of unicorns and hippies
I should have guessed that something was up when I passed two tie-dye tunic peddlers on the same street, or when I saw the advertisements for authentic tibetan-blessed incense and chakra cleansing sessions. I should have realized that this neighborhood was...off when I saw the sidewalk vendor selling 'mystical' stones to bald people wearing saffron robes and Birkenstocks. But I had heard that the bakeries in this part of town (which was represented on my map by a foot-shaped darkish region with no definite boundaries) had nice, clean juices and good, healthy sandwiches. That also should have been a clue. Nothing in this part of India is particularly clean or healthy - unless transplanted hippies from the West demand it. And this place, apparently unknown (or purposefully neglected) by cartographers, attracted hippies by the multi-colored love-bus load.
I should note that when I sat down to write this I felt some trepidation at the idea of using the word 'hippie' in any sort of authoritative way, as my personal history with the term is somewhat muddled. It's a term that's bandied about with some regularity in the towns of the Arkansas Ozarks where I was raised, and my understanding of the its meaning and proper application has changed significantly over time, as has my relationship with this place. My first memories of the term involve its disdainful application to various people that in other parts of the country (particularly parts that are more northern, western, or northwestern than my homeland) might be referred to variously as intellectual, liberal, Buddhist, French, or Hilary Clinton. For some time I thought it was a catch-all phrase that one might use to describe anyone not currently wearing Wranglers or accustomed to pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Later, with the aid of some dubious public school book learning, I would come to see the term as a historical relic, attaching it to a long since passed generation of 'flower children' and 'free-love crazies' who seemed a tad more urban legend than contemporary reality, something more akin to a characterchure of an idea of a person than actual flesh and blood - something like Yoko Ono, whom I'm fairly certain doesn't exist. The hippies that I had read about were, as far as I was concerned, mythical beasts - the unicorns of 20th century American history. Having never seen one with my own eyes I was content to consign them to the realm of the griffin, the sphinx, and the 'stay at home dads' that everyone on TV was talking about. That is, until my search for a sandwich led me all the way to this foot-shaped patch of darkness on my map of India.
"Are you here for the ashram?" the boy behind the counter asked me (ashram being the Hindi word for the residence of a guru where his disciples congregate and live, and the hippie word for the physical seat of metaphysical freedom, man). I would soon learn that this seemingly innocuous question is local code for "are you crazy?" If the answer is no, you are given prompt and even courteous service, along with a sly grin that initiates you into the laughing side of a city-wide inside joke. If the answer is yes you are tolerated as long as the Rupees are flowing, but just try to pull some new-age food-is a-human-right-so-I-shouldn't-have-to-pay crap and you're shown the door (or, in the case of the bakery in which I now sat - the beaded curtain). And laughed at.
I was not here for the ashram (crazy) so my juice and gloriously fat sandwich were handed over promptly, with a wink, and I sat down at a dining table that could only be described as communal. Everything was becoming clear now. A gaunt, greasy headed man sat down directly in front of me.
“Is that sandwich good?”
“I hope so. I haven't tried it yet.”
“Hmm. Do you mind if I try some?”
“Um, yes, actually. This is my lunch.”
“Man,” - all profundity, I would learn, is book-ended by the word man - “Man, everything that’s yours is everyone’s, man.”
“Yes, right. Ok. But I’m really hungry and I’m sort of weird about germs.”
I'm actually not weird about germs at all, but it seemed at the time that the easiest way out of a situation with a crazy is to pretend to be a member of the club, albeit perhaps from a different chapter. But there is no appeasing crazy. He continued.
“Man, all things will fade.”
Normally I love conversations with strangers. Especially crazy strangers. But right now I just wanted to make love to this sandwich, and this culinary equivalent of a cock block was getting in my way. I got short with him in the way a movie man with designs on a movie woman gets short with her movie kid brother or her movie homely best friend, with meddlers who have no idea what sort of anger wells up inside a man with designs who is forced to wait unnecessarily on their implementation.
“Ok, goodbye.”
The anger, my friend, is righteous.
