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

Where are the letters I wrote? Where are the letters that were written to me?

In a few weeks' time, I will have a new address. The feeling is mixed. How will my new address sound and will it have a nice ring to it? I hope you get the drift! Sometimes, addresses do have a nice ring, like say, Sugar Land, Texas or Palli Hill, Bandra or say, Poes Garden or even Lake Avenue. I could go on about sweet sounding addresses which sound nice and read nice. But however nice and sweet it may sound, it is sad that some addresses never receive letters promptly. Well, my letters are such and so are the letters written to me by dear friends. I have come to the conclusion that my address does not sound and read well because I have lost precious letters in transit. What happens to the lost letters, anyway?

Who benefits from my lost letters? Where are they? Are they struck in some old and rusty post-office or have they been dumped in some junkyard?

When I was about ten years old, there was a case in the newspaper which reported of a post-woman who bundled up all the letters and sunk them in the common water tank. Ah, what was wrong with her? How can she so mindlessly dump messages of love, success, failure, birth, death, wedding, crush and others into the water tank? When I think of my lost letters, I think of that post-woman. My beautiful purple ink would have been lost in water. Death of letters by water! I shudder to think of my letters meeting such a fate. That's about my letters. What about the letters that were posted to me? I am yet to receive five letters and they were written long ago, sometime in August or September. I took a conscious decision to avoid some friends on Facebook and communicate only through letters. Alas! I broke my self-imposed vow and inquired about the letters. The letters, they say, were posted long ago. Missing in Action/Transit?

Well, is someone savouring my letters? Are they reading it and throwing them away? I am not able to put my finger on any valid reason. Should I blame the inefficient postal system in India? As it is, the news is pretty stale when I receive the letter and yet I relish the joy of the letter but now that small joy has been snatched away from me. Where are the letters I wrote? Where are the letters that were written to me?

I believe that I am one of those rare species from another era who still writes (W.R.I.T.E.S) letters but everything seems against me.

And inspite of all, I am still an optimist one . . . perhaps another rare trait, in these days of pessimism and whining. I wait for my letters. And, please don't write any letters to me until I send you my new address.

Will you write to me and shall I reply.

Image: Internet