Pubdate: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2001 The Toronto Star Contact: One Yonge St., Toronto ON, M5E 1E6 Fax: (416) 869-4322 Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Forum: http://www.thestar.com/editorial/disc_board/ Author: Rosie DiManno THE GOA CONNECTION Last of the ancient hippies hold the fort as ecstatic young ravers inherit the beaches of India's `Empire of Hip' Rosie DiManno STAR COLUMNIST GOA, India - GROOOOOVY, man. Tie-dyed shirts, trance music, nudie parties on the beach, hookah pipes, Hare Hare Krishna Krishna, transcendental-ism, tantric sex, flower power, karma and the heady pleasures of dirt-cheap ganja. Along this coastline in southern India, the Age of Aquarius has never gone into eclipse. It was here, to these sand-dune beaches on the warm Arabian Sea, that legions of long-haired hippies made their tune-in/drop-out pilgrimage in the late 1960s and early '70s. Trippin' to Utopia. Goa was a major Nirvana destination of the hitchhiking counter- culture youth movement that defined a generation, a teenage backpacking cult capital even more bohemian - let it all hang out - than Haight- Ashbury, with its laissez-faire attitude toward nudity, free love and psychedelic drugs. Local postcards declared Goa the ``abode of hippies'' and English-speaking colonizers in the ``Empire of Hip'' had their own regional magazine, The Stoned Pig, to peruse. When the author Graham Greene descended on Goa in the first wave of New World Navigators, circa 1964, he went to Christmas mass and then attended a party where he was promptly presented ``as a matter of course'' with a tablet of benzedrine. Wrote Greene: ``There is more than a hint of the worldly Babylon . . . naked bathing parties take place at a secluded beach, and who sleeps with whom is known to all . . . .'' The Beatles came here in their Sgt. Pepper period, as did Mia Farrow - refugees in their separate ways from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In its second renaissance, during the 1980s, Goa saw the rise of ``Touristan'' and even hosted a Commonwealth leaders summit, at which Pierre Elliott Trudeau was briefly arrested during an early-morning swim off Aguada beach on suspicion of being a frogman-spy. The unlamented Nehru jacket, gossamer Indian skirts, sitar music, magic mushrooms, bongs, mirror-brocaded waistcoats - all these totems of the hippie generation had their genesis in Goa, where what passes now for New Age spiritualism in the West is really Old Age in India, most especially in this distinctive and atypical state supplanted from the Moors (who'd earlier seized it from tribal inhabitants) by Portuguese conquistadores 500 years ago. For most trippers, Goa was a hippie haven for merely one memorable summer of love in their misspent youth before they went back to college, cut their ponytails, got a corporate job and eventually transformed themselves into baby-boomer yuppies, with an Audi in the driveway and never-ending Rolling Stones on the CD player. Make love, not war. Outta sight. Wear some flowers in your hair. How quaint, from today's perspective. Or embarrassing. But some, the stalwarts, dropped out permanently, whether from drug-addled ennui or simply because they preferred the beachcomber lifestyle to what they'd known before. ``Hippytitus'' is what the chronic condition was called hereabouts - except by the Indo-Portuguese locals, for whom the long-hairs would forever be known as freaks - which the Goans were happy enough to have in their midst. They may have disapproved of all that sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, but these were American and European kids, not their own, so they were content to make a few bucks by renting out rooms in their crumbling bungalows and beach shacks. Let the hippies blow their minds, if that's what they wanted. Besides, the largely Catholic indigenous population in the towns along the shores of North Goa were not entirely unaccustomed to nudity. Hindu renunciates, the religious extremists known as sadhus, were a common sight as they crisscrossed India, often covered only in ashes and tormenting themselves with such flesh-punishments as the steel jockstrap. Westerners worshipped drugs and sex instead, casting off their clothes at every opportunity, many of the men otherwise adopting the casti, a precursor to the modern-day thong, originally worn by coastal fishermen as protection against jellyfish stings. It was 100 square miles of paradise. The California-to-Goa sensibility was even reflected in Goa's own version of Charles Manson, a freaked-out acidhead by the name of Thomas Gross - actually a 32-year-old Czech with a West German passport - who butchered three fellow druggies and then disappeared into the jungle, never to be seen again. That was in 1983, in the town of Arambol, and the lustre of paradise began to wear thin as terrified teenagers hightailed it back to the Western suburbs from whence they came. As David Tomory put it in hello goodnight - A Life In Goa: ``The rebellion of the civilized against their civilization was over.'' For those who stayed, who've gone Goa for keeps, what a long, strange trip it has been. ``I've been here for 29 years,'' says Vancouver-born Barry Walls, who is sitting on the ground in the lotus position, hawking rather high-quality gemstones at the weekly hippie market, a vast and quite famous bazaar just above the dunes of Anjuna beach. Walls imports the stones