Yatra

Dancing the night away

The day after Christmas, we rolled down to Old Goa to check out the Cathedrals and Archbishop's quarters.  Deluxe.  With the thick Corinthian columns and floor-to-ceiling gilt alter, it felt more like Europe than India.  The Portuguese ran Goa for more than 400 years and built a ring of giant churches in Old Goa, their seat of power, in the Tuscan-Gothic style, with taxes from the lucrative trade in spice, cotton and indigo.  A colony in India was hugely profitable.  For a time in the 17th Cent. pepper corns were worth their weight in gold back in Europe. 

The Old Goa churches are the biggest in Asia, with the centerpiece, the Se Cathedral, reputedly larger than any in Portugal.  It took 90 years to build.  Walking from one gargantuan to another, it's as if the Franciscans, Jesuits and Roman Catholics of Old Goa were building to outdo each other.   At its height, the city was as populous as London or Paris, but then in the 19th Cent. disease wiped the population and the state capital moved down the Mandovi River to Panjim.

To catch a breather after the cab rides and scooter break-down on the trip to Old Goa, I headed back to Brahmani Yoga for an afternoon meditation class and stuck around for some traditional Hindi singing, known as Bhanjans.  What a great time.  We had a band with drums, guitar and tambourine, and together chanted traditional devotionals in Hindi:

Shiva: Kashi Vishvanatha Gange

(Interpretation by Krishna Das: BREATH OF THE HEART)

Hara Hara Mahadeva Shambo / Kashi Vishwanatha Gange

Kashi Viswanatha Gange / Kashi Amarnatha Gange

Hara Hara Mahadeva Shambo / Kashi Vishwanatha Gange

Hara Hara Hara Hara / Mahadeva Shambo

Bom Bom Mahadeva Shambo / Kashi Vishvanatha Gange

On Wednesday was the famous Anjuna Flea Market, with amazing crafts from all over India, from Tibetan full cord knit sweaters to Keralan spices, all at rock bottom prices.  The colorful Rajathasni mirror and block-work blankets were a personal favorite.  Next time I'm bringing a bigger backpack!

I met up with Bobby & Alex P. at the Jam Connection for chocolate pancake breakfast. Yumm... the place is run by an old German lady who bakes the bread fresh every morning.  We chilled in hammocks in the leafy garden and watched her hippy grandkids play in the tree fort and tire swing.  Also, I met a really great married couple, an American guy from North Adams, MA and Japanese girl, who volunteered at the local dog shelter.  On my second trip to India, I definitely want to do some volunteering.

To celebrate New Year's, Alex P. and I got henna tattoos on the beach.  I looked pretty bad in a swirly sun with a Hindi Om over my shoulder and arm.  Hmmm.... makes you wonder how a real one would look. Ok, not going to happen, but fun for a week.

On New Year's Eve day, I ran in to Elissa, Karim and Bryan totally by accident.  At first, Karim didn't recognize me!  It was hilarious running into to them in of all places, Anjuna.  Karim said, "I bet we've had very different experiences of India."  Wise words.  They invited me to a party at some nice club, but I declined.  At $80 to get in, it was more than I spent all week! 

For New Year's, I decided to keep it low key.  Actually, a lot of people were going to just chill since the Isreali security services had issued a terrorist warning for Goa.  After dinner and a few drinks at Nine Bar, I headed over to the local church for the midnight mass in Kokani, the native Goan language.  What a surreal experience.  There were folk-art quality Santa decorations and rickety overhead fans accompanied by a trio of haunting but out-of-tune violins and Kokani singing in a wavering soprano.  At midnight, a barrage of fireworks went off right outside the church doors and the priest, draped in white vestments, lifted a gold chalice above his head with both hands.

After the mass, I headed down to the beach to catch some more fireworks on the moonlit surf.  I was going to call it a night when I saw a massive bonfire and bumping party at Lilliput.  The Radio Shack mixer was turning out a crowd with funky house and everybody was dancing care-free.  I ended up staying up all night and caught my bus at 8 in the morning!

