And I Feel Like A Disco Ball

A while back I got an email from T, an old friend from Tulane, in which he told me of his own Indian sojourn as a doctor with a humanitarian mission. He wrote of riding the Manali-Leh highway, the highest motorable road in the world, and of other experiences traveling India's northwest that will elude me until we make it back here in the proper season for such altitudes. His closing thoughts included some sage advice, ready for Poor Richard's Almanack:

"Never look down the hole of a north Indian shithouse...you'll never forget the dead dog on which you just dropped a watery load."

Whew, yeah. That's about right. Some days in India are very, very good. Some days are soupy shit on a dead dog, and no telling which one's you.

So T's words have been with me this week as we pack our things and depart this fine, strange country. As I write this, one day before our departure for places more Turkish, we have been in India for six months, two weeks, three days, and a 29th of February. We have logged at least a full fifty days in transit--probably even more, but I prefer not to think of them all at once. We have seen ruins thousands of years old and some dating from the last monsoon. There have been ups and downs and in-betweens too numerous to mention. And it's been a fucking blast.

But how does one sum up such an experience?

Our last morning in Arambol, D and I rose early for a final swim before the two overnights between us and Delhi. We strolled without speaking through the coconut grove separating Girkarwaddo from the beach, soaking in the salty air, heavy with three days of rain and clouds and a distinct feeling of finality. On the beach we walked south past the fishing boats to our favorite spot, where we saw from a distance a crowd gathered in the lapping surf. Thirty or forty people, Indians and gora, radiated around something lying on the sand. While we walked warily closer to the group, five men emerged from its center carrying the dripping greengrey body of an Indian boy maybe twenty years old, dressed for swimming in only his skivvies, lifeless as a sack of grain. They toted him out of the surf and laid him on the hard sand from the night's high tide, where a young traveler, his backpack still strapped on both shoulders, resumed performing CPR. Shocked, we stared at this scene as it played out over the following five minutes. Every couple series of compressions was followed by the men turning the boy on his side, a sickly white foam rolling out of his mouth, as the leader briskly rubbed his midsection to disgorge the fluid he had taken in. From our vantage point I could see two youths in their swimwear kneeling just behind the ring of people circling their friend, the knot of legs and bodies open on their side as if to let them watch. One rocked back and forth and craned his head to face the heavens, his mouth open in a wail that never found voice, before leaning over to punch divots in the hard sand with both fists. The other knelt stockstill, his face void of expression as he stared miles through the scene unfolding before him.

"Come on," I told D. "I don't need to watch some poor fuck die this morning." We walked on down the beach, turning our heads at intervals to check on the situation. While we swam at a short remove from the thinning scrum of people ten minutes or so later, the men again carried the boy, head lolling, fingers dragging in the sand, up the dune and into the coconut grove. This time they didn't stop for CPR. All urgency had evaporated from their movements and demeanors. I couldn't see the two other boys.

So we swam for a while longer as the beach returned to normal, the hawkers toting piles of vivid bedsheets on their heads, the Hello Coconut guy wheeling past on his bike, the couples ambling up from Mandrem for a bite on Glastonbury Street. As the unpromising clouds allowed fewer and fewer random shafts of light to hit the beach, we decided to call it quits, get cracking and packing, take care of a few last-minute details. My feet were in my sandals and I had already turned homeward when D asked, "Are those fins out there?" I spun back around and, sure enough, there were three dorsal fins breaking the water about 75 meters from shore: Dolphins porpoising north. I had heard this was the wrong season for dolphins, but they supposedly abound in the waters off north Goa. We looked at each other, each of us knowing we were going back in, and I kicked my shoes behind me and trotted off into the waves.

I swam out as fast as I could through the surf, bouncing above the swells to spot the fins and adjust my angle. One of them had trailed off southward, but the other two were still breaking the surface on a direct path perpendicular to my approach. Swimming further without seeing any sign of them, I was afraid I might have scared them off when one porpoised fifteen meters off my one o'clock, the other just after that, further off my eleven. They were close enough to watch their dark grey skin throw back the limited midmorning sunlight, dappling a brilliant silver and blue in concert with the glassy still water. I turned and D was smiling and pointing, nodding that Yes, she'd seen it, too. We treaded water for another ten minutes watching them recede, never getting any closer, until they were just shy of the headland at the north end of Arambol beach. Then we got out, dried off, scanned the water all the way back up the beach. Just in case.

So that's India. She'll throw you a dead guy and dolphins in the same morning, just to say Goodbye. Oh well. It's namaste, my dear, you intractable whore, you beautiful tease, adieu. We may meet again sometime. I'll be older, you'll stay the same age. Be well. Take care, and mind the children. Peace.

Everybody's Goan Crazy!

Love is in the air here in Goa.

There's a brace of baby chicks in the courtyard downstairs from our guesthouse. At the end of the day all the little downy ones are assembled into a wicker basket that seems, in the night, to cheep! of its own accord.

All the well-fed beach dogs of Arambol have hatched the puppies they were working on when we were here in September. A local fisherman down the beach takes his litter one by one into the surf, tosses them lovingly, paternally into the waves and splashes them as they swim back to dry land and their mother, who barks encouragingly from midway up the sand.

And the population of the town has changed from the Israeli dread-n-spliff scene it was in September to a crop of young mulleted Russian couples with very young, very blond toddlers. Everyone here seems to have their kids in tow, in fact, Russian or not. I spent days wondering what the twin-rutted trails in the sand could be, watched the coconut bicycles and the fishing boats going in and out for clues before recognizing stroller tracks for what they were.

But not everyone seems to have their children's safety in mind. There's this Spanish chick who was staying down the road from us with one youngster less blond than the Russian ones, who stared from the inside of a blind turn near the general store in Girkarwaddo as her child negotiated boarding her toy bike (with training wheels) in the middle of the road, on the other side of said blind turn from the vroom-ing scooter-and-Enfield traffic coming towards her. We watched a handful of separate scooters zig and zag to miss this kid in the two minutes between noticing the scene and passing, jaws agape, while Mami lazily instructed the child to put her feet on the pedals and push.

Later the same day there was a new pair of couples checking out rooms in our compound*, where there's a prominent open well at least forty feet deep with an unscreened top. D and I watched from our balcony as one of the couples, lost in haggling over room rates, didn't notice their kid stumbling over to the well to peer over its edge and see just how far down it went. The two feet of cement were just enough to keep the kid from seeing over the lip without climbing on the bricks, so of course he climbed up the bricks to have a better look. He was flat on his belly, legs dangling on the safe side and staring into the abyss when his parents noticed him, clucked him down from the ledge, never moving from their stance across the way. He reluctantly and with difficulty slid himself back to solid ground and toddled back to their side.

So maybe I've suffered from growing up in a litigious and overcautious society, one where Stranger Danger is taught to every kid old enough to talk and where that well would never be left uncapped--except in Texas and Pennsylvania, where they have the Cutest Baby Down A Well Pageants and young contestants vie for bragging rights and parental affection. Maybe I don't understand the degree of freedom you have to provide a child in order to, on the one hand, ensure its successful maturation without, on the other, allowing a weak and stupid child to pollute your name and gene pool.

But maybe these fucking parents are the crazy ones. Hear me out:

Goa has long been a haven for free thinkers and free lovers and those who like their holiday costs as close to free as their thinking and their loving. Since the dawn of time (or at least the 1960's) Goa has been the Indian destination of choice for those wishing to open their minds and expand their horizons and maybe smoke some dope and have naked dance parties on the beach during full moons and other, not-so-full moons.** Or broad daylight, depending on the season. Booze is cheap, hash is everywhere, and people generally wander the beach bronzing and swimming and occasionally passing out for a few hours under the shade of a fishing boat.

Along with the general laissez-faire attitude, there's a cottage industry here in Enlightenment, a broad term I'll use broadly in its capitalized italics. You can get your aura palpated, your chi scrubbed, your chakras opened, your asanas put all in a line. There are workshops for firewalking and kundalini yoga during successive hours in the same venue, and most nights you can join in the big-bamboo-stick-fitness-deal down the beach toward Mandrem (just past the last boat) and improve your flexibility while making yourself impervious to attack by other, less Enlightened souls wielding big bamboo sticks. Then, after a short skinny dip to cool off, you can stroll past every other hippie paying homage (in his/her own way) to the Sun God/dess and catch the fire twirlers when they're blazed enough to make their flowing skirts match their stone.*** Everywhere you go there are fliers posted by tourists looking to share their Enlightenment with you, sort the aforementioned chakras and such, scrub your chi and teach you the Extended Wallet Asana. Need a picture drawn?

This is from a flier touting the services and talents of one Emanuel Lev, whose 30-hour "ThetaHealing" workshop we missed by a blasted six weeks. Shit. Had we made it, we could "Come and experience what your soul already knows through a healing method that has already changed the lives of thousands of people throughout the world." Mr. Lev, you see, is a "Certified Instructor and Practitioner of the Basic DNA1&2 and Advanced ThetaHealing courses, and of the ThetaHealing Abundance and Manifestation workshop," whatsoever those might be. He "Conducts workshops in Israel and around the world [as a] Primal Feelings Therapy Instructor, Reiki Master, Therapist of Bio-Energy, Yoga, Tantra and other techniques... Married to Ruth and father of Zohar Lev." Usually the capital letters in one's credentials are enough for me to know he's qualified to lead my ThetaHealing, but it's nice to know that E's good people and a family man.

