Jerry Beisler has published international political commentary, travel articles, historical research papers, reviews, and short stories. He lives in Mill Valley, California. Country Joe McDonald is a musician who has played at Woodstock and released albums in the styles of folk, rock, country, and blues. He is also an antiwar protestor and Vietnam veteran.

The Bandit of Kabul

Counterculture Adventures Along the Hashish Trail and Beyond …

By Jerry Beisler

Trine Day LLC

Copyright © 2012 Jerry Beisler
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936296-02-6
CHAPTER 1

If it didn’t happen this way, it should have.

GOA, INDIA, NOVEMBER 1971

The former Portuguese colony of Goa was hyped as the counter-culture Nirvana. If the hippies ran Disneyland, it would be a lot like Goa – with free sex, plenty of herb to smoke and the greatest mango lassis we ever tasted. It was real life — not the virtual world of modern American society, that stifles and subverts freedom with conformity and bourgeois boredom.

The pirates that preyed on cargo traffic out of hidden coves that line the Goa coast were not the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” an amusement park attraction acted out by human manikins. They were real pirates, and there the differences begin.

In fact, Goa was not quite the perfect paradise it was cracked up to be. The first night my fiancée, Rebecca, and I arrived, we learned a new definition of creature comforts: Only the “creatures” are comfortable.

Sleeping on the hard wooden slats that passed for a bed, to the accompanying whine of mosquitoes eagerly feasting upon us two well-fed American delights, caused a few moments of doubt about our proposed stay.

The next day Rebecca and I found the house with the heart on the roof. 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 blood-besotted friends. The alternative was a coil of reeking incense, probably laced with DDT.

Forty years later, Goa hosted a Conference of International Bankers, some of whom were interviewed by CNN in front of their luxury hotel, complete with imported palm trees.

One of the more charming aspects of Goa was the sanitary system. All houses came complete with a convenient out-house that was backed up against a pig pen and raised above it by three steps. When one used the facilities, little snouts would be visible at the end of the chute, grunting eagerly while awaiting their breakfast. The pigs became our constant companions on treks to these outhouses. Watching them scurry for the choicest spot suggested the origin of the term “piggy back”. Once we moved into our charming little home with the heart on the roof, mosquito nets in place to protect us and softer bedding for indulging in tropical lust, the days and nights became much more pleasant in the land of Goa.

The farmer’s market consensus was that a couple of hundred people lived on the beaches from Calengute to Anjuna. The locals survived by fishing and were happy with the low-key commerce we international types contributed to their villages.

Our next-door neighbors were Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor and their two young sons. Definitely not hippies, the Kapoors 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. Jen’s parents were Shakespearean actors during the late period of the English Raj, and had remained in India. In their retirement years, the couple continued to perform two-person Shakespeare plays.

Shashi was notified by telegram of his starring role in producer/director Conrad Rook’s film “Siddhartha” a week after we met them. He and Jennifer and the children were elated and invited us to a small, celebratory party.

The beaches of Goa were spectacular, a seemingly endless span of sand and palm trees. The waters of the Arabian Sea were not particularly inviting, being somewhat murky and filled with small sharks. All the same, we enjoyed a couple of swims every day. Evenings would find us strolling along, enjoying the sunset and admiring the waves outlining the shore with glittering, phosphorescent streaks.

Daily life in Goa included one Father Perez, the last Catholic priest left from Portuguese colonial days. Kicked out of the subcontinent at gun point in 1964 by the Indian government, all that remained was the traditional Portuguese sweetbread that we enjoyed, and the one Catholic Church managed by Father Perez on four rupees a day. Father Perez was either admired or despised by the traveling community. He made a living changing money on the black market for the foreigners and would often drop by our house with his own coconut chillum contraption and mooch a little hashish to smoke.

He was known to have postcards made up of himself standing in front of a gaggle of young Hindi boys, which he sent to unsuspecting altruists asking them for donations to support a fictional soccer team. Father Perez also spent hours recounting, always with great laughter, his threats to the Hindi wives of local fishermen. After their husbands sailed out to sea for the daily fishing expedition, Father Perez would intimidate the wives with impending evil spells if they didn’t give him money.

