Kabir Bedi recalls ‘getting stoned' while working on a Dev Anand film: ‘He sent a doctor'

Indian Express

2 days ago

While conversations about a purported spike in substance abuse, particularly among youngsters, continue, reports of such practices persisting in the film industry have also emerged in recent times. Amid all this, certain remarks made by senior actor Kabir Bedi recently have gained attention. Bedi revealed that he, too, experimented with drugs in the 1970s, adding that, like many of his contemporaries, he was drawn to hippie culture.
Reflecting on that era, he shared that the world underwent significant changes. Youngsters, he said, began questioning and pushing back against prevailing militaristic and hyper-masculine attitudes. He noted that the music scene also experienced a revolution at the time, marked by the arrival of rock bands such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Doors, as well as artists like Bob Dylan. Bedi further stated that philosophers like Alan Watts and poets like Allen Ginsburg also had an influence on the movement.
'In India, we knew about all this and wanted to be part of the movement,' he shared during a chat with Filmfare. Admitting that he, too, was part of the hippie movement, Bedi added, 'They brought a lot of new drugs which were passed around. Many of us experimented with them (the drugs). It was all part of a changing world.' When asked if it altered him emotionally and mentally, the actor noted, 'Obviously.'
On balancing his career along with all these, Bedi said: 'It's not as though taking drugs means we were on drugs all the time. These were things that we experimented on from time to time; when we took time off. But it certainly affected the whole philosophy of the age.' For the unversed, the hippies were members of a countercultural movement that rejected the customs of mainstream American life.
He also recalled getting high while working on a film with Dev Anand. 'One day, a hippie came into my room and said, 'Man, do you mind if I come in? I'm freezing out here.' I invited him in, thinking I would let him watch the shooting. They lit up this big fat joint. I don't know what he smoked, but he got me stoned as well. I looked around, and nothing made sense to me. I told Dev saab that I couldn't shoot that night. He asked what happened, and I told him I wasn't feeling well. He then sent in a doctor who gave me an injection,' he shared.
Discussing the nature of that era in depth, Bedi said there was significant societal resistance when he and his then-girlfriend, model and Odissi dancer Protima Gauri, decided to live together out of wedlock. 'Even when it was such a conservative time at one level, when Protima and I started living together, people were writing articles about it. My bosses called me and asked if this was the right image to give out to the clients. It was quite threatening because I could have lost my job. Though they didn't fire me, they didn't quite approve of what I was doing. But we fancied ourselves as the rebels of the time. We just wanted to be different and not go with all the old assumptions. So, if living together was what we wanted, we did that,' he added. Kabir Bedi and Protima Gauri eventually married in 1969 and had two children together before parting ways in 1974. She passed away in the Malpa landslide in 1998, a year after their son Siddharth died by suicide.