A Blue Hand, Deborah Baker, Viking Rs 499
Allen Ginsberg’s search for his personal brand of salvation

In a recent interview, Amit Chaudhuri said that “for any cultural practice… the position of the outsider, the misfit, the daydreamer and even of failure are very important categories in the creation of a truly energetic and self-critical social and intellectual space…. My anxiety is that in the last 20 years India, typically for a globalising country, hasn’t theorized [such a] position.”
To find some of the best examples of such irresponsible misfits, you’d have to look at members of the so-called Beat Generation of the late 1950s and early ’60s in the US, with their experiments with psychedelic substances, their stand against those in positions of power and their redefinition of what constitutes a literary work. Ironically, in light of Chaudhuri’s statement, it was India that some of the most prominent Beats looked to for a degree of illumination and sustenance.

In Deborah Baker’s A Blue Hand, we find an account of Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky’s sojourn in India in 1962, interleaved with the travels and exploits of others such as Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger. In this detailed narrative, Baker draws heavily not only on the unexpurgated and unedited version of Ginsberg’s Indian Journals, but also the books, journals and correspondence of the rest. The logorrhea of the Beats was well known, and Baker bravely dives into their sea of words for her reconstruction.
Though the sections dealing with India form the bulk of the book, Baker also dwells on the dovetailing effects of the actions of others, including those who never visited India, such as Gregory Corso. In particular, she dwells on Corso and Ginsberg’s fascination for Hope Savage, the charismatic and chimerical young American woman whom both attempted to influence and engage.

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