He realized that he wasn't getting anywhere with me or my sandwich and went off to beg food from some other unsuspecting patron. As soon as he left an old woman appeared in the door of the bakery seemingly from out of nowhere. She floated into the dining room on a cloud of tie-dye, her long silver mane flowing behind her. I got the impression that she was tethered to this mortal coil tenuously, held down only by the tremendous weight of the various rocks that were dangling from her neck by hemp cords. She sat next to me without making eye contact, staring off into the distance. Noble. Regal. Smelly. She began to silently and delicately finger some sort of long wooden instrument (it might have been a lute but I really don't know my Yani from my Yogi Bear, so I'm not sure). She introduced herself as Sunbeam, breaking the silence but still not looking at me.
“I know, I know. It’s such a cliche. But when your parents are hippies, what can you do?”
I smiled as if I completely understood where she was coming from. In fact, I had no idea. In fact, I distinctly recall a dinner conversation in which some of my family members expressed a desire for some hippies to wander onto their property so they could shoot at them. We came from different worlds, Sunbeam and I. But here we were, sitting together at a tiny health-food bakery on the outskirts of an ashram in India.
“I just embrace it. I mean, I fought it for a while. Turned Catholic, even. But it’s in me. It’s in me...” she trailed off.
I liked the idea of ‘turning Catholic” as a form of rebellion. Did it happen over night - did she go bed angry and wake up with the catechism on her lips? Did it happen in the heat of an argument - instead of spouting some anti-establishment Che-ism at her parents, did she find a 'Hail Mary' coming out of her mouth? Did she burn her daisy chain and pick up a rosary? I tried to make a mental list of all the people who might wear a t-shirt with a picture of the Pope screenprinted on it just to piss their parents off. Just as I was trying to form a mental picture of Martin Luther’s teenage daughter in such a t-shirt, Sunbeam’s friend (who had stealthily approached me from behind without my noticing) thrust a hand over my shoulder, expecting me to shake it.
“Jim,” he said. “I’m one with Sunbeam.”
I laughed, then realized that he wasn’t joking. This pattern of behavior would become a common occurrence in these parts.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said. Responding to crazy without resorting to meaningless vagueries is hard. Nonspecific language would quickly become my best friend. He laughed a bit, mirthlessly, as if to let me know that he wasn’t buying the ‘oneness’ routine either, but he kept the act up for Sunbeam’s sake.
In time I would come to see Jim and Sunbeam as a sort of tag team of mystical new age blame mongering. I saw them around this part of town often, but never separately (they were, after all, one) so I took to calling them JimBeam.
“Here, put this in your water and drink it.” He/she said as he/she removed a cloudy crystal from around his/her neck and held it out to me. The crystal was long and sort of plump, spiraling to a point at one end. It looked somehow out of place hanging from its dingy cord.
“No thank you.”
“No, I’m serious. It’ll balance you.”
“No, thank you.”
JimBeam gave each other knowing looks. His/her hand was still outstreched. “Open yourself,” he/she said.
"No, really. I sort of have this thing about germs.” There it was again, the handy lie.
Now, these hippies were annoying. But the sandwiches in their lair were so good. Resolving to put up with one for the sake of the other for as long as possible, I called on everything I had ever learned about hippies to try to deflect their attention from me, to conceal my rationality and my practicality and disguise myself as one of them. Turns out I don't know much about hippies, and just not washing my hair for a couple of days isn't enough of a disguise. I never found a really fool-proof way of dealing with the inhabitants of this strange part of town, these barriers between me and my sandwiches, so I resigned myself to simply accommodate them as I ate.
Over time (and over a procession of delicious sandwiches on an astounding variety of breads) I actually learned some things from JimBeam. They taught me that my aura was brown, my chakras were wobbly, my diet was strangling me from the inside, and my peace was in peril, man. I found out that I have been brainwashed and stuffed with mind-altering chemicals that numb my natural sensitivity to the spiritual world. They gave me a small volume of their guru's teachings which I promised to read (why is it so easy to lie to hippies?). I think the greatest thing that they taught me was that the mingling smells of patchouli and body odor, when coupled with the sound of the lute (or whatever the hell that thing was) and the glint of a large, horn-shaped crystal signifies the same thing all over the world - incontrovertible proof for the existence of unicorns. And sometimes a really good sandwich is worth the hassle of putting up with a mythical beast or two, or...two-in-one. As I meditate over my toasted ciabatta with roasted turkey, tapanade, and basil I find comfort in that thought, man.
