Hippie

I would say that this book actually took me places. When I bought this book, I really had no idea that it’s partly Paulo’s autobiography. It was just the title that I found intriguing. I wondered why would Paulo write something on The Hippie culture? I was having a hard time imagining Paulo as a Hippie.

The Hippies represented a counter cultural movement that rejected the traditional and conventional ways of life that became quite popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Having read 10 books by the author previously, where most of his protagonists embark on a spiritually motivated journey, the book Hippie reveals his personal journey and experiences which certainly motivated the making of his fictional characters. Coelho, I believe is an exceptional man. I am sure most of you have read his books and I am not talking about his most hyped books like The Alchemist but some of his other books like Zahir, Veronika Decides to Die, Eleven Minutes and The Witch of Portobello, which reflects his exceptional perceptions on diverse themes ranging from faith and spirituality to mental health, love, sex and adultery.

This guy have seen it all, experienced it all and all of his personal experiences , I think, of unrequited love, drug addiction, capiophobia and even being sent to a mental institution three times helps him create the masterpieces he does.

In the first half of the book, before Paulo’s encounter with a Hippie woman named Karla, he attempts to nullify the basic stereotypes on Hippies who were looked down as a group of people wearing weird clothes, who doesn’t believe in the concept of personal hygiene, keeps their hair uncombed, mostly unemployed drug addicts who engage in immoral sexual activities defying societal norms. Paulo blasts these stereotypes one by one with contradictory references to the Hippie way of living. Their journey seeking the meaning of life can never be generalized. Where one may seek peace with the use of cocaine, LSD and other drugs at their disposal, another mightsimply resort to other spiritual and mystical means.

I really loved Karla. The woman in search of a purpose, a meaning of life who establishes a quirky mix of platonic and sexual love with Paulo and somehow makes him a part of her journey in a magical bus from Amsterdam to Kathmandu. The later part of the book took me by surprise. Some part of me really hoped seeing Paulo and Karla together but those two hippies were never meant to be. Their inner selves were crumbled in different ways and the answers they were looking for could never have been found in the same spiritual pursuit. The little part of the long journey that Paulo was a part of, introduced us both to new places and people. It was truly a refreshing expeience.