Bombay, Bombay! What a forbidding, magical labyrinth of a city to get lost in! Seven Islands made as one, built around the temple of Mumbai Devi, a captivating goddess playing by the Arabian Sea, bubbling over with creativity and hope. In the early seventies it was struggling out of its British colonial straight jacket, an English modernity still strived for, the streets clean, the traffic mostly pedestrian and under control, red double-decker buses competing with a few white Ambassador cars, Enfield motorbikes and a swarm of peddle-pushers.
But at night the footpaths were crowded with the sleeping poor, attracted to the city by the promise of making it to wealth, with Mumbai Devi’s help. Every square foot of pavement space was reserved for a specific family, and being very poor himself, Arthur often had to sleep on the streets with them, wandering for hours searching for an available space, outside a shop in the old Fort Area with the shopkeepers, on the steps of the Regal Cinema in Colaba with the crippled beggars, in the cricket Maidan with the city’s outlaws, and on Chawpati Beach with the family picnics and coconut pedlars.
A few times he was refused entry into the seedy Colaba Hotels, the firanghi tourist Mecca, because of his neo-sadhu appearance, the grunge of dusty, hippie glad-rags aglitter with beads and jewels he’d picked up along the way. Those flea pit hotels thought they were too good for him and, rejected, he had nowhere but the streets to sleep. In the night a rat as big as a cat leaped upon his chest and snarled into his face, his screaming causing his fellow pavement dwellers to laugh, the great firanghi reduced to being eaten by a rat. In the morning he awoke to find his shoes and the shawl that covered him missing, but his passport was still tucked down his undies, for no Indian hand could venture there unnoticed. Yet in the main, the people of the streets were kind and made space for him and he survived his many caste-away sojourns in Bombay unscathed, singing high from the ebullient city’s hustle and bustle.
In those long-gone days there was a steam ship that sailed from Bombay to Goa and what joy it was for Arthur to rush upon the boat with a horde of hippies and stake his place upon the open deck where for three days they’d loll about playing guitars, smoking chillums and eyeballing the jungle coastline they slowly cruised along. Huddled together in the chilled sea-breeze they’d argue philosophy, politics and the minutiae of the drug culture, Arthur slowly losing his shyness.
“There aren’t many real saints left in India anymore, money is fast taking over as the one god here. Have you noticed the difference between the rich and the poor, it’s shocking!”
“Everybody’s got to earn money in this world, even the big babas. Some of them use it to build hospitals and schools”, quipped an Italian freak, dressed like Ali Baba himself.
“But surely that’s the job of the government?” whined Arthur.
“According to urban myth there’s supposed to be only seven true Masters guiding the planet’s progress at any one time so that doesn’t leave many for India to hang on to.”
A long-haired American chipped in his seven cents worth,
“You can blame the Congress Party for the mess, they’ve ruled since Independence, and corruption is rife, at every level of government. You can’t make a move here without paying a bribe. The Nehru family dynasty and the high caste elite run it all, and in twenty-five years they haven’t achieved much for the millions of peasants. Nixon met Indira Ghandi before he got kicked out and they couldn’t stand each other; the American establishment have worked to suppress India’s advancement, they don’t want another big competitor on the world stage.”
“Yeah,” said a British lad after passing the chillum, “and Russia’s meddling too, their ‘great game’ of winning influence, selling India factories and tanks, even nuclear technology, and encouraging her to invest in grandiose, five year industrial plans that soak up much government funding but do little to relieve the living conditions of the people.”
“It’s a good thing we’re running away to Goa, all this shit won’t find us down there.” This from Arthur had them smirking, “Sure, kid.”
He was reeling from this political blab-fest, the other bums seemed to know much more than he, he hadn’t thought it out much, he didn’t want to stir up his stoned meditation with harsh realities but the world had a way of breaking into the most secret hide-outs, for globalisation was on the march and he, unwittingly, was part of its advance guard.
