Lunch and dinners were soup, plain basmati rice and bland but nutritious vegetarian dishes with almost no spices.

Sometimes I ate with them, as crows settled in the trees and monkeys gathered on the flat roof of the nearby kitchen, both waiting for an opportunity to grab a scrap of food someone might leave behind. Occasionally, a vulture circled lazily overhead, hanging in the updraft, pausing on its way back across the river to the non-vegetarian side of the Ganges beyond Rishikesh. Rishikesh itself was a designated vegetarian area.

People on the meditation course were off on their own, meditating ten to twelve hours a day. The Beatles spent their time meditating, resting, writing songs and attending the Maharishi's lectures, or talking with him on the roof of his bungalow. My days were free to meditate, relax and hang out with the Beatles, their partners, Mal Evans, Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence, Donovan, and Mike Love, usually in small groups at our table by the cliff.

As we sat together, John, Paul, Ringo and George exuded a decency and warmheartedness, without airs. It was getting towards evening, the sky turning a lovely pale pink, and across the Ganges the sounds of Rishikesh were fading into dusk. A flight of forty or fifty beautiful emerald-green parrots landed dramatically in a nearby tree, glimmering like jewels in the evening light. Gradually, people got up to leave until eventually everyone left, except John and me. He was quiet, even a bit sullen, and I got the sense he wasn't happy. I asked him how long he was staying.

"We're all taking the Maharishi's course for three months, including Mal, and who knows after that." He looked at me very warmly, and smiled, asking, "What about you?"

I thought for a moment, about my coming to the ashram to heal a broken heart through meditation, and wondered if he'd even care to hear about it all. What, with him being a Beatle and me being, like, an ordinary shmoe? The thought quickly passed and I realized that at that moment we were just two young guys, John twenty-seven and me twenty-four.

I told him about it and added that I'd probably hang around for just a few more days. He picked up a glass of water and, after almost finishing it, said that meditation had certainly been good for him, so far. After a moment he added, "Yeah, and love can be pretty tough on us, can't it?"

We both sat quietly. It felt like a moment suspended in time. A lone hawk circled in the sky just above us and out over the river, so close we could see its talons. I looked at John and our eyes met, and he smiled and said, almost mischievously, "But then, eventually, you get another chance, don't you?"

"For sure," I said. We were silent again, and after a while John said, "Off to write me music, then." We got up and walked together to the bungalow where he was staying, and I continued on to my tent.

It wasn't until some months later when I was back in Canada that I read all about John and Yoko and realized that, that evening in Rishikesh, he had been talking about himself.