision. A schedule appeared so she would never be alone. Rides were organized for her mother at all hours. The room filled—first with people, then with music, animals, poetry, flowers, art.

We spoke to her, sang to her, sat beside her. I told her what she had given us, how deeply she would be missed.

Her eyes remained open. She moved, restlessly, reflexively. It was impossible to know what she perceived, but her presence—however altered—was undeniable.

Her mother sat close, wrapped in a violet cardigan, absorbing the steady current of grief and gratitude that moved through the room.

She had written:

*We believe that when the time comes to die,

you will die.

If your time has come,

you have to die.*

—from Distances, 2002, Poems by Wende Davis

In her will, she left her red door open to us. We were invited to take what we wished—her art, her objects, fragments of a life. The rest would be given away.

I had already purchased two panels of a triptych from her. That day, I carried the third home, completing it in a way neither of us could have anticipated.

We have continued to meet, we Chutneys, for nearly twenty years now.

We have moved through illness, loss, aging, and the quiet recalibrations of later life. We have celebrated, mourned, and borne witness to one another’s unfolding. The meals remain abundant. The conversations, unguarded.

What began in a yoga studio—wordless, physical, tentative—has become something enduring.

We still gather because of Wende.

And cherish one another.