1) After a 24 hour marathon of sleeper trains and multiple connections of local buses, locate a rainforest hideaway 1250 metres up in the Coorg mountains.
2. Be greeted by two steaming cups of coffee. Learn that the beans have been plucked from the mountainside and sun roasted in the courtyard a stones throw from your seat.
3. Lay your weary head in a log cabin. Ebb sleepwards to the forest's music.
4. Arise at dawn. Salute the sun as it rises over the mountainside. Let the rhythm of woodpeckers plucking forest trunks guide your movements.
3. Drizzle fragrant honey on your breakfast. Find that the toast has been crisped by electricity generated by a pelton wheel turbine. Listen for the bass thrum of the bees that supplied your breakfast topping.
4. Take your clothes to the river, let the flow cool your ankles. Slap your clothes on the flat rocks like the saried ladies of Hampi. Enjoy the simplicity of domesticity.
5. Dusty and peaceful from a five hour trek to the dazzling waterfall, cleanse your skin with mineral spring water heated over an open log fire.
6. Laugh as a young sow joins you at the open tap and eats your soap.
7. Gather firewood and chop before your log cabin. Let the night gather around you; spend the evening hypnotised by the flames licking the black air.
8. Look up, and gasp at the blanket of silver stars hanging above you. Feel sobered at the realisation of the light pollution that you have always known.
9. Sleep deeply, calmed by simplicity.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Just need a cigarette...
We step out of the Hubli train station. We have an hour until our sleeper train departs for Mysore. I want a cigarette so badly that it feels as if all my cells have tightened. Not just the cells, the chromosomes of my dna helix are spiralling tighter, squeezing the sanity out of me. We follow the mass of bodies headed over the bridge. Exiting the dimly lit concrete square, the twit and I immediately light a cigarette.
"You can't smoke here", a man with a groomed moustache and button down grey shirt called, stampeding our direction. "5000 rupee fine. Get off the concrete". We walked through a gap in the railing that bisected the concrete on our right. Again we touched the flame to our cigarette ends. "No", called a second man dressed all in green, "you cannot smoke here!"
"Jesus Christ, where the fuck can we smoke?" I cursed at the twit, the unfortunate target of my frustrated rebuttals.
"Lets head to the end here", the twit pointed to where the long railing reached the road. "That should be fine".
We walked to where the gleaming concrete met the black dirt of the pavement. Turning left we stopped in a bus shelter and lit up. I took in a long lungful. We were surrounded by the stench of piss. An old lady, looking so brittle that she may turn to dust any second, stood in the shadows, her fingers pulling at her wild mane of grey hair.
A middle aged man with greying curls and a checked shirt walked past and stopped beside us. His eyes focused squarely at me. At the same moment a second man, slightly his junior, pulled up a scooter before our feet. "Namaste", he bowed to the twit. "You cannot smoke here sir, you are on a bus shelter, that is government property". The twit apologised profusely while we stubbed our cigarette ends on the dirt. "No worry man, no worry, but", he looked at me and shook his head, "No, no, no. Where you from?" he returned to the twit. The man with the greying curls beside us jumped onto the back of the scooter. "You from, you from?" he chanted. We swapped the usual cultural exchanges, the driver revved his scooter to indicate he was leaving, "One last thing," he called in the dank night, "you're in a really bad place. There are bad people here, you're surrounded by them. Cross the road, don't talk to anyone, and stick together, don't split up." He started to pull into the four lanes of mayhem, calling over his shoulder "remember, they're bad people here, really bad people...".
"Right", the twit festered in the roots of panic. "Lets get over the road, get some snacks and get straight back into the station". "But what about dinner?" I protested. "Lets just find a little restaurant over the road and grab something to eat".
Leading over the road directly from the train station was something that looked a bit like a zebra crossing. If it actually worked as such, well, all bets are off. We stepped into the maniacal roar of engines and rickshaws. Stepping into the road, two rickshaws immediately zipped in front and behind us. We Bambi stepped across the street, hopping backwards and forwards to avoid the traffic hurtling around.
We stopped at the confectionary store to pick up supplies for the train journey. The youth at the counter smirked when he spotted the unlit cigarette in my palm. My eyes threw him daggers, I was fraught amd desperately needed to wrap my lips around that cigarette end and inhale.
We found a busy well lit cafeteria. The manager was a plump elderly gentleman with cokebottle end glasses. His eyes peeped out, amplified under the white neon light. Tense, we discussed strategies for getting out of the Hubli ghetto alive. The twit reaoned that he should look big and strong. I said I would go for knowledgable and calm. Bullies like to kick down and out dogs. Act like you know where you are going and that all is well with the world. Then if someone tries something, thats when you should go psycho, real quick. Luckily I haven't had to try out that stage, fingers crossed I never will. We also debated whether the Indian restauranteur with the body builder physique was genuinely threatening, or if we were perceiving him as threatening because of our shock. The latter proved to be true when he playfully berated our waitor for trying not to bring us our change, and ensured we saw every rupee.
We decided our best and final chance to put to bed this nicotine craving that was clawing the underside of my flesh, was to light up on the left side of the station gate. A patch of concrete cast in shadows that did not belong to the government. The twit sparked the cigarette, as he was about to pass me the twos we spotted a traffic policeman on the other side of the road. "Not yet" hummed the twit, "I can't give it to you without him seeing us". I rolled my eyes to convey my disgust.
At that moment, a squat greasy man jumped around the corner and started gesturing at the twit. "I don't speak English, but you smoke, ok. She, she, no, no, no she can't smoke here". "I'm not smoking" I quipped bluntly. Acid bile rose in my gut, as is always the case when I am faced with unwarranted authority. "She not smoke," the man continued, looking at the twit, and gesturing at me. "No, no, not urm here, no no". "She's not smoking" replied the twit, also gesticulating at me, this time to illustrate the obvious. The man began his spiel again. "Lets just go get the train" I snapped at the twit, digging fingernails between my palms and barging between the two men. I felt like I had stepped back in time eighty years; to when it was possible to section women for enjoying smoking and long walks. "Wait up" the twit called, chasing as I paced off my ferocity. He sees my frown and the tears pricking my eyes, "Welcome to South India", his eyes radiating comfort. I tutted, "Goddam patriarchs. I hate Hubli".
"You can't smoke here", a man with a groomed moustache and button down grey shirt called, stampeding our direction. "5000 rupee fine. Get off the concrete". We walked through a gap in the railing that bisected the concrete on our right. Again we touched the flame to our cigarette ends. "No", called a second man dressed all in green, "you cannot smoke here!"
"Jesus Christ, where the fuck can we smoke?" I cursed at the twit, the unfortunate target of my frustrated rebuttals.
"Lets head to the end here", the twit pointed to where the long railing reached the road. "That should be fine".
We walked to where the gleaming concrete met the black dirt of the pavement. Turning left we stopped in a bus shelter and lit up. I took in a long lungful. We were surrounded by the stench of piss. An old lady, looking so brittle that she may turn to dust any second, stood in the shadows, her fingers pulling at her wild mane of grey hair.
A middle aged man with greying curls and a checked shirt walked past and stopped beside us. His eyes focused squarely at me. At the same moment a second man, slightly his junior, pulled up a scooter before our feet. "Namaste", he bowed to the twit. "You cannot smoke here sir, you are on a bus shelter, that is government property". The twit apologised profusely while we stubbed our cigarette ends on the dirt. "No worry man, no worry, but", he looked at me and shook his head, "No, no, no. Where you from?" he returned to the twit. The man with the greying curls beside us jumped onto the back of the scooter. "You from, you from?" he chanted. We swapped the usual cultural exchanges, the driver revved his scooter to indicate he was leaving, "One last thing," he called in the dank night, "you're in a really bad place. There are bad people here, you're surrounded by them. Cross the road, don't talk to anyone, and stick together, don't split up." He started to pull into the four lanes of mayhem, calling over his shoulder "remember, they're bad people here, really bad people...".
"Right", the twit festered in the roots of panic. "Lets get over the road, get some snacks and get straight back into the station". "But what about dinner?" I protested. "Lets just find a little restaurant over the road and grab something to eat".
Leading over the road directly from the train station was something that looked a bit like a zebra crossing. If it actually worked as such, well, all bets are off. We stepped into the maniacal roar of engines and rickshaws. Stepping into the road, two rickshaws immediately zipped in front and behind us. We Bambi stepped across the street, hopping backwards and forwards to avoid the traffic hurtling around.
We stopped at the confectionary store to pick up supplies for the train journey. The youth at the counter smirked when he spotted the unlit cigarette in my palm. My eyes threw him daggers, I was fraught amd desperately needed to wrap my lips around that cigarette end and inhale.
We found a busy well lit cafeteria. The manager was a plump elderly gentleman with cokebottle end glasses. His eyes peeped out, amplified under the white neon light. Tense, we discussed strategies for getting out of the Hubli ghetto alive. The twit reaoned that he should look big and strong. I said I would go for knowledgable and calm. Bullies like to kick down and out dogs. Act like you know where you are going and that all is well with the world. Then if someone tries something, thats when you should go psycho, real quick. Luckily I haven't had to try out that stage, fingers crossed I never will. We also debated whether the Indian restauranteur with the body builder physique was genuinely threatening, or if we were perceiving him as threatening because of our shock. The latter proved to be true when he playfully berated our waitor for trying not to bring us our change, and ensured we saw every rupee.
We decided our best and final chance to put to bed this nicotine craving that was clawing the underside of my flesh, was to light up on the left side of the station gate. A patch of concrete cast in shadows that did not belong to the government. The twit sparked the cigarette, as he was about to pass me the twos we spotted a traffic policeman on the other side of the road. "Not yet" hummed the twit, "I can't give it to you without him seeing us". I rolled my eyes to convey my disgust.
At that moment, a squat greasy man jumped around the corner and started gesturing at the twit. "I don't speak English, but you smoke, ok. She, she, no, no, no she can't smoke here". "I'm not smoking" I quipped bluntly. Acid bile rose in my gut, as is always the case when I am faced with unwarranted authority. "She not smoke," the man continued, looking at the twit, and gesturing at me. "No, no, not urm here, no no". "She's not smoking" replied the twit, also gesticulating at me, this time to illustrate the obvious. The man began his spiel again. "Lets just go get the train" I snapped at the twit, digging fingernails between my palms and barging between the two men. I felt like I had stepped back in time eighty years; to when it was possible to section women for enjoying smoking and long walks. "Wait up" the twit called, chasing as I paced off my ferocity. He sees my frown and the tears pricking my eyes, "Welcome to South India", his eyes radiating comfort. I tutted, "Goddam patriarchs. I hate Hubli".
the prehistoric boulders of Hampi
We paused at the bottom of the 500 steps chipped from white stone. The sun was hovering just above the heavy green treeline, signalling the near end of our third day in Hampi. The bearded twit and I surveyed the climb, blinking out beads of sweat. The two young brothers, who had been skipping us to the monkey temple, began to leap the stairs two, three at a time. "Come sir", the elder yelled to the twit, "Thirty minutes! Thirty minutes!" The sun was now a mishapen circle on the horizon, we had a fast climb if we wanted to make the rocks by sunset.
We had walked to the bottom of the temple from the Northern bank of Hampi's river. Left past the guesthouses where each restaurant specialises in Chinese, Iranian and Italian. A scurry through the menu reveals a subsection of local cuisines. Our guesthouse was the eighth on the left.
We arrived wired from a night of broken sleep, taken where possible around bus crashes. Heaving our dusty bags to the steps, a Thai guy wearing only light blue denims and a jaunty swagger led us to an empty bamboo hut, "One fifty a night", "But the book says 100?". "Nah, thats wrong man, its only this cheap cos its a quiet season". The twit and I said we'd think about it.
Ten paces out of the guest house was time enough to decide to take it.
Ordering breakfast was a strange affair. Spilling onto the floor of flat matresses and cushions, we warily eyed our surroundings from the shin high black table between us. The beams of the open walls framed sparkling paddy fields and coconut trees. The air was silent except for cricket chirrups. Scattered around us were three Israeli men. Seperately, they blinked at the sun from beneath their black shades. Hashish smoke clouded beneath the Dali portrait hung on the ceiling, curling extended whisps to his signature moustache. The Thai spun our breakfast bowls before us without a word.
I leaned forward and cupped my hands around my face, "I'm not sure I like it here", I semi-whispered to the twit. We quickly ate, showered and headed out.
Fifty paces past our resting place was enough to take you past the string of guesthouses and out back into the Triassac era. Out of sight of the Northern strip, and the bustle of Hampi's bizarre, the landscape looks untouched. Boulders large enough to ensure you question your position on the earth pepper the landscape in impossible formations. Nestled underneath, coconut groves and banana forests sit like a giant rug of green and brown. We took the weaving path that brushed the dense landscape. Mud huts congregated in clearings. Families waved from porches. A frail old man with a shock of white hair stumbled from his porch to bid us Namaste. Children ran to us in packs. They called in gaggles "Hello, Goodbye, Your country?!" Two wiley lads had strayed from their flock and now skipped before us up the temple steps.
We began our climb indented in the mountainside to the red flag of the monkey temple. I gasped in ragged lungfuls. The remaining sun hammered down on the steps. We'd done 150, just 350 more to go.
The sound of our sandals slipping stone is all that reached our ears. Acoustic solitude relative to the soundscape south of the river. Stepping from the rescue night bus, we had comically rubbed our eyes at the landscape hung over the shoulders of desperate rickshaw drivers. A stone age city spanned before us. We could almost hear the clunking of mishapen wheels that trundled the oxen pulled carts. Rejecting the rickshaw drivers for a short trek, the twit and I took in the skyline of temples and boulders. A stepped ornate pyramid dominated the left end of the city. Monkeys swung from metal bars that covered the sky high windows. Leading to the temple, a sprawl of jagged streets make up the bizarre. Wooden Thali houses sat betwixt jewellery shops and travel agents. Racks of bright cotton dresses enclosed tailors pumping iron sewing machines. Rickshaws wobbled on haphazard pavings, beeping a signal for the next corner.
Within a single day the twit and I had found two friends in the rickety streets. The first friend was recognised from a coincidental run in on the boat that day. Mandru bounced over to us, the sun glinting from his gold chain and red baseball cap. "Ah good sir" he hailed, "I know you. Come into my shop, please, not for business, just for friendship". The twit and I agreed, happy that the wave wash of random encounters was flowing again.
Mandru's shop was a simple array of silver craftwork. Behind where the Twit and I sat on low blue stools hung an array of pendants. Beneath the glass counter, between Mandru and the twit and I, turquoise, garnet and moonstone lay embedded in ornate silver rings. In the far right corner, piles of black and pink stones twinkled.
Mandru told us about his shop. "These jewelleries, all mine design. My father used to make all the silvers. But now he is too old, he doesn't see very well. Now he lives with me". At that moment, Mandru's father, a kind looking plump gentleman with magnifying glasses brought us three glasses of chai tea. He shyly nodded us Namaste with a smile. Mandru said something short in Hindi. A look passes his face which depicts the international language for frustrated with your parent. He returned to us, "See, Hampi is special to me because I make many friend. One friend, my Spanish friend, he comes in - 'I love your shop'. He buys many things, many things for his girlfriend. And now, when he comes to Hampi, we go out, we eat, I take him for breakfast. Tomorrow morning I will take you for breakfast. I go every day around the corner, this old lady, she makes the greatest omelettes". It was such open invitations that warmed us to Mandru. The charm of the morning infected me. Leaning over the glass counter I pointed to a pile of black stones that each shone a single silver star. "What are those?" I asked.
"These" he beamed, "are very beautiful. See," he plucked one from the cabinet and held it to the light, "each one shines with a single star of India. You wear this, and she protects you, you are safe". I turned to the twit, "I want to buy one for you". Mandru opened his hands and smiled, his eyes effervescent. "Now see, when the Star is bought by someone who loves you, you are specially protected".
