"We were the hell raisers, the pot smokers, the rule breakers, says Kabir Bedi. Protima, Kabir, Mahesh Bhatt, Johnny Bakshi, Shekhar Kapoor all belonged to the gang of hell raisers. Those in the bell bottoms, of the long hair and sideburns whose blood hummed to the Beatles and passions soared to the psychedelia of lysergic. It was the age of liberation and Protima Bedi in an expression of the self ran in the raw on the Juhu beach in Bombay.

Protima writes in her book Timepass: It was the age (the mid70s in India) to defy society, to walk around practically naked, to practise free love. I did that too."

Like in all ages, for the 70s youth brigade too the aspirations flew skywards - east or west. In the west the flower movement grew as a protest against the Vietnam war when students actually stuck flowers into gun barrels. It was the age of Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. When music was about love and flowers, the raunchy rock fests where Mick Jagger zipped his fly open, when the young flaunted the I-care-a-damn for traditions and rigidity in the west, when students seized Paris for a few days, the lysergic, rock and roll and mini skirts - all climaxed into an orgasm of pleasure. To love and live free was to be drenched in psychedelic pleasures. "Turn on, tune in and drop out."

Indian consciouness was big in the west which levitated in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's world of transcendental meditation. The sitar strains of Ravi Shankar brought over to the west by George Harrision was hip, even more so as he was greatly idolised by the cult gurus then - the big, big Beatles and had received a standing ovation at the Monterey pop festival.