I should note that when I sat down to write this I felt some trepidation at the idea of using the word 'hippie' in any sort of authoritative way, as my personal history with the term is somewhat muddled. It's a term that's bandied about with some regularity in the towns of the Arkansas Ozarks where I was raised, and my understanding of the its meaning and proper application has changed significantly over time, as has my relationship with this place. My first memories of the term involve its disdainful application to various people that in other parts of the country (particularly parts that are more northern, western, or northwestern than my homeland) might be referred to variously as intellectual, liberal, Buddhist, French, or Hilary Clinton. For some time I thought it was a catch-all phrase that one might use to describe anyone not currently wearing Wranglers or accustomed to pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Later, with the aid of some dubious public school book learning, I would come to see the term as a historical relic, attaching it to a long since passed generation of 'flower children' and 'free-love crazies' who seemed a tad more urban legend than contemporary reality, something more akin to a characterchure of an idea of a person than actual flesh and blood - something like Yoko Ono, whom I'm fairly certain doesn't exist. The hippies that I had read about were, as far as I was concerned, mythical beasts - the unicorns of 20th century American history. Having never seen one with my own eyes I was content to consign them to the realm of the griffin, the sphinx, and the 'stay at home dads' that everyone on TV was talking about. That is, until my search for a sandwich led me all the way to this foot-shaped patch of darkness on my map of India.
"Are you here for the ashram?" the boy behind the counter asked me (ashram being the Hindi word for the residence of a guru where his disciples congregate and live, and the hippie word for the physical seat of metaphysical freedom, man). I would soon learn that this seemingly innocuous question is local code for "are you crazy?" If the answer is no, you are given prompt and even courteous service, along with a sly grin that initiates you into the laughing side of a city-wide inside joke. If the answer is yes you are tolerated as long as the Rupees are flowing, but just try to pull some new-age food-is a-human-right-so-I-shouldn't-have-to-pay crap and you're shown the door (or, in the case of the bakery in which I now sat - the beaded curtain). And laughed at.
I was not here for the ashram (crazy) so my juice and gloriously fat sandwich were handed over promptly, with a wink, and I sat down at a dining table that could only be described as communal. Everything was becoming clear now. A gaunt, greasy headed man sat down directly in front of me.
“Is that sandwich good?”
“I hope so. I haven't tried it yet.”
“Hmm. Do you mind if I try some?”
“Um, yes, actually. This is my lunch.”
“Man,” - all profundity, I would learn, is book-ended by the word man - “Man, everything that’s yours is everyone’s, man.”
“Yes, right. Ok. But I’m really hungry and I’m sort of weird about germs.”
I'm actually not weird about germs at all, but it seemed at the time that the easiest way out of a situation with a crazy is to pretend to be a member of the club, albeit perhaps from a different chapter. But there is no appeasing crazy. He continued.
“Man, all things will fade.”
Normally I love conversations with strangers. Especially crazy strangers. But right now I just wanted to make love to this sandwich, and this culinary equivalent of a cock block was getting in my way. I got short with him in the way a movie man with designs on a movie woman gets short with her movie kid brother or her movie homely best friend, with meddlers who have no idea what sort of anger wells up inside a man with designs who is forced to wait unnecessarily on their implementation.
“Ok, goodbye.”
The anger, my friend, is righteous.
He realized that he wasn't getting anywhere with me or my sandwich and went off to beg food from some other unsuspecting patron. As soon as he left an old woman appeared in the door of the bakery seemingly from out of nowhere. She floated into the dining room on a cloud of tie-dye, her long silver mane flowing behind her. I got the impression that she was tethered to this mortal coil tenuously, held down only by the tremendous weight of the various rocks that were dangling from her neck by hemp cords. She sat next to me without making eye contact, staring off into the distance. Noble. Regal. Smelly. She began to silently and delicately finger some sort of long wooden instrument (it might have been a lute but I really don't know my Yani from my Yogi Bear, so I'm not sure). She introduced herself as Sunbeam, breaking the silence but still not looking at me.
