WHAT HAS A HIPPIE TO DO WITH SATURN AND JUPITER?

In the winter of 2002/2003 I was staying in a low-budget guesthouse, just a few minutes’ walk from the edge of the cliff in Varkala Beach, India. I wanted to stay in my favourite hut on the cliff, but the owner of that particular property hadn’t shown up yet so early in the season, hence I was forced to reside at a guesthouse for a few weeks. One night I had stood still for a long time at the south-side of the cliff where there had been made a clearing in the palm tree forest over a decade and a half before. A part of that area had been covered with asphalt and painted with a large white circle that had an H in the centre. It was once used as a helicopter platform to allow Indira Gandhi to land there. She had been invited to visit a nearby temple.

When you stand on the edge of the cliff on that helicopter platform at night and look up into the sky, one gets a great sense of standing on a sphere in a vast universe, and thus feel very small and insignificant. One can see the star sign of Orion, and the planets of Saturn and Jupiter…and dream away.
I always loved standing on that helicopter platform and gaze into the star-studded night sky. One night I went to bed and had a dream about Saturn and Jupiter. It was the first time in my life I actually dreamed about planets. I have dreamed of many things in my life, but never about planets. In my dream I was able to see the rings around Saturn and the moons of Jupiter, something impossible to see in real life with the naked eye.

The next day I had forgotten about my dream and went through my routine of having breakfast on the cliff at Café del Mar, swimming in the sea, and having dinner at night on the beach at Aje’s Restaurant. As usual, I would end my evenings by chatting a few hours with my Tibetan friends Tenzin and Dolker, who ran a little souvenir shop called Wind-Horse in a palmleave hut on the cliff. At eleven, I walked back to my guesthouse, finding my way through the forest with my flashlight. When I arrived at the guesthouse, I found a dirty old man laying in front of the door. The owner of the guesthouse wasn’t present, and as it was still off-season, I was the only guest in the guesthouse. I wondered what to do with this bum laying in front of the door. Who was he and why was he sleeping in front of the door? I woke him up. The bearded man sat up. He looked like a hippie on drugs.
“Hello. Can I help you?” I asked.
“Hi. I got here this evening and checked into a room. I went out for dinner at the temple but I got a little drunk later on and then I lost the key of the front door and the manager isn’t here so I can’t get in. Fuck!”
I took in his words. “So you still have your room-key?”
“Yes. I just lost the front-door key.”
“Okay. In that case I can let you in. Which room are you staying in?”
“The lilac room.”
He convinced me to be a guest here. None of the 6 rooms had numbers, but colours as names.
He followed me inside, climbed the staircase to the first floor and opened the door to his room.
I pressed the buttons of my digital lock and opened my door.
The hippie reappeared on the landing. “O excuse me. Do you have some grass for me to smoke?” he asked me.
“Sorry. I don’t do grass. But if you hang out in this area for a while, perhaps have a walk near black beach, some Indian will come up to you and ask you if you want something. If you say yes, you’ll get a fair amount of grass for a few hundred rupees. Enjoy and good luck. Goodnight.”
He nodded and went back into his room and I in mine. Half an hour later someone knocked on my door. I asked who was there.
“It’s me. I can’t sleep. You want to talk with me?” It was the voice of the old hippie.
I contemplated. I couldn’t sleep either, but what was I to talk about with this crazy bearded hippie? Was it safe to be with him? We were all alone in this guesthouse; the manager had obviously gone home to spend the night with his family in Varkala town.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked him with my door still closed and locked.
“Anything. I just feel the need to talk to someone. I am broke, have no money to pay for the room at the end of the week, spent my last money on food and beer a few hours ago and I feel depressed. I want to talk to someone. About anything.”
I rolled my eyes, accusing myself in silence of being too much of a Mother Teresa, and finally opened the door.
“Can I come inside your room?” the old hippie asked.
“No,” I replied. “I have no chairs in my room and I don’t allow people to sit on my bed. We can sit on the veranda.”
We sat down on some uncomfortable rattan chairs on the veranda. “So what’s your name and where are you from?” I asked him.
“I am Antonio. I am Italian. And you?”

