lunedì 18 marzo 2013

goa


certain things are becoming more familiar to me here in india, like the long looks which people will give me and which i now expect and which i can choose to return or not.  still, the question occasionally runs through my mind:  what is it like to be you seeing me?   whence come my celebrity status which i carry around with me, provoking the questions whichcountry and yourgoodname? and handshakes and sometimes the request that my photo be taken alongside.  and sometimes when i board a crowded bus a seat is precipitously vacated for me.  is it because of the colour of my skin? and what subconscious impressions are awakened in me by the colour of thy skin? is there any way to redefine the descendant of colonising group/descendant of colonised group discourse?  i never expected so many people to enter the general class train compartment.  when it seemed like it had already become very full, at the next station more people would pour in and we all became royally squashed like sardines, very intimate one could say but at the same time simply sharing space on a train.  swinging a cat would have been impossible.  at one point it struck me as a good idea to sit in the toilet, there enjoying the relative luxury of several square metres of unoccupied air space, but then i remembered the smell of urine, and the fact that other people would probably come and want to use the toilet alone.  travelling on the roof on such high-demand trains, it seemed to me, would be a very practical solution.

after a while the group of adolescents who were pressed against me swapped their flighty probing glances for a few faltering questions.  they found out i was from scotland.  they partially discovered the contents of my rucksack.  they slowly learned the price of my arrival airplane.  i only partially understood the last question, and i was only partially reluctant to answer it, how much money do you have on you? when the train stopped and i decided it would be considerably more comfortable to travel with a little more personal space.     i found an empty luggage compartment - not normally intended for passenger travel - and quickly jumped in and before the train departed i was joined by a group of grinning young men.  no english, and so a chance for me to pull out my fledgling hindi.  they were builders.  they built houses.  maybe they could come to scotland and build houses, they wanted to know.  i was travelling in india because...i liked india very much.  so much colour, so many fruits, so many people, so much . . . life.

i knew the fruits was by the by but, turning the question over in my mind, i struggled to put my finger on just what india was for me, or why i liked being in india.  the people must be a big part of it, but who are the indians? what qualities can be ladled upon them.  there is much diversity there.  there is a general respect towards the other i would say, but like all generalisations. . . brazenness can be found too.  men pissing in anywhich public place.  men clearing their throats and launching great gobs of spit onto the pavement.  i heard somebody make this comment recently: for indians their entire country is a litter bin.  and for indian men the entire country is a toilet.  later, prateek from delhi considered this topic and said: yes but where else will we put our litter and piss if the government do not provide a litter collection service and public toilets?   the generality of indians don't do not often choose to swim in the sea or in rivers and lakes, although the ritual of washing on the banks of a river is very common.  not revealing one's nudity, even while bathing, is a universally made choice.   a widespread acceptance of what is puts my finger close to it.  travelling ungrumbling like that like sardines in the train.  











i came to goa spurred on by a loosely-arranged laconic tryst with Inga, a couchsurfer from Estonia, who had written to me with the words "if you want to meet I'll be at Sporting Heros bar on the main street in Arambol at 10.   (10pm)"
as it happened, to this day, we have not yet made our acquaintances, but Inga's invitation was a necessary step along the enchanted path which i subsequently followed.    i told a ginger-haired Russian on the bus to Arambol about Inga and he told me about a peaceful place to sleep out, "from the main beach, if you follow the coast round a rocky headland, you get to another smaller, quieter beach.  behind the beach is Sweet Lake.  if you walk round the lake then follow a small river up through the trees, after fifteen twenty minutes you will get to the Banyan tree"  so armed with this enchanting description and my flashlight, illuminating the forest evening gloom, i stumbled upon my camino of incantation.  Hari Baba's formal greeting was thrown out to the inquiring light of my torch, "Hare HAR"
"hello"
namaste, i climbed into the simple encampment of mats on ground, oil candles dotted around, a fire in the middle. i say i am looking for somewhere to sleep and am told that i can sleep right here.  a plate is pushed in front of me: "jungle pancake brother".   it seemed like i entered Hare Baba and Anil Baba's simple jungle society with the same natural flowing motion with which a river enters the sea.   the Banyan tree was a further 5 minutes walk up the hill, where other babas were encamped. many foreigners and wanderers passed there throughout the day, removing footwear and bowing to the assembled company before joining the circle and passing round the chillum pipe.   i climbed the banyan tree and then became quite fascinated by observing the loose sketching style of a youth from florida who soon engrossed me with a rambling curious generous intellectual foray which left me with a wondrous impression of the concentrated flow of energy along the spinal column, culminating at the base of the brain.  i think he knew that the design of his rambling dialogue was to provoke wonder in the mind of the listener, rather than delivering any serious scientific commentary.

i love to draw too.  to draw is to try and capture the moment in which the eye sees the world.  like writing, drawing is distancing oneself from the moment, for the sake of the moment's posterity.  or is drawing to inhabit the moment more fully?  it is shifting all of one's focus onto form.  writing is still too mysterious to comment on.  is communication the central thrust of words?   words are a liminal veil between something real and throbbing, and something more intellectual, more distanced.   words are a testimony that one has had a particular thought in one's mind.  words are the fruit of the intellect playing with memories of the world.  words themselves are born in the pulsating beat of the present moment and will always belong in the now.  i suppose i didn't really think you were Inga.  Inga had blonde hair on her profile picture whereas your hair is . . . mmm .golden.   but what matters, we are talking to each other now.  i like talking with you

Hare Baba emanated great peaceful waves of stability and friendliness. sometimes Babaji would be down at the river washing the cups when our eyes would meet and they were full of a simple, smiling, sixty-year old childesque happiness.  he will never be at cross-purposes with anyone.  he reminded me of Baloo from the Jungle Book, albeit with a little less of Baloo's insistency (although that was probably specific to the urgency of Mogley's situation).  maybe that impression was fuelled by their self-description as "jungle people".  meeting Anil dispelled my impression that it is the aspiration of all young indians to wear a freshly pressed freshly laundered shirt.  for him the tripartite quintessential good morning consisted of chai, chillum and chapattis. on a couple of mornings, after my enquiry, that list expanded to include chess.  Anil suggested that i might like to climb the coconut palm nearby, for there were some very pendulous coconuts to be had.  i followed the sinuous trunk snaking high into the sky with my eyes and, after a while, commented:  "that would take a lot of energy
and a lot of courage"   a cloud of chillum smoke.  Hare Baba, before smoking the pipe, ritualisitcally called out "Hare HAR", then "mahedev" almost as an aftermutter, which he told me was another name for Shiva.  before passing on the pipe, he would announce it with a resounding "BOOM"; these calls also served as greetings to those approaching the encampment, or to announce one's return from the village.













after perhaps five days i realised it was time to leave.  Hare Baba gave me the directions for catching the 4pm Goa Express to Delhi, and wrote down a list of places to pass through on the way to Kathmandu.  he gave an extra special salutation upon my departure, calling upon a range of presumed deities, laying his hands on my head and leaving me his mobile number, saying "maybe see you in Kathmandu"



it is not unusual to be loved by anyone.
it is not unusual to travel for 39 hours by train.
it is not actually all that common to feel such a strong simple vibrant attraction to a girl, like some crazy mysterious fate-decreed obsessive bond.  
i am travelling by train to Delhi and all i can think about is a Russian woman named Auxana.


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