Hippie Masala

A Passage to India
"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...

Will appeal mainly to those interested in how foreigners are accepted by Indian society
HIPPIE MASALA: Forever in India is a documentary film by Ulrich Grossenbacher and Damaris Lüthi about six people who went on the overland trail to India in the late 1960s/early 1970s and decided to stay. Cesare from Italy became a sadhu (a religious beggar) and spends his days chanting in the company of his Indian peers. Meera from Belgium did the same, though as a woman her experience has been quite different. Hanspeter from Switzerland settled down the Himalayas, maintaining a dairy farm and going hunting and fishing. Robert from Holland got into trouble as a youth running away from home and selling drugs, but once he made it to India he established a career as a painter. Finally, Erica and Gillian are South African twins who now design clothes in Goa, though we mostly view these two lushes enjoying their drinks.

The film has a number of interesting moments. Hanspeter and Robert have Indian wives, and the documentary discusses in some detail the cultural clashes of...

Disappointing!
I was expecting a lot more than what I watched from this video. It was kind of a sad situation with most of the people in this video.In one situation I felt deeply that the lady that was married to the man in this story was very abused by her husband. She finally left him, but, it was not a great movie at all. I do not recommend it. Sad and disappointing movie.

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