Attracted to these beaches was a parade of characters from all over the world. As frequent guests at Joe Banana’s Fruit Shake shop and Tony’s Up the Beach we joined the international throng dining on seafood and the simple, local fare. The relaxed, jovial atmosphere made it seem that the cream of the traveling community had found their way to Goa. Artists came with portfolios of their original work and decorated many of the houses with murals. The musically talented played exotic instruments such as the sitar, oud and vina, and the not-so-exotic guitars, drums and flutes. Spontaneous music was a daily occurrence on the porches of hippie houses. Writers, searching for perfect metaphors for a brand new scene, sent letters and articles to their far-flung families, friends and homeland media, chronicling the happenings and high jinks in Goa and beyond. These original hippies created a swirling, mesmerizing cacophony of sound and color.

Getting into the spirit of things, Rebecca and I enjoyed psilocybin one full-moon night. It added more magic and romance to an experience already in a timeless, primeval setting with a feeling of human oneness. Goa.

For Christmas we decided to throw a party. Rebecca had purchased a gallon of Canadian maple syrup at a duty-free shop on our way to India. It inspired me to use the local Portuguese sweetbread and readily available eggs for French toast. Before Christmas morning I hired four Goanese women to make huge fruit salads. We produced a unique, welcome feast for about 200 people, including Peace Corps volunteers and other travelers who heard about the party by coconut telegraph up and down the beach from as far as 50 miles away.

As the party cranked into full gear, a group of us spontaneously decided to rent three canoe-style outriggers from the local shark fishermen. This turned out to be much more exciting than we bargained for. After piling a half-dozen sated and stoned partiers into the boats, and clearing the shore break, we found ourselves cruising festively in open water. The fishermen then proceeded to bring out several bottles of an illegal, powerful whiskey and launched into a celebration of their own. Gleeful at their unexpected, over-paid boat rental, they swilled liquor until they were blind drunk. These outriggers were very narrow and none of us had experience in manning such a craft – our lives were in the hands of the more and more inebriated fishermen. It was with great difficulty that we managed, by hand signals and body language, to instruct them to row us ashore at Chapora Beach for a swim. After a relaxing, enjoyable dip and a few hits off the chillum, we piled the besotted fishermen, now mostly unconscious, back into the boats and launched our ship of fools towards home– in the darkness, through shark-filled waters. When we finally hit the beach at Heart House the party was still raging, and continued all night long.

As the days flowed together during the month we spent in Goa, it became obvious that the primitive living conditions were putting an unhealthy stress on everyone’s lifestyle. Foolish hippies were eating something called Mandrax, a form of Quaalude, just to get them through the nights. Smoking prodigious amounts of hashish all day long was a common pastime. More acid arrived when members of the Brotherhood of Light from Southern California came upon the scene. Girls went topless on the beach and men wore nothing but the g-string type bathing suit preferred by the local fishermen. The local women bathed in full saris, but seemed not to mind that their scantily clad foreign sisters were bouncing around the beach. This fantastic feeling of “freedom found” was compromised by the primitive lifestyle and the spread of lice and disease. The time to move on was quickly approaching.

It was in Goa that I connected with a Canadian we called Montreal Michael. Michael came up with the concept of extracting oil from hashish in an ingenious way to slide it past unsuspecting customs agents. Michael’s “bonafides” for me were his 20 or more heavy textbooks, U.N. Reports and scientific journals that he referred to as a “study library.” His mother had been a member of the LeDain Commission created by the Canadian Government to study and present recommendations to the progressive Prime Minister, the worldly Pierre Trudeau. The commissioners voted five to four against legalization in their report. Michael inherited the “study library” his mother had used in her academic examination of the history and use of cannabis. Michael had hauled these heavy books to this center of low-key hedonism, more replete with paperback novels than learned texts. He said he was going to go to Afghanistan and try to put the extraction operation together. I said I was planning to make a trip to Afghanistan as well for the ultimate horseback ride of my life and that if I saw him there I’d consider taking a look at his idea. We talked about a plan to transport hashish from legal Nepal and Afghanistan to quasi-legal Amsterdam- if only the countries in between didn’t carry a sentence of ten years’ hard labor. We never shared these thoughts or plans with Rebecca. She had little use for legal subtleties.

Shashi Kapoor departed for Bombay to begin filming “Siddhartha.” We found ourselves spending more quality time with Jennifer and the children rather than the hippies who found their way to our front porch and mostly wanted to talk of their acid trip the night before. It was at this time that I made a cardinal rule in my traveler’s life: no stories about acid trips. Boring. What was not boring, however, was the whisper of war between India and Pakistan.

