announcement behind a poster, so all you could see was the word “Smoking.”
Sometimes the white sadhus from across the river would show up, with their orange
robes and mala beads and ancient, fading biker tattoos. They were no joke, these white
sadhus, however eccentric they may have been. I heard a marvelous tale about one
fellow who vowed to spend a month sitting in one of the caves that peppered the
landscape. After beginning his vigil, he was so pestered by other freaks coming to
gape at his feat that he wound up letting a room in the village in order to fulfill his
vow.
Gil had criticized the whole idea of a Hampi rave before I left. Hampi was where
you hung with sadhus, he said, not where you threw parties. His comment reminded
me that, despite the supposed spirituality of a good Goan fete, their hedonic logic
did not exhaust one’s spiritual life. Nor did it fit the psychogeography of “real”
India, whose spiritual possibilities far outshone a mere rave.
In the week leading up to the full moon, I could understand Gil’s reservations. A
noticeably trendier crowd moved into Hampi: nattier threads, better cheek-bones,
more cash. Rooms filled to capacity, kids slept on roofs or in temples. Finally a huge
tour bus drove up and parked in the dusty bazaar. Slogans blazed across the side:
Techno Tourgon, LSD 25, Shiva Space Age Technology. Jörg the DJ had arrived.
I finally caught up with Jörg on the day of the full moon. The BBC had just
finished interviewing him, and the man was beaming, his blue eyes glowing with a
mad lucidity A huge bronze Shiva Nataraj danced on the dashboard, an image
echoed in the Shankar tattoo on Jörg’s taut naked belly
Jörg was pure freak, too maniacally enthusiastic to cop a snobbish DJ attitude. “I
used to be a typical heavy-metal rock ‘n’ roller. Now I am addicted to techno,” he
said. “For five years time now I listen to nothing else. Except meditation songs in
the morning.” Like many techno-freaks, Jörg’s first Goa party was nothing less than
a conversion experience. “You can laugh, but it was like seeing a keyhole to God,”
he said in a hoarse voice. He’d been back and forth to India ever since, selling
Landcruiser parts at the Chinese border, DJing parties around Kathmandu, dipping
in the Ganges with the sadhus at the holy city of Haridwar.
“I’m a little bit extremist,” he admitted, grabbing a cigarette from a pack lying
next to a crumpled photo of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The previous year, after a
month in Goa packed with drugs and dancing, and with hardly any DJ experience,
Jörg set up his gear in Hampi’s underground Shiva temple and threw the
archaeological area’s first rave. “After that party I feel like this big hole. I sat for
another month under a tree. Nothing inside anymore.” He fiddled with the five-
inch Sony mini-discs he uses instead of DATs. “But believe me, to be empty and
open to everything is exactly the right position when you come to India. You have
to improvise.”
Only hours before moonrise, Jörg was still improvising. After spending days
finding the right official to bribe in order to throw a party, he made his case. “We
talked for hours. We got to know each other very well. Then he said no.”
So in the fading sunlight Jörg decided to cross the river into another district. He
and his crew lugged their gear down the river’s edge, and loaded the equipment into
ERIK DAVIS 267