By this stage he had dreadlocks and therefore joined that elite group of funky Indiaphiles who stood out in any crowd, flicking their manky braids about like badges of honour and deferred to by newcomers, grunge-bunny Arthur the cynosure of all eyes as if he were the prince of thieves camped out on their pirate cruise-ship. This hairstyle became ubiquitous over the years, one could buy it at a hairdresser’s and it soon lost it’s cachet, deadheads were not special, they just didn’t comb their hair and Arthur later came to loathe the look as dirty and cheap, but for Goa it was de rigour and he trained his matted locks to be more frightful than a gorgon’s snakes nest.
The 1972/73 New Year’s party season in Goa was the last hurrah of the first wave of hippies that had invaded those pristine beaches in the sixties, before the junkies, thieves, peddlers, beggars and cashed-up package tours descended like swarms of locusts on the place. In those days there were only a few hotels and houses to rent, with several hundred foreigners stretched thin across the seven beaches. Bagga Beach had a beautiful lagoon and waterfall, and no concrete jungle. Anjuna Beach had a couple of private cottages hidden deep in the coconut groves, a chai shop at either end of the beach, and a clearing in the middle where the best parties were held. Arthur landed in the virgin jungle at the next beach along, Vagatore, where a community of international drop-outs lived in grass huts at the edge of the Arabian Sea, everyone naked and everyone stoned. Each freak outdone the next in the elaborate design of his/her hut, veritable palaces made of woven palm-fronds, towering from the terraced cliffs or swinging from the palm trees like live-in mobiles.
The freaks lived in various tribes with language as the common bond, the French refusing to speak English at their elite encampment; the Italians in their own feral nest, notorious for cheats and hard drugs; and the disparate English speakers lumped together to console each other for their uncouthness. They played at creating a tropical Utopia, with no God (but plenty of pagan demi-gods), no master (but a hierarchy of India-freak hipness), and no inhibitions (except for the western cultural baggage they had brought with them like heterosexual supremacy, European hygiene and techno-superiority).
Arthur gravitated towards a camp with a British girl acting as hearth-mother and a Dutch guy filling in as the wise, counseling papa. They lived under a large lean-to of woven mats near a waterfall at the end of the beach and shared everything communally, as there was very little money between the lot of them. While Erica ladled out food from the collective pot the boys would sit around the fire discussing their dreams and attitudes, the sea crashing upon the beach nearby, the stars shining through the palm-frond matting of the hut. Arthur would bang on about his spiritual kick as the chillum of hash got passed around.
“I’ve been studying yoga for years, I’m trying to realise my true Self amidst all the bullshit the System has piled upon me.”
“There is no true self, that’s the bullshit”, opined sagacious Dutch Hans, “like there’s no god, you’re chasing a will’o’the wisp. I bet you’re a different person with whoever you meet. Just be strong and smart.”
“Yeah, but that’s the point, surely deep in my centre there’s a core identity that’s never changing, cool, equanimous, compassionate.”
“I hope you hang onto that cool soul, be him all the time, that’s what I’d like,” murmured Erica, ladling more vegie stew into Arthur’s bowl.
“Good hashish, a meal, a beautiful woman and a grass hut to bed her in is all I need. You know, the best hash comes from Manali, it’s primo,” burbled another English lad.
“I’m sure the Vietnam War will be over soon,” pondered an itinerant American, “and maybe the beast of capitalism will fall and we’ll all be able to go home and live communally, sharing, not worship profit, and not having Big Brother always watching. That’s my dream.”
“I want to take India to my heart, melt into her, become one with her and never go home.” This from a dreamy Arthur, the others smoking quietly.
There were no taxis or motorbikes and buses were infrequent, everybody walked from beach to beach, barefoot, with only a cotton dhoti to cover their nakedness if they covered it at all. Not many Indians dared venture onto the beaches for the hippies were seen as foreign devils with an incomprehensible lifestyle and capable of any madness. And there were definitely some villains about for the psychedelic-befuddled hippies were easy pickings for anyone with a cold heart and the gift of the gab. Arthur was cautious, not easily suckered in by a smiling face and honeyed tongue, having come up through the school of hard knocks that was Australia. He put his few valuables in the trust of the chai-shop wallah on Anjuna Beach, and dressed in cheap Indian cloth he did not present an attractive, rich target, his passport the only thing worth scamming him for. In that one clunky chai-shop on Anjuna beach he sat next to Charles Sobraj, the infamous serial killer, and ignored the blandishments of that handsome French-Vietnamese monster out scouting for potential victims. Lounging nearby was a young American girl mouthing off unashamedly to catch the ears of the hippie crowd around her.