"My name is Pantau. I am Dutch but I live here in India. I live in the Himalayas for eight months a year but the winters I spend here in Varkala. So what are you doing in India without money, Antonio?”
“I am homeless and India is cheep. I can’t stay in Europe. Too cold and too expensive.”
“Do you work…sometimes?”
He looked at me and grinned.
“I haven’t worked in years. I am a bum. People give me food. Indians are nice. They always give me food. I sleep in temples. People feed me. Sometimes I do chores for people. They give me some money. Things like that.”
I nodded.
“Do you have some money for me?” he asked.
“No. I am sorry.”
He nodded.
“These rooms cost 100 rupees a night,” he informed me.
“I know. You should have thought about that before you checked in. Sorry, I cannot help you.”
He started to irritate me and I thought of going back to my room to continue re-reading my book The Art of Happiness by H.H. the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler.
A long silence followed. Antonio looked up into the sky. “The moon is beautiful tonight.”
“Yes. It’s almost full.”
“Do you know about the planets? Have you seen them?” he asked.
“On pictures, sure, and as little dots in the night sky.”
“I am an astronomer,” he said.
“Really? A real one?”
“Yes. But I hate teaching at universities and I started travelling the world about twenty years ago. I never went home. I am always unsure about whether I will be alive the next day, whether I will have food in my stomach or a place to sleep. But I like it this way. It’s not boring. Working as a professor is very boring. At least, that is how it feels to me.”
“Indeed. So you never felt a need for certainty and security?”
“No. Everyone wants security and certainty, but that doesn’t bring happiness. It’s very boring.”
“People want surprises then?”
“They think they like surprises, but they only enjoy surprises that they like. If they’re surprised by something they don’t like, they consider it a problem.”
I smiled and took this information in. “I had a dream about Saturn and Jupiter last night. Very strange, because I never dream about planets. But last night I was observing Saturn and Jupiter in my dream as if they were right in front of my eyes. I could see the rings around Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.”
Antonio stood up. “Jupiter has over sixty moons. Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. You want to see them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come with me to the roof and I’ll show you Saturn and Jupiter.”
I stood up and followed him to the roof of the guesthouse. To my surprise there was a little table in the centre of the concrete roof and a rattan chair. On top of the wooden table stood a large telescope. It wasn’t one of those long slim things on a tripod but a drum-like, two foot long cylinder with a small viewfinder sticking outside the bottom. Antonio searched the sky, pointing the telescope in the right direction and then allowed me to look through the viewer. And there it was. Saturn with her rings. Never seen it before like this. This was a first for me. It looked so close to me, so clear; the sight ran a shiver down my spine. Saturn moved so fast through the sky that within a minute it disappeared out of the telescope’s view and Antonio had to adjust its direction for me every minute so I could keep following it through the sky. A little later, he pointed the scope at Jupiter and I could see 5 of its moons so clearly. They appeared so close to me, as if I could reach out my hand and touch them.
The moon started to appear higher in the sky and Antonio directed the lens at the moon’s surface. The view of the moon through this big telescope was more impressive than I had ever seen it through my binoculars. That night we spent a few more hours talking about the universe. I offered him some money, as this experience was worth it. I also discussed with him a little business plan....

For the next few months, Antonio would stand on a strategic point atop the cliff near the tourist restaurants. He had made a cardboard advertisement reading: SEE SATURN AND JUPITER FOR 60 RUPEES. Tourists queued to get a glimpse of the planets through Antonio’s telescope. Antonio could pay for food and shelter. I greeted him every night. He would sometimes show me Saturn again (for free) until one day Antonio no longer stood on the cliff with his telescope. He had disappeared, probably moved on to a new adventure.