I bought the twit a star of India weaved onto a black leather chain. The twit bought me a Tibetian turquoise ring. Bartering was an area of grey territory for me and the twit. We had mastered haggling for stock mass produced in Karnataka, and had calculated a rudimentary cost for rickshaw journeys. We could even barter for weed. Knowing the value of something meant that the haggle was firm. Confidence wins the deal.
But how to value the worth of a uniquely crafted gift found in the shop of a stranger who offers you Chai amidst Hampi's golden boulders? This got me thinking about something I had read before I had left England. In economics, there are several varieties of pricing systems. One, where market value dictates the worth, is the system we use to value goods in the West. Competitors set prices according to what the majority of people will pay. Self pricing systems run according to the individual. Commodity prices are not fixed. The value of the item depends upon what it is worth to one person. Essentially, what they are willing to pay. Bartering a few hundred rupees in a het up climate would diminish the value of the gift, because it would tar the magic that had beget it. For me, 15 pounds was a bargain.
Mandru chatted with us long after we purchased the items. He fingered the delicate gold chain that circled his neck. "I had another friend, she give this to me, this chain. She came from Australia and I took her to Delhi. I showed her all around. She fell in love with the Taj Mahal. And she felt something for me too. I saw it in her eyes, when she left". Mandru goes quiet for a moment. His solemn profile facing the street. Suddenly his face relit, "Hey, did I tell you I played cricket for Delhi! I could have played for India, but my father needed help with the business. So here I am. It is good. I find ways to be happy" He showed us his phone, and a camera he wanted to buy. He saw England, and the shiny objects, and thought that it was good. But these gifts would only be bestowed on him if his monkey god wished it.
Phew, only 300 steps left to climb. A family of macaques jump onto the wall. We laugh with the brothers as the monkeys grab at bananas from passers by. Their grey matt fur is so close I could touch them. In the dying sunlight, a colossal rock glows. Close your eyes and you can see neanderthals leaping and beating their chests for their ancient gods.
We left Mandru's with the promise to return for breakfast. I wear the ring the twit has bought me, I ask Mandru, "Shall we give you the money?" "No no, tomorrow will be more than fine".
I hop down the lane and stop before a tailor shop. Running my fingers over the wrap cotton dresses, a hand suddenly appears and dissects a space. A youthful face pops out between the cloths. "Good day madam. How are you?" I jump back lauhing, "I'm wonderful thank you. And how are you?". He smiles and raises a fist to his chest. "Magnificent...I love your skirt". I look down at the silk patchwork skirt. "Where did you get it?". "A stall in London, you know Camden?". "No, I do not. Is it handmade? May I see?" He reached out his hand and gestured feeling the fabric. "It is nice, it is very nice. Madam, you have good taste. Will you come in my shop and drink some Chai?" The twit had not long joined us before Saru shared his story. He shows us photos of a pretty English girl. "My girlfriend", he smiles proudly at the picture, "My heart is so big for her". They spend together the winter seasons. He could not move to Europe, "There are too many rules, it is not free. I need to be free". He has been a tailor for six years, designs and stitches each of the delicate items in his shop. Next he shows us a picture of a wild Indian family stood among sandy desert stones. "This is my family. The village has a wall there now. I have a dream I follow every day. The money I make from my clothes I save. And one day I will build a dam for my village. I will feed my village water forever. Then the young can grow strong. The whole village can grow. I have this dream my whole life".
We turn a corner on the climb to the monkey temple. Reclaiming a normal breathing pattern, my attention is fully on the spectacle through my camera lense. A single male macaque stares pensively into the distance. His tiny hand is curled under his chin. My shutter clicks and the beauty of the moment is now mine to hold. 150 steps to go, and the sun is setting.
We went back to see Mandru and Sera the following day. Mandru takes us or breakfast; dumpling omelettes and gravy, and deep fried battered chillis. The locals leaned in together as the twit and I raised the chillis to our mouths. "Why do they laugh?" I ask Mandu. "They laugh because white people are normally scared of the chillis". The twit and I gulp ours down, relishing the astonishment on the faces around us. Mandru watches us thoughtfully, "You two make a beautiful couple. Normally one is light and one is dark, but you both carry light in you". He fingers the gold chain around his neck, "I hope one day I can find the same. Hey-" he grinned, "Do you have a sister?".
After leaving Mandru we went to see Sera. Immediately upon our arrival three glasses of Chai were produced. We talked at length about the differences between Indian and English families. "It is not good" he frowned into the golden beams spraying his shop, "in India, people are earning more money. They do not stay with their families and look after their parents any more. My father, he gave all his money, ten thousand rupees, to marry both my brothers. Now, my brothers make lots of money and move away, because the wives do not like it. I am the only one left who will take care of my parents". A stillness settled over the air as we watched Sera's dam dreams crumbling under the weight of family responsibility.
Both Mandru and Sera made us promise to visit them again at their homes in Delhi and Rajastan. The invitation was the same,"You come for a month, as my guest. You will pay for nothing. I will feed you and show you all the wonderful things about my home". We were in the city for three days and two strangers opened their homes and their lives to us in friendship. How beautiful. Both men dared to dream, and still found joy in life when the weight of responsibility pulled them further away. They counted their lot and found reasons to be happy.
We reach the monkey temple, a small white stone building flying a red flag, just as the sun is halfway under the horizon. To the left, a large expanse of boulders run to the edge of the skyline. Scattered over the rocks, groups of travellers meditate the sunset. An ancient wall runs along the boulders, and in the distance, a single tree has found the determination to grow roots. The young brothers leading, the twit and I scrabble over the boulders. We are looking for a seat directly below the disappearing sun.
Leaving Mandru and Sera with light hearts and full bellies, the twit and I had returned to our guesthouse. The scene had been transformed. Indian chill out music floated out into the dark. Laughter peeled over the sultry aroma of expertly blended spices. The Thai guy with the swagger nodded gently as he placed down our order. His short salutations re-understood for shyness. We ask him what cd is playing. It is a compilation of Indian Cafe Del Mar tracks that he has hand selected to form his own compilation. After a while, he plucks up the courage to show us his sketches. He looks reverently to the Salvidor Dali portrait, "He is a true genius". The pictures he shows us depict alien landscapes, where mountains and clouds interchange one another. We are struck by his quiet beauty. Our wrangled mindsets that had arrived at the guesthouse had been unable to perceive his still, shy contentment. The lazy stoned silence had been darkened by our own eyes.
The twit and I have found our space beneath the sun. The two children skip over the boulders with gazelle grace. A macaque sits at our feet. Man and monkey sit spellbound by the energy of the sun's embers. Smoke from burning banana plantations billows up and over the lines of boulders. Its as if the sun set fire to the earth before its departure. While the twit and I are stilled by this scene of prehistoric wilderness, I turn my thoughts to the strip of guesthouses along the north bank of the river. In one, a group of travellers are watching an American movie. This movie is about a group of animals whose first home was concrete. Sent into the wilderness, they learn that their time spent in urban boxes was time spent not knowing their true nature. Kind of funny that.
We had walked to the bottom of the temple from the Northern bank of Hampi's river. Left past the guesthouses where each restaurant specialises in Chinese, Iranian and Italian. A scurry through the menu reveals a subsection of local cuisines. Our guesthouse was the eighth on the left.
We arrived wired from a night of broken sleep, taken where possible around bus crashes. Heaving our dusty bags to the steps, a Thai guy wearing only light blue denims and a jaunty swagger led us to an empty bamboo hut, "One fifty a night", "But the book says 100?". "Nah, thats wrong man, its only this cheap cos its a quiet season". The twit and I said we'd think about it.
Ten paces out of the guest house was time enough to decide to take it.
Ordering breakfast was a strange affair. Spilling onto the floor of flat matresses and cushions, we warily eyed our surroundings from the shin high black table between us. The beams of the open walls framed sparkling paddy fields and coconut trees. The air was silent except for cricket chirrups. Scattered around us were three Israeli men. Seperately, they blinked at the sun from beneath their black shades. Hashish smoke clouded beneath the Dali portrait hung on the ceiling, curling extended whisps to his signature moustache. The Thai spun our breakfast bowls before us without a word.
I leaned forward and cupped my hands around my face, "I'm not sure I like it here", I semi-whispered to the twit. We quickly ate, showered and headed out.
Fifty paces past our resting place was enough to take you past the string of guesthouses and out back into the Triassac era. Out of sight of the Northern strip, and the bustle of Hampi's bizarre, the landscape looks untouched. Boulders large enough to ensure you question your position on the earth pepper the landscape in impossible formations. Nestled underneath, coconut groves and banana forests sit like a giant rug of green and brown. We took the weaving path that brushed the dense landscape. Mud huts congregated in clearings. Families waved from porches. A frail old man with a shock of white hair stumbled from his porch to bid us Namaste. Children ran to us in packs. They called in gaggles "Hello, Goodbye, Your country?!" Two wiley lads had strayed from their flock and now skipped before us up the temple steps.
We began our climb indented in the mountainside to the red flag of the monkey temple. I gasped in ragged lungfuls. The remaining sun hammered down on the steps. We'd done 150, just 350 more to go.
The sound of our sandals slipping stone is all that reached our ears. Acoustic solitude relative to the soundscape south of the river. Stepping from the rescue night bus, we had comically rubbed our eyes at the landscape hung over the shoulders of desperate rickshaw drivers. A stone age city spanned before us. We could almost hear the clunking of mishapen wheels that trundled the oxen pulled carts. Rejecting the rickshaw drivers for a short trek, the twit and I took in the skyline of temples and boulders. A stepped ornate pyramid dominated the left end of the city. Monkeys swung from metal bars that covered the sky high windows. Leading to the temple, a sprawl of jagged streets make up the bizarre. Wooden Thali houses sat betwixt jewellery shops and travel agents. Racks of bright cotton dresses enclosed tailors pumping iron sewing machines. Rickshaws wobbled on haphazard pavings, beeping a signal for the next corner.
Within a single day the twit and I had found two friends in the rickety streets. The first friend was recognised from a coincidental run in on the boat that day. Mandru bounced over to us, the sun glinting from his gold chain and red baseball cap. "Ah good sir" he hailed, "I know you. Come into my shop, please, not for business, just for friendship". The twit and I agreed, happy that the wave wash of random encounters was flowing again.
Mandru's shop was a simple array of silver craftwork. Behind where the Twit and I sat on low blue stools hung an array of pendants. Beneath the glass counter, between Mandru and the twit and I, turquoise, garnet and moonstone lay embedded in ornate silver rings. In the far right corner, piles of black and pink stones twinkled.
Mandru told us about his shop. "These jewelleries, all mine design. My father used to make all the silvers. But now he is too old, he doesn't see very well. Now he lives with me". At that moment, Mandru's father, a kind looking plump gentleman with magnifying glasses brought us three glasses of chai tea. He shyly nodded us Namaste with a smile. Mandru said something short in Hindi. A look passes his face which depicts the international language for frustrated with your parent. He returned to us, "See, Hampi is special to me because I make many friend. One friend, my Spanish friend, he comes in - 'I love your shop'. He buys many things, many things for his girlfriend. And now, when he comes to Hampi, we go out, we eat, I take him for breakfast. Tomorrow morning I will take you for breakfast. I go every day around the corner, this old lady, she makes the greatest omelettes". It was such open invitations that warmed us to Mandru. The charm of the morning infected me. Leaning over the glass counter I pointed to a pile of black stones that each shone a single silver star. "What are those?" I asked.
"These" he beamed, "are very beautiful. See," he plucked one from the cabinet and held it to the light, "each one shines with a single star of India. You wear this, and she protects you, you are safe". I turned to the twit, "I want to buy one for you". Mandru opened his hands and smiled, his eyes effervescent. "Now see, when the Star is bought by someone who loves you, you are specially protected".
I bought the twit a star of India weaved onto a black leather chain. The twit bought me a Tibetian turquoise ring. Bartering was an area of grey territory for me and the twit. We had mastered haggling for stock mass produced in Karnataka, and had calculated a rudimentary cost for rickshaw journeys. We could even barter for weed. Knowing the value of something meant that the haggle was firm. Confidence wins the deal.
But how to value the worth of a uniquely crafted gift found in the shop of a stranger who offers you Chai amidst Hampi's golden boulders? This got me thinking about something I had read before I had left England. In economics, there are several varieties of pricing systems. One, where market value dictates the worth, is the system we use to value goods in the West. Competitors set prices according to what the majority of people will pay. Self pricing systems run according to the individual. Commodity prices are not fixed. The value of the item depends upon what it is worth to one person. Essentially, what they are willing to pay. Bartering a few hundred rupees in a het up climate would diminish the value of the gift, because it would tar the magic that had beget it. For me, 15 pounds was a bargain.
Mandru chatted with us long after we purchased the items. He fingered the delicate gold chain that circled his neck. "I had another friend, she give this to me, this chain. She came from Australia and I took her to Delhi. I showed her all around. She fell in love with the Taj Mahal. And she felt something for me too. I saw it in her eyes, when she left". Mandru goes quiet for a moment. His solemn profile facing the street. Suddenly his face relit, "Hey, did I tell you I played cricket for Delhi! I could have played for India, but my father needed help with the business. So here I am. It is good. I find ways to be happy" He showed us his phone, and a camera he wanted to buy. He saw England, and the shiny objects, and thought that it was good. But these gifts would only be bestowed on him if his monkey god wished it.
Phew, only 300 steps left to climb. A family of macaques jump onto the wall. We laugh with the brothers as the monkeys grab at bananas from passers by. Their grey matt fur is so close I could touch them. In the dying sunlight, a colossal rock glows. Close your eyes and you can see neanderthals leaping and beating their chests for their ancient gods.
We left Mandru's with the promise to return for breakfast. I wear the ring the twit has bought me, I ask Mandru, "Shall we give you the money?" "No no, tomorrow will be more than fine".
I hop down the lane and stop before a tailor shop. Running my fingers over the wrap cotton dresses, a hand suddenly appears and dissects a space. A youthful face pops out between the cloths. "Good day madam. How are you?" I jump back lauhing, "I'm wonderful thank you. And how are you?". He smiles and raises a fist to his chest. "Magnificent...I love your skirt". I look down at the silk patchwork skirt. "Where did you get it?". "A stall in London, you know Camden?". "No, I do not. Is it handmade? May I see?" He reached out his hand and gestured feeling the fabric. "It is nice, it is very nice. Madam, you have good taste. Will you come in my shop and drink some Chai?" The twit had not long joined us before Saru shared his story. He shows us photos of a pretty English girl. "My girlfriend", he smiles proudly at the picture, "My heart is so big for her". They spend together the winter seasons. He could not move to Europe, "There are too many rules, it is not free. I need to be free". He has been a tailor for six years, designs and stitches each of the delicate items in his shop. Next he shows us a picture of a wild Indian family stood among sandy desert stones. "This is my family. The village has a wall there now. I have a dream I follow every day. The money I make from my clothes I save. And one day I will build a dam for my village. I will feed my village water forever. Then the young can grow strong. The whole village can grow. I have this dream my whole life".
We turn a corner on the climb to the monkey temple. Reclaiming a normal breathing pattern, my attention is fully on the spectacle through my camera lense. A single male macaque stares pensively into the distance. His tiny hand is curled under his chin. My shutter clicks and the beauty of the moment is now mine to hold. 150 steps to go, and the sun is setting.
We went back to see Mandru and Sera the following day. Mandru takes us or breakfast; dumpling omelettes and gravy, and deep fried battered chillis. The locals leaned in together as the twit and I raised the chillis to our mouths. "Why do they laugh?" I ask Mandu. "They laugh because white people are normally scared of the chillis". The twit and I gulp ours down, relishing the astonishment on the faces around us. Mandru watches us thoughtfully, "You two make a beautiful couple. Normally one is light and one is dark, but you both carry light in you". He fingers the gold chain around his neck, "I hope one day I can find the same. Hey-" he grinned, "Do you have a sister?".
