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.