November jottings

The harsh rays of the mid-day sun have become mellower and gentle. Some of the birds have gone away. I think winter has arrived! I love this time of the year. I actually like the time beginning with the Fall, as it is referred to in the Western countries. We have no Fall, but we do see a subtle change in the weather. We complain less about the weather and generally a happy mood prevails. Winter, as every other season, has a special set of memories with it. And, winter in Goa is no different. It was in winter that we first arrived in this small state with our head dizzy with the picture-postcard frames and images of beaches floating in our sub-conscious minds. December will mark two years of our sojourn here. The first arrival now seems like aeons. The entire stretch of land after stepping out of the airport is a vacant and distant speck in memory. We pass the Airport quite often now and have lost track of the number of times we played and replayed the first scene of our arrival. Sometimes the roads still challenge me to a bout of nostalgia - about my Chennai. I see the Airport in Goa and think of Chennai. Airports have always been there in my cycle of life. I was born near one, grew up next to one and now, live next to one. Airports and winters, I reckon, are recurring points in my nostalgic diaries.

Coming back to winter, I remember the sweet nothings that were part of my teen and adult life. Bus rides, special classes, Christmas and many more. The soothing breeze is fit for a book and lovely coffee, both which are slowly disappearing from my horizon. One suffers due to time and the other due to taste/health. Such is life, I come to accept. I am not complaining. At different phases of one's life, there are different occupations and engagements. One has to make peace with them and learn to befriend them otherwise it gets a bit hard on us.

I am now getting ready to hop to the nearby beach. I am looking forward to soaking in the lovely evening glory of the mild month of November. I know that a million thoughts will cris-cross my mind but then, I want to be empty-handed and so will keep the thoughts safe in some corner of my mind.

Dear reader, hope you are enjoying the last months of this glorious year. Pray tell me, what are your thoughts.

The lost beaches of Goa

Yesterday, I was quite pumped up with energy and general feel of goodness after I returned from an early morning visit to the beach. The beach is almost like a temperamental individual exhibiting different tempers at different times of the day and be warned, every beach is distinct and has its own shade of personality. I learned all this by visiting some beaches in Goa. I was literally in a hazy sea of thoughts when my domestic walked in for the day. She had her usual smile and charm and inquired me after the sand that she had spotted in the entrance. With an excited demeanour, I told her that we had gone to watch the sunrise in the nearby beach. She nonchalantly replied: "We have been living here for so many years but have never visited the famed beaches of Goa till date." Her reply stirred me. It rattled my thoughts. I wouldn't know how to react to her reply which was a tone mingled with part regret and part resignation to her life. Implicitly, I asked her when she came to Goa. "Just after getting married," she replied. She has been married and living in Goa for about 18 years but the beaches were lost to her and her family. There was a beach quite close to where she lived but the time and zest to go and visit that beach was lost on her family.

I wondered why should one go to the beach? Does one want to feel a sense of contentment that comes with living in one of the most sought after tourist spots or does one go there to marvel at the wonder of nature and take in the beauty that everyday existence cannot possibly provide? I realised that going to the beach is a privilege of time and leisure. A chasing after beauty that allows one's heart to be puffed up with gratitude and warmth. I also wonder whether by not visiting a beach in Goa, did I miss out on the essence of the place? Do I visit beaches just because it would be a shame to have lived in a place filled with beaches and not have visited them. Some of these questions could niggle me endlessly and chances are that I might not even arrive at a legitimate answer.

Till my mind rests, let's go to the beach and take pictures that make others yearn and drool simultaneously.

Have you thought why you do what you do.

Travelling vs Living

When I say that I live in Goa, everyone gasps and sighs and thinks that it would be absolutely wonderful to live in a place where everyone goes for vacationing. Well, why not? After all the place is beautiful filled with beaches and lovely people. For a long time I had imagined how it would be to live in a place where everyone vacations and now the imagination has become a reality. Wow is the most cliched expression to Goa!

But seeing a place as tourist/traveller is a completely different perspective. A tourist does not stand in long queues, runs about for gas connections and feels that the heat is absolutely draining. Living in a place demands a removal from seeing the same place as a tourist destination. The vegetable markets which sells fresh vegetables are not seen by tourists unlike the one who dwells here. Beaches which are synonymous with Goa are not even seen where I live! But I know that there are beaches somewhere and I will get to see it soon. That promise of being surrounded by sea on all sides makes one feel glorious. But as a dweller, the taxi driver tells you that the sea around Goa makes it a humid place. He will not tell this to tourists. Sometimes I wonder whether the actual place or the imagination of a place makes a person go gaga. I guess it's a bit too early to comment. Every place, no matter a tourist destination or just another places has pluses and minuses which start raising its head slowly but I realise that I asked for it and so I will focus on the best this place has to offer.

I have always had a special relationship with places. I have either loved them or hated them. But as I grow older than what I was yesterday, I realise that perceptions change. One can hate a place and continue living there for certain things just cannot be changed. As time goes, the place and the individual grow together and both are part of one another even without realising the same. We form our own comfort zones - the domestic help, the vegetable seller, the milk-man, the newspaper vendor, the local market, the community around and others. I had a comfort zone in the place where I lived before and I terribly miss my domestic help - she knew my rhythms and I hers. We were just acquainted for about eight months and I had to depart. She called me yesterday and told me that I should be careful in a new place - people are not the same everywhere. She also asked me whether I had found a new help. I miss her.

As I begin my stay here, I am looking for the coordinates that will connect my comfort zones. Until the comfort zones are in place, I will be a restive dweller.

So, dear reader, how does relocation and new places work for you?

Love from Goa :)

Image: Internet

Wanting the NOW as FOREVER

Traveling and walking on the beach does this to me. A mad desire to seal time and wish that it was forever. While traveling in trains and buses, the gentle breeze, lulling movement makes me so lazy and comfortable that I start my fantasies. The first one, which would inevitably want entire life in a train/bus. I just don't feel like getting out and walking back home. It seems like a crude jolt of the embryonic delight.

Next, is the time when I walk in the smooth sand. Ah! I just wish that I could walk and walk into tomorrow and invariably want that FOREVER. Coming back home brings me into a different reality and time.

In instances as these, my thoughts flow to Rip Van Winkle and his sleep. How would he have felt after waking up after twenty years and finding everything so very different. Imagine not recognising anyone from his past. Oh! that would have been so cruel. Winkle froze in a particular time and that became FOREVER to him.

I am not only talking about lovely moments which many of us want forever nor I want everything to be hunky-dory like in 'feel good' movies.  All that I am talking about here is getting lost in a moment rather say, the present and feeling that it is FOREVER.

What are your FOREVER moments.

Images courtesy: 1. Government of India
                           2. bbc.co.uk