After leaving Mandru we went to see Sera. Immediately upon our arrival three glasses of Chai were produced. We talked at length about the differences between Indian and English families. "It is not good" he frowned into the golden beams spraying his shop, "in India, people are earning more money. They do not stay with their families and look after their parents any more. My father, he gave all his money, ten thousand rupees, to marry both my brothers. Now, my brothers make lots of money and move away, because the wives do not like it. I am the only one left who will take care of my parents". A stillness settled over the air as we watched Sera's dam dreams crumbling under the weight of family responsibility.
Both Mandru and Sera made us promise to visit them again at their homes in Delhi and Rajastan. The invitation was the same,"You come for a month, as my guest. You will pay for nothing. I will feed you and show you all the wonderful things about my home". We were in the city for three days and two strangers opened their homes and their lives to us in friendship. How beautiful. Both men dared to dream, and still found joy in life when the weight of responsibility pulled them further away. They counted their lot and found reasons to be happy.
We reach the monkey temple, a small white stone building flying a red flag, just as the sun is halfway under the horizon. To the left, a large expanse of boulders run to the edge of the skyline. Scattered over the rocks, groups of travellers meditate the sunset. An ancient wall runs along the boulders, and in the distance, a single tree has found the determination to grow roots. The young brothers leading, the twit and I scrabble over the boulders. We are looking for a seat directly below the disappearing sun.
Leaving Mandru and Sera with light hearts and full bellies, the twit and I had returned to our guesthouse. The scene had been transformed. Indian chill out music floated out into the dark. Laughter peeled over the sultry aroma of expertly blended spices. The Thai guy with the swagger nodded gently as he placed down our order. His short salutations re-understood for shyness. We ask him what cd is playing. It is a compilation of Indian Cafe Del Mar tracks that he has hand selected to form his own compilation. After a while, he plucks up the courage to show us his sketches. He looks reverently to the Salvidor Dali portrait, "He is a true genius". The pictures he shows us depict alien landscapes, where mountains and clouds interchange one another. We are struck by his quiet beauty. Our wrangled mindsets that had arrived at the guesthouse had been unable to perceive his still, shy contentment. The lazy stoned silence had been darkened by our own eyes.
The twit and I have found our space beneath the sun. The two children skip over the boulders with gazelle grace. A macaque sits at our feet. Man and monkey sit spellbound by the energy of the sun's embers. Smoke from burning banana plantations billows up and over the lines of boulders. Its as if the sun set fire to the earth before its departure. While the twit and I are stilled by this scene of prehistoric wilderness, I turn my thoughts to the strip of guesthouses along the north bank of the river. In one, a group of travellers are watching an American movie. This movie is about a group of animals whose first home was concrete. Sent into the wilderness, they learn that their time spent in urban boxes was time spent not knowing their true nature. Kind of funny that.
Friday, 16 January 2009
Crash!
The passengers of the Hampi nightbus jumped alert at the unmistakable sound of steel ripping the full length of the bus side. The group peer over the twit and I as the lorry's head sits beneath our window. "Can you see anything?" a young French girl asks. "Not much," replies the Twit, "we just seem to be one big vehicle now".
Smelling fumes we spill onto the black road. Diesel spills from the engine in a black pool on the tarmac. A procession of lorries queue the right side of the road as far into the night. Cars veer to the right of the crash, as if bowling the passengers to the safety of the roadside bushes. Passers by sound horns and lean from vehicle windows to take in the show. The tourists have become the attraction.
The passengers divide into two main groups. The first, true converts to the youtube generation, light cigarettes and paddle the black splash, their steps repeatedly illuminated by the white camera flashes. The second, the twit and I included, repel from the diesel stream and seek safety by the roadside bushes.
Four lads ana a girl from Liverpool hover next to us. One, dressed in a black tracksuit and an eye mask that pushes back a spiralling ginger mane, parades in the headlights to his friend's mobile phone, "I've bloody 'ad two valium n'all. I jus' wanna go to sleep". "Don't mind you, I've 'ad four!", the young girl, hair scraped back in a ponytail calls out. "Its bin a bad week for our Carly," quips the lanky one, "last week she run her scooter straight head on into a cow. Chip?"
Our bus manoeuvres out of its metal tangle and we learn another bus is coming, in three hours. Though how a new bus is going to reach us through two lanes gridlocked with stationary traffic as far as the eye can see is anybodys guess. The majority of passengers hop back on the bus, to sleep until the new arrival. However, the steady stream of diesel spilling into the overflowing bucket keeps some of us nervous. The twit and I play 'Queen is zero' on the roadside. We look up to find the roadblocked lorry drivers spilled loose onto the road are our audience. "Cigarette sir? You have cigarette?" We shake our heads, reluctant to begin sharing with the school of drivers. Aimably they laugh and joke in Hindi. One notices my upwardsgaze to the clear starry night which has reached a temporary moment of calm. "You are star counting?". I point at the three starred diagonal belt, "Orion". "We have Orion at home," the twit bounces his starward gesticuations. "You are from?"...and so goes the conversations of introductions and interest that we are greeted with by each Indian we meet from every walk of life.
The engine has finished its diesel expulsion, and feeling safer we board the bus of travellers attempting to sleep in the middle of the horn beeping cross current of trade trucks heading north.
After any number of hours have passed, we wake up in a pool of headlights. The second bus has arrived. Hovering in a space that is not quite sleep, and is not quite awake, we camber the bus that will take us to Hampi. The whole incident was taken with the calm that comes from just rolling with life. Plans are thrown from the window, and thats ok, because none of us have schedules we need to keep.
The Hampi heat greets us with a pool of rickshaw drivers waving maps and cards in the faces of the sleepy. Rickshaw drivers pounce on their prey and the rest of the passengers are whisked off wordlessly. The twit and I hover in the shade of a nearby tree waiting out the rickshaw feeding time. The twit consults the map. A scrawny young girl of abot 5 clutches her baby brother in one hand and my arm in the other, "Lady, please?" She opens her hand for food or money or both. I turn away. "Lady, please? Lady, please? Lady, please?" The girl is relentless and presses in like the late morning heat. I have to turn my back on her and the sun as she hovers by desperately.
Hampi emerges as a horizon of cascading boulders and high rise stone temples, magnificent. The bazaar is a beeping frenzy of scooters and guest house touts. We meander the lanes, sweat soaking through our worn t-shirts.
At the river crossing a group of Indian teenagers hover around me - "Photo please?". I assent and am surrounded by the gang hooking their arms over my shoulders and beaming. "One more, one more!" they cry, "No more" I squeal, laughing, "You have enough photos of me know".
Across the river a snake charmer dances with his cobras, an empty basket collecting rupees for entertainment. We hover with cameras. The man pauses his pipes and the cobra leaps at him, grabbing his arm with his fangless mouth. How it must feel to keep a pet that is always on the look out to harm you.
Hoisting our bags we clamber the boulder steps to the guest house road north of the river. We look up and see Jonathan ambling down with a girl from Melbourne. The tourist trail is a community. Like an English village, you come to find you do not pass a street without someone you know.
Smelling fumes we spill onto the black road. Diesel spills from the engine in a black pool on the tarmac. A procession of lorries queue the right side of the road as far into the night. Cars veer to the right of the crash, as if bowling the passengers to the safety of the roadside bushes. Passers by sound horns and lean from vehicle windows to take in the show. The tourists have become the attraction.
The passengers divide into two main groups. The first, true converts to the youtube generation, light cigarettes and paddle the black splash, their steps repeatedly illuminated by the white camera flashes. The second, the twit and I included, repel from the diesel stream and seek safety by the roadside bushes.
Four lads ana a girl from Liverpool hover next to us. One, dressed in a black tracksuit and an eye mask that pushes back a spiralling ginger mane, parades in the headlights to his friend's mobile phone, "I've bloody 'ad two valium n'all. I jus' wanna go to sleep". "Don't mind you, I've 'ad four!", the young girl, hair scraped back in a ponytail calls out. "Its bin a bad week for our Carly," quips the lanky one, "last week she run her scooter straight head on into a cow. Chip?"
Our bus manoeuvres out of its metal tangle and we learn another bus is coming, in three hours. Though how a new bus is going to reach us through two lanes gridlocked with stationary traffic as far as the eye can see is anybodys guess. The majority of passengers hop back on the bus, to sleep until the new arrival. However, the steady stream of diesel spilling into the overflowing bucket keeps some of us nervous. The twit and I play 'Queen is zero' on the roadside. We look up to find the roadblocked lorry drivers spilled loose onto the road are our audience. "Cigarette sir? You have cigarette?" We shake our heads, reluctant to begin sharing with the school of drivers. Aimably they laugh and joke in Hindi. One notices my upwardsgaze to the clear starry night which has reached a temporary moment of calm. "You are star counting?". I point at the three starred diagonal belt, "Orion". "We have Orion at home," the twit bounces his starward gesticuations. "You are from?"...and so goes the conversations of introductions and interest that we are greeted with by each Indian we meet from every walk of life.
The engine has finished its diesel expulsion, and feeling safer we board the bus of travellers attempting to sleep in the middle of the horn beeping cross current of trade trucks heading north.
After any number of hours have passed, we wake up in a pool of headlights. The second bus has arrived. Hovering in a space that is not quite sleep, and is not quite awake, we camber the bus that will take us to Hampi. The whole incident was taken with the calm that comes from just rolling with life. Plans are thrown from the window, and thats ok, because none of us have schedules we need to keep.
The Hampi heat greets us with a pool of rickshaw drivers waving maps and cards in the faces of the sleepy. Rickshaw drivers pounce on their prey and the rest of the passengers are whisked off wordlessly. The twit and I hover in the shade of a nearby tree waiting out the rickshaw feeding time. The twit consults the map. A scrawny young girl of abot 5 clutches her baby brother in one hand and my arm in the other, "Lady, please?" She opens her hand for food or money or both. I turn away. "Lady, please? Lady, please? Lady, please?" The girl is relentless and presses in like the late morning heat. I have to turn my back on her and the sun as she hovers by desperately.
Hampi emerges as a horizon of cascading boulders and high rise stone temples, magnificent. The bazaar is a beeping frenzy of scooters and guest house touts. We meander the lanes, sweat soaking through our worn t-shirts.
At the river crossing a group of Indian teenagers hover around me - "Photo please?". I assent and am surrounded by the gang hooking their arms over my shoulders and beaming. "One more, one more!" they cry, "No more" I squeal, laughing, "You have enough photos of me know".
Across the river a snake charmer dances with his cobras, an empty basket collecting rupees for entertainment. We hover with cameras. The man pauses his pipes and the cobra leaps at him, grabbing his arm with his fangless mouth. How it must feel to keep a pet that is always on the look out to harm you.
Hoisting our bags we clamber the boulder steps to the guest house road north of the river. We look up and see Jonathan ambling down with a girl from Melbourne. The tourist trail is a community. Like an English village, you come to find you do not pass a street without someone you know.
A whirlwind of laziness....
The last five days have passed us by in a whirlwind of laziness. Agonda beach is a seductive seclusion from the psy-trance scene that permeates Goa. A single ramshackle street houses a limited selection of beach huts and restaurants. Stalls pedalling the typical cotton wares are sparse. A silver expanse of beach curves into an alcove meeting jungle trimmed mountains. Gravity defying rock compositions provide natural vantage points to peep playful dolphin fins between the cascading waves. However, Agonda is changing. Only eight months ago there were only two establishments where a wayward wanderer could rest their head. Now there are more guest homes and restaurants than people to fill them. The people will come. An Agonda buzz vibrates through the winding streets of Vagator, Anjuna, and the resort fortresses of Palolem. The undiscovered gem is reaching the lime light. It feels that once we board tonight's bus to Hampi, we will never be able to return to the Agonda we know now.
Five local buses delivered us from heaving Vagator to this secluded paradise. Vagator to Mapusa, Mapusa to Paniji, Paniji to Margao, Margao to Chaudi and Chaudi to the last stop in Goa's south. Local buses do not appear to operate to a timetable system, but rather leave when the potential for new bodies has been incapacitated, and each and every limb is in full contact with your three neighbours. In this writhing sardine can a conductor weaves through impossible gaps to collect fares. Our second bus was boarded in transit, the twit and I jogging alongside the departing vehicle while a company man heaved our rucksacks into the boot. The leap of faith onto the boarding steps is met with camaraderie and backslaps. Joviality at the situation's comedy is abundant. Upon each journey leg we are greeted and questioned, what is our name, where are we from, what do we do, where do we go in India? The open desire for contact is duplicitous in experience. The beauty of a stranger wanting to share their food and their life with you is astounding until saturated with contact, you have had your fill and desire withdrawal to your soul. However, the openess of Indian culture is open to the point of unrecognition for the desire of peace. Once you start to give yourself away to strangers, you feel that you will give until there is nothing of you left.
We stumbled off our final bus journey into the searing heat, struggling to free our packs from the multitude of rice sacks in the bus storage section. Starving and worn, we took ten steps and slumped next to the cows in the shade offered by the low whitewash wall. "Which way to the beach do you think?" I asked the twit, lighting a cigarette. "Well," he said, the lighter's flame illuminating the beaded sweat on his brow, "that couple there look like they are heading to the beach, while those to there", he pointed to the left, "definitely look like they have just come from the beach. Lets ask them."
I followed his gaze to a young couple in flip flops and dampened sarongs. They stopped as they passed, "Have you seen the beach?" asked the girl, Micah. Her Indian skin held a voluptous figure. Her proud posture and ready smile indicated the temperament of a warrior princess. "It is absolutely beautiful" chimed Allen, his pale skin reddening under the heat.
Allen and Micah reside in London and have been travelling India's coastline for three months. Micah is strong and fierce, with a twinkle of mischevious humour in her dark open eyes. Allen's smile is as honest as his wide blue corneas. Long and lean, he emanates a softer, carefree balance to Micah's vibrant power. Recently married by a Hindu monk in the Himilayan foothills of the Ganges, they are alive with life lust.
Within minutes, Micah and Allen had whisked us into a tumble down haze of care free hedonism. We dropped our bags at the nearest available beach hut, and ran whooping to the beach, letting ourselves loose and free in the tumbling lunar rhythyms. Watching the burning red orb disappear behind the horizon, we waved and yelled "Goodbye Mr. Sun" as we dragged hashish smoke down our lungs and gasped at the acrid tang of powders sniffed. The waves lapping the shore twinkled a multitude of dimensions, each fragment of light intensely beautiful as the dissasociative anaesthesia washed our neuronal firings askew. Hermit crabs scuttered the line of the sea, synchronised to the pounding aqua that beats over their burrows.
Micah and Allen came and left in three days of heady action led by a lust for life, glee for the next buzz. Our evenings whirled by in easy conversation and delightful cries of "One more beer!", "Another line!", "One more Smoke!", "Cheers!". We disseminated all that was wrong with the West; the greed, the inherent biases in the free-market solution to wealth distribution, the cold individualism, the thirst for redundant possessions, the desperate striving for unlimited growth in a world of finite resources, patriarchal society, matriarchal society, the hope of anarchism, the fallacy of objectivity. "How can we use our brains to design an experiment to measure an aspect of the world without it being fundamentally biased by the assumptions and cognitive mechanisms that our brains use?", "Here, here!", "But what do we do about it?", "I don't know, lets have another line". We whoop in unison.
We picked up companions for our liberal political rants. Friends from home chanced by and found us packing up to explore the boulders at the far left of the beach. The evening flowed, witticisms and stories sparkled like the effervescent amber we poured from our bottles. Warmth from familiarity on foreign shores tingled our flesh.