Most people arrived in and departed from Goa on large, cargo-carrying ferries that plied their trade along the coast to Bombay and back. The ship would moor a half-mile from shore and it was fascinating to see the small boats rowing out to collect the various supplies that were often just tossed overboard into the waiting vessels.

The ferry did have six lovely first-class cabins on the upper deck, which we had the foresight to book round-trip.

We left Goa in January with our sights on Nepal and the beginning of an import business. Jennifer Kapoor and her two children joined us on the ferry. The lower deck was filled with hippies heading back to the hashish trail, immediately replaced by those pouring into the hippie Disneyland.

Rebecca and I were so overcome by the romance of our journey that we decided to be married by the ship’s Captain, an event reminiscent of those classic seafaring ceremonies of yore.

In the spirit of the occasion Jennifer Kapoor went below and commandeered, as she said, “the best looking European Don Juan I could find,” To be my best man.

He was Alejandro, a handsome Spaniard whom Rebecca and I had met at various Goa celebrations. Unfortunately he could not stand up with me, because he was so inebriated he couldn’t, well, stand up. We propped Alejandro against the life ring and Jennifer Kapoor accompanied Rebecca as maid of honor. The first mate was my best man. The brief rite was held on the open deck and highlighted by a beautiful, gigantic red sun setting into the Arabian Sea behind us.

The Captain entered our marriage into the ship’s log.

CHAPTER 2

Hark, now hear the sailors cry.
Smell the sea and feel the sky.
Let your soul and spirit fly.
Into the mystic.

–Van Morrison, “Into the Mystic”

The threat of war hissed through Bombay. In 1947, the world powers had ludicrously allowed the creation of an East and West Pakistan with thousands of square miles of India in between. This untenable situation was about to be resolved, in a short but bloody conflagration. We checked into the Ambassador Hotel, then went to fight through the lines for railroad tickets towards Kathmandu.

Everything got hazy that first night in Bombay. We ran into our would-be best man, Alejandro, and he asked us if we had ever been to an opium parlor. “Your honeymoon night in Bombay … why not?”

“We go to ‘vice’ part of the city. Anything goes … for centuries,” Alejandro emphasized, “for centuries!” Alejandro further explained that the deal was to visit the O dens in the Sokologi Square part of Bombay but, above all, to avoid spending many days there.

“Come, I’ll take you down there,” he said “and we must go now and you must start to say the following mantra: ‘I will not stay more than 8 hours, I will not stay more than 8 hours’ because the masters of the pipe will continue to offer to refill your pipe until there is no money left. Some people have actually started to get their mail there,” he further cautioned.

“We’re headed to the mountains and safety tomorrow,” we replied.

When we entered the opium den we caused quite a stir. Seeing a beautiful blonde woman such as Rebecca always caught the locals’ attention. The docents of the den spread fresh newspaper on the floor and gave us each a tin can for a pillow. Squatting next to us and filling the long opium pipe with small balls of “O,” the den wallahs instructed us to take big, full drags on the pipe. Like every drug in my experience, the first time is the best time, and I was quickly transported to blue lagoons, red sails and golden sunrises. We were offered tea and soft drinks and, of course, many opportunities to refill our pipes. Now and then Alejandro’s warning – “no more than 8 hours” – would bounce across the bucolic scenery that I was enjoying in my head. Rebecca and I agreed it was time to go. Alejandro refused to take his own advice and we left without him.

We were astonished to find ourselves greeted by the dawn. It was six in the morning and the city of Bombay was rocking. We walked into the breaking day across the Square and saw thousands of prostitutes stacked in tiny cages six stories high in building after building. Everywhere small cooking fires shed an eerie glow on the swarming populace, each soul eking out a bitter survival in scenes that rivaled anything I recalled from reading “Dante’s Inferno.” We could not have been further from our small, conservative hometowns. It felt as if I had just looked into a strange mirror. Everything looks back at you differently. I had walked through a door of perception: a time shift. The hypothetical “teeming masses of Asia” had become a visible fact.

We missed the train, and awoke after twenty-four hours of delirium to mankind’s most horrific nightmare reality. India and Pakistan were at war. Bombay, within striking distance of the Pakistani air force, was under blackout and all seaports and airports were closed. The entire populace seemed to be in a wild, patriotic panic. Lawlessness and chaos were breaking out in the streets. The only safe move was inland, and fast.

(Continues…)Excerpted from The Bandit of Kabul by Jerry Beisler. Copyright © 2012 Jerry Beisler. Excerpted by permission of Trine Day LLC.
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