Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India

'I thought you said there were no, you know, roads in Anjuna,' remarked Tom in a mocking tone.

I ignored him.

'That way goes to Vagator,' explained one of our guides. 'Over there's the bus stop. The bus will take you to Mapusa. Or you could hire a motorcycle and driver.'

Without asking questions I found out Mapusa was the closest town. It had a Post office, marketplace, pharmacies . . .

Down the road, we heard music. We passed a wooden fence and saw lights flicker through the trees. We entered a gate and wended down a gravel path.  'BOMBOLAI!' came loudly from various directions as chillums flared. Clusters of people sat grouped around candles planted in the sand.  'BOMBOLAI!' Music blared. Soon we had to shift and sidestep through wildly moving dancers. Dressed in glitter, silks, and tassels, hundreds of Freaks swayed to the Beat.  'BOM SHANKAR!' A fieldstone house came into view. On its circular porch, a band played, wiggling, wagging, bobbing up and down.

'Let's find somewhere, you know, to sit,' Tom yelled.

'Over here,' shouted Julian. 'Did we remember to bring a candle?'

I surveyed the colourful dancing figures, the band; the porch cluttered with amplifiers, the woman in the doorway tapping a tambourine on her hip, the guy leaning out the window. I didn't want to sit; I wanted to roam.

'I’ll be back,' I said and headed toward the house.

Rhythmically I meandered through the dancers, recognizing no one. As I edged closer to the hand, I noticed again the people leaning, out the windows. Inside the house—that's where the Anjuna people would be; outside was for tourists and people from other beaches. I belonged with the Goa Freaks. But the band prevented access to the front door. How to enter?

Dancing round the side, I found the kitchen blocked by a feathered and bedecked crowd. I squeezed by a woman with purple paint on her face and purple sparkles in her hair and entered the kitchen. Through a hallway of gyrating forms, I inched to a front room and spotted Norwegian Monica. I joined her. What a room! Brightly coloured saris climbed the walls to the rafters. More saris were draped from the roof, giving a tent effect. Small, round mirrors sewn into an intricate Rajasthani artwork over the doorway reflected candlelight. The room was packed with people sitting and lying on satin cushions. Across from me sat Dayid and Ashley, holding court. Dayid wore burgundy velvet pants and a full-length burgundy velvet cape over his bare chest. Embroidered in gold on the back of the cape was a crab. Ashley—in a silk Jean Harlow dress—held a gilded mirror an her lap. She was chopping cocaine.

Though I'd gone through a speed-freak phase in my teen years, I'd never tried cocaine before coming to Goa Lately I'd been doing a lot of it, though since it was the centre of Anjuna parties and get-togethers. I loved the stuff.

'Shambo, man. Want a line?' Shambo was an Indian greeting, and I turned to find a dark guy next to Monica proffering a mirror with lines of coke. I took it and the rolled-up hundred-rupee note in his other hand. 'My name is Kabir,' he said. 'Nice party, man, don't you think?'

I leaned over and snorted a line through the ML 'Great' I snorted a second line. 'This house is fantastic. Where are you from?'

'I'm from Algeria, man, and this is my house.' He wiped the end of his nose, checking that no white powder dangled from it.

'I thought this was Dayid and Ashley's house.'

'It is. Dayid and I are partners, man. This is their room, mine is on the other side. Want to see? Come.'

I was dying to ask what kind of business he and Dayid were in. The Goa Freaks seemed so wealthy. Besides the oodles of jewelery they wore, they continually mentioned exotic places they'd just returned from. And the enormous amount of drugs they gave out! That alone must have cost a fortune. But I didn't ask I didn't want to seem a naive tourist.

Fewer people partied in the other room 'Shampo, man,' Kadir said to someone as they exchanged a slap-slap, over-and-under double handshake.

As we sat on a floor mattress, he took out a silver vial. With a silver spoon, he presented my nostril with more coke.

'Hi, Kadir,' shouted someone excitedly, seeing what we were doing. 'Cool party.' He sat with us just in time for a snort.

'Kadir, mon cheri, let me have some of that,' said Georgette, who had green stars glued to her cheeks. She and her friend also joined us. The room soon filled with eager noses. Now it was as crowded as the other had been.

After a while I wandered back to Dayid and Ashley's and squeezed into a spot in time to be passed the mirror again. After two more lines I handed it on. Nearby, a guy leaned over a folded piece of paper from which he scooped white powder into someone's nose with his long fingernail He scooped some into the next person's nose and then came to me.

'Want some MDA?' he asked, holding his powder-covered nail in front of my face.

'Sure.' I inhaled. Although hash and marijuana male me paranoid and confused, I'd never had trouble with LSD or other hallucinogens like MDA. The next thing I knew, I floated out the' door and over the music. Sand swashed through my bare toes. The hair of a twirling dancer broke off and sailed past me like a rocket ship. Whoa! I met Tom and Julian. 'Hi, where've you been?' one of them asked.

'Want some MDA?' asked a guy holding another packet of the powder.

'No, thanks,' answered Tom.

'Just a tiny bit,' said Julian.

'Sure,' I said when the guy aimed the spoon at me. I inhaled and swirled away.

The candles in the sand rainbowed beams of colour. So did the stars. I didn't think. I just felt. I didn't have to think. There was nothing in the world I had to do. I could just be. Just feel. Feel the air brush my skin as I moved through it. Feel the thud of bass drums in my bones. Forms, colours, sound. I didn't know what anything was. Nothing had a name. But everything was safe, and I knew that if I really wanted to, I could identify that colour and texture as a 'tree.' But I didn't have to, so I didn't.

Suddenly, something horrible entered my consciousness. A noise. A horrible, loud noise. I focused. I had danced behind the house and up the hill to where the generator was. The big machine supplied power to the musical instruments. My nails vibrated from the excruciating sound of it. I danced away.

Over the next few hours I returned to Dayid and Ashley's room periodically to wait for the coke to come around. It was never long before it did.

Even with coke energy, it cost a supreme effort to move an arm, leg, or hand: My body felt as if it belonged to a gargantuan prehistoric animal. But I felt cosy and joyous and completely entranced by the friendly, shimmering sights. Sometimes I communicated with someone near me. With everyone equally stoned on MDA, mostly we only grunted at each other.

At one point I noticed my image in the coke mirror.

'Oh, shit, what's that?'

'Don't get hung up looking in the mirror,' a voice from somewhere advised me. It seemed like good counsel. I passed the mirror on. For a while I watched the movements of skin cells in my finger tips. The sun came up.

Alas, things began to identify themselves. That was the sky out there. Those were palms trees. This was a day.

Around noon I decided to go home. The band still played for the colourful people dancing outside, now in sunlight. I navigated through the gate and onto the road. Not a thing on it. However, it was a road, and I assigned a piece of my mind the job of keeping alert for something on wheels. I let the rest of me trail behind. When I reached the house, I found the front door open and Tom and Julian sitting inside.

'Hi, there,' one of them said.

'I'm-really-stoned-I'm-very-tired-I'm-going-to-sleep-good-night.'