“We had the wildest time last night, I’m still tripping. And all these guys kept grabbing at my arse, I must of fucked seven of them in the jungle, my cunt is sore as all heck but I really think I saw God in there somewhere. It was like those blue gods the Hindoos worship, eight arms groping me, it was amazing. I’m thinking of dreading my hair, does my bikini-line show? Did you see that movie “Candy” with the levitating guru? I think I levitated last night. Do you think I could make it in the movies? I think I can act... blah blah, blah.”
“Where you from buddy?” smiled the gorgeous Eurasian guy, Arthur glued to the girls rant, impressed by her unabashed attitude, she didn’t care what anybody thought of her, out-front loud like a hippie Sally Bowles.
“Australia, but who gives a shit? What’s with her? She’s too cute.”
“She’s yours if you want her, I’m sure she likes you too. Come back to our room and party, we’re all friends here.”
“Ummm… no thanks. There are people waiting for me. I’m off.”
The creep must have murdered at least twenty-one people in his ugly career, in India and Nepal, winning their trust, pretending friendship, volunteering as a tourist guide then drugging and killing them, burning some of them alive, for their money and passports. Arthur had met a lot of lethally charming guys in his sleaze-bag life and he didn’t give a flying fart for them, they were interchangeable in their smooth beauty. Charles Sobraj was like a false mirage on a desert road, Arthur looked past him to real horizons possible to reach.
The main parties of the season were on any Full Moon, Christmas and New Years Eve. Recalling the deep cosmic trance and euphoria of his psychedelic aversion therapy back in bleak Melbourne, he hoped to recapture the pseudo-nirvana at the notorious parties, maybe even defeat the creepy-crawlies that welled up from his unconscious and overcome his deepest fears. In his stupid enthusiasm he ingested a double barrel of Orange Sunshine LSD before arriving at his first big shindig. A couple of hundred freaks had gathered around a bonfire on Anjuna Beach and without much ado fruit salad was dished out to the crowd by a blonde called Gypsy, luscious matriarch of the French clan. Unbeknownst to Arthur, it was heavily laced with Clear Light Acid and so the fool got himself an overdose of the mind-boggling substance.
As the crowd whipped itself up into a bacchanalian delirium, thumping drums, banging bongos, twanging guitars and shrilling flutes, Arthur watched his world disintegrate, eyeballs popping out of people’s heads, their hair lifting off like wigs and their ears floating away. Freaks cavorted about the blazing bonfire, dancing with demonic abandon, leaping through the flames, pirouetting upon the hot coals, voices wailing and ululating like cats being barbequed. Someone started screaming as if their very soul was being torn from their body, a scream of terror that went on and on, till Arthur thought his own skin was being flayed from his back.
Suddenly a little Indian beggar boy, with no legs, threw himself onto Arthur’s lap, cackling in glee at Arthur’s alarm, for he thought he’d somehow given birth to a misshapen imp that now clung to him like a succubus from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. All the freaks sitting around smoking chillums joined in the ugly, cackling laughter, looking like a chorus of deformed witches at a Black Sabbath about to curse Arthur with a shape-change. Shrieking in horror, he flung the cripple from him, and with his rational mind in a meltdown, he crawled away from the conflagration on his hands and knees, around a dirty sand dune and down to the beach, the terrible scream from the midst of the revelers following him like a tortured fiend.
