He Spent Time In India

Ginsberg shocked the literary community in 1957 by moving away from San Francisco. He and Peter Orlovsky joined Gregory Corso in Paris after spending some time in Morocco. Corso referred them to the Beat Hotel, a run-down inn that was located over a bar at 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur. Burroughs and the others quickly joined them. For all of them, it was an active and imaginative period. There, Ginsberg started composing “Kaddish”, Corso wrote “Bomb and Marriage” and Burroughs assembled “Naked Lunch” from his earlier works with assistance from Ginsberg and Corso. The photographer Harold Chapman, who moved there at the same time and continued to take photos of the "hoteltenants "'s until it closed in 1963, provided documentation of this time period.

Ginsberg and Orlovsky spent much of 1962–1963 traveling extensively across India, living in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Benares for periods of six months each (Varanasi). He also became acquaintances with some well-known young Bengali poets of the era, such as Shakti Chattopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay, during this period. The most notable of Ginsberg's political connections in India was Pupul Jayakar, who assisted him in extending his stay there when the government wanted to expel him.