Before we knew it, the time came for Micah and Allen to board the plane that would hurtle them back to concrete, health and safety, and convenience dinners. The twit and I felt the itching where our toe meets the soul that told us it was time to leave.
We took our last dinner at Paul's, the Punjabi Palace. We met Paul on our second day lounging where the waves lapped our ankles, cooling the fiery circle of mosquito bites that had taken residence. He greeted the Twit and Allen with the salutation "Brother" and shared with us his habit to walk the beach daily so he coud witness the dolphins jumping waves at sunrise. Paul's love for life warms you as it swells your heart. He raises his arms at us in glee, "I believe that truth is love, and love is God, and that there is no greater truth on this earth. We may look different, but underneath brother, we are truly the same". He clasps his palms across his bear chest and his rounded face is illuminated. The night we stroll the candlelit lane to his restaurant, he opens his arms wide and hugs the breath out of each of us. From Punjab, he prepares the meals of his homeland for those who come. Each spice is hand ground with loving attention, and each detail attuned with the concentration of a Buddhist monk on the experiential path of enlightenment. The aromas spice our bellies and our spirit, and each mouthful nourishes our bodies and our faith. Paul's love for the earth infects us with each taste of his cherished craft.
The twit and I wander over our mindset on our direction. The twit does not want to visit the cities, but I do. The twit knows the poverty that exists there, we both do, we have read abut them extensively. He does not need to see them to understand the despair and does not want his heart ripped out. I want to go. I want to go to the slums of Calcutta and feel my heart torn from its arteritic fibres. How can you claim knowledge of a land when all you have seen is its soft sandy underbelly? Life is truly beautiful, and to find some sort of light in the extremity of poverty, of desperation, will confirm that no matter where you are in the world, there is beauty in the dark.
Alone, the twit and I finish our dinner and walk back onto the village street. We are the only customers that night and everynight that we have shared with Paul our recipes and stories. We make our way to a fairylit garden where a single man sits at a microphone playing the blues on a mandolin. His voice carries the stories of a lost generation who made their home the road. He sings extraordinary songs because on the road, there are no ordinary people to inspire anything else. The waves undulate lunar rhythms to his haunting melodies. His harmonica swelled our pumping muscle in the candlelight. I sat one leg crossed beneath me with my upper foot on my lower ankle, eyes closed and my bare toes tapping the fresh night breeze.
A sunny young Mexican girl and her pale Fnnish boyfriend ask if we know where they can buy some grass. We don't but we know we can share ours with them. Before long Paul joins us and we gather around the small table, finding commonalities and laughing. The mandolin blues man has exited the stage and beside the campfire, Rob strums dirty blues and his smokey voice gravels stories of New Orleans and the unrelenting life of the South. Rob was born in Bombay and like any Londoner who has retreated to any quaint village, spends his nights frustrated that he can't buy the food he wants at 4 in the morning after the parties that are not prohibited on Agonda beach. Before long he joins us and the six of us huddle close with gddying round after round as the restaurant is dismantled around us. The staff hover by the bar, sipping old monk rum in the dark. And without warning, the night had become magical again. It was our 13th best night ever in India.
As we swapped emails and embarked our seperate ways home, Paul tells us how his youngest daughter is ill. Every fifteen weeks they must take her to the hospital, praying that a stranger has been generous enough to donate the blood that she needs. "Women are stronger than men". I laugh, "Every woman knows that, but not many men would say it". He turns to me, his panda kind eyes serious, "I watch my brave little girl face things I never could. I have seen and I know, women are the tough ones". We shake Paul's hand and watch him off into the night. Our hearts break to know that such a beautiful man knows such hardship, we know a deep rooted fear that his restaurant will stay quiet, will not bring the money he needs to keep his daughter safe and well. But we also know that Agonda is changing, that the quiet dusty street will give birth to stalls, hostels and huts. That the tourists will come. The calming crashing of the waves will soon be over-run with the beeping of scooter horns and the cat calls of the tourist drunk. At least with this, we hope that Paul's success will come.
Five local buses delivered us from heaving Vagator to this secluded paradise. Vagator to Mapusa, Mapusa to Paniji, Paniji to Margao, Margao to Chaudi and Chaudi to the last stop in Goa's south. Local buses do not appear to operate to a timetable system, but rather leave when the potential for new bodies has been incapacitated, and each and every limb is in full contact with your three neighbours. In this writhing sardine can a conductor weaves through impossible gaps to collect fares. Our second bus was boarded in transit, the twit and I jogging alongside the departing vehicle while a company man heaved our rucksacks into the boot. The leap of faith onto the boarding steps is met with camaraderie and backslaps. Joviality at the situation's comedy is abundant. Upon each journey leg we are greeted and questioned, what is our name, where are we from, what do we do, where do we go in India? The open desire for contact is duplicitous in experience. The beauty of a stranger wanting to share their food and their life with you is astounding until saturated with contact, you have had your fill and desire withdrawal to your soul. However, the openess of Indian culture is open to the point of unrecognition for the desire of peace. Once you start to give yourself away to strangers, you feel that you will give until there is nothing of you left.
We stumbled off our final bus journey into the searing heat, struggling to free our packs from the multitude of rice sacks in the bus storage section. Starving and worn, we took ten steps and slumped next to the cows in the shade offered by the low whitewash wall. "Which way to the beach do you think?" I asked the twit, lighting a cigarette. "Well," he said, the lighter's flame illuminating the beaded sweat on his brow, "that couple there look like they are heading to the beach, while those to there", he pointed to the left, "definitely look like they have just come from the beach. Lets ask them."
I followed his gaze to a young couple in flip flops and dampened sarongs. They stopped as they passed, "Have you seen the beach?" asked the girl, Micah. Her Indian skin held a voluptous figure. Her proud posture and ready smile indicated the temperament of a warrior princess. "It is absolutely beautiful" chimed Allen, his pale skin reddening under the heat.
Allen and Micah reside in London and have been travelling India's coastline for three months. Micah is strong and fierce, with a twinkle of mischevious humour in her dark open eyes. Allen's smile is as honest as his wide blue corneas. Long and lean, he emanates a softer, carefree balance to Micah's vibrant power. Recently married by a Hindu monk in the Himilayan foothills of the Ganges, they are alive with life lust.
Within minutes, Micah and Allen had whisked us into a tumble down haze of care free hedonism. We dropped our bags at the nearest available beach hut, and ran whooping to the beach, letting ourselves loose and free in the tumbling lunar rhythyms. Watching the burning red orb disappear behind the horizon, we waved and yelled "Goodbye Mr. Sun" as we dragged hashish smoke down our lungs and gasped at the acrid tang of powders sniffed. The waves lapping the shore twinkled a multitude of dimensions, each fragment of light intensely beautiful as the dissasociative anaesthesia washed our neuronal firings askew. Hermit crabs scuttered the line of the sea, synchronised to the pounding aqua that beats over their burrows.
Micah and Allen came and left in three days of heady action led by a lust for life, glee for the next buzz. Our evenings whirled by in easy conversation and delightful cries of "One more beer!", "Another line!", "One more Smoke!", "Cheers!". We disseminated all that was wrong with the West; the greed, the inherent biases in the free-market solution to wealth distribution, the cold individualism, the thirst for redundant possessions, the desperate striving for unlimited growth in a world of finite resources, patriarchal society, matriarchal society, the hope of anarchism, the fallacy of objectivity. "How can we use our brains to design an experiment to measure an aspect of the world without it being fundamentally biased by the assumptions and cognitive mechanisms that our brains use?", "Here, here!", "But what do we do about it?", "I don't know, lets have another line". We whoop in unison.
We picked up companions for our liberal political rants. Friends from home chanced by and found us packing up to explore the boulders at the far left of the beach. The evening flowed, witticisms and stories sparkled like the effervescent amber we poured from our bottles. Warmth from familiarity on foreign shores tingled our flesh.
Before we knew it, the time came for Micah and Allen to board the plane that would hurtle them back to concrete, health and safety, and convenience dinners. The twit and I felt the itching where our toe meets the soul that told us it was time to leave.
We took our last dinner at Paul's, the Punjabi Palace. We met Paul on our second day lounging where the waves lapped our ankles, cooling the fiery circle of mosquito bites that had taken residence. He greeted the Twit and Allen with the salutation "Brother" and shared with us his habit to walk the beach daily so he coud witness the dolphins jumping waves at sunrise. Paul's love for life warms you as it swells your heart. He raises his arms at us in glee, "I believe that truth is love, and love is God, and that there is no greater truth on this earth. We may look different, but underneath brother, we are truly the same". He clasps his palms across his bear chest and his rounded face is illuminated. The night we stroll the candlelit lane to his restaurant, he opens his arms wide and hugs the breath out of each of us. From Punjab, he prepares the meals of his homeland for those who come. Each spice is hand ground with loving attention, and each detail attuned with the concentration of a Buddhist monk on the experiential path of enlightenment. The aromas spice our bellies and our spirit, and each mouthful nourishes our bodies and our faith. Paul's love for the earth infects us with each taste of his cherished craft.
The twit and I wander over our mindset on our direction. The twit does not want to visit the cities, but I do. The twit knows the poverty that exists there, we both do, we have read abut them extensively. He does not need to see them to understand the despair and does not want his heart ripped out. I want to go. I want to go to the slums of Calcutta and feel my heart torn from its arteritic fibres. How can you claim knowledge of a land when all you have seen is its soft sandy underbelly? Life is truly beautiful, and to find some sort of light in the extremity of poverty, of desperation, will confirm that no matter where you are in the world, there is beauty in the dark.
Alone, the twit and I finish our dinner and walk back onto the village street. We are the only customers that night and everynight that we have shared with Paul our recipes and stories. We make our way to a fairylit garden where a single man sits at a microphone playing the blues on a mandolin. His voice carries the stories of a lost generation who made their home the road. He sings extraordinary songs because on the road, there are no ordinary people to inspire anything else. The waves undulate lunar rhythms to his haunting melodies. His harmonica swelled our pumping muscle in the candlelight. I sat one leg crossed beneath me with my upper foot on my lower ankle, eyes closed and my bare toes tapping the fresh night breeze.
A sunny young Mexican girl and her pale Fnnish boyfriend ask if we know where they can buy some grass. We don't but we know we can share ours with them. Before long Paul joins us and we gather around the small table, finding commonalities and laughing. The mandolin blues man has exited the stage and beside the campfire, Rob strums dirty blues and his smokey voice gravels stories of New Orleans and the unrelenting life of the South. Rob was born in Bombay and like any Londoner who has retreated to any quaint village, spends his nights frustrated that he can't buy the food he wants at 4 in the morning after the parties that are not prohibited on Agonda beach. Before long he joins us and the six of us huddle close with gddying round after round as the restaurant is dismantled around us. The staff hover by the bar, sipping old monk rum in the dark. And without warning, the night had become magical again. It was our 13th best night ever in India.
As we swapped emails and embarked our seperate ways home, Paul tells us how his youngest daughter is ill. Every fifteen weeks they must take her to the hospital, praying that a stranger has been generous enough to donate the blood that she needs. "Women are stronger than men". I laugh, "Every woman knows that, but not many men would say it". He turns to me, his panda kind eyes serious, "I watch my brave little girl face things I never could. I have seen and I know, women are the tough ones". We shake Paul's hand and watch him off into the night. Our hearts break to know that such a beautiful man knows such hardship, we know a deep rooted fear that his restaurant will stay quiet, will not bring the money he needs to keep his daughter safe and well. But we also know that Agonda is changing, that the quiet dusty street will give birth to stalls, hostels and huts. That the tourists will come. The calming crashing of the waves will soon be over-run with the beeping of scooter horns and the cat calls of the tourist drunk. At least with this, we hope that Paul's success will come.
Saturday, 10 January 2009
A brush with India's burgeoning middle class
Sahed slapped his mobile phone on the table. “They come in ten minutes” he blurted and turned his dark face to survey Anjuna beach. Now all I could see was the dark blue of his t-shirt and the black ponytail draped down his back. I fiddled the smoke between my fingers contemplating the uncomfortable silence that had fallen around the table. Had the twit and I just executed a cultural insult? Or was this merely the silence of the stoned? I contemplated the potential paranoia and decided to turn my mind to the fishing boats bobbing on the waves before the falling sun.
Let me explain how we got this far. Yesterday had begun slowly. After eating lunch at the Mango tree, having been sat between a sleeping red, his head and arms sprawled over the bar, and Jonathan, who was explaining at great length the pros and cons of purchasing a local sim card, we decided to head down to Little Vagator beach to hire a scooter for travel to a party in Anjuna. Meandering the dusty lanes, we took the road to disco valley and decided to shortcut across Vagator beach. The sun was hovering just over the sea line and we chose to rest and contemplate in a private cove of shining black rock formations.
As we took seat on the rocks, three young, well-dressed Indian men stopped and hailed to the twit, “Hello my friend, what is your name?”
Sunjay, decked in Versace jeans and a gold print t-shirt, was clearly the alpha male of the trio. He bounded over the rocks to shake our hands. His eyes sparkled with a wry humour. Nuneb followed, gesticulating beneath his union jack flat cap that he was delighted to meet us. The smallest lad, Alaib, followed last, tapping a pristine hairstyle in a neat white t-shirt.
Quickly they established themselves to us. They worked for Sunjay’s family, a business exporting precious metals to the West. In Goa for business, they spent their days making connections and their nights in a hedonistic flurry of movements across Goa’s beaches. It came to our turn to introduce ourselves, “We were married two weeks ago and we honeymoon for a year in Asia”.
“Married!” Nuneb clapped his hands together in delight, “And why are we not invited to your wedding party?” I laughed, “We did not meet you when we had our wedding party”. “This is not good enough”, Nuneb continued in mock seriousness, “In India, the wedding party is a very big joy, a great celebration. Come with us tonight, we make you a big wedding party at our house in Baga”.
“Yes, we insist we make you wedding party,” Sunjay followed, “I want to introduce you to my brother and we cook dinner for you in our house. Come, come!”
The twit and I looked at each other and shrugged our carefree understanding. Why not? So we picked up our bags and followed them along the beach.
Sunjay opened the door to a neat, new Peugeot car. The five of us clambered in to the bass tones of Bhangra pelted at full volume into the dusk. Nuneb turned down the music so he was audible, “This is a very beautiful love song” he calls from the front passenger seat, “This song is for you two, a beautiful song for a beautiful couple”.
Sunjay revs the engine so that we accelerate to 85km per hour on the narrow winding streets. “I drive so fast the police can never catch me”, he calls back in delight, “Even when I am on a bike they cannot catch me…You know, when the police catches three of us on a bike we have a trick that makes sure we are never in trouble”. “What trick is that?” I ask. “When the policeman stops us, he will always ask to speak to my father. So I call up my friend and I speak to him in code so he knows what to say. Then I tell the policeman, ‘here is my father’. My friend will then say, ‘my son, he is such a bad boy, no respect, arrest him immediately!’ and the policeman will say, ‘don’t be so hard on your son, he is just a boy!” The boys fall about in laughter and we spend the rest of the journey discussing their future marriages. Sunjay knows that he will marry the younger sister of his brother’s wife in two years, until then he plans to live fast. To spend his nights dancing and drinking and making girls love him. Nuneb and Alaib will have marriages arranged one day, for now they learn the trade that will carry them through life and explore all the reasons under the sun to make parties.
About twenty minutes later we pull up into the driveway of a four storey house resplendent with ornate marble and balcony views. We follow the dark stairway to the fourth floor; to live any lower would mean contesting with nightly mosquito invasions. I point out my bare shoulders to Sunjay on the stairs, “Will I be ok at dinner dressed this way?” Sunjay looks me up and down. “You will be ok I think. Normally the girls we cover their arms, but your dress is not unusual in Goa”. “I know!” I exclaim, “All my other clothes I bring cover my shoulders and arms, and the one day I bare my shoulders I am invited to an India home for dinner!” The twit laughed in assertion of wardrobe choices, prudish for Goa but respectful of wider Indian traditions. “Don’t worry”, Sunjay gestures to my full length skirt, “Already you wear too much for the beach. If you looked like typical Westerners we would not have picked you up!” Again the boys through back their heads in laughter and we joined them feeling at ease and delighted by acceptance. However, I do borrow a t-shirt from Sunjay for the evening. He gives it to me as gladly as if he is clothing a long lost sister.
