For a particular section of people in India, the convent educated set, these were heady influences from the west. It was the time of cross-pollination when the flower power (the term coined by the 50s beat poet Allen Ginsberg who spoke of free love), of the west came to India. Anjuna in Goa, India's hippy capital became a second home for these flower children who travelled all over from Afghanistan, Iraq to reach India disillusioned with excesses of the war and saw in the east a world of karma, dharma and shanti - the words in fashion in the west.

The wild 70s were the times of an LSD-induced sensuality. The wonder drug lysergic popularised in the west by Timothty Leary found ardent followers among the young upper middle class world of India. It revved up the body chemicals much like the pranayama in yoga does and the senses exploded in fluoroscent fantasies. The advertising world was hugely into acid rock parties and psychedelic drugs.

Protima Bedi opened the fist disc in Bombay, which soon turned into a haunt for charsis and drug freaks. She writes that she made joints and sold them illegally to freaks and soon enough, the police closed down Hide Out.

Says Mahesh Bhatt: "Lysergic brought an intense audiovisual experince. It unplugged the mind and many of my ideas have come under the lsd-induced state. The pleasure it brought was equivalent to what the sages and rishis experience. It was a mystical experience which changed my take on life."

Many like Mahesh went through a "spiritual supermarket." And on the spiritual highway of India, was Rajneesh then not bhagwan and not yet Osho who attracted the oddballs from the creamy layer.

Says Mahesh: "I wanted to make that lysergic induced pleasure permanent. And so I went to Rajneesh. He offered me a world of altenate morality - free love, free sex. Sex was used as a glue to draw in people and attain god. After two years there, I discovered that what he offered was nonsense. What he called a spiritual club was nothing but a f…..g club. Why give it a spiritual name at all. Inside me I still remained ordinary. I could still feel jealous, I could still hurt others and be hurt myself. And so I gave up the mala and said I was leaving. Then that guru who spoke from the platform of unconditional love started behaving like a jilted lover - he said return the mala to me. I will see to it that you are destroyed.