Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India

overnight in his Baga house and I accepted, enjoying the company for half the journey. I unrolled my sleeping bag on his floor.

I declined his unwanted midnight passes. 'Shh, no! I'm sleeping. Goodnight.'

Early the next morning, I made my way to the Baga River. The tide was out. Following the Frenchman's instructions, I waded across through shallow water. On the other side was a hill (not a mountain), which I climbed by following a rocky, and in some places nonexistent, path. Halfway down the other side, I had my first view of Anjuna Beach, bordered by another hill about three miles away. I could see only the tops of palm trees and acres of paddy fields. It was getting hot, and the ocean to my left looked welcomingly cool.

The first house I encountered was a chai shop called Joe Banana's. Three steps led to an open porch bordered on either end by cement benches and wooden tables. Scantily clad Freaks sprawled there passing a chillum of hashish. Fat clouds of smoke drifted by. Aha! Now these were a different type of people from those in Calengute. No white-cream noses here. No cameras. No guidebooks. And they had that elusive quality I couldn't put into words. This was it. This was for me. Now I had to find a house.

I tapped the shoulder of a guy with a mass of long curls. 'Excuse me,' I said, 'do you know where I could find a house to rent?'

He gave me a curious smile and stared a second before answering, 'You asked me that question before. On Ios, in Greece, outside of town. Remember? You stopped me and asked for directions to a cave. You asked in the exact manner you did now.'

Hey! An old friend, almost.

'You're still on the road?' he added, laughing. 'I remember thinking you were just a vacationer.'

A vacationer! He called me a vacationer. I was crushed. That was like calling me a nine-to-fiver, a worker, a peasant. 'No!' I protested in a voice pitched higher than usual. 'I've been on the road three and a half YEARS! Before Greece, I lived in a tree house in the SINAI! Before that I was on a KIBBUTZ! And before that I drove ALL OVER EUROPE living in a painted car! It had a big face on the front and an egg on the roof.'

'Okay, okay.' He laughed some more. 'I'm sorry. That's what I thought at the time.'

'I found that cave on Ios you directed me to,' I continued, still affronted. 'Lived there a MONTH. Up on a cliff, with nobody for miles—it wasn't TOURIST season.'

'I believe you, I believe you.'

'Well . . . so now I need a house. Know of anything?'

'Not right here,' said Greek Robert, as he was called. 'All the houses are occupied. Everyone wants to five on Anjuna Beach.'

'Try in back of the rice paddy,' someone suggested in a strained wheeze, holding in a lungful of hash smoke.

I asked Joe Banana, an old, wrinkled Indian wearing gray shorts, but he said the same thing. Beachfront houses were taken. He let me leave my bag in his back room, though, and I set out to explore.

A vacationer. Huh! I was NOT a vacationer. Never had a real job in my life. What kind of drudge did Greek Robert think I was?

Anjuna had no paved roads, only paths created by tramping feat. The thick cover of paling protected me from the sun as I walked. I passed Goan houses made of stones and topped with thatched roofs. Few Goans seemed to five there, though—only Freak foreigners. European women, naked above the waist, lounged in hammocks. They smiled at me as I went by. The men wore a rectangular piece of material called a lungi. It wrapped around the hips to form a skirt. They smiled too. I passed three people bathing at a well. One stood naked and soapy as the other two poured buckets of water over his head.

'Whoa, that's cold,' he exclaimed. 'Hi there.'

'Hi,' I answered.

Then reached the beach, I surveyed the scene. Over a hundred people, all naked, sat together soaking sun. A group of tan, naked guys played volleyball. A laugh and a yell reached me as someone crashed into the ocean after a Frisbee.

I felt flurries of excitement grow within me. This looked exactly like what I'd been dreaming of—a community, a Freak community—in par-advice. This was it. Here was a fellowship I could belong to. Here was something to be part of. This would be the place, I just knew it. This was where I'd make my home. I didn't want to five in Calangute or in back of the paddy field, though. I wasn't a worker on vacation. I wanted to five right there, near the sea.

I turned away and walked toward the hill at the other end of Anjuna Beach. A mother pig and a bunch of piglets screamed at my footfalls and scampered away. In a yard, some chickens pecked. A water buffalo lifted its head at me and shivered an ear. I wanted to find a house so badly. I wanted my own territory in that wonderful place. I passed people sitting under trees. Everyone smiled and said hello. I belonged there, I just knew it.

Crossing rocks, I stopped a blonde guy in a lungi coming the other way, carrying an instrument he plucked unmelodiously.

'Excuse me, do you know where I can find a house?'

His answer came in a German accent. 'Good timing you have. My name is Ramdas, and I am leaving for Poona. You can have mine until I return.'

'Oh, really? Where is it?'

'Right on the beach. I will show you. It is a marvelous house.'

First Season in Goa 1975 — 1976

YES, IT WAS A MARVELOUS house, and only a ten-minute walk from the south end of Anjuna Beach, where the crowd gathered. Ramdas left the next afternoon, and by the day after that I was settled in. As I opened the shutters facing the sea on my third morning as an Anjuna resident, a crow whizzed by. Its 'caw, caw' mixed with the squeaking sound of someone drawing water from a well. 'Oh', I love this place already,' I thought,' as I prepared to step out of my seaside abode.

I put the lock on the door, opened my purple parasol, lifted the hem of my ankle-length purple dress, and stepped over the boulders that separated the sand of my yard from the sand of the beach. Though starting daintily, I had to sprint the last few yards to the sea to cool the burning soles of my feet. The water barely pulsated against the shore. Not a wave in sight. I hitched my dress another inch and proceeded south through the water. Nobody swam in the middle or at the north end of the beach, partly because of the rocky bottom, but mostly because the south end was the place to be. As I approached the hill that marked the southern boundary of Anjuna, I could see tanned, naked bodies lying in the sun. Aside from a few isolated groups of twos and threes, everyone collected in one big troupe. Near where the shore met the palm trees, the volleyball net had been set up. I watched a naked guy serve the ball. His penis bobbed as he jumped back against the force of his fist. To my right, three people bounded into the ocean in a chorus of shrieks.

I slowed my steps and desperately scanned faces. Maybe I could find Greek Robert or one of the people Ramdas had introduced me to. I'd the if I reached the end of the beach without finding a place to sit. That would brand me a tourist, new to the scene. I was NOT a vacationer.

'Hi, Cleo!'

Saved! I looked toward the waving arm. It belonged to Saddhu George, an American I'd met the day before at Joe Banana's. I recognized the blonde, matted hair reaching to his naked waist. He wasn't really a saddhu, the Indian term for a holy man. Supposedly, at one time in the past he'd relinquished his possessions and stopped combing his hair to wander through the hills of India in search of inner knowledge. He had given up that holy life, though, his matted strands the only sign left of his spiritual foray. Much relieved, I veered around sunning bodies and laid a piece of cloth next to him.

'Hi, George. What's new?' As I folded the parasol and took off my dress, I noticed that the most popular Anjuna faces were nearby. Good. This was an excellent Spot. Saddhu George's quest and his long stay in India had bestowed upon him respect and notoriety. I longed to be an insider too.