This was the biggest move I could have made, in the sheer nerve and planning it was to move by road with four dogs, but we made it and we made it fine- all landed safely on the other side of the fence, in the burning summer of Goa then- to experience the greatest monsoon of our lives (though it was an El Nino year, with less monsoon), to see how things changed, seasons changed, and then came the football games, christmas and the year is on its way out.
Today the children all around the villages have made a scarecrow, that they are calling the ‘old man’ symbolizing the year that is going out- having grown old. They will burn it all around in the village at night and there would be a special mass in the churches everywhere, and that is the way the new year will be ushered in. Not bad- there is a tradition around it, and it is not just for the rich 🙂 If i can, i will try to take pictures, though it seems unlikely now, as I will be straightaway driving to Curtorim and it is dark already.
New lands, hands, hearts and a fresh new hearth
So while we moved at least these many people entered into our lives this year- in so many different ways, while we entered and made a home in Goa. I really feel the richer for so much. Wish I can really put down here all the people I encounter on my daily walks with the dogs and how we exchange hellos and good-evenings while having no other words to exchange, thanks to the language barrier. But I am keen to learn the language for sure. perhaps I could put an ad in the paper for a teacher! I really want to talk to all the vegetable vending women, who welcome me with smiles and sometimes even give me an extra banana, bunch of methi leaves or whatever they can give extra. I love their simple souls. And of course I appreciate their sense of accepting me as a part of them- no matter how we look, speak or communicate with one another.
It was a very challenging thing to settle into a village, where the only connection one has with others is a language we can talk in- nothing else.But if one sees how we are ending the year, from the Christmas pictures here- you do get a sense that it was a year of sharing. Of course this is the sharing that could be measured via pictures, but there is a lot that happened in many ways that cannot be shared thus, especially the numerous dialogues, ideas, friends and peers I joyfully welcomed into my life- notwithstanding the solitude I work in. I of course cannot mention the professional setbacks, growth or leaps I experienced- they are reserved for other blogs or forms of writing.
It was really a great thing, though this sense comes only at hindsight, not when you are cribbing about what is NOT WORKING 🙂
at home in the country 