from elsewhere in Asia, then sells them to the swell of tourists that rolls in every week - a seething mass in search of not only crafts and trinkets but also the very spirit that was hippie Goa three decades ago. ``I guess I had no attachments back home,'' continues Walls, after overcoming his initial wariness of a couple of Canadian journalists whom he suspects will produce another rip job on superannuated hippies and Goa-stuck-in-time. ``There was not a lot to go back to.'' Walls has a middle-class house - ``with a garden and everything'' - farther inland. He comes to the beach strip for ``the season,'' although he has weathered three monsoons right here on the coastline that bears the brunt of the torrential rains. ``You can live here cheap during the monsoons, a dollar a day.'' But come the hot, stupefying summer, he retreats to higher land, where cooler breezes blow. When he's not vending stones, he teaches yoga. ``I was never a hippie,'' Walls insists. ``I prefer to think of it as an alternative lifestyle. A lot of the people who came here back then were young kids reacting to their parents' values. I guess I was never much of a rebel myself. I just liked it here. It was so . . . easy.'' That's the thing about Goa. It can be so very seductive, so effortless to fall into a life of idyll and indolence, with or without the narcoleptic influence of drugs. As long as a person is prepared to pay the piper - in Goa's case, that means providing increasingly stiff baksheesh to the local cops - all can be bliss, even for the dopeheads. Until 1988, drugs were more or less legal in India, if only because there was no specific law for police to apply. And besides, the cops were getting their piece of the action ``Officially, I don't think this country even knows I exist and that's the way I like it,'' says Walls, who was a 24-year-old printer when he left Vancouver in 1972. ``I'm not an official resident - my name won't show up on any government list. ``You can come here and be part of the community, even get rich. Or you can take the easy path, which is what I did. With the level of corruption in India, you can pay your way through just about anything.'' For most of the long-haulers, Goa is a seasonal residence. In the summer, many of them retreat to Himachal Pradesh in the north - where the Dalai Lama has his Tibetan government-in-exile - or to Nepal. Others venture even further afield, but they always come back. One of those is a Montreal-born eccentric who calls himself Jean Le Flute - because he's a flute-maker, natch. Actually, the instrument is an ocarina, small and round, fashioned from clay. He has a string of them fastened to a cord around his neck and he plays a melody for me. Le Flute returns every summer to Quebec, where he continues his ocarina business. But with the first chill in the air, he scoots back to Goa. ``I've been doing this for 10, 12 years,'' he says, sitting astride his gaily painted Enfield 550 cc motorcycle, the popular Indian replica of the British Royal Enfield. ``When I was young, I would go to Latin America, South America, travelled all over the world. Now, it's just Goa for me.'' Displaying a sweet vanity, Le Flute won't give his age, but he's 50 if he's a day. The waist-length ponytail is silver. His face is deeply creased and wrinkled; too much time in the sun and on the back of a motorcycle in a country that does not require helmets. ``I love the road,'' he says. ``The road is my life.'' There is an aura of transience, impermanence, to the Western community in Goa, even among those who've been here forever, as if they've not quite decided to put down roots. But being footloose was also part of the hippie allure and these gray-haired veterans - the men with their middle-aged paunches and receding hairlines, the women now either gone to fat or stringy - are not prepared to acknowledge that they are indeed the older-generation establishment now in the beach towns of Goa. Many of these hippie beach towns in North Goa - Calangute, Baga, Candolim, Colva - are now part of the state's resort strip. Local entrepreneurs discovered they could make a lot more money catering to the well-heeled, fortnight-tourists from Europe - the golfers - than to the young-adult crowd. But the legacy of the hippie generation has been incorporated into the tourist-oriented establishments. Restaurants and bars have names like Saffron Pixie, Eruption Discotheque, Moon Crest, Opal Moon Cafe, Whole Bean Tofu Shop. Only a law passed by the late Indira Gandhi's government in 1981, making it illegal to build large establishments within 500 metres of the shoreline, has kept creeping hotel development at bay, while permitting family-run shack joints to continue doing business along the water's edge. Through the '70s, '80s and '90s, from all points on the globe, latter-day dropouts continued to be drawn to Goa. There's Michael from Germany, who makes pendants from polished cowrie shells and has been here a quarter-century. And Lise, from Marseilles, still soldering silver jewelry after nearly two decades. Karin Gismervik is a willowy 38-year-old from Norway who left her high-pressure job as a computer operator three years ago so she could sell knitted hats on Anjuna beach once a week and get in touch with herself the rest of the time. ``I just was fed up with my life in Europe,'' she says. ``My family, they thought I was completely crazy. But I was ready for this. It was time.'' Batik