Category Archives: Around Goa
Lashing rains, banging panes
For the last couple of days, the monsoon, is in full fury here. Everything is wet and a drier is what everyone needs to dry clothes. Several times a day, winds of such intensity are raging through the homes, that doors are slamming, windows are opening up spontaneously and the ventilators, which all windows and doors have here, are either banging or have to be securely fastened. Oh yes, the title comes from the same- because windows are slamming ever so frequently and we cannot leave them closed all the time. So you can never be ready for the rain, because in a minute it comes and then vanishes after lashing the world here, left right and center.
I am just showing by way of two/three pictures from the same location, just outside my bedroom door, what the rains look like. In the first one here, you can see the hill in front of my home, in bright light. Now just take a look at the same in the rain-
and then more rain. To make matters more complex, my kitchen has become a veritable restaurant for a friendly-trespassing rat, who is managing to come in and eat anything easily available and if is not then eat the plastic lids of certain utensils, the creep. How many sides can one deal with – the rat, the rains making everything wet and clothes not drying, the dogs not wanting to walk out or only eat grass when they do, peeing right at the doorsteps of neighbours, who are naturally annoyed, the number of times one has to dry up the space when 16 little feet walk in from the rain…life is an unending rain song these days, and it seems to be taking a lot of notes to sing it.
And yes, every time I sit for practice, the rain comes down so hard on the tin sheet above, that I can not even hear the tanpura…so there goes my Mian Malhar and Lalit, the ones I was spending my mornings with.
New views and new hues
This little hill is what I see from my house front everyday, and that track you see on the right is the track I take several times a day to talk up the path, that leads to the base of this hill.
One day I was feeling a little despondent for some reason and then I just looked at the face of my dumbo. You can also look at her, though she may not look you up in the face-
(btw, can you believe that my walls have this horrendous color on the outside). So, in particular, I looked at the middle dumbo of these- the one called Raga. I just forgot my monochrome and said, hey, yipee we are in Goa, and this is a permanent holiday. Did I ever think I would take my dogs for a holiday. But look what I did! I took all of us on a permanent vacation from which one is allowed to occasionally take a break, by doing a little work– whatever it has to be.
So here we are in our new, horrendously coloured new home and yet facing some beautiful views on all sides of it, including, the sky such as-
and when I face the road behind my house, to see the lane opposite, this is it-
And just in case you can see the little bird, sitting at the edge of the parapet to the left in this last picture, I must tell you an interesting thing about this birdie- it sits here for hours and hours, sometimes I have seen it for four, five hours at a time. Doesn’t move even if we are moving in the room behind and even sings a beautiful melody of its own. So these are the new hues and shades from our new home- which we moved into about two months back now.
No more the country home that we had for the last year or more, but a beautiful part of the country still.
New home in just over a year
This must be the shortest that I lived in any space, as the one I recently left behind in the beautiful village of Chandor, in Goa. But am I relieved to be out of there! oh dear, seriously- what a relief! It was just a befitting case of ‘from the frying pan to the fire’. The home before that, the one in Faridabad, where we lived for six and a half years is our own, to the extent we still ‘own’ the house, but this was the first rented house I hired for myself, and just as lonely and desolate a spot as could be. Though it gave me the satisfaction of being in a beautiful place, it never went a long way with that emotion- it was too lonely a place.
When you come to a new country, you do want to be relatively in the midst of things, or close by so that you can partake of whatever life it is that the new place offers. IN that location I could simply never never do it. Coming out to a new part of the country was difficult as it is, being in a small, back-of-the-beyond place did nothing to help me in any way. But I cannot but acknowledge with greatest gratitude the kindness of my neighbours- Hyginus (who was my landlord) and Joanita (immediate neighbour in whose yard numerous cats, fowls and pigs roam).
Now we have moved to the outskirts of Margao, a prominent city of the Southern part of Goa- a noisy, hustling, warm and slothful city just the way the entire Goa could be seen. However, because it is a city and not the country anymore, life is a little more pacy, active and energetic.
These days I find myself without a camera and other problems of this new location are so numerous that it makes me worry whether life here is even sustainable, notwithstanding the kindness of the landlord. The phone lines are just struck, on their route to being transferred from the village- the phone provider does not supply phone lines to this neighbourhood. I would have to go and meet the General Manager, telephones to discuss this issue. These are what I call the structural bottlenecks of living in smaller places in India- the slap of difficult attitudes about thigns as small, shall I say inane, as phone/internet connections.
As of now, which is nearly more than three weeks of my moving into the new home, for reasons of the phones I am extremely exasperated; for several other reasons, though’ I am somewhat happy and for some uncorrelated reasons (that come from the professional and academic domains) I am perplexed. Keeping my fingers crossed that this new place will be something conducive to my work and future. Much as I would like to, I do not have a device yet to click pictures of the green hill that is there right ahead of my house, and which I can see every time I look out of my eastern windows and doors- both on the ground and the first floors of this new house in Cupangale.
Life goes on…
So it is finally the time that I waited for this past so many months- time to move out of the country home. a very tough act that I brought into my life, by choosing to live in the village. But an act which taught me a lot, as usual. One of the key learning is that to live in the country you require a lot more resources than you require to live in a city or town.
Life can be quite unexpected in smaller places and people insular, and hesitant to mingle with strangers- in other words you cannot but have a life of your own and then think of physically being in a village. If one thinks that one can be part of the life around, you really need to be able to blend in their daily lives, which have a big component of any religion!
But honestly speaking I am leaving here with a sense of relief- I was tired of the negativity and the solitude. As it is work is so serious and academic. On top of that if you cannot even step out of your confines and talk to a few people and have their perspective on life, and all communication with the world happens due to the internet- there is a reason to worry about your sanity!
So even if I do not have any one to mingle with in my neighbourhood, in future as well- the fact that I am closer to town will make me less hesitant to leave home in search of things that I require and that would ensure a greater integration with life in Goa in general- the manner I once adapted to Faridabad in Haryana. The first of these pictures is from outside a neighbour’s home where one can see the fowl roaming around, and the second is from my former home in Faridabad- a city home. Both are green, of a different kind.
We shared with all the neighbours that we are finally leaving and mostly everyone expressed surprise, dismay or even tears (the landlord especially). I think this is the best way to live a life- where you are missed for your absence and appreciated for your presence. Otherwise so many come and go from the world, without touching another. This may be my last post from Chandor, or indeed my home in the country, as I now move into a town from here.
Time to go onwards
On 16th March 2014, we all came here- driving a few thousand kilometers from Delhi, to set up our home in a small, out the way, noiseless village home- in a serene, quiet environment. It was the lap of nature and we have been surrounded by bird songs of so many decibels and timbers that the only location they could be captured were in little poems that I could attempt. But seeing from a distance, where we came from Goa seemed so idyllic that to think of it not being perfect was far from imagination.
The picture that you see as part of this post, is what I encounter every time I go from my home in any direction, it is the paddy fields, which are currently ploughed. There is a mountain range surrounding this and when the weather is too hot or cool, you see mist around. It is strange, to see mist in summer, but then nature is so fascinating and mysterious, there can only be learning in her lap, nothing else.
But entering into the zone one comes face to face with the unusual nature of being alive and the significance of being closer to civilization- this is all too dreamy and ‘beyond’ the world in many ways. To imagine being connected to modern city life here is foolishness, or to even think that in an emergency an ambulance will reach you- is to be imaginative or wishful. So one needs to get up, do a reality check and then notwithstanding the beauty one is surrounded by, get real and decide that inasmuch as a human needs beauty and serenity, one needs other human beings to connect with and create meaning in life, work and social connections. Without that, even Adam wept in the garden of Eden- alone. So having had a bit of that garden myself, I think I am becoming a little realistic and now moving home from this beautiful, back of the beyond village to a more active and busy part of town.
Though the new home is in another so-called village too, but it is much too close to town to be really a village. Anyhow, for now I am relieved to leave from here. Whether that place proves to be more conducive to being in Goa and offers the scope for better integration needs to be found out. This may be the last of my posts from Chandor actually, if not the exact last one.
The frogs abound…around
The beauty about life in goa, or particularly this part of it is the abundance of frogs. I have already written one post or two about this earlier. So this is the next, and I expect there could be more. This beautiful frog here is found jumping guess where…in the dog water bowl! 🙂
Just see how beautiful it is… i mean if you are not averse to seeing beauty in different, unthinkable forms!
But of course I have also seen its brethren jumping in and around the commode- more of them after I get them on my camera.
The year we moved- set up a new tent :)
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 🙂
The lotus pond next door
I walk around this pond everyday. There is no option actually. Between the closest neighbour to the south of my house, my path takes me around this pond, no matter where I have to go. So I have to cross this pond several times a day, if I want to go out of my home.
For months after I came here, I saw the pond still. No ducks, no life, nothing. Only on a rare occasion on some of the branches of the overhanging tree, I would see a few birds flutter, or a langur jump across and vanish in the greenery around.
Then I started noticing the green leaves beginning to cover the surface of the pond. I know lotus leaves, but no buds, no flowers ever. For months it remained that way. Then I wondered to myself, if the flowers did not come with the sun. And sure enough one day, accidentally, I went out in the morning, for normally mornings are reserved for other things than going out, I peeped toward the pond and lo and behold, there were lotuses blooming and many at that 🙂 Of course they had to someday, I would see the folded petals in the my evening walks but wonder about the mystery- not knowing that they fold up too. Now i do.
I wonder if most of my learning and lessons do not come from nature, in many a different way!
By the bye, the reason I write blogs, when I do is to share the love of things that I notice around, and due to my love for photography- no other reason.
Tree Frogs
Behind a curtain, a folded mat
A bathroom door or the kitchen cabinet
I’ve had many a chance encounter
With beautiful, small, hopping, brown-back tree frogs
Whose sightings’ve brought simple joys to me.
Even though sometimes their motion
Has tempted a slithering snake
To practice a quick snapping of its jaws
Reveal the raw pulsating nature in its untrammeled rustic countenance
Where one feeds on another without remorse, without cruelty
Or how natural it all feels.
Even though sometimes their motion
Has alerted the dogs to shed their daytime languor
Go chasing under computer tables, bookshelves,
dining table or tree trunks piled in the yard
These tree frogs have made it seem
In these close-by presences
That nature, its encompassing arms
Its flora, fauna and hot’n cool breezes
Embrace me, making me one ‘mong ‘em.
In sending in these little forms it’s emissaries
I am one ‘mong ‘em
(for they accept it so)
These frogs, snakes, birds, bees, spiders, centipedes and butterflies
For they fear me not, nor I them
As lightly we all go by our rhythms, our mayhem
This another leaf of our life in the country.
6th November 2014
(for some reason i am not able to indicate different paragraphs by space, so indicating them with bold fonts)
at home in the country 