chilling in rishikesh

I go to RamJhula, big crowds, and walk to the Parmath….. ashram, where there is an arati in the eveing. The manager has said go there, it is not like the hardwar one where they play the same Lata Mangeshwar cassette every day. There is live arati. I go. About 300 people many foreigners sitting nicely on the floor, whilst there is live singing … okay, with lots of kids who are all dressed in saffron. The Ashram is huge.. and seems like a place for middle class urbanites to come to, to send their children to….
There are so many ashrams just this side of the jhula, and hundred more on the other side, and many many hundreds in Hardwar. Some small, some amazingly large. The Sivananad Yoga ashram is 7 stories high, this one also seems to have thousands of rooms. I had lunch in one Seva ashram, overlooking the Ganga, which has a Baba massage centre, everykind of course you can think of, 100 rooms, at Rs. 300. Have lovely lovely greek dish Mousakka. Surprised, they also serve eggs, which are actually not allowed… (though the manager has told us that locals can eat anything……….. at the Vaishnovate place Im staying, there is a Satyanarayan temple, so no onions and garlic.

There are clouds … the river flows much faster in the night and early morning and then calms down as the day progresses…. Have an ayurvedic massage in the morning, and the electricity goes off and the water is not too hot. Every person becomes a yoga teacher here…and photograph from across the river, some teaching of yoga by some foreigner to another. Seems quite wrong according to what Ive learnt, but there are hundreds of teachers all teaching different things…. Who knows. The video camera with this zoom is actually quite a intrusive instrument… it can zoom into someone far away and photograph every move… I put up the tripod and photograph this sadhu who has come for a bath… I feel weird capturing it from across, him having no idea that someone is watching every move.
Rohit has gone riding somewhere, I take a walk along the laxshman jula side of rishikesh towards ram jhula.
Shopping galore, clothes, gems, bronze statues, food of all kinds, Mexican,Russian,Italian, Israeli…..Cd shops blaring out bhajans, east west renderings, videos of songs popular about ganga ma, in every centre I have been to there are these local shootings and songs which are fun to watch, in one Shiva is drinking bhang and swaying dangerously around. Lots of clothes, not too highly priced, ypgs, ptsnsysm, mantra chanting classes every three steps.
When I had been to rishikesh earlier there was this lovely road on a sort of sandy beach with swami little kuiyas around (this was over 10 years ago)… now the main street is very crowded, with jeeps and scooters rushing back and honking madly. I sit watching some dogs playing, the dogs are amazingly beautiful, thick fur and playful, when I see a group of foreigners led by some guru like person in white leading them into a small gate…. I follow them and guess what, it is the path I was seeking. Except now the kutiyas have become bigger, pucca. I remember having tea sitting under a tree and the guy is still there…. Yes he said, I have had this stall for 15 years…. Have a big cup of tea.
A young guy, asks for a cup of tea, and says that he cant pay. The owner asks where he has come from, Jabalupur. No money. He shakes his head. At that time a sadhu is passing, who is possibly attached to some ashram. He talks to them, and tells the boy to follow him…. Tells him, things are under tight security now. Police are picking up anyone who is hanging around on the streets. So go with him.
Security. Everyone talks about it, recognizing that it is very important, but also about how it is changing the nature of sannyas, of the culture of sadhus. An old sadhu tells us, earlier we could sit anywhere, no one said anything. Now we are confined in out ashrams, and cops look at us suspiciously….. our wandering has become less.