Joanne Kyger

from Notes from India, 1962

March 3, 1962

Gary insists I eat yogurt and spills it over my mouth and sleeping bag. Leaves the cup outside and a dog eats it. A cat comes through the bars at night and knocks over a pail of it, comes back to lap it up.

Cows and bulls outside the door, one pins Allen to the gate. Peter pets them.

Chapter II from some book by Tim Leary at Harvard University Center for Research in Personality, who turns everyone onto mushroom pills. Pages peppered with words like: sweet loving guy, sweet new therapy, fine loving afternoon. He says he loves the poets but from the way he writes about them he turns them into unattractive foolish asses, drops just enough phrases through the mouths of others to show how he feels—no baths, big phone bill. Not very bright. Probably wants to write or be spiritual in big way—and envies Burroughs, Ginsberg—who he basically hates—covering it up with gooey admiration. ‘Allen Ginsberg, Zen master politician.’ Constantly harps on the poorer physical aspects of Allen—thin, glasses, white, stooped shoulders. ‘Hung, like me, on doing good.’

March 14, 1962

Fever, brings cold. Made stew in and out of bed. Peter and Allen turn on with Morphine before dinner and no appetite. Peter has also taken Opium at 10 o’clock, before going to find his 12 rupee roast chicken was stewed in curry. He washed it off in the restaurant kitchen.

The next morning after buying Tibetan rug and hairy blanket we took the bus on to Kaumuni government rest lodge on ridge facing Trisul and surrounding ranges. Bask in sun all day facing the mountains, bundled all over, reading Gandhi’s autobiography.

The chokidar makes us dinner. Kerosene lamps, fireplaces. Each room, 2 rupees a night. This morning on the way to Naini Tal, Peter and Allen sing rock and roll, blues.

Naini Tal has a lake, surrounded by high mountains, is a resort town with fancy Indians with transistor radios on trays and tweed jackets.