preparing for concert appearance Rishikesh

Keith and I are preparing for a cameo appearance in a music concert in Rishikesh--go figure! We are enjoying the peace and quiet of the Parmarth Ashram here, where there are three square meals a day, pretty gardens of azalea like plants with red orange and purple blossoms, and a warm and friendly atmosphere. This is our last week in India. Today we were reading the writings of the head teacher, apparently a living saint, associated with the ashram. I also connected with Rashmi Tilak at the Om Rudra Cultural Society and before I knew it he asked me to send him our pictures for a flyer about a Sunday concert that we will be performers in. our pic will be on walls all over the town soon. Communication can be interesting here. I am not sure at this point how the conversation produced Keith and I being on a concert on Sunday. I was spending time with Rashmi on flute playing matters, asking questions and playing some alankars he gave me. Alankars are extra movements like grace notes that create more beauty in flute tunes. I made a photo of Keith and I playing flute and singing to send to Rashmi for his poster he is having produced this afternoon. Here is the image above. Ashram garden is in the backround. I have been meaning to blog about the traffic here and life on the streets. In India you share the street with street vendors. This is the biggest oper air shopping mail in the world . As you try to walk down the street to get to your destination, and yes I do mean to say street because often there isn't a sidewalk, people try to hawk and sell their stuff, holy men try to get your attention , beggars ask for money, and cows also wonder by, and in all directiosn at the same time. As a westerner you attact even more attention. the holy men are also generally beggars hoping for a few coins and are dressed in orange robes. they are renunciates of all things wordly. It is often necessary to take a cab somewhere and this exposed you the driving method here, which after a while I have come to understand sort of mostly in full. You honk loudly at everything that is in your apparently rightful place on the road as the all powerful vehicle drive, including , cows, monkeys, women carrying children, locals, tourists, other cars, everything and everything. And two inches clearance to pass any other moving object is an acceptable margin of clearance. So you might be inches from a mammoth truch or a small child as you the powerful operator of a wheeled vehicle. Very few if anyone at all drives here, everyone stakes a taxi. In Ajmer I could feel myself actually breathing while we were being chauffered, this was a good thing as usually I stop breathing and gasp at every apparent close call on the road here; the reason I could breathe is that we got into a bicycle rickshaw and life seemed good on the road because we were moving so slow, as some poor fellow tried to lug two grown men, Keith and I, up and down small hillls, over potholes , etc., on a leg powered cart. Although Rishikesh where we are now is less populated and is mostly pedestrian, because the area we are in is reached only by a pedestrian bridge, motorcycles are here! They cross the pedestrian bridge louding beeping and honking and clearing everything out of their way. The relief from all of this street commotion has occured in Bhagsu, where we were just recently, and also somewhat here in Rishikesh things are easier on this count. - David