The Foreign Service Journal, September 2011

smile that I was the official who should meet with him: “You’re our hippie con- trol officer, Larry.” And I was still the only officer in the consular section. The police officer was probably just a few years older than I, and impres- sive looking in his starched uniform and short pants: a smart outfit. He was a tall man with a short haircut and ex- cellent posture. His English was good enough to conduct our conversation without anyone interpreting. He was a no-nonsense guy. He told me the number of crimes committed by hippies was rising — though he conceded they were almost entirely petty incidents, nothing violent. But the New Delhi police department had decided it should try to develop more cooperation with the U.S. embassy in an effort to stop the crime wave or at least greatly reduce it. I explained to the cop that very few hippies ever made contact with the embassy unless and until they got into trouble. And I mentioned that not all hippies were Americans, anyway. “Oh, we know that,” said my inter- locutor. “Only 40 percent of them are Americans.” I couldn’t resist following up. “That’s very interesting,” I said. “How do you know that’s the percentage?” The policeman’s manner changed subtly. He probably wasn’t used to being asked to back up his statements with documentation, and he didn’t like it. He answered defensively. “We did a kind of census. We counted them.” “The police did a hippie census by nationality?” I asked, expressing in- credulity. “I don’t think so. Let me tell you where I think that figure came from.” And I proceeded to tell him about the AP interview and the article that followed. I admitted that the 40- percent figure was based on nothing more than a wild-ass guess wheedled out of me by a charming but un- scrupulous journalist. My police interlocutor clearly did not enjoy listening to my story as much as I enjoyed telling it. At the end he told me stiffly, “No. Your guess was ac- curate. We did a count and it matched your guess.” I wouldn’t leave it alone even then, although I should have known that was not the way to cultivate a cooperative relationship with the New Delhi po- lice. I told him I would love to see the study he was citing; it would help the embassy to cooperate with the police. But, I added, it was hard for me to imagine why or how the police — or any agency of the Indian or municipal government or any academic institu- tion, or anyone at all — could devote scarce resources to undertaking a cen- sus of hippies by nationality. “What would be the methodology? What’s your definition of ‘hippie’? And how would you identify them to count them?” The cop soon ended our conversa- tion. He thanked me for my time and I walked him to the door, where we shook hands. And that was the end of the matter. He didn’t send me the hip- pie census study. Nor did we ever dis- cuss how we could work together to deal with problem hippies. If you want to know how many hip- pies actually were in India in the late 1960s, and what percentage of them were American, your best source is this story, augmented by the AP article. My 40-percent estimate still sounds about right to me. Maybe on the low side. My police interlocutor clearly did not enjoy listening to my story as much as I enjoyed telling it. 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 Buy all your travel guides, language books and pleasure reading through the AFSA bookstore. Buy the Amazon Kindle and download and read first chapters for free before you decide to purchase that new book. When you access Amazon.com through our bookstore all your purchases will benefit AFSA at no additional cost to you. Find State Department and AFSA Reading Lists Online at www.afsa.org/fs_reading_list.aspx Start your purchase on our site: www.afsa.org/fs_reading_list.aspx