He had dragged his blanket with him and, with all the furies from fairyland clambering at the gates of his existence, he curled up under it, like a child, hoping its thin cover would protect him. The cacophony of the atavistic party jarred against his frazzled consciousness, bursts of wild laughter and agonized screaming punctuating the heart-thudding drums and ear-piercing flutes. He imagined them all as devils leaping joyously amidst the flames as the beat quickened to some unimaginable climax of howls and breaking glass, where maybe Satan himself stepped from the shadows to accept a sacrifice. He still had some religious conditioning to cleanse from his cortex, the last grubby stains of good versus evil, God versus the Devil, Christian uptight sexuality versus pagan nature worshiping rapture. In every gutter along every highway Satan hung in there threatening to drag his soul down into the darkness while he reached arduously towards the light.
Hypnogogic mind-scape swirling, Arthur buried himself in the sand where the turds and trash glittered like jewels hoping to hide his diamond soul from those who might steal it. When he peeped from under the blanket he could see the shadows of the frolicking imps elongated and distorted against the surrounding coconut trees. From the tops of the palm-fronds erupted multi-colored dragons that poured to the ground like streams of incandescent water, slithering towards the party and breathing long plumes of fluorescent fire into the air, like electricity seeking to be earthed by quivering human flesh.
Arthur withdrew into his own inner-cosmos, the archetypes and myths of his own particular, psychic make-up washing over him like the tide of a mystic ocean tugged by seven moons. Occasionally he took a look at the chaotic tableau beyond his blanket, making sure no one came near him to take advantage of his vulnerable mental derangement. A crescendo of howls signalled a hallucinatory group orgasm, the primeval music segued into mellifluous harmonics for the agonised screaming had stopped, replaced by choral music and sweet laughter echoing around the coconut tree grove. Arthur imagined the crowd of freaks skipping and dancing like innocent children following the seductive pipe-music of Pan as He led them through the pearly gates of Paradise, leaving the world of mean adults behind. And in his mind Arthur chased after them, only his crippled nature did not allow him to catch up, and all he got was a glimpse of Heaven between the closing gates, forever the stranger looking in. He saw the freed children swooning in delight at the flower gardens and crystal palaces, dancing and flying about like cherubim, laughing in liberation, then the gates slammed shut, and he was locked out and left to wonder in the shadows.
The pink light of dawn finally banished the necrotic black horrors of the night and Arthur, safe and sound, crawled from under his blanket and staggered back to base-camp along a milky-green ocean shore, the waves tumbling in exquisite slow motion in time with the languid thoughts of his now quiescent mind. He went to many more parties to see if he could make it through those Pearly Gates but he failed every time, each trip becoming a screaming bummer, fairies turning to demons, his wings refusing to sprout, his courage too faint-hearted. He took all the varieties of LSD in hope that one of them would push him past the ‘heebie-jeebies’ threshold, from Clear Light to Strawberry Fields, Purple Haze to Black Pyramids, they all brought on Satan and the fear that Arthur’s soul was up for grabs. He would run from the parties and wait for the nightmares to mellow and dissipate, then get lost amongst the coconut groves, terraced cliffs and rice-paddy fields. Tripping on a tab of Mr. Natural Acid out in real nature proved the best experience, for the moonlight created intricate mosaics upon the ground as it shone through the palm-fronds. The jungle around him came alive, every space occupied by a little furry mammal with huge mirror-black eyes, all of them purring and chirruping like friendly marsupials, making Arthur step lightly as he walked amongst them.
His elation was rudely interrupted when he stepped over the edge of a deep canal, disguised by all the kaleidoscopic optical illusions. Attempting to walk on thin air, he did a double-somersault and landed heavily upon his hip on some sharp rocks far below. All the yogic and dance exercise had come in good stead for his body was very supple and he only sustained a deep cut in his side and a few bruises.
He treated all of his psychedelic journeys as vision quests, exploring the strange depths of his Id for knowledge of his self, his antecedents, limitations and potentialities. He felt flawed and so much wanted healing. If Mind was meshed with the universe then he hoped it was possible to inquire into the very fabric of existence, to gain real knowledge, of human nature, of history, the origin of life and of consciousness, the purpose of sapiens sapiens, knowing that you know: why did he have eyes to see and mind to ponder? Why was humanity so fucked?
