Broken Psyches: Flipping Out in India

I came across the BBC documentary, Flipping Out, a few months ago. It contains some stunning and evocative images of both India and the Israeli backpackers who inhabit the notorious guesthouses.

Drug-use is prevalent among backpackers. From the full-moon parties in Thailand to the rave-soaked beaches of Goa, hash, coke, MDMA, LSD or heroin are the various drugs of choice. These substances are cheap, potent and readily available to young travelers in search of existential freedom from their mundane, lawn-covered suburbs.

Flipping Out dives a few fathoms deeper than I expected from a documentary on this subject. Besides interviews with ex-soldiers on "why they come" to India in the first place, only to be surrounded by other Israeli ex-soldiers, the film focuses also on the people who feel called to come to the rescue of those who've "flipped" - spiritual healers who attempt to re-member the shattered fragments of Self back into a functional consciousness.

Highly recommended, this documentary captures the essence of the quandary my writing deals with - that of what happens when paradise is permanently accessible to droves of outsiders.

Turning News into Fiction

Last summer, Hindu pilgrims making their way up a mountain-side to the hill-top Naina Devi Shrine were caught in a human stampede as one of the guardrails broke, sparking panic throughout the crowd. I read about the incident in the Toronto Star and turned it into the short-story "The Stampede" for my collection The Vagrant Borders of Kashmir.

In recent news, Clark-Nova Books has requested to include the story in its up-coming anthology - Writing Without Direction - for writers under 30, due out in Spring 2010.

The politics of writing about a place like India from a Post-Post Colonial standpoint are risky. Using a real-life tragedy as a creative catalyst forces one to re-evaluate the line between truth and fiction and where our responsibilities lay with either. "The Stampede" challenges our privileging of certain catastrophic events by framing them in an outsider's outsider perspective - that of a journalist reporting on the events with the help of an Indian intern.

Many thanks to Clark-Nova Books for including me in their anthology.