Yertward Mazamanian

Who was Yertward Mazamanian?

Yertward Mazamanian, widely known as "Eight Finger Eddie", was an American hippie of Armenian descent, who was credited with popularizing Goa, India as a tourist destination from the mid-1960s onward.

Mazamanian was born with only three fingers on his right hand, and was one of seven children of Armenian immigrants from Istanbul who apparently settled near Boston. In his memoirs, he claimed to have been a Boy Scout, a regular churchgoer and an "honors student" at school.

During the Second World War he convinced an Army psychiatrist that he was unfit for military service, and worked for a while for the General Electric Company before being sacked. He later wrote:

"I abhor work, begrudging every moment I've wasted as a wage earner. My aim in life is to get through life doing what I want to do."

He performed occasionally as a bass player in jazz bands, consumed large quantities of illegal drugs, married, and divorced, before moving to southern California around 1950. In the 1950s, he lived for a time in Mexico, and in the early 1960s was based in Copenhagen, traveling to Spain, Morocco and elsewhere with friends in a camper van. Around 1964 he made his first trip to Iran, India and Nepal, eventually settling for a period at Colva in Goa. Around 1966, he settled at Anjuna beach in Goa, at that time "a tiny hamlet with a few tea stalls and houses dotting a pristine sandy beach". Mazamanian once stated: