| From Goa - Nov 2001 |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Thursday, 24 April 2008 13:43 | |
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Dear Friends: Were I a Japanese nobleman at the Heian court, I might perhaps wonder, with a sigh, whether, perhaps, in my previous life I have lived in this climate. How else can I account for this powerful feeling of having at last arrived home? This feeling of relief? The merciless heat, the stifling humidity, the coconut trees swaying in the gentle breeze from the sea, the orange haze in which the world is dunked at sunset, thee gold in which it bathes at dawn, the banana tree outside my bathroom window, the life lived in open houses, whose doors and windows are never shut, on broad verandahs, under shady roofs, in large, leafy gardens behind high laterite walls, the five foot snakes slithering past my doorstep, the bats flying in at night through the tall windows and circling under my 25 foot ceiling, the falling asleep in colorful hammocks on drowsy afternoons under mosquito nets and slowly turning ceiling fans, the piglets energetically wagging their tails in the streets, the buffalos wallowing in the rice fields all of this is so homey, so familiar, so dear. I have been made for this life and this climate, or perhaps it has been made for me. It is only an accident of fate which threw my soul in a body of a temperate climate. We have taken a small bungalow in a large old Portuguese compound, behind such a wall, full of such shade, with a deep, lusciously cool swimming pool. And that has kept us here and will keep us here till end of November. We won't settle here, we rather think. Goa is, despite its status as a tourist destination, too remote: telephones don't work, power is unreliable, banks are user unfriendly, getting anything done is a chore; its hard to get certain products routinely available in other cities of India, worst of all, no one here carries The Economist; and their restaurants are appalling no one here seems to know how to fix a decent dahl makhani or malai kofta or even a simple tandoor dish But for a month, this place is fine. And the sea, only 400 m away, whose surf lulls us to sleep at night, will keep us busy until we hit the road again. At end of November we will up sticks and head to Madras (known to some as Chennai these days), by way of some sites in Karnataka (Badami, Hampi, Mysore). We will be in Chennai Dec 14, 2001 January 4, 2002, every night attending Carnatic music concerts, and the rest of the time sheltering in an a/c room of Hotel New Woodlands from the joys of a tropical big city |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 25 April 2008 12:31 ) |