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.