Colva Beach

We are lying on a dark blue quilted blanket, big enough for all four of us, on the deck of the ferry headed along the coast south of Bombay.  Destination: Goa. The weather is balmy, almost tropical after the chilly Delhi mornings and the rocking of the boat is soothing to us. I feel we are riding a magic carpet, especially when I consider how this blanket was purchased from an old Sikh merchant in Delhi who tried everything to get us to pay a higher price, even asking me to throw in my pocket calculator, an item that has already proved its value to us many times this trip. When we refused to budge, having already priced blankets for a few days now and recognizing its value, the old merchant sold it to us anyway, happily smiling as if there had never been any haggling at all and saying, "You are good customers."

At the Bombay ferry terminal, this blanket was then given to a red-jacketed porter who we hired before boarding, in the accustomed local fashion, to jockey for a space on the deck. His job was to race on board, at a given cue, with forty or fifty other porters and beat them to a choice spot on deck which he would then claim by spreading out our blanket and sitting on it until we arrived. "Otherwise you will never get a place to sleep", he had informed us when selling his services and he was right. We had a choice spot on deck, while many who arrived later were forced to the inner decks with little or no view. 

There is a photo of us lounging on deck, me in shirtsleeves leaning on my guitar and Karen and the girls smiling happily. We felt quite proud of our coup and the lazy ambiance of this overnight journey was a pleasant contrast to the hectic, dust-bowl-days journey by train across northwestern India to Bombay. 

I close my eyes and feel the warm sun and soothing brush of the sea breeze on my face. This is the closest thing to heaven yet, this absolutely unhurried sense of proceeding to an interlude in what has already been described to us as a tropical paradise. Although I had been reluctant to leave New Delhi, for there seemed to be so much to see there, this is surely one of the main reasons we have come to India, to experience this healing tranquility of the warmer climate. To dry and bake our frosty northerner bones for a spell in the mystical Indian sun.

Twilight falls in its own leisurely rhythm and we have barely budged from our place on deck. I was sure that at nightfall we would be chilly but the temperature remains warm all through the night so that we drift off to sleep and dream like babies, totally unconscious of any discomfort. This sleep is one of the most relaxing on our journey, having been rocked all night in the arms of the Great Mother Sea. 

In the morning we are wakened by the familiar cry of "chai walla, chai walla..." the tea seller making his rounds, who pours us steaming cups of sweet, spiced tea from an enormous rustic teapot. We purchase some sweet rolls from another vendor passing along the decks and  enjoy our first breakfast in Goa. Soon the harbor is sighted and the passengers line the decks to get a better view. Almost before we know it we are jostling down the gangplank with the pushing, shoving multitudes and trying to avoid being pigeon-holed by the throng of porters, each one competing to personally wrestle our baggage from our hands.

In a flashback from my youthful travels in the late 60's, we fall in with a group of four other young westerners who are all bound for the fabled Colva Beach and we agree to share a taxi. There is a humorous end to our journey, for so intent are we to getting to the beach that we neglect to ask the proper questions in regard to accommodations and after paying the cab fare wind up trekking across the dunes alongside the ocean in the wake of a local urchin who offers to guide us. Heavy luggage in hand, our comical caravan struggles along until, one by one, our companions drop out realizing that our miniature guide does either not know where he is taking us or there is a relative with something to sell us waiting for our arrival far off the beaten path.

Already forty-five minutes away from human habitation we too make the decision to pay off our young guide and retrace our footsteps through the sand towards what appears to be a village. The young boy now follows us as we make our way wearily back and begin to ask our own questions of passers-by, none of whom seems to guess what in the world we are talking about. Finally, exhausted, we stop at a little grocery store for a soft drink and our little guide finally proves his worth by asking the right person the right question and leading us to the home of Madame Silva-Pareda, who rents us a room for fifty rupees per night. This is much higher than we thought to pay but not nearly as high as the fancy hotels near the beach, we discover.

Madame Silva-Pareda is a dignified, elderly matron and wife of a reputable local doctor who has recently passed away. The rambling old vine-covered house on its tropical acreage reminds me of stories of "the old south" with its aura of bygone grandeur. Madame Pareda has now converted the mansion into a rooming house and at the rear of the courtyard, in a long, detached wing of the estate, are several large rooms that are rented out to travelers. Our room is high-ceilinged and dark, with small shuttered windows that do not receive any direct sunlight. The floor is cool, marbled stone, and a large overhead fan is the only thing that keeps the room from becoming stifling. The bathroom, a cold shower and seatless toilet, is down the hall to the left and shared by occupants of the other rooms, which at present are vacant. The bathroom floor is always streaked in wet, muddy sand, no matter how often we mop it, as though it is leaking in from a crack in the foundation somewhere. No matter how we try to keep it clean, it stinks.

However, we are happy to find this room as we are dead tired and so set up house here. There is a large wooden table in the courtyard where we can sit in the shade of a banana tree. The kitchen serves as a laundry room but is not set up for cooking as there is only an old propane stove which has no tank attached. We plan to eat out anyway except for light meals which require no cooking. A clothesline drapes across the courtyard where our hand-washed garments can dry in the sun. The beach is about a twenty minute walk from here and I can already picture myself strumming my guitar at the wooden table and munching on watermelon, after a refreshing swim. My foresight is fairly accurate, except that the walk to the beach with two, young children in the hot, humid sun is usually exhaustive, taking up the better part of a morning. What better way to spend it though?

We have come here for one purpose, to relax and heal but I find I have to remind myself of this. From time to time I try to write a song but my mind is a blank screen. I hear ragas playing in my head but the music coming out of my guitar is strangely and inexplicably more Celtic than I have ever heard myself play. So I go with the flow and decide to experiment in that playing mode and for most of our time in Goa that's exactly how it sounds.

I scribble daily in my little Saraswati notebook and in a way that keeps me focused or I think my nervous energy would drive me to distraction. There is a contrast between the sleepy, fluid rhythms of this Portuguese influenced community and the highly intense nervous energy we have brought with us from Canada. We find it difficult to simply be, although that is exactly what this setting calls for. Rather we are always asking ourselves what we are going to do today, fussing unnecessarily about it and often getting on each other's nerves.

About five days into our stay we hit a crisis. Karen seems to be smoking more and more, although she's been trying the cardamom seed cure prescribed by Ali Moosa. She's angry with me about something although I can't figure out what. Finally one morning she explodes and starts packing her bags. "I'm taking the children and getting out of here. You do what you want."

Clearly this does not include joining her. I can't believe this is happening and I try and talk her out of it which only makes everything worse. She is in a frenzy but by the afternoon the emotional hurricane has passed and we are all out at the beach, our bodies covered in the fine white salt that dries on the skin like a powder after a swim. In retrospect it is easy to see this as part of the healing we went in search of.

Each time we swim I am amazed at the amount of mucous that comes out of my lungs. I feel we having been storing it up all our lives and if not for this sojourn in the healing south perhaps we  might have all come down with pneumonia or worse. I wonder if this is a natural condition of northern peoples.

These daily walks and swims are literally squeezing the toxins out of our bodies. I feel  everyone should have the chance, once a year at least, to do nothing but let their bodies release all the poisons built up by daily living. There is a darker thought that follows this, that this need is the symptom of a larger, much more innocuous disease that is permeating our Western world in the form of widespread, unhealthy living. This influences all areas of our lives in terms of the energies we devote to developing technologies in business, arts, medicine and defense. In a culture that is physically unhealthy, how can technologies be developed that are ultimately life-enhancing?

These introverted thoughts are worlds away from our daily strolls along the palm-fringed white sands, our children frolicking naked and our only consideration where we might eat that night. The Paradise Cafe, constructed out of driftwood and local timber is our restaurant of choice. There are several eateries like it, hand-crafted rustically along the waterfront, right on the beach, but none offers the special charm and culinary arts of this one. Here, seated around a circular table, travelers from different countries convene nightly to share good food and regale each other with stories of their journeys.