Ashram + Osho = Ashhole

Warning! This article contains violent words, including cusses, adult situations and heaps of frustrated feelings. Don’t try this at home.

I arrived in Gokarna, an idyllic beach community in the North of Karnataka, the state between Kerala and Maharashtra (where Bombay is). This beach approaches what the book The Beach was trying to capture. The community is a very small Indian village with three very isolated beaches – a 45, 60, or 90-minute walk, respectively. You can still sleep on the beaches, and a crowded day consists of perhaps 20 westerners on a beach that’s about a kilometer long. Beautiful? No: boring!

If I hadn’t just spent three weeks in Kovalam I would have been in seventh heaven. But unless you like to smoke pot till you’re blue in the face and dumb as a stump, there ain’t much to do, and the smokin’ niche isn’t for me, either. I don’t need any drug that makes me feel even more self-aware and awkward. So, after two days on Gokarna, with a French woman who looked like a cross between Brigitte Bardot & Sophie Marceau (UGLY!), and since the full moon was fast approaching, I opted to try out Goa.

The Full Moon in Anjuna is legendary. As to why, I don’t know. I termed Anjuna – more appropriately, I thought – Angina, as it gave me a real pain in the heart. We (westerners) have ruined one of India’s loveliest stretches of coastline.

Angina beach is as if every continent vomited up its hippies, dreadlocks, eyebrow rings, speedfreaks and heroin addicts – and placed them there. It’s not just young kids; it’s like a gathering of the Woodstock, X, and Pepsi generations. People sunbathe nude (highly offensive to Indians) and in general behave like pre-adolescents. If you’re trying to imagine what it’s like, think Fort Lauderdale during spring break, minus the class and decorum, and with twice as much Ecstasy, vomiting, and rude behavior, such as one drunken Spaniard who thought it was funny to repeatedly blow out a Hindu woman’s holy oil lamp.

On my walk to the beach I was offered Chinese opium, Manali cream (hashish), ecstasy, speed, psychedelic mushrooms, grass, cocaine and heroin – kind of like being at an industry party in Hollywood. My favorite part was being stopped three times on my way back to my guesthouse, by three different Goan policemen (they have been known to plant coke on people for baksheesh/tips/bribes). One even stole 100 rupees out of my pocket (about $2.50). By this point I was getting pretty annoyed and, being innocent, got sassy and told him, in not so many words, to Goan fuck himself. (I warned about language…)

I stayed in Anjuna 18 hours, left two days before full moon, and continued up the coast to Arambol. This is the Goa I imagined: Gorgeous, sparsely populated, but still things to do; white sands, coconut palms, fresh water lake.

One of the stranger things that happened (and happens all the time in India) is I was walking on a deserted beach and saw a guy walking towards me. It was my Austrian friend Simon, with whom I traveled in Nepal – too weird. Now in Pune, we left for the Ajanta and Ellora caves the next day.

A quick aside on the Osho: In Ashram I was physically removed from the hallowed meditation retreat (by the Vigilantes – embroidered on their uniforms, no less). You see, they (Osho-ites) are a throwback to the 70’s, like a cancerous tumor growing on the neck of the Me Generation. Free sex is enlightening; I knew they wouldn’t let me in, so I took the mandatory HIV test anyway, just to see their reaction:

“Sorry. Can’t enter.”

“Why?”

“You have AIDS.”

“People with AIDS can’t meditate with you and attain enlightenment?”

“Osho said two-thirds of the people in the world will die of AIDS. We can’t have that contamination here.” (I am about to be racially offensive, but I did not mean it and the guy I was speaking to was black.)

“Well, if Osho said, ‘The Blacks are too stupid to understand enlightenment – they can’t come here,’ would you still call him ‘Bagavan’ [god]?”

At this moment, the Vigilantes walked me (aerobically even) to the door.

On a related note, a Hindu man who followed Vishnu had been arguing with them too, and he came up to me and said, “Blessings, brother. God, whoever you choose to follow, would never exclude from his kingdom.”

Right on, Hinduism.

And so I leave you now, the Norma Rae of Pune.

HIV-positive, vital, and a hell of a lot more godly than any of the lost souls who’ve come to Pune for a free-for-all fuckfest. (Again, I apologize to any and all for the language, but my feathers are just now unruffling.) Until the next, love God, whichever form you choose, for He will love you, too, just as you are…