“I know, I know. It’s such a cliche. But when your parents are hippies, what can you do?”
I smiled as if I completely understood where she was coming from. In fact, I had no idea. In fact, I distinctly recall a dinner conversation in which some of my family members expressed a desire for some hippies to wander onto their property so they could shoot at them. We came from different worlds, Sunbeam and I. But here we were, sitting together at a tiny health-food bakery on the outskirts of an ashram in India.
“I just embrace it. I mean, I fought it for a while. Turned Catholic, even. But it’s in me. It’s in me...” she trailed off.
I liked the idea of ‘turning Catholic” as a form of rebellion. Did it happen over night - did she go bed angry and wake up with the catechism on her lips? Did it happen in the heat of an argument - instead of spouting some anti-establishment Che-ism at her parents, did she find a 'Hail Mary' coming out of her mouth? Did she burn her daisy chain and pick up a rosary? I tried to make a mental list of all the people who might wear a t-shirt with a picture of the Pope screenprinted on it just to piss their parents off. Just as I was trying to form a mental picture of Martin Luther’s teenage daughter in such a t-shirt, Sunbeam’s friend (who had stealthily approached me from behind without my noticing) thrust a hand over my shoulder, expecting me to shake it.
“Jim,” he said. “I’m one with Sunbeam.”
I laughed, then realized that he wasn’t joking. This pattern of behavior would become a common occurrence in these parts.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said. Responding to crazy without resorting to meaningless vagueries is hard. Nonspecific language would quickly become my best friend. He laughed a bit, mirthlessly, as if to let me know that he wasn’t buying the ‘oneness’ routine either, but he kept the act up for Sunbeam’s sake.
In time I would come to see Jim and Sunbeam as a sort of tag team of mystical new age blame mongering. I saw them around this part of town often, but never separately (they were, after all, one) so I took to calling them JimBeam.
“Here, put this in your water and drink it.” He/she said as he/she removed a cloudy crystal from around his/her neck and held it out to me. The crystal was long and sort of plump, spiraling to a point at one end. It looked somehow out of place hanging from its dingy cord.
“No thank you.”
“No, I’m serious. It’ll balance you.”
“No, thank you.”
JimBeam gave each other knowing looks. His/her hand was still outstreched. “Open yourself,” he/she said.
"No, really. I sort of have this thing about germs.” There it was again, the handy lie.
Now, these hippies were annoying. But the sandwiches in their lair were so good. Resolving to put up with one for the sake of the other for as long as possible, I called on everything I had ever learned about hippies to try to deflect their attention from me, to conceal my rationality and my practicality and disguise myself as one of them. Turns out I don't know much about hippies, and just not washing my hair for a couple of days isn't enough of a disguise. I never found a really fool-proof way of dealing with the inhabitants of this strange part of town, these barriers between me and my sandwiches, so I resigned myself to simply accommodate them as I ate.
Over time (and over a procession of delicious sandwiches on an astounding variety of breads) I actually learned some things from JimBeam. They taught me that my aura was brown, my chakras were wobbly, my diet was strangling me from the inside, and my peace was in peril, man. I found out that I have been brainwashed and stuffed with mind-altering chemicals that numb my natural sensitivity to the spiritual world. They gave me a small volume of their guru's teachings which I promised to read (why is it so easy to lie to hippies?). I think the greatest thing that they taught me was that the mingling smells of patchouli and body odor, when coupled with the sound of the lute (or whatever the hell that thing was) and the glint of a large, horn-shaped crystal signifies the same thing all over the world - incontrovertible proof for the existence of unicorns. And sometimes a really good sandwich is worth the hassle of putting up with a mythical beast or two, or...two-in-one. As I meditate over my toasted ciabatta with roasted turkey, tapanade, and basil I find comfort in that thought, man.
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