When the 85-year-old, touted as the godfather of Goa's hippie scene, died last week in a beachside village in Goa, the west coast Indian state he had helped put on the travel map for global backpackers and stoners had long since turned its back on him and his kind.

Goa owes much of its success to Eddie and others like him who created the buzz about the serene paradise-like beaches that brought the first wave of Western tourists, travel writer Hugh Gantzer said.

The details of how and why Eddie arrived in India in his 30s are not clear. He was born Yertward Mazmanian in America in 1924 with just three fingers on one hand, helping him earn the nickname "Eight Finger Eddie" in Anjuna, along with his other nickname, "The King of Hippies." Before moving to Anjuna, he lived a few years at another Goan beach village, Colva. "Then a Japanese girl told me about a beautiful beach called Anjuna with just some houses and nobody nearby. We all went there. I was 40 then and the rest of the freaks were 20-year-olds," he said.

When Eddie, seen lately wearing worn slippers and a cheap bag slung over his shoulders, died on Oct. 18 of a heart attack in Anjuna's hospital, the only public mention of it was the next day in a local English newspaper's "death advertisement," signed by "friend and family in Anjuna and all over the world."


It calls him "a guiding light for travelers" and credits him with being the "first foreigner who settled on south Anjuna beach, which became the last station of the hippie trail."



Goa's hippie pioneer dies in India's tourism mecca - Yahoo! News