Leaving our shoes at the door we enter a bright white open plan living room, the floor is tiled with intricate blue and white designs. The walls of marble are cool to the touch despite the dry heat that emanates the evening air. On a long bench covered with a rose embroidered throw a serious man in his thirties sat cross legged at a slim line silver laptop. His dark eyes contemplate us and his tied back hair draped over a pressed pinstripe shirt. Sunjay turns to us, “I would like you to meet my brother Daneb”. We exchanged names with Daneb and he enquired after our occupations. Satisfied he clapped his hands together, “How wonderful to have such intelligent people as guests. Now come please, let me show you the balcony. You like Chai?” We nodded our assent. He called in Hindi to the youngest boy who had been in the car. He immediately rushed to the kitchen to prepare for us some tea.
Daneb guides us to the balcony and explains himself to us. “I am a business man. We have shops in London”. He turns directly to the Twit, “If you ever want to impress your lady wife I give you good price, good price”. The business pleasantries over, he leaned back and lit up a smoke handed to him by one of the younger boys who hurries about the apartment. “Now let me tell you about the Indian culture…”, his eyes focused directly on the Twit’s. I stepped back to take in the hierarchical activity of the household. It was clear that Daned was in charge of the operation. Sunjay, Nuneb and Alaib followed Daned’s instructions with seriousness and efficiency, and in turn they would direct two wiry boys we had not been introduced too. These two would jump to attention to complete tasks with complete concentrated obedience.
Sunjay came onto the balcony, “Please, let me show you around my home”. I follow Sunjay through tiled rooms with arching ceilings until we reach a square space, hanging from one wall was a large black marble worktop, at which a young girl in a lime green sari cut vegetables and rolled dough for the evening meal. “If you like, we show you how to make chapattis tonight. If you know of a native dish you would like to prepare then maybe you can do that too”. I jump and clap my delight at the notion. “But now Chai is ready, let us go back onto the balcony and take tea”.
Daneb’s eyes were still fixated directly at the twit’s as we returned, “See what I do not like about Western culture is that it is very cold. My cousins who live in London, I take one of their cigarettes and they say ‘why do you take my cigarette?’, while here, in any Indian home, you must treat it as your home, our cigarettes are your cigarettes, everything we have belongs together”. Sunjay joined the discussion, “Yes, Indian hospitality is very forceful, we say you come, you drink, you eat more – more! But it is warm, it is always the warmest”. “Well,” the twit puffed on the smoke handed to him by Daneb, “not all of England is like that, once you know people as a group then we are similar. If you are in my home you can help yourself to my cigarettes and likewise. I am not sure it is so different”.
“Ah but-“ continued Daneb, “Also Western culture is not willing to learn. People, they come to the beach here in Baga and they go from airport to hotel to beach to tourist restaurant. They do not learn anything about India”. I sat up and interjected passionately, I think surprising the gender strength assumptions of our hosts, “You see the tourists in Baga, they are a very poor representation of our country. Only a specific person comes to Baga and that is the person who wants to drink beer, sit on a beach and not learn. A very specific type of English person” I punctuate the air with my cigarette, “Please do not think that this type of person represents all of Western culture”.
At this point another young man steps onto the balcony and sits beside us. Sunjay offers the introductions, “Please meet Sahed, he is a very funny man”. Sahed leans forward, extending his hand, ‘And what is your good name?” I give it to him. “Now, what is your bad name?” He leans back and laughs, crinkles corner his eyes and his hands hold his heaving flat stomach, “Very good, pleased to meet me”. At this we laugh together, feeling a relaxed closeness as warm as the night. Sahed spends the next half an hour showing us aged movie clips of Bollywood love songs on his mobile phone. “This” he points to me, “is the story of young gypsy girl who falls in love with young soldier, but they cannot be together. The song is so sad and so beautiful. Together it will make you cry”. And so it goes with each video clip stored on his handset. Each clip begins with a group affirmation of the beauty of the love song, all the young men clap their hands together before their chests like a group of aged Italian grandmothers gesturing grief. “So beautiful! So romantic – this is a very beautiful love story”.
Sunjay leans forward and eyes the Twit and me with sudden seriousness, “Do you not want to learn to make chapattis?” “Of course!” His face lights up with confident delight and he takes us to the kitchen. The young girl, who we have realised is the wife of Daneb is still at work. As we knead the dough between our fingers and the twit and I roll our misshapen chapattis we discuss Nepal. The family has offices and staff there, Sunjay offers us the world of Nepal, a car to meet us, places to stay and boats to float along the winding valleys banked by jungle that teems with the exotic. The girl remains silent and deftly prepares three dishes at once, Dahl, curried potatoes and rice. The twit turns to Sunjay, “We are very privileged to eat with you today”. “No” Sunjay says, frowning at his chapatti effort, “You are not privileged, we are not government or officials, we are just humble people. It is not special”. “Well,” I chime, “I don’t think that it is privileged to eat with important people. If privileged is to eat with warm, open, genuine people, then we are most privileged indeed”. “What she said!” the twit asserts and we fall into laughter amid the sizzling spices.
At this point a red eyed white man stumbles into the kitchen, he wears dark blue three quarter combats and a half open cotton shirt. Sunjay leaps to the man, “This is my good friend Johnny”. I reach out my hand, “Pleased to meet you Johnny”. Sunjay collapses into laughter, “No no, his name is David, but each time I introduce him I give him a new name, Eric, James, Peter and now Johnny!” “Oui” the Frenchman chuckles, clearly understanding only the list of names he has been given and little else of the conversation. Nuneb enters the room and delightfully hugs the Frenchman, “David!” He exclaims and turns to us, “He is my first friend of the new year. He barely understands me but he is good person. What language do you need to share when you know that someone is good?”
Pre-dinner conversation turns serious and the twit and I nod in assent at Daneb’s statements. We are tired and the wait for nourishment is long and laid back. Daneb is angry at many things in his homeland. He is concerned for the poor of India, they have little to eat and yet they produce 5, 6, 7 children in a family. The children cannot go to school and must work or beg from infancy, “And this is crippling our country” he states in earnest. Fiery passion fervours their bellies at the poverty of their homeland. Part of the burgeoning middle classes, they are among the first to realise the benefits of development at first hand. Their expendable income and education frees them to philosophise. To analyse the economics of their country and find it lacking, to feel the fresh rise of passion at inequality. The vehemence of their statements call to mind the innocent fervour of the 1960s revolutionaries, the power of media supplementing the primary witnesses of the atrocity of war. The belief that they can forge the path to an equal India blossoms blazing and vulnerable.
Suddenly the tension snaps like a dry twig as a bell tinkle over the balcony door. “Dinner!” Daneb delightedly shows us into the living space where a long table has been covered corner to corner with china dishes. Eating is a cultural minefield for the Twit and I but we adapt. We learn to drink so that the bottle does not touch our lips, we drink Dahl from small china bowls and struggle through the rice marathon as portion after portion is piled upon our plate with cries of, “Eat more, you must eat more!” We learn that nobody should receive leftovers in India, if you want to feed a beggar it is respectful to buy him fresh food. Over dinner I tell our hosts that it is my birthday the next day. They cheer “We make birthday party! We make you big birthday party!” “Bahut bahut Shukriya!” I cry. “Who tells you this?” They ask surprised. “I have a translation book”. “What you speak is Hindu Urdu” says Daneb, “Proper Hindi language you say ‘Danuwad’”. “Danuwad” I profess and bow, my hands in prayer position.
The post dinner conversation is released from its brevity as smoke is passed around and around in a dizzying haze of sweet odour. Daneb tells us a joke, “Four men, an American man, an English man, an Israeli man and an Indian man stand on the Eiffel tower. Each one wishes to stand out and be the best. The American man raises his collar and says, ‘I have plenty of dollars in my country’ and he throws them over the edge of the tower. The British man sees this and retracts some pounds from his pocket, ‘I have lots of pounds in my country so I will throw these off the tower’. The Indian man, he stands and thinks awhile. After much thought he picks up the Israeli man, ‘I have many Israeli’s in my country’ he says as he throws him off the tower. Peals of laughter carry from the balcony. Our company show delight that we know they smoke the Bhang at the Shiva festival, and they direct us to the best. They teach us to describe our heady high from the smoke by declaring, “I feel orange!” Listening to the fast flung witticisms and the cascading laughter, we feel we are in the throng of a culture who value the art of conversation. A true appreciation for the value of the mind’s ideas.
At midnight the young girl comes out to the balcony. Having exchanged her sari for a long sleeved striped shirt and denim boot cuts, she sits and takes a beer as if she has finished work for the day. Later on I will discover that she smells of rose and jasmine. “I believe it is your birthday!” declares Daneb looking at his watch. At once, six young Indian man our professing me their hands with cheers of “Happy Birthday!” before the group mingle voices in the traditional song.
Daned then declares, “tonight we make you birthday party for tomorrow is Russian new year in the West End. Now,” He spread his palms open before him, “Lets go to paradise!”.
We take the car with Daneb and Sunjay. David, his stoned amiable silence indicating his fill of the night is taken home by Nuneb on bike. Heading to Anjuna beach, our company knows upon which bay the party of the night is located. Stretching out of the car, we hear the dull thuds of the trance beat that is ubiquitous on the Goan party scene.
To reach the party we must trek 2 kilometres down dirt tracks weaving through the dense green jungle. The sounds of wildlife breathe more melody into the air than any trance party on Goan shores. Scooters slide by in the sand left and right. One pulls and stops by the twits left. We recognize Jonathan, his equilibrium clearly inebriated, “Hey!” he calls, “You’re following an…Indian”, a momentary confusion washes his features. He turns to the twit, “We’re going to Shiva bay to light some fireworks – hope to see you there. I’m just going to get some more and head down”. He wobbled on his bike. The twit shrugged his shoulders, “Maybe, we’re on a random one ourselves tonight”. Jonathan glanced again at our company. Revving his scooter, the Englishman hailed over his shoulder, “Don’t trust them” as he sped off into the Indian night. “You know him?” Daneb enquired. “Er, we’ve kind of seen him about a couple of times, you know, at the Mango bar.” “You mean the Mango tree?” “Ah, yes, the Mango Tree”. “Ha ha, for a minute I think you talk of a bar that sells only Mangos!”
The beach is alive with candle flames illuminating stalls of cigarettes, papers and jewellery. Under the canopy of one bar revelers spasm in union to the unrelenting beat of psychedelic trance. Sunjay leaps straight to the dance floor and proffers an Indian dancing lesson, “the trick is to move only your knees and your arms”.
The twit and I head to the shore exhausted. Our brains are worn from forging neuronal paths required to learn a new language of cultural nuance. A man in a black shirt dances alone on the shoreline, his arms raised primordially to the moonlight shining directly above his path. Occasional he sits, collects himself and gathers energy to continue his primal worship.
We decide its time to leave. Daneb insists we take his scooter, there is room for Nuneb in the car. We begin our protests but they will take nothing but an affirmation of their offer. Nuneb walks us to the scooter. “I promise I will drive very slow and carefully” I say, to assure myself over my company. “There is no traffic, there will be no problem”, Nuneb replied, then his face broke into a ripple of laughter, “And if you break it – well, start selling yourself!”
The ride home is soothing. For the first time in a week cool air whisps over my skin bring calm. The only point of concern is that I can’t find the horn, the national tool to signal that you are arriving around a corner. We make it to our room with no event, and as I lean forward to take myself off the bike, a short sharp hoot fills the air making us both jump with fright. The twit bent over double with laughter, “At least we found the horn!”
Our arrangement is to arrive at Anjuna flea market the next day and call Daneb to return the bike. The market road is grid locked and numerous horn blasts add fire to the heat waves rippling off the dusty road. We park and head into the market. Anjuna flea market is according to the Lonely Planet “An essential part of the Goa experience”. I call it an assault on the senses. No sooner than had we passed the first stalls on thee market did two Indian men appear with metal rods insisting that they were ear cleaner. Without time to respond, I found my head flung to one side as the second man reached into my ear and retrieved a lump of yellow gunge from my ear with his surgical instrument. A young Israeli couple immediately screamed in unison for me to get away and not to trust them. Not entirely believing them, but fearing the raucous I tried to move my head, but the young Indian man held me fast as he delved into my ear again. I looked at the twit pleadingly and he stepped between us. I knew his strong sound exterior was not the complete picture of his cognitions and inside I thanked him. We hurried on past the stalls of silver, wood carvings, drums and saris. Young children rushed barefoot to us offering necklaces and thread metal baskets, “It is not business, I am starving” they cry as we shake our heads and move away. To our side, an aged Indian man sits propped in the dirt. His body below his torso has long been absent, the stump of his waist is now in permanent contact with the earth.
We weave our way through the endless myriad of pathways and find a bar on thee beach. Sitting cross legged in a patch of sunlight I find refuge in the relative calm underpinned by the driving beat of trance. The twit finds that the barman is happy to lend us his mobile phone and we call Daneb. He instructs us to wait ten minutes, so we sip San Miguel and share disbelief that Western girls feel free to expose their breasts to the sun in a country of conservatism, where respect is the true recognized currency.
Ten minutes later Sunjay and Nuneb skip over the beach and drop to our sides. They have slept only four hours and bounce like kittens chasing twine. “So many beautiful girls” Sunjay waves his hands at the bars clientele, “So little time”.
After a few minutes Sahed arrives with his girlfriend. A Dutch girl, blonde, tall and withdrawn. Sahed greets us with his arms open and takes us to the bars roof terrace. We stretch back and watch the world drift in the scattered sunlight. We ask Sunjay and Duneb if they will party in the West End. “No, no party, I don’t think I will play tonight”, Sunjay states, “And what about you?”. “I take my beautiful wife for a romantic dinner and a walk on the beach” he smiles, taking my hand. They rock their heads on their necks in Indian affirmative motion. Suddenly, Sunjay and Nuneb rise to their feet, “We are off!” they cry and head into the market.
Sahed rolls a smoke and hands it to me beaming, “Happy Birthday!”. The conversation is relaxed and Sahed reels at great length the history of the Anjuna flea market. The twit tells him, “We would like to have a look before the sun goes down,” he nods to the burnt red perfect sphere hovering over the crashing waves, indicating that our time was running out. “Can we show you where the bike is so we can go?”. Sahed looks over the ocean and then back of us, “Keep it with you”, he says, “Give it back tomorrow”.
The twit and I exchange glances. We both recognize the seeds of panic sowing sweat rivulets down our spine. So grateful for the abundance of hospitality we had received, we did not wish to offend, and the sudden cold snap to Sahed’s tone indicated that something lay amiss. At the same time, to keep the scooter was to be indebted to this family for longer than we wished. Why the sudden reluctance to let us go?
The twit took control of the conversation, “No no, we might leave for Agonda tomorrow. Can we give it to you now?”
“Sahed shook his head, “Bring it tomorrow to our home”. “Why don’t we bring it now?” The twit replied, “How do we get to yours?” Sahed looked again at the dancing shimmer of the ocean reflecting the sun. “You won’t find it, it is too difficult”.
The twit and I brought our heads together as Sahed’s company debated whether she would have chocolate brownie or ice cream. “What do you think?” asked the twit. “I don’t think I like this. I want them to take it back”.
“The twit leaned forward with earnest, “Can you call Sunjay so we can take him to the bike? We really want to look at the flea market”. Sahed snapped up his phone and dialed. After a brief conversation in the rhythmic tones of Hindi he put down his phone. “They come in ten minutes” he said and turned to face the ocean.
