A Passage to India
Amaranth | Northern California | 05/30/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
""Hippie Masala" is an engrossing documentary about Europeans in India. Most of the former hippies are from Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and are married to Indian women. There's Meera, a Belgian woman who lives as a sadhu (at the end of the film, it says she briefly worked as a nude model in Europe) with massive dreadlocks. Cesare from Italy is hunchbacked, with dreadlocks, and chanting endlessly to Shiva. There's a tension between their Western upbringing and their life in Eastern culture. Sadly, many are estranged from their families.
"Hippie Masala",surprisingly, lacks Americans. Going to India to seek enlightenment in the '60s seems mainly to have been a European phenomenon, a notable example being the Beatles (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)In "Hippie Masala",the Europeans have embraced Hinduism. Meera and Cesare live as sadhus, as renunciates. A man from Switzerland paints Hindu motifs. Another man, ironically, fancies himself peace-loving when he wishes aloud that hunting were legal in India,and carries his rifle as he goes into the mountains. In America, on the other hand, Buddhism trumped Hinduism due to its accessibility.
"Hippie Masala" is a great documentary about East meeting West."