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Goldie Hawn charms Delhi with her divine giggle
Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, April 8 (IANS) Actress and entertainer Goldie Hawn was born with a gift to laugh off life's many absurdities and inanities, but the lucky few in the national capital got a glimpse of her spiritual avatar Saturday evening when she recounted the story of her self-exploration amid pressures of showbiz and celebrity glitter.

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As the golden girl of the swinging 60s spoke about fame, showbiz clichés, her glorious career in films and her spiritual hunger, writers, readers and plain star-struck crowd hung to her every world in a hush. Their meditative calm was punctuated by squeals of Hawn's infectious divine giggle.

India is where her long affair with spirituality started. 

"I noted that people are happy here in India. When I went back home, people had everything in the materialistic sense and were surrounded with abundance, but they were not happy," Hawn said as she vividly recalled her first visit to India in the early 1980s.

"I wanted to investigate the nature of this joy," said Hawn, effervescent like a girl at the golden age of sixty-plus.

"India really got to you like a belly button. The only way to get happiness is to search. I started to go inward," she told the audience at a literary festival at India Habitat Centre.

Hawn has narrated her spiritual odyssey in her vivid memoirs called "Lotus in the Mud" - a spectacular bestseller that has sold at least a million copies. 

She acted in films such as the Oscar-winning "Cactus Flower", "Swing Swift" and "Private Benjamin".

For all those who were brought up on her seductive comic persona in various movies, discovering the spiritual avatar of Hawn was a revelation of sorts.

"To have a balanced life, you have to see the sadness, the tragedy, the despair. We can get addicted to happiness and we can get addicted to misery as well," said Hawn, speaking from what she called "a deep place in my heart." 

Bits and pieces of divine wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of stardom followed.

"Our fears are illusory. It's all in the mind. Understanding each other, spirituality, religiosity...In the long run, they help us solve problems and be happy in the spiritual sense," she said in a exalted tone.

How did she get the name for her book? "Lotus symbolises compassion and beauty, but it can grow only in the mud. We can all be lotuses in the mud," said the irrepressible actress who has found in her inner journey the solace and joy that escaped her in showbiz-ridden life.

"I speak from a deep place in my heart. We have to embrace obstacles to reach the next stage of joy," said Hawn with deadly seriousness, and after a meditative pause burst into another of her divine giggles.