A cold aura settled. I waived between confusion, fear and the smoke induced laziness. My mind settled for the later, fear breeds misunderstanding. The only solution was to let the events unfold so that our slight may become transparent. And yet no clues came. The joyful exchange had frosted, unthawed by the furnace that was the day.
Sunjay and Nuneb soon returned and rolled a smoke. “We go after this”’ he says. My English soul, rooted in the traditional lemming style rush, fought to stay patient and take things the easy way. I nodded and closed my eyes, facing the perfect sphere of the sun. I felt hair brush my face and Sunjay’s voice vibrate the hairs by my ears, “You see my brother, he gets special food for your birthday party. That is why Sahed acts unhappy”. I open my eyes and meet Sunjay’s. I must look downcast and confused. In my head a whirl of thought fragments rolled like waves as I remained unsure how to feel. Last night I had been told that tonight was Russian new year party, and that last night had been the celebration of my birthday. Feeling delight that strangers would make such efforts, I felt my rebellious core kicking at the forcefulness. I remained wedged between juxtaposed decisions. I could take the hospitality with a nagging unease that this was not my choice, or I could turn my back on their warmth and spend my day sorry to my soul that I had offended them. I sighed as the complexities of India washed through me again. This country to me is a writhing mass of contrasts, that I seem ill equipped to navigate without sadness. And yet, how could I experience the joys and beauty of India without sadness and know India at all? To experience day without night in India is to taste a fraction of a chapter.
We waited and with heavy feet we walked Sunjay to the bike. Himself remained upbeat, as if solar powered by the never ending warmth of the environment. Nuneb tried again to extend evening hospitality to the twit who politely sidestepped the advances. “Ignore him!” cried Sunjay, “He knows not what it is to be married – am I right? Am I right? I will be calling his mother soon and say ‘marry him quick – he is too busy disturbing young love’!”
We arrive at the bike and I bow deeply as I say goodbye to Sunjay. I hope my eyes convey some of the conflict I am feeling inside. As Sunjay and Nuneb speed off in a ripple of laughter, they wave goodheartedly as they pass. We head back into the sensory confusion deflated and downhearted.
On our way to the beach we find one of the sari sellers from Vagator beach. “Ah hello!” she hails, “You remember me?” We laugh our hellos. “You look at my stall now you are here at Anjuna flea market”. She runs her hands over her goods, “You need a blanket? Or I have pretty trousers? Here, take a silver anklet – 50 rupees, good price!” “Where do you get your stuff?” I asked. “It is made in a factory in Hampi. There are two, three men who bring everything to us, we buy and give them money on market day”. I looked again at the girls stall, the mass produced history tarnishing the shimmer of her bright fabrics. “please, you buy anything? 50 rupees. I need some good luck before the man comes”. I looked down at the factory produce, mass volumes of stock for Goa’s essential experience. Again the nagging notion that I would be doing something because someone else wished it pervaded my fibres. I shook my head, “I’m sorry – I really don’t want anything”. She turned her eyes downcast. “Ok, no problem”. We shake her hand and say goodbyes. The twit and I turn hands held into the night, feeling the brevity of complexity upon our shoulders.
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Vagator Nights...
I’ve awoken in a Zen palace to find that I have been served as the main course at the bug King’s banquet. Feverishly I search out each nibble at my flesh to try and decipher who I played host too. The twit and I decide that it couldn’t have been a mosquito party, but as a safety measure I should drink gin and tonic all day.
Vagator is a small village set in a haphazard square of rambling guest houses, bars, Averyurdic health centres and stalls of multi coloured shimmering fabrics. Young girls in crop top saris hail us as we walk by, “You come look at my stall? I give you best price.” “We can’t now,” we reply, “we are on our way to the beach/lunch/dinner” (used as appropriate). “You come back later then ok?” “Ok, maybe we come later”. “You come back, you like, you buy, you promise me now.” “Ok, we promise that if we come back we look”. “Don’t forget me now, don’t forget you promise me.” And so it goes, by each and every stall we promise to return and examine the wares.
This is our fourth day in Vagator. We arrived late on our first day, and had time only to find ourselves a bed and a meal. As the night drew in we found a bar on the beach and took a beer from the waiter. “You’re very quiet tonight”, observed the twit. “We’re only busy in the day my friend,” he replied, “Tonight everyone drinks at nine bar”, he nods his head up the hill to a ramshackle construction pumping trance music into the surrounding area.
As the sun neared the middle of the cloudless sky on the second day we stretched our legs in search of breakfast and chanced upon a Zen haven offset from the road on Vagator’s outskirts. This is where we awoke today. As you walk up the cobbled drive past a blackboard upon which ‘Vehicle free zone’ is written in friendly multi-coloured chalk the mellow tones of Indian fusion chill meander over the air into your mind. Upon each table in the open restaurant sits a single red rose underneath a stained glass bell. Dreadlocked individuals and Buddhist families flick through the menu peppered with life affirming quotes to choose from the extensive range of soya shakes and fresh fruit breakfasts. The staff nod and smile, one waiter, who works the seasons here away from his Delhi home bounds over to salut the twit as his brother and to toast us a happy new year. One Nepalese gentleman serves us our drinks, is delighted to find we will visit Nepal and immediately promises to swap addresses as he nods and beams, the light of his face reaching all the way to his eyes.
Vagator beach is a liberal free for all relative to the traditional atmosphere of Campal. Western girls sun worship in string bikinis while Russian and Israeli men strut in speedos speaking into mobile phones. The British men are easily spotted with pale skin, shaved heads and long shorts. The twit and I take a seat in the bar we visited upon the first night. Almost immediately a young girl has sprung to my side, “You want to come and look at my stall?”, “No thanks, I don’t want to buy anything”. “I bring to you, I also do manicure and pedicure”. The twit leans over my lap and looks into the young woman’s eyes, “Do you know where we can get any smoke?” He punctuates his question with the international gesture for taking a toke. She looks confused, “I don’t know. I’m not sure”, and turns and leaves.
A moment later a young attractive man with an array of sunglasses draped over one arm stops by the twit, “Would you like some sunglasses sir?”, “No thank you sir”. The young man leans forward to reach the twit’s ear – “I hear you want some smoke?” The twit nods. “Come to my shop behind the bar in 5 minutes and we talk”. The twit affirms this and returns to sipping his beer. After 5 minutes he wordlessly stands and heads to the stall.
The young man is waiting for him, “This is good stuff, straight from Malawi, you won’t get anything as good as this on this beach. I had to go specially to get this for you”. The twit shuffled among the rose pink and gold scarves stacked around him and the young man, “No, no, I didn’t ask you to get it. I just wanted to know how much”. “OK then, lets talk price, how much do you want to pay?”, “300” the twit asserted. The man laughed and shook his hands wildly before him, “No no no…this is good stuff, 1800”. The twit shook his head with mishearing, “1000?”. The man gesticulated wildly again, “No, no, no, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED”. The twit stepped back among the racks of silver ornate ankle bracelets and burnt yellow saris, “No, No, I don’t want it at that price, there’s no way I can afford it”. “Well how much do you have on you?” “500”. “Right, I went and got this especially for you. Its bad for me to go and take this back”. “Well I didn’t ask you to get it, and there’s no way I can pay that price”. “How about you give me 500 now and the rest tomorrow?” “Look, I don’t know if I’m coming back tomorrow. I don’t want to make you promises that I can’t keep”. “Who’s making promises? I trust you! How about you pay 500 today and 400 tomorrow?” “No, no, I don’t know if I’m coming back, I won’t do it”. “Look I trust you, its ok”. “I might not be coming back tomorrow. I can’t bring you money tomorrow”. The young man smiled winningly, “I tell you what, I like you. Sometimes we make more, sometimes we make less. I’ll let you have it for 500 and you get me a beer. And you promise that your lady will come and look at my store”. “Ok”, the twit delved into his pockets and pulled out a 500 as a 10 fell out with it, “Ah!” the twit exclaimed as his claim that he only had 500 was falsified, “Well here, have this too”. The twit handed the young man the 510 and they both laughed, followed by the subtle handshake that only occurs when a discreet package is being passed.
The twit rejoined me in the bar, a film of sweat across his brow, “Phew, that was heavy”, and we left the bar for a sun lounger before the sunset. Once on the beach we were surrounded by 5 young Indian girls bedecked in traditional saris and silver jewellery, “Hello good couple, what are your names?” they would sing one at a time. Each girl had the same story, “Where are you from?” we would ask, “Karnataka”, “Which town?”, “Hampi”, “Are you married?” “Yes”, “Do you have children?”, “Three, but I must work this beach all day, my husband is a bad man, he sleeps and drinks and doesn’t lift a finger. I work here all day and then I must go home and wash and clean and put the children to bed”. The pleasantries would be passed over as the young girls flung anklets over my legs and saris over my arms while they leafed through notepads of intricate henna deigns. “You give good price” they begged, desperation embedded with the tactics of the hard sell. “No, we don’t buy. We DO NOT buy” we had to restate many times over. And so this continued until we had fourteen girls sat cross legged around us, “You buy tomorrow, you remember me – you promise?” Upon realizing that we would not be customers they sat back and the atmosphere changed. Happy to share stories as the tourists left the sunset beach and the days work was complete. We sat in a circle and laughed at their stories of unfriendly Russian tourists, half suspicious that perhaps they have the same spiel in reverse for Russian customers.
One of the girls was different. Young, perhaps barely 18, she skipped over to where we were sat and introduced herself in sing song tones. Draped in purple silks, her dark eyes shone with a calm wit. She was luminescent in the last embers of the setting sun. “How did your day go?” we ask her, “I didn’t sell much, but selling something is better than selling nothing”. She tilted her head and laughed, “Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?” she inquires. “No,” I say, holding up the rings put on to protect myself against forward natives, “we are married”. “This is nice”, she smiles, “how long do you know each other?” “Two years”. “Ah this is not as long as some,” she muses, “but some people know each other straight away, while some others spend years together and do not know each other at all”. We laugh, “You are philosophical” I say. “I am a professional!” she beams, “I work this beach every day since I am 5 years old. I see many people from many countries and I learn many things”. “Are you married?” I ask. “No, my parents will pick me someone soon, I leave it to them to do the work for me. Well have a good evening my friends, maybe see you soon”. And with that, she gathered up her wares and skipped off to the cliffs where she will board the back of an open truck to head home for the day. We watch her leave wondering how bright her spark will be in ten years once she has been chosen a man she must serve as well as love.
The next day, we found ourselves sat at a bar surrounded by a group of cockneys. Their reddened skin heads and ease with the bartenders signaled their familiarity with the surroundings. They have been coming to Vagator for ten years and sitting among them feels like you’ve taken your own stool in an English village pub, apart from the relenting heat and the emphatic instructions of no ice. They swap stories of their travels with us and recommend treks in Laos. One guy, whizz, tells us the story of his arrival in Vietnam, “I showed the taxi driver my 9 dollars and said, look mate, this is all I have, can you take me to the hostel. The taxi driver nodded and I got in the cab. He then started driving me down this dark alley, and I thought, hang on, my mate wouldn’t stay anywhere dodgy like this. The driver then stopped and pulled a gun out of the glove compartment which he pointed in my face. ‘Money’, he said, ‘I want all your money’. But I didn’t have no more than this 9 dollars. So I pulled out all my pockets to show him I didn’t have none. He used the gun to gesture to my necklace. So I gave him everything, my 9 dollars, my necklace, my rings, my wallet. And then he drove me around the front of the hostel, and followed me in, took my bag and everything. Smiling and joking with me like he was my best friend. Couldn’t f**king believe it. Not half as bad as the time I got robbed by a gang of Thai lady boys. What are you up to tonight? Come for a drink in Chapora.”
And so we did. We walked down the jungle lined hill to the main street of bars, shops and stalls, more ramshackle, and somehow more urban than the neater stalls lining the road to Little Vagator beach. The cockney crew are in full force, they fill the balcony and we join them. The bar has the air of a private party and this they know. They point to the juice bars surrounded by a haze of chillum smoke. ‘They’re a bit nuts down there’ they gesture to the tie dye clad hippies lying blessed out on silk cushions sipping melon juices and lassies. At the same instant, red, who has been swaggering heavily, falls back over a shop stand across the street and does not get up. We watch in silence and erupt into laughter as the sound of heavy snoring carries across the hot dusty dirt track. We meet a multitude of British people, a young couple who have just quit university because they do not know what they really want to do and they believe they will find the answer on the red brick trails of Indian shanty towns. Uncle Ed, the wild Scotsman, whose liver is decaying rapidly and who firmly believes that all British politicians have sold their soul to Satan. We meet two Londoners who continually complain that their home borough is over run with Indians. Jonathan is unmistakably middle class, and his warm open smile flinches slightly when he admits that he will be calling his mother in two days for cash. His long lean body is golden and the stab wound scars that follow his left forearm trace a burnt brown path. He has fought here too – but there is no trace of a temper in his joviality tonight. Jonathan and Uncle Ed reminisce over all the beautiful girls who have smiled, kissed and opened themselves to them on Goa’s sandy shores.
Nearing midnight, the shanty bar is running out of drinks and we head to the Primrose café. We jump on the back of Jurgen’s scooter as he speeds wildly into the night alive with the sounds of revelers and a multitude of crickets singing songs that only the insects will understand. I cheer as we rush along the dark pot holed paths, heady with liquor and heat. The twit grabs for life behind me at a handle that the bike has not been furnished with. I feel his arms wrap around my waist as he wrestles with gravity and equilibrium to stay on.
We arrive at the Primrose, the party is in full swing beneath the psychedelic neon paintings that adorn the roof. Jonathan buys us a beer and draws us a map so we can always find his English home if we need a place to crash. Someone tells me that if we want a rush, red is the man to talk to. I whisper in his ear and he sizes me up, his eyes clocking the safety of my pale skin, drunken swagger and eagerness. He takes me to a dark corner and opens a Clingfilm wrap, “Ere you are, have a dab’. I like my finger and sink it into the sticky grey mud, “Not too much mind you, its strong stuff”. I slip my finger in my mouth and beam through the acrid taste that seeps into my tongue. “Now get your fella, I don’t wanna be caught with this so make it quick”. I turn and rush off for the twit. Red doesn’t ask for anything off either of us. After the twit has had his fill, red looks up and smiles, “mate…welcome to India!”
Next thing I know I’m sat at a table where two Austrians find that they have worked together before, and the skin headed manc next to the twit resides in a trailer ten minutes from our last home in England. Synchronicities fill the air, signifying that the world is safe. That wherever you are, there will always be a friend. Jurgen and me are discussing the fallacies of bipolar ideologies and the life defying nature of heavenly beliefs. I don’t know how we reached this topic but we agree. We pose for photos with new found friends. Each picture reveals widened eyes, blackened pupils and unhinged jaws that chew the excess energy coursing through our nervous systems. I feel the floor rush through my feet and my chest heave as the lights dazzle my eyes and my optical nerves fragment the neon colours like prisms. The groups are closer now, friends of years share private jokes and intimate stories. The twit and I see its our time to leave. We hug everyone goodbye and head back to the bliss-filled ambience under our mosquito net.
Time is irrelevant here. The sun has moved midway across the sky as I write this. We sleep half the hours a day gives, and the completion of one task a day is an achievement. Yesterday we recuperated in our Zen palace, waking to eat and drink but little else. Exotic birds hummed shrills that guided our dreams to paradise. We ventured out for a beer yesterday and learnt that one night at the Primrose is sufficient to put yourself on hello terms with half of Vagator. Journeys have doubled as we meet and greet all we know on our way. Vagator seems the place that you slip into like a warm tartan slipper, it feels as if we have always been here and we would not need to leave if we did not wish it.
