Travel Day 977 – Sivananda Ashram, Kerala, INDIA
After our very interesting Friday, today everything was back to the normal schedule and it became increasingly difficult for me to motivate myself to fully embrace the daily program…
On Stage Music at Sivananda Ashram
We had the usual 5.20am wake-up call, the 6am Satsang, which I joined with my Tabla, the 7.30am chai, 8am Asana Yoga and the 10am brunch. But after that we decided to do something else. We had learned during the morning Satsang that in the evening there would be a talent show and we all were engaged to perform or do something on the big stage. We naturally decided that it could be fun to present some music and 11am seemed the best time to start a more serious music practice…
Unfortunately the lady from the Karma Yoga department did not agree with our decision and when she found us practicing music rather and than doing any service, we got yelled at for the second time while being in the ashram. To us it didn’t matter too much and we continued with out music and tried to narrow it down to something that seemed presentable on stage…
Engaged Musicians at Shivananda
So far we had only been playing what came to our mind and only for our own sake, but in terms of being on stage, it seemed we needed at least one fixed song that could be performed easily even under a little bit pressure when everyone was looking at us and we were sitting in the spotlight. Eventually we decided on a self-written song by our lead singer, but by the time we started practicing it, we had to go to our 2pm yoga teaching class…
Unfortunately we all found ourselves completely focused on the music and evening concert and so the sit-down class seemed to be the most boring thing in the world, with none of us being able to pay even a little bit of attention. Still, we made it through it and we even joined the afternoon Asana Yoga as well as the dinner, to then finally continue with our music practice on the roof of the cafeteria…
By now we were all getting a bit nervous and so some last-minute changes and new ideas came up. After a lot of back and forth, we finally narrowed it down to four people going on stage, two with guitars, one of them being our lead singer, one shaker and me on the Tabla. We also decided to play the one fixed song we practiced and then play something a bit more freely and up-tempo which would have to be mostly in freestyle…
Yoga Performance at Sivananda
The plan was good and despite the little nervousness and some trouble with the microphones, worked out quite well. But most importantly we all had a really nice experience, did something we really enjoyed and we contributed to the nice program of the evening. Besides our music, we also saw some yoga performances, we heard some poetry or jokes and we also saw a belly dancer girl from Iran who was pushing the limits of this conservative ashram environment. But she definitely helped to make this a perfect evening, as did the Indian guy who did a really bad Bollywood dance performance all alone on stage. While I personally felt embarrassed for him, he obviously thought he was the best dancer in the world… : )
Anyway, this performance on stage was definitely the best thing we had done and once we were outside the main hall, I felt equally as satisfied as I felt empty and ready leave. It just seemed that I was done with the Sivanada Ashram thing and since it couldn’t get any better than this, it was probably the best idea to slowly pack up and leave…
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