It was a comfort for Arthur to return to his campsite after the wildest parties and regale his fellows with breathless tales of amazing, visionary experiences under the influence of LSD, Dutch Hans disclaiming cautionary tales and English Erica laughing in sympathy at Arthur’s wide-eyed ingenuousness. While she made him breakfast of whole-wheat porridge and fruit, he’d rave,
“I flew on a magic carpet to wondrous realms where I wielded the sword Excalibur and cut through the obstacles on my path. I drank from the Holy Grail and united all my opposing energies, male and female, and for awhile I was free of sex. I threw the Spear of Destiny into the sun and knew where my path should take me. I wore magic armour made of golden light and faced my childhood fears. I polished Allah’din’s lamp in the middle of my brain and summoned forth a genie to grant my heart’s wish. I rode a UFO to the centre of the galaxy and thought I’d solved the mystery of existence. Then it all melted away like honey on my tongue. In the dying moments of the trip I glimpsed from the corner of my eye the Green Man dancing, beckoning me on to try for Paradise and cripple though I am I limp on and on in hope…”
Dressed in a sari, tying her hair up with sprigs of jasmine flowers, Erica would listen patiently and with a cryptic smile reply,
“Crazy boy, I think you should come back to earth, get real. Here, have a nice cup of tea, that’ll calm you down. Go native, do as the Indians do, keep it simple, forget about fairyland, it’s here you’ve got to survive. There are evil creatures roaming amongst us, a lot of lonesome hippy-trippy tourists have gone missing. You’d better watch your lovely little bum at those LSD parties.”
Hans, as the wise patriarch, added his counsel as he also cared for the innocents he’d taken under his grass roof.
“Yeah mon, I’m thinking a gang of killing, thieving, devil worshipping weirdos have fled the West after that Manson Family cult got exposed in America and some of ‘em ‘ave probably run to anarchic India to hide out, maybe even Goa.”
With terrified mien, Erica whispered, “I’ve heard stories from the locals of body parts found washed up on the shore’s edge after the parties, severed hands and limbless torsos. Ooooh, it gives me the proper creeps! And there’s always plenty of gibbering maniacs left lost and penniless upon the windy beaches at the season’s end, when everybody else has moved on. You don’t want to wind up one of those do you, Arthur? Do your yoga, eat healthy and leave the drugs alone.”
She was strong, good-hearted and clever and Arthur took some heed of her advice. He was able to keep his wits about him no matter what imbroglio was induced in the hippie mobs by the heavy doses of psychedelics, thus he survived several months in this wilderness of chemically induced rapture, nightmare and clashing world-paradigms beside the Arabian Sea, ever the fool but getting wiser by the day.
In spite of the much hyped Utopianist free love and lack of restraints, there was no sex for Arthur as the Adam and Eve motif ruled supreme, back to Nature meant the congress of sexual opposites and, as a poof, Arthur was the freak of freaks. No fellow nudist male gave him a lascivious glance that he noticed and he was resigned to permanent abstinence, sensual gratification satisfied by dance, sun and sea. He sublimated his sexual urge with yoga, meditation and copious drawings of the Goan hippie scene with pastel crayons in a sketchbook he carried with him everywhere. The psychedelics purged him of his aberrant compulsions, drifting upon the beaches he didn’t long for much, except to belong, somewhere, to some tribe, but he found himself ever the loner.
There was no honest space for him within this milieu of aberrant normalcy and ultimately the hedonistic, inebriated scene fatigued his naturalist’s sensitivities. He felt like his pineal gland had been squeezed dry by all his visionary exploits and he just couldn’t face another outrageous party. Campsites broke up around February/March as the various tribes moseyed off on their treks into the hinterland and Arthur, his third-eye glowing like a radioactive jewel, decided to venture forth on his own odyssey, to travel the full length of the entire subcontinent, explore every site of ancient splendour and get truly lost in India.
Not long after he left Goa, Erica, the generous, good-natured earth goddess in the flesh, with a sprig of Jasmine in her hair Goan style, racing to her marriage ceremony with the Goan man of her dreams was killed in a car-crash. She died young, for all her good sense, and Arthur lived long, for all his recklessness, such is the hungry blind god of Chaos.