Omar humored my aversion to the police and politely segued into probing my expectations of what I would call authority figures. He has a lot of dignity which I would like to learn. He simply does not regard them as punishing overseers.
We decided to go to the foreigner camp, Rainbow. We had adventures, saw and elephant, talked to a lot of people, and eventually made it to the actual corner of the festival, beyond which was desolation. It was a hippie camp. It was seemingly organized by one middle aged man and everyone else was 20-35, with most under 25.
I suppose I should have expected a hippie camp. I guess what I had in mind was just a quiet place after cursory pleasantries and a short nap in safety. I do not need to tell the story so I will just give some imagery – fill the gaps with stereotypes. Think of these: smoking pot out of a radish; displayal of amature tattooing; trash talk about American fascism; talk about starting some band; eating raw onion as a meal of choice; talking about minutae of varieties of pot as they differ by region, growing method, love; vagrancy and unwillingness to acknowledge a place of origin, despite discussing topics with local specificity in a communal setting; the lessons of life; bad smells.
I do not know if I made this clear earlier, but contrary to what rumors I heard India does not smell or stink. I find it quite clean enough though often dusty, but dust is more a part of life than other hygenic issues. Hippies however, do stink.
Let me back up – I see a lot of hippies here. They come from all countries – well, America, Canada, Europe, Israel, and Japan, that I have met or seen / heard – and I always thought that they imitated or had some connection with Indian ways. However, now that I am here in India, I see that hippie hygeine is obviously poorer than practically any Indian’s.
Hippies smell just as bad here as they do in America, and no one wears patchouli here except them. When they wear robes they are following no Indian fashion. Even compared to the robes that are acceptable on certain elderly people at certain times in certain places, it is immediately obvious to me that the hippies are wearing them all wrong. An analogy would be like a complete foreigner to Western culture wanting to imitate it, so he puts on grandpa clothes and wears them backwards.