Since he kindly left his flier in the restaurant where I take my muesli-fruit-curd breakfasts, well within the line of sight from my favorite table, I will continue to share with you Mr. Lev's plans for total wellness and healing. To wit:

"The Basic ThetaHealing course lasts three days. During this time, from a place of unconditional love, kindness and absolute connection with the creator we will learn how to connect to Theta waves in our brain and to communicate with the power that creates reality. We will learn how to remember the deepest knowledge inside our souls and in the universe... [T]he process is so simple and takes place in an atmosphere of complete happiness and love. During the course we learn together how to open the intuitive centers of sight, hearing and feeling and how to awaken the dormant aspects of our DNA."

I'm sold, but for those of you out there who want more from your ThetaHealing dollar, there's a rundown of the key talking points: "Topics included in the course: easy reach to the theta brain wave, intuitive readings, connecting with the creator, working on belief systems, the seven plans of existence, spontaneous healing, activating your youth gene, working on our DNA to create changes on a genetic level..." (now wait for it, wait for it!) "...and much more..."

I just wish he'd capitalized "creator" in that first bit. His whole seminar seems a little too pagan for my tastes, now that I think about it. I'll go elsewhere to awaken the dormant aspects of my DNA, maybe get that prehensile tail I so envy in our monkey cousins. Or X-ray vision, so's I can get to palpating my own aura more intensively.

Goofing aside, everything's fun and games until someone misplaces her daughter. And now we come to the serious part of today's lecture.

A fifteen-year-old British girl named Scarlett was drugged, beaten, raped, and left in the surf last month in Anjuna, about twelve clicks down the shore from Arambol. Her body washed up the next day and the local cops chalked up the death to drowning. But how did such a young girl go missing after hours from a beach bar in one of the most trafficked towns in Goa? Scarlett was in the care of "a friend" after her mother, mom's boyfriend, and six younger children (!) went, in the words of the BBC report, "further afield." Two Goan men have been arrested and charged with drugging and raping Scarlett, but her mother claims to have no faith in the Goa police or their prospects for closing the case to her satisfaction. "The administration tried its best to hush up the death as a simple case of drowning," she bleats while assuring the world "I think I was probably naive and too trusting of the people around her that claimed to be her friends, but that was probably the worst thing I have done." [Emphasis mine.]

Mom's probably right. She didn't drop the kid down a well or let her be tire-tracked in two by a runaway Honda. That'd be irresponsible. No, she left her fifteen-year-old in the care of seasonal beach shack employees whose only responsibilities are to slowly walk legal intoxicants to tables and proffer (upon demand) all the illegal ones a kid's heart could desire. She let that flower grow and flourish only to leave her, in words almost too apt to write, in water over her head.

In other news, beach life is great. We wake in the morning for a papaya and a swim, then occasionally bounce down to Panaji to catch a flick at the local cineplex. We take care not to run over babies in the middle of the road, and we assiduously remove the bones from every bite of chicken we feed to Supdog. Our consciences--if not our ThetaWaves--are spotless, unsullied, and we're brown like li'l mixed-race babies. May the sunshine in your corners of the world be so bright. Peace.


*: I have given few recommendations in these pages, but let these be my first two: Arambol is the bomb, and God's Gift Guest House is the place to stay. It's a fifteen-minute walk south from Arambol central and Glastonbury Street along a beautiful beach strewn with traditional fishing boats and the occasional naked Russian. The proprietors, Baptiste and Baptiste's brother (whose name I can never remember and so will be known as G) welcomed our tired, sweaty white asses in September and opened up a room for us at an amazing rate. We stayed six days and would have stayed longer, but our feets was itchin'. So when we got down off the bus from Mapusa this time, we knew where we were heading. We'd called ahead to make sure they weren't booked and explained that we had stayed there at the end of the last monsoon and would love to repeat the scene. They said come on by, and when we walked down the path we were greeted with smiles of recognition and amazement that we'd made it back to their neck of the palm grove. A few lingering handshakes later and we'd secured a great room at a good price, considering the season, and we've been there since. We've even adopted one of their dogs, which we've named "Supdog" regardless of his actual appelation. We bring him bits of tandoori chicken dinners and haven't grown tired of saying "Supdog" each time we see him. He never answers "Not much, man, 'sup wit' you?" but he probably speaks Konkani. Whaddyado?
**: Because naked dance parties don't have laws, man.
***: Seriously. We watched the tail end of a spontaneous fire-twirling show the other night and the final performer set his lunghi on fire, took it off, and cast it aside into the surf without missing so much as a single twirl. I mock, but I got nothin' but love for that playa.