Vagator is a small village set in a haphazard square of rambling guest houses, bars, Averyurdic health centres and stalls of multi coloured shimmering fabrics. Young girls in crop top saris hail us as we walk by, “You come look at my stall? I give you best price.” “We can’t now,” we reply, “we are on our way to the beach/lunch/dinner” (used as appropriate). “You come back later then ok?” “Ok, maybe we come later”. “You come back, you like, you buy, you promise me now.” “Ok, we promise that if we come back we look”. “Don’t forget me now, don’t forget you promise me.” And so it goes, by each and every stall we promise to return and examine the wares.
This is our fourth day in Vagator. We arrived late on our first day, and had time only to find ourselves a bed and a meal. As the night drew in we found a bar on the beach and took a beer from the waiter. “You’re very quiet tonight”, observed the twit. “We’re only busy in the day my friend,” he replied, “Tonight everyone drinks at nine bar”, he nods his head up the hill to a ramshackle construction pumping trance music into the surrounding area.
As the sun neared the middle of the cloudless sky on the second day we stretched our legs in search of breakfast and chanced upon a Zen haven offset from the road on Vagator’s outskirts. This is where we awoke today. As you walk up the cobbled drive past a blackboard upon which ‘Vehicle free zone’ is written in friendly multi-coloured chalk the mellow tones of Indian fusion chill meander over the air into your mind. Upon each table in the open restaurant sits a single red rose underneath a stained glass bell. Dreadlocked individuals and Buddhist families flick through the menu peppered with life affirming quotes to choose from the extensive range of soya shakes and fresh fruit breakfasts. The staff nod and smile, one waiter, who works the seasons here away from his Delhi home bounds over to salut the twit as his brother and to toast us a happy new year. One Nepalese gentleman serves us our drinks, is delighted to find we will visit Nepal and immediately promises to swap addresses as he nods and beams, the light of his face reaching all the way to his eyes.
Vagator beach is a liberal free for all relative to the traditional atmosphere of Campal. Western girls sun worship in string bikinis while Russian and Israeli men strut in speedos speaking into mobile phones. The British men are easily spotted with pale skin, shaved heads and long shorts. The twit and I take a seat in the bar we visited upon the first night. Almost immediately a young girl has sprung to my side, “You want to come and look at my stall?”, “No thanks, I don’t want to buy anything”. “I bring to you, I also do manicure and pedicure”. The twit leans over my lap and looks into the young woman’s eyes, “Do you know where we can get any smoke?” He punctuates his question with the international gesture for taking a toke. She looks confused, “I don’t know. I’m not sure”, and turns and leaves.
A moment later a young attractive man with an array of sunglasses draped over one arm stops by the twit, “Would you like some sunglasses sir?”, “No thank you sir”. The young man leans forward to reach the twit’s ear – “I hear you want some smoke?” The twit nods. “Come to my shop behind the bar in 5 minutes and we talk”. The twit affirms this and returns to sipping his beer. After 5 minutes he wordlessly stands and heads to the stall.
The young man is waiting for him, “This is good stuff, straight from Malawi, you won’t get anything as good as this on this beach. I had to go specially to get this for you”. The twit shuffled among the rose pink and gold scarves stacked around him and the young man, “No, no, I didn’t ask you to get it. I just wanted to know how much”. “OK then, lets talk price, how much do you want to pay?”, “300” the twit asserted. The man laughed and shook his hands wildly before him, “No no no…this is good stuff, 1800”. The twit shook his head with mishearing, “1000?”. The man gesticulated wildly again, “No, no, no, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED”. The twit stepped back among the racks of silver ornate ankle bracelets and burnt yellow saris, “No, No, I don’t want it at that price, there’s no way I can afford it”. “Well how much do you have on you?” “500”. “Right, I went and got this especially for you. Its bad for me to go and take this back”. “Well I didn’t ask you to get it, and there’s no way I can pay that price”. “How about you give me 500 now and the rest tomorrow?” “Look, I don’t know if I’m coming back tomorrow. I don’t want to make you promises that I can’t keep”. “Who’s making promises? I trust you! How about you pay 500 today and 400 tomorrow?” “No, no, I don’t know if I’m coming back, I won’t do it”. “Look I trust you, its ok”. “I might not be coming back tomorrow. I can’t bring you money tomorrow”. The young man smiled winningly, “I tell you what, I like you. Sometimes we make more, sometimes we make less. I’ll let you have it for 500 and you get me a beer. And you promise that your lady will come and look at my store”. “Ok”, the twit delved into his pockets and pulled out a 500 as a 10 fell out with it, “Ah!” the twit exclaimed as his claim that he only had 500 was falsified, “Well here, have this too”. The twit handed the young man the 510 and they both laughed, followed by the subtle handshake that only occurs when a discreet package is being passed.
The twit rejoined me in the bar, a film of sweat across his brow, “Phew, that was heavy”, and we left the bar for a sun lounger before the sunset. Once on the beach we were surrounded by 5 young Indian girls bedecked in traditional saris and silver jewellery, “Hello good couple, what are your names?” they would sing one at a time. Each girl had the same story, “Where are you from?” we would ask, “Karnataka”, “Which town?”, “Hampi”, “Are you married?” “Yes”, “Do you have children?”, “Three, but I must work this beach all day, my husband is a bad man, he sleeps and drinks and doesn’t lift a finger. I work here all day and then I must go home and wash and clean and put the children to bed”. The pleasantries would be passed over as the young girls flung anklets over my legs and saris over my arms while they leafed through notepads of intricate henna deigns. “You give good price” they begged, desperation embedded with the tactics of the hard sell. “No, we don’t buy. We DO NOT buy” we had to restate many times over. And so this continued until we had fourteen girls sat cross legged around us, “You buy tomorrow, you remember me – you promise?” Upon realizing that we would not be customers they sat back and the atmosphere changed. Happy to share stories as the tourists left the sunset beach and the days work was complete. We sat in a circle and laughed at their stories of unfriendly Russian tourists, half suspicious that perhaps they have the same spiel in reverse for Russian customers.
One of the girls was different. Young, perhaps barely 18, she skipped over to where we were sat and introduced herself in sing song tones. Draped in purple silks, her dark eyes shone with a calm wit. She was luminescent in the last embers of the setting sun. “How did your day go?” we ask her, “I didn’t sell much, but selling something is better than selling nothing”. She tilted her head and laughed, “Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?” she inquires. “No,” I say, holding up the rings put on to protect myself against forward natives, “we are married”. “This is nice”, she smiles, “how long do you know each other?” “Two years”. “Ah this is not as long as some,” she muses, “but some people know each other straight away, while some others spend years together and do not know each other at all”. We laugh, “You are philosophical” I say. “I am a professional!” she beams, “I work this beach every day since I am 5 years old. I see many people from many countries and I learn many things”. “Are you married?” I ask. “No, my parents will pick me someone soon, I leave it to them to do the work for me. Well have a good evening my friends, maybe see you soon”. And with that, she gathered up her wares and skipped off to the cliffs where she will board the back of an open truck to head home for the day. We watch her leave wondering how bright her spark will be in ten years once she has been chosen a man she must serve as well as love.
The next day, we found ourselves sat at a bar surrounded by a group of cockneys. Their reddened skin heads and ease with the bartenders signaled their familiarity with the surroundings. They have been coming to Vagator for ten years and sitting among them feels like you’ve taken your own stool in an English village pub, apart from the relenting heat and the emphatic instructions of no ice. They swap stories of their travels with us and recommend treks in Laos. One guy, whizz, tells us the story of his arrival in Vietnam, “I showed the taxi driver my 9 dollars and said, look mate, this is all I have, can you take me to the hostel. The taxi driver nodded and I got in the cab. He then started driving me down this dark alley, and I thought, hang on, my mate wouldn’t stay anywhere dodgy like this. The driver then stopped and pulled a gun out of the glove compartment which he pointed in my face. ‘Money’, he said, ‘I want all your money’. But I didn’t have no more than this 9 dollars. So I pulled out all my pockets to show him I didn’t have none. He used the gun to gesture to my necklace. So I gave him everything, my 9 dollars, my necklace, my rings, my wallet. And then he drove me around the front of the hostel, and followed me in, took my bag and everything. Smiling and joking with me like he was my best friend. Couldn’t f**king believe it. Not half as bad as the time I got robbed by a gang of Thai lady boys. What are you up to tonight? Come for a drink in Chapora.”
And so we did. We walked down the jungle lined hill to the main street of bars, shops and stalls, more ramshackle, and somehow more urban than the neater stalls lining the road to Little Vagator beach. The cockney crew are in full force, they fill the balcony and we join them. The bar has the air of a private party and this they know. They point to the juice bars surrounded by a haze of chillum smoke. ‘They’re a bit nuts down there’ they gesture to the tie dye clad hippies lying blessed out on silk cushions sipping melon juices and lassies. At the same instant, red, who has been swaggering heavily, falls back over a shop stand across the street and does not get up. We watch in silence and erupt into laughter as the sound of heavy snoring carries across the hot dusty dirt track. We meet a multitude of British people, a young couple who have just quit university because they do not know what they really want to do and they believe they will find the answer on the red brick trails of Indian shanty towns. Uncle Ed, the wild Scotsman, whose liver is decaying rapidly and who firmly believes that all British politicians have sold their soul to Satan. We meet two Londoners who continually complain that their home borough is over run with Indians. Jonathan is unmistakably middle class, and his warm open smile flinches slightly when he admits that he will be calling his mother in two days for cash. His long lean body is golden and the stab wound scars that follow his left forearm trace a burnt brown path. He has fought here too – but there is no trace of a temper in his joviality tonight. Jonathan and Uncle Ed reminisce over all the beautiful girls who have smiled, kissed and opened themselves to them on Goa’s sandy shores.
Nearing midnight, the shanty bar is running out of drinks and we head to the Primrose café. We jump on the back of Jurgen’s scooter as he speeds wildly into the night alive with the sounds of revelers and a multitude of crickets singing songs that only the insects will understand. I cheer as we rush along the dark pot holed paths, heady with liquor and heat. The twit grabs for life behind me at a handle that the bike has not been furnished with. I feel his arms wrap around my waist as he wrestles with gravity and equilibrium to stay on.
We arrive at the Primrose, the party is in full swing beneath the psychedelic neon paintings that adorn the roof. Jonathan buys us a beer and draws us a map so we can always find his English home if we need a place to crash. Someone tells me that if we want a rush, red is the man to talk to. I whisper in his ear and he sizes me up, his eyes clocking the safety of my pale skin, drunken swagger and eagerness. He takes me to a dark corner and opens a Clingfilm wrap, “Ere you are, have a dab’. I like my finger and sink it into the sticky grey mud, “Not too much mind you, its strong stuff”. I slip my finger in my mouth and beam through the acrid taste that seeps into my tongue. “Now get your fella, I don’t wanna be caught with this so make it quick”. I turn and rush off for the twit. Red doesn’t ask for anything off either of us. After the twit has had his fill, red looks up and smiles, “mate…welcome to India!”
Next thing I know I’m sat at a table where two Austrians find that they have worked together before, and the skin headed manc next to the twit resides in a trailer ten minutes from our last home in England. Synchronicities fill the air, signifying that the world is safe. That wherever you are, there will always be a friend. Jurgen and me are discussing the fallacies of bipolar ideologies and the life defying nature of heavenly beliefs. I don’t know how we reached this topic but we agree. We pose for photos with new found friends. Each picture reveals widened eyes, blackened pupils and unhinged jaws that chew the excess energy coursing through our nervous systems. I feel the floor rush through my feet and my chest heave as the lights dazzle my eyes and my optical nerves fragment the neon colours like prisms. The groups are closer now, friends of years share private jokes and intimate stories. The twit and I see its our time to leave. We hug everyone goodbye and head back to the bliss-filled ambience under our mosquito net.
Time is irrelevant here. The sun has moved midway across the sky as I write this. We sleep half the hours a day gives, and the completion of one task a day is an achievement. Yesterday we recuperated in our Zen palace, waking to eat and drink but little else. Exotic birds hummed shrills that guided our dreams to paradise. We ventured out for a beer yesterday and learnt that one night at the Primrose is sufficient to put yourself on hello terms with half of Vagator. Journeys have doubled as we meet and greet all we know on our way. Vagator seems the place that you slip into like a warm tartan slipper, it feels as if we have always been here and we would not need to leave if we did not wish it.
Negotiating strange lands...
You are not lost you are here. India is everything that I have read it to be. Our taxi spewed out of Goa airport onto chaotic streets. These unmarked roads seem to operate under a take way, opposed to a give way system. A constant backdrop of bass engine thrums and beeping horns give a feeling of constancy to a country swept up in a multitude of cultural conflicts. Tin shanty shelters neighbour colonial houses. Their green and pink ornate balconies peep between palm trees onto the lawless roads. Street vendors serve food beside houses decked in bright red corporate logos. Baboosh, our taxi driver weaves between gleaming fords and tuk tuk. Scooters whiz by on the left and right sides. Ladies draped in pink, gold and lime green saris sit side saddle, arms cradling the waist of their male driver akin to the riding habits of equestrian ladies of colonial England. Peppered between half completed construction projects, rubble piles and coconut trees are ornate shrines to Ganesh, Shiva, Buddha and Jesus. They glint dazzling golds through the haphazard city around them.
It is dark when we arrive at the Panjim YMCA. I’m almost disappointed to find a throne toilet in our spotless bathroom. The air conditioning system hums like the engines on the streets. A small boy in a Nike t-shirt leaves his shoes before our door and deposits our bags as quickly as he arrives. Afterwards, we realize we should have tipped him and feel the first flush of cultural insensitivity. Later we find him with four other lads around the same age, similarly decked in frayed labeled t-shirts and hand him 50 rupees. Feeling lost in the Panjim night, we skim the pages of the Lonely Planet. Campal, where we are staying, has no entry. Small surges of pride and rivulets of nervous sweat wave over our bodies as we realize we are already off the beaten track. However, there are two things to remember in situations such as this. Firstly, the laws of physics still apply, secondly, as the twit observed, “Where there are people, there will be people selling food”. So we prepared to venture into the bustling night with a map of neighbouring Panjim torn from the lonely planet. The lonely planet becomes both a bible of aid and a badge of amateurism. You want to consult it and at the same time fear that the image of you clutching it will scream out to locals that you are new, that you are not entirely sure what you are doing, that you are vulnerable.
In a break from my narrative of last night, I’ll just take a moment to make mention of our taxi ride from Panjim bound for Vagator. Baboosh again drives us. His cheerful tones resonates back to us as he asks us where we will go, how much do we pay at the YMCA, and points out markets, buffalo, coconut stands, his own village home and laughs with us as we veer to avoid the cows that spill into the road. His boss is a Christian, so he spends his Hindu sensibilities sat at a depiction of Jesus on the dash board. His pentamic language flows musically into his Nokia handset as he discusses his next job with mission control. He shares with us his dreams; he will take up the fishing trade of his father when he has worked the taxis for six months. Only then, when he has his own job will he find his wife who will bear him the gaggle of children who will look after him as he grows old. His smile reaches his dark eyes and his young skin shines with youth upon his lithe frame. He earns 20 pounds a month, this he shares with his family and saves for the day he may have his own home.
So, we enter the lobby of the YMCA clutching the torn off map of Panjim. In the reception area, a thin middle aged man lies on the floor with a towel draped over his face. He senses our footsteps and soundlessly jumps to life. After much map pointing, he emphatically gestures us to take the street to the main road and follow the bend. Only upon exit do we realize that he is mute, and must have felt our footsteps resonating against the tiles.