dyers from Holland, carvers from Sweden, carpenters from Wales. The whole kitschy, raggedy band of them. But strangely few from the United States, perhaps because Americans were less inclined to make a genuine lifelong endeavour of their youthful idealism. Or maybe the Yanks were among the many drug-culture casualties. The coastline is not just a weird Brigadoon for over-the-hill hipsters. What has kept Goa lively is that it remains a mecca for youth, and these days they come with a bit more money in their pockets. `It's cheap, it's interesting and there are a lot of drugs,' says one young Israeli sojourner. `Sure, it's hippie, but it's hippie 2000' The coastline is not just a weird Brigadoon for over-the-hill hipsters. What has kept Goa lively is that it remains a mecca for youth, and these days they come with a bit more money in their pockets. Goa may no longer have the same cachet for North American teenagers, but they've been replaced to a large degree by party-hardy Israelis like Yotan and Yaron, a couple of 23-year-olds who are just winding up eight months on the Goa beaches and at the Anjuna market to sell their motorcycle. ``It's cheap, it's interesting and there are a lot of drugs,'' is Yotan's frank explanation for his extended sojourn. ``Sure, it's hippie, but it's hippie 2000.'' In fact, as Yaron points out, 10 grams of hash can be purchased for between 400 and 1,000 rupees (about $16 to $40), depending on the quality. When the Anjuna market shuts down at sunset, the community of Western expatriates descends on the sandy dunes, building beach fires and blasting ``trance music'' - the techno-pop that has replaced folk and rock in the third millennium. They dance, they frolic, they couple and uncouple underneath the stars. Since 1987, the second ``Summer of Love,'' Goa has been the main stop on the international rave circuit, drawing the top techno DJs in the world. These are the contemporary rave parties for which Goa is also famously known, though they don't hold a candle to the bacchanalia of the '70s. Nowadays, the big raves are held only during the full moon and then only with the acquiescence of the police department, which demands huge payoffs - - up to 100,000 rupees from rave organizers for beach permits - in exchange for withholding drug raids. It's no fun, even in Goa, getting busted for drugs. Until 1988, drugs were more or less legal in India - another reason for its popularity with the trippies - if only because there was no specific law for police to apply. And besides, the cops were getting their piece of the action. But then India passed its draconian Drug and Psychotropics Act - anything more than five grams of hashish results in an automatic 10-year sentence, no bail during trial - and the free-spirited life would never be quite the same. ``Right now, we are having two main areas of illegal drug activity,'' says Goa police Supt. Davesh Chandra Srivastva as he opens a ledger to reel off the pertinent statistics. ``There's the ganja and the heroin, then there's the synthetic drugs, LSD and ecstasy.'' Ecstasy is the drug of choice this year, although the hemp products are still smoked as casually as bidi cigarettes. ``We are not spending our time arresting the small drug users,'' Srivastva assures. ``We are going after the peddlers, the ones who bring the drugs into Goa to sell to the tourists. Our arrests are down but the quantity of drugs seized is up.'' In 1999, Goa police made 20 major arrests involving 24 people - 17 Indians, three Greeks, two French, one Kenyan and one Tanzanian. Seized were 4.97 kilograms of marijuana, 54 kg. of hashish, 6 grams of heroin, 17 grams of cocaine, 20 ecstasy tablets, 31 grams of morphine, 17 grams of brown sugar (low-quality coke), 96 grams of opium and 239 strips of LSD. Last year, there were 42 major arrests involving 46 individuals - 35 Indians, four Nepalese, two each from Germany and Nigeria and one from Kenya, Britain and Switzerland. The 2000 haul of drugs: 51 kg. of marijuana, 5 kg. of hash, 965 grams of heroin, 83 grams of cocaine, 1,630 ecstasy tablets, 112 grams of morphine, 100 grams of brown sugar, 2.25 kg. of opium and a mere four strips of LSD. Those arrested and convicted end up in the forbidding Fort Aguada prison, a grim place on a desolate outcrop not far from the Goan capital, Panaji, and just east of the dungeons built by the Portuguese in 1612. Most of the Fort Aguada inmates are doing time for drug offences. At the moment, there are 208 residents rotting in in the prison, including several Americans but, thankfully, no Canadians. One of these inmates, Pardeep, has been coralled as interpreter for two Canadian visitors, a pleasant diversion from the monotony of life behind bars. Leading us through the damp, fetid corridors, Pardeep admits he was a drug trafficker, but only a very little one. ``I've been here eight years,'' he says. ``I'll get out in two years' time, if I'm good. Four years, if I'm not.'' There's one final irony at Fort Aguada. Directly next door to the prison, just below it, is a sprawling mansion, constructed right within the side of the cliff and surmounted by its own private chapel. This is the ornate home of an infamous brigand, a native Goan diamond smuggler called Jimmy Rama. Diamond Jim. It amuses Jimmy to flaunt his wealth under the nose of the jail warden. But Diamond Jim doesn't do drugs and he was never a hippie. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry F