Chapter Forty-Five
“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.”
Mark Twain
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Throw the peace sign in the air and say ‘higher’ — it’ll do you no harm.”
Sly of “Sly and the Family Stone” to the crowd at Woodstock
“It’s better to have weed in the time of no money than money in the time of no weed.”
Free Wheelin’ Franklin
“You’re the party, the Grateful Dead is the excuse.”
Jerry Garcia
“Don’t get the idea that I’m knocking the American system.”
Al Capone
“I got forty red, white and blue shoe strings and a thousand telephones that don’t ring. Do you know where I can get rid of these things?”
“Highway 61 Revisited,” Bob Dylan
“Smoking is a custom, loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fumes thereof, nearest resembles the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
“On Smoking,” by King James, 1604 A.D.
“All of a sudden I could hear somebody whistling from right behind me. I turned and she said ‘Why do you always end up down at Nick’s café?’ I said ‘I don’t know, the wind just kind of pushed me this way.’”
“Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” Robbie Robertson
“The only thing new is the history you just learned.”
Harry Truman
Prologue / Author’s Note
This book is set in some of the world’s most remote and exotic locations, but you will not be reading poetic or minute descriptions of the sights, sounds or smells of those places. There are no carefully crafted remembrances of deeply emotional interludes, frighteningly fearful experiences or moments of ecstatic joy, though they did, naturally, occur. Nor will love, in all its many aspects and facets, be inspected, analyzed or remembered in detail. There is no time for dwelling on these things during this era of endless war that produces murderous national leaders, idiotic economic policies and draconian, tyrannical laws. But the historical facts, the action and adventure, the spirit and spirituality of human beings are here; this story begins and ends with love.
Chapter One
“If it didn’t happen this way, it should have.”
INDIA, NOVEMBER 1971
Goa, India, was hyped as the counter-culture Nirvana. If the hippies ran Disneyland, it would be a lot like Goa – with sex, some herb to smoke and the greatest mango lassies you ever tasted. It would be real life, not the plastic, future-modern society that stifles freedom with conformity and bourgeois boredom.
The pirates that preyed on cargo traffic out of hidden coves that lined the Goa coast were not the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” an amusement park attraction acted out by human manikins, but were real pirates and there the differences begin.
In fact, Goa was anything but what the traveling, hippiecommunity exaggeration of paradise was said to be. The first night that my fiancée, Rebecca, and I arrived, we missed our creature comforts and we learned what the real definition of “creature” comfort is.
Sleeping on the hard wooden slats that passed for a bed, to the accompanying buzz of mosquitoes eagerly feasting upon us two American delights, caused us to have a few moments of doubt about our proposed stay.
Rebecca and I found the house with the heart on the roof the next day. It was one of only three structures on the entire 50 miles of beach that had the benefit of intermittent electricity. We discovered that padded mattresses were available from local merchants as were colorful fabrics to use for bedding or beach wear. A mosquito net provided the necessary protection from our buzzing, blood-besotted friends. The alternative was a coil of reeking incense, probably laced with DDT.
The farmer’s market consensus was that a couple of hundred people lived on the beaches from Calengute to Anjuna. The local populace survived off fishing and were happy with the low-key commerce these international types contributed to their villages.
Our next-door neighbors were Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor and their two young sons. The Kapoors were definitely not hippies and while not opposed to the lifestyle, were strongly anti-drug, especially in front of their children. Shashi was a third-generation actor related to a long line of Bollywood producers, directors and promoters. Jennifer, Shashi’s lovely, blonde English wife, boasted of parents who were Shakespearean actors during the period of the English Raj and who had remained in India. Now, in the retirement age of their lives, Jennifer’s parents continued to perform two-person Shakespearean plays.
Shashi was notified, by telegram, of his starring role in producer/director Conrad Rooks film “Siddhartha” a week after we met them. He and Jennifer and the children were elated and had a small, celebratory party when they shared the news with us.
The beaches of Goa were spectacular, a seemingly endless span of sand and palm trees. The waters of the Arabian Sea were not particularly beautiful, being somewhat murky and filled with small sharks. All the same, we