The night was close. I love the smell of tropical climates, like musk of spice and hot earth. We headed down the main street towards Panjim, turning left at the Jesus shrine, avoiding the three way convergence of mopeds, taxis and tuk tusk. The municipal gardens hung a leafy backdrop on the left. A myriad of pathways meandering uplit Buddhas and nativity scenes. In front the twit and I stopped by a street vendor serving turmeric chickpeas amidst family members perched on the wall and a sari wrapped grandmother cross legged on the floor. Determined to begin our bartering skills we paced to the middle aged man behind the counter. “How much for a bottle of water?” “15 rupees sir”. “Ok…we’ll have two.” The twit ruffled through his pocket and pulled out the smallest note. “Have you got change for 100?” The incredulous look uniformly presented upon the family’s faces told all we need to know. “Wait up, I have 30”, I ploughed through my wallet trying to seize the notes quickly. We paid for the water and walked away slightly embarrassed, and also subdued. How are we supposed to barter with people who only earn 2 pounds per day and can’t change up the smallest note we have?
We walked further down the buzzing main street and took a left into the market. Primary yellows stacked fuscia pinks and gleaming whites as women draped in twinkling saris sat upon tables and strung flower necklaces. Three graying women wiped clean the white metal shelves of the now empty fish stalls. Joints of meat hung in spotlights over the open meat counter. Silks and cottons of multicoloured arrays lay in neat piles, waiting to be selected and folded into somebody’s sari. Opposite, t-shirts adorning the badge of any English football club you could name were piled high above a counter row of Levi’s. Turning left through the market, we felt our English upbringing avert our eyes as a young woman draped in rose silk lifted her skirt to urinate in the gutter.
With stomachs feeling like cavernous balloons we heaved a sigh of relief as we came to a well lit, busy vegetarian café. Families and friends sat clustered in groups, hand feeding themselves dishes scooped up with naans and poppadoms. We sat down in a window seat under the light cast from the green neon sign. A young waiter immediately came to our table and laughingly took our order. “Is he laughing because we are Western, or because he is happy to see us?” I asked the twit. “Probably both” he replied, brow furrowed at the alien names scrolled down the menu card. I had a momentary panic as I couldn’t tell which dishes contained meat, and laughed at the wash of relief as I remembered the green lit sign spewing “Vegetarian Restaurant” into the night. We ordered Goan Thali with a side of Samosas and Watermelon juice (emphatically saying “No ice” while waving our hands in a gesture of finality).
The food arrived on a large metal plate, naan, poppadoms and rice surrounded by a circular selection of pickled chillis, curried vegetables and three white dishes, looking suspiciously like dairy which we avoided. Afterwards we took a long sip of the watermelon juice and recognized the momentary panic in each others eyes as we wondered if it had been watered down. “Its fine, the lonely planet said fruit juice is ok if it has no ice cubes” I repeated like a mantra.
The time spent after dinner, and after lunch today I noticed, is like you are playing a waiting game. Hypersensitive to the conditions of your stomach, you wait and seek out any twinge, or gaseous movement that could signal the start of the horrifying twisting cramps and liquid expulsions that you hear about from every traveler you meet who has crossed the paths of India. Will this dish be the one that leads to my own version of the traditional traveler shat myself in public story? The early hours of this morning were prominently tense in this game of wait. Especially as the twit chuckled at my rookie mistake of cleaning my teeth with the tap water. I lay in the rooms hypnotic humming of the air conditioning, time elapsing as my stomach grew with gas. Each time the twit and I fart now we declare with pride “dry”, “dry”, “phew, dry again”. We wait for our first onslaught of dysentery.
We are now staying in Vagator, Baboosh has left us at the Jolly Jolly Lester’s. We had to turn down two rooms because of the unfeasibly high prices until they slashed their price offers and showed us a room we preferred. It seems that when we can’t afford something we are actually rather good at bartering. The twit and I are sprawled out on an ethnic print cover draped over our double bed. I’m again disappointed to find that we have a throne toilet. I would like to get used to emptying my bowels into a hole as soon as possible. We’re in the hub of tourism now. Outside the door of our room bikini clad girls chat to young men in shorts sat astride hired scooters. We’re going to drink some cocktails and kick back, act like we are on holiday and join the partygoers. After we’ve holed up here for a few days we’re going to head South. Out of the tourist trap and into the fishing villages that surround the Kerala backwaters. I might try and write a story, unless I am too busy absorbing the dazzling arrays of smell and sounds that make up this run down, vibrant country.
It is dark when we arrive at the Panjim YMCA. I’m almost disappointed to find a throne toilet in our spotless bathroom. The air conditioning system hums like the engines on the streets. A small boy in a Nike t-shirt leaves his shoes before our door and deposits our bags as quickly as he arrives. Afterwards, we realize we should have tipped him and feel the first flush of cultural insensitivity. Later we find him with four other lads around the same age, similarly decked in frayed labeled t-shirts and hand him 50 rupees. Feeling lost in the Panjim night, we skim the pages of the Lonely Planet. Campal, where we are staying, has no entry. Small surges of pride and rivulets of nervous sweat wave over our bodies as we realize we are already off the beaten track. However, there are two things to remember in situations such as this. Firstly, the laws of physics still apply, secondly, as the twit observed, “Where there are people, there will be people selling food”. So we prepared to venture into the bustling night with a map of neighbouring Panjim torn from the lonely planet. The lonely planet becomes both a bible of aid and a badge of amateurism. You want to consult it and at the same time fear that the image of you clutching it will scream out to locals that you are new, that you are not entirely sure what you are doing, that you are vulnerable.
In a break from my narrative of last night, I’ll just take a moment to make mention of our taxi ride from Panjim bound for Vagator. Baboosh again drives us. His cheerful tones resonates back to us as he asks us where we will go, how much do we pay at the YMCA, and points out markets, buffalo, coconut stands, his own village home and laughs with us as we veer to avoid the cows that spill into the road. His boss is a Christian, so he spends his Hindu sensibilities sat at a depiction of Jesus on the dash board. His pentamic language flows musically into his Nokia handset as he discusses his next job with mission control. He shares with us his dreams; he will take up the fishing trade of his father when he has worked the taxis for six months. Only then, when he has his own job will he find his wife who will bear him the gaggle of children who will look after him as he grows old. His smile reaches his dark eyes and his young skin shines with youth upon his lithe frame. He earns 20 pounds a month, this he shares with his family and saves for the day he may have his own home.
So, we enter the lobby of the YMCA clutching the torn off map of Panjim. In the reception area, a thin middle aged man lies on the floor with a towel draped over his face. He senses our footsteps and soundlessly jumps to life. After much map pointing, he emphatically gestures us to take the street to the main road and follow the bend. Only upon exit do we realize that he is mute, and must have felt our footsteps resonating against the tiles.
The night was close. I love the smell of tropical climates, like musk of spice and hot earth. We headed down the main street towards Panjim, turning left at the Jesus shrine, avoiding the three way convergence of mopeds, taxis and tuk tusk. The municipal gardens hung a leafy backdrop on the left. A myriad of pathways meandering uplit Buddhas and nativity scenes. In front the twit and I stopped by a street vendor serving turmeric chickpeas amidst family members perched on the wall and a sari wrapped grandmother cross legged on the floor. Determined to begin our bartering skills we paced to the middle aged man behind the counter. “How much for a bottle of water?” “15 rupees sir”. “Ok…we’ll have two.” The twit ruffled through his pocket and pulled out the smallest note. “Have you got change for 100?” The incredulous look uniformly presented upon the family’s faces told all we need to know. “Wait up, I have 30”, I ploughed through my wallet trying to seize the notes quickly. We paid for the water and walked away slightly embarrassed, and also subdued. How are we supposed to barter with people who only earn 2 pounds per day and can’t change up the smallest note we have?
We walked further down the buzzing main street and took a left into the market. Primary yellows stacked fuscia pinks and gleaming whites as women draped in twinkling saris sat upon tables and strung flower necklaces. Three graying women wiped clean the white metal shelves of the now empty fish stalls. Joints of meat hung in spotlights over the open meat counter. Silks and cottons of multicoloured arrays lay in neat piles, waiting to be selected and folded into somebody’s sari. Opposite, t-shirts adorning the badge of any English football club you could name were piled high above a counter row of Levi’s. Turning left through the market, we felt our English upbringing avert our eyes as a young woman draped in rose silk lifted her skirt to urinate in the gutter.
With stomachs feeling like cavernous balloons we heaved a sigh of relief as we came to a well lit, busy vegetarian café. Families and friends sat clustered in groups, hand feeding themselves dishes scooped up with naans and poppadoms. We sat down in a window seat under the light cast from the green neon sign. A young waiter immediately came to our table and laughingly took our order. “Is he laughing because we are Western, or because he is happy to see us?” I asked the twit. “Probably both” he replied, brow furrowed at the alien names scrolled down the menu card. I had a momentary panic as I couldn’t tell which dishes contained meat, and laughed at the wash of relief as I remembered the green lit sign spewing “Vegetarian Restaurant” into the night. We ordered Goan Thali with a side of Samosas and Watermelon juice (emphatically saying “No ice” while waving our hands in a gesture of finality).
The food arrived on a large metal plate, naan, poppadoms and rice surrounded by a circular selection of pickled chillis, curried vegetables and three white dishes, looking suspiciously like dairy which we avoided. Afterwards we took a long sip of the watermelon juice and recognized the momentary panic in each others eyes as we wondered if it had been watered down. “Its fine, the lonely planet said fruit juice is ok if it has no ice cubes” I repeated like a mantra.
The time spent after dinner, and after lunch today I noticed, is like you are playing a waiting game. Hypersensitive to the conditions of your stomach, you wait and seek out any twinge, or gaseous movement that could signal the start of the horrifying twisting cramps and liquid expulsions that you hear about from every traveler you meet who has crossed the paths of India. Will this dish be the one that leads to my own version of the traditional traveler shat myself in public story? The early hours of this morning were prominently tense in this game of wait. Especially as the twit chuckled at my rookie mistake of cleaning my teeth with the tap water. I lay in the rooms hypnotic humming of the air conditioning, time elapsing as my stomach grew with gas. Each time the twit and I fart now we declare with pride “dry”, “dry”, “phew, dry again”. We wait for our first onslaught of dysentery.
We are now staying in Vagator, Baboosh has left us at the Jolly Jolly Lester’s. We had to turn down two rooms because of the unfeasibly high prices until they slashed their price offers and showed us a room we preferred. It seems that when we can’t afford something we are actually rather good at bartering. The twit and I are sprawled out on an ethnic print cover draped over our double bed. I’m again disappointed to find that we have a throne toilet. I would like to get used to emptying my bowels into a hole as soon as possible. We’re in the hub of tourism now. Outside the door of our room bikini clad girls chat to young men in shorts sat astride hired scooters. We’re going to drink some cocktails and kick back, act like we are on holiday and join the partygoers. After we’ve holed up here for a few days we’re going to head South. Out of the tourist trap and into the fishing villages that surround the Kerala backwaters. I might try and write a story, unless I am too busy absorbing the dazzling arrays of smell and sounds that make up this run down, vibrant country.
Leaving...
Ray Charles and Nora Jones play a bittersweet melody as we hurtle through the air at a height of 7834km. A 3d globe projection charts our 4369mile flight path. The depicted journey closely resembles Hawkin’s diagram of curved space-time, even now our movements are inseparable from the physical laws that govern our bodies.
My mouth feels as if a sloppy caretaker has emptied a bag of sawdust into it. In a final salute to Western culture we indulged in overpriced venti coffees and home county brewed ales. Final sips of familiar tastes we leave behind.
As we reached the airport gates we met a flow of arrivals. Travelers from Mumbai decked in tan brown loafers, neat blue denims and suit jackets accompanied by graying ladies flowing in burnt orange silk saris. Swimming upstream in loose cotton clothing, we looked out of place among the high powered fashion ensembles.
The twit and I deal with the travel tension separately. Heading into the unknown, the twit seeks out tools from the ordinary; an in-flight paper bag will serve as a useful vomit sack on a future bumpy bus ride. Silk serviettes are seized for their potential to block the suns glare through transport windows. A compass and a space blanket protect against the threat of airplane failure. Myself, I exercise my own set of rituals. Continual rehearsal of mathematics that will convert me pounds to rupees in fast paced situations. I calculate the distance from the airport to our accommodation, exercise my barter start point, and test the limits of what I will pay. I re-read the culture section of my guide book to ensure I am equipped to deal with cultural conversions, will not offend societal etiquette, and hopefully, maybe, will not portray the vulnerable novice I inevitably feel that I am.
I tap my feet and shake my head to the heartworm blues that pump through my entertainment system. An in flight multimedia free for all, serving to distract us from the fact that we are hurtling through the air at a height and speed that god, nature and all never intended.
Our fellow travelers are varied. We spied another couple ruffling through the pages of a well known guide book. His dark wiry hair contrasted her blond strands, but there the contrasts end, as sequenced movements and strategic packing sequences reveal a long learnt comfort and understanding between the two. Opposite us, two Indian middle aged men furrowed brows at financial newspapers; balding heads framed by dark suits and neatly knotted ties. Young men carry sacks of duty free bounties to present to proud parents at home, and disheveled parents herd overexcited dark haired children to the boarding gate.
Six hours and thirty minutes until our destination. Now the twit and I will carry out a final ritual against fear of the unknown. A diazepam and a whisky will wrap us up and ensure that we float to our Mumbai landing. Sweet dreams until then. Once at Mumbai we will wait for our domestic transfer to Goa.
Goa airport is the most kitsch I’ve seen, with its plastic statues of men riding swans, and imitation cards making up the baggage return rack, in homage to the local casino. And outside the battalions of taxi drivers and luggage handlers, waiting to pounce upon you for business.
My mouth feels as if a sloppy caretaker has emptied a bag of sawdust into it. In a final salute to Western culture we indulged in overpriced venti coffees and home county brewed ales. Final sips of familiar tastes we leave behind.
As we reached the airport gates we met a flow of arrivals. Travelers from Mumbai decked in tan brown loafers, neat blue denims and suit jackets accompanied by graying ladies flowing in burnt orange silk saris. Swimming upstream in loose cotton clothing, we looked out of place among the high powered fashion ensembles.
The twit and I deal with the travel tension separately. Heading into the unknown, the twit seeks out tools from the ordinary; an in-flight paper bag will serve as a useful vomit sack on a future bumpy bus ride. Silk serviettes are seized for their potential to block the suns glare through transport windows. A compass and a space blanket protect against the threat of airplane failure. Myself, I exercise my own set of rituals. Continual rehearsal of mathematics that will convert me pounds to rupees in fast paced situations. I calculate the distance from the airport to our accommodation, exercise my barter start point, and test the limits of what I will pay. I re-read the culture section of my guide book to ensure I am equipped to deal with cultural conversions, will not offend societal etiquette, and hopefully, maybe, will not portray the vulnerable novice I inevitably feel that I am.
I tap my feet and shake my head to the heartworm blues that pump through my entertainment system. An in flight multimedia free for all, serving to distract us from the fact that we are hurtling through the air at a height and speed that god, nature and all never intended.
Our fellow travelers are varied. We spied another couple ruffling through the pages of a well known guide book. His dark wiry hair contrasted her blond strands, but there the contrasts end, as sequenced movements and strategic packing sequences reveal a long learnt comfort and understanding between the two. Opposite us, two Indian middle aged men furrowed brows at financial newspapers; balding heads framed by dark suits and neatly knotted ties. Young men carry sacks of duty free bounties to present to proud parents at home, and disheveled parents herd overexcited dark haired children to the boarding gate.
Six hours and thirty minutes until our destination. Now the twit and I will carry out a final ritual against fear of the unknown. A diazepam and a whisky will wrap us up and ensure that we float to our Mumbai landing. Sweet dreams until then. Once at Mumbai we will wait for our domestic transfer to Goa.
Goa airport is the most kitsch I’ve seen, with its plastic statues of men riding swans, and imitation cards making up the baggage return rack, in homage to the local casino. And outside the battalions of taxi drivers and luggage handlers, waiting to pounce upon you for business.
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