Ashtanga Wisdom

"We call it introductory because we're introducing you to your muscles." -Yogi in Pushkar

Somewhere between the yoga studio and the end of my scooter ride through the rice patty fields, it strikes me that I lead a very stressful life back in business school. 

Yoga is about healing, the body and the soul.  This truth is imparted to me by the Brits and Euros who teach the Ashantaga school of yoga from Mysore.  Stretching, sweating, breathing.  It's a search for spiritual, mental and physical balance through release of the negative energy that's stored up in our body and mind over successively hectic days. 

Of course this all sounds like new age hippy mumbo jumbo... until you try it.  Words aren't really sufficient.  To understand the language of yoga, you need to move and breath, then sit completely still.

Then it strikes me personally, ahead of this major looming job search, that some career pursuits are going to cause more harm than good to me and the people I know and love.  Oy!  What a bad time for another epiphany!!  But it's pretty clear, some work is bound to create strife for and some alternatives to resolve it. 

I'm not saying it's possible to classify whole occupations. Labeling work in a sustainable enterprise or a handicraft workshop or a monastic cell as "good" or "healing" would be just as much an oversimplification as calling work in an investment bank or a high-tech startup or an economic policy think tank as "bad" or "harmful." 

But in order for work to lead to health and happiness, I think it must be based on motivations that are genuinely positive, that arise from a desire to contribute to the social stock rather than one's brokerage account.  To sustain that contribution, one needs a work-life balance too.

Why sign up for a hellish job thinking it will enable you to make a greater impact later on?  It seems, to me anyway, like an unnecessary dose of chemotherapy -- a painful treatment with no guarantee to heal.

Long live rock

Goa's a bit like a rock sample cross-section you might study in geology.  It exists on several levels at once, some strata fully covering earlier deposits, other shafts zig-zagging through subsequent generations to the surface. 

In this stratigraphic analogy, the law of social superposition applies to each generation of Goan, from the pre-Portuguese Hindus to the seasonal immigrants who maybe just answer to Karma. 

Like the rest of the sub-continent, Goa seem like a stable place only from a safe distance, but get up close and you can see it's teetering on the brink of total mayhem. India has its own Tectonic Plate.  The whole country seems to tremble from the lack of an underpinning legal system.

Then the Portuguese laid down alter of Christianity.  Sandwiched between the shaky subcontinental bedrock and a top-layer of New Age tourism, Goan Christianity is comparatively quiet, private cultural strata.  In Hyderabad, the Muslim's brought a slab from holy Mecca to wedge in the Majjid Mosque's outer wall, which market men scramble past 5 times a day under the wafting Iftar.  At Pushkar Lake, Hindu families and neighbors amble up the mountain path to Sivitra Temple together, inviting every tourist and rickshaw-wallah along the way.  In Goa, the 30% Christian population dress up on Christmas to worship respectfully behind whitewashed church walls. 

The surface layer is an amalgam of beach sand, little shells deposited in the surf and the forgotten flip-flop and lost trinket from tourists from all over the world.  People come here for many reasons.  Some stay at the Marriott and sip waiter-served Mango Lassis from private beach chairs.  Some sleep all day on the beach and twirl flaming swords at night.  There's a lot of Isrealis fresh from the military with chillums to Trance music.  I saw a few Russian couples tattoo'd to the cranium just lounging in front of cabanas and heaps of fried prawns.  The pasty Brits are never too far from a Kingfisher or Cobra.  The loud Americans are racing to the craggy hill where the parasails take off.  The Indian tourists, mostly packs of single men, roam the beaches to gawk at and pester the topless foreign women.  And so on... it's kind of like the world's sandbox. 

But Goa's most interesting present-day feature are the hippies, gray-haired Anglos in batik skirts and open-collar white linen who poke up through the sands like quartz outcrops.  Ten years after the Portuguese left, the hippies laid down a thin but valuable igneous layer.  They've been coming here every winter since, zig-zagging through the later 'seedimentary' deposits like attenuated veins of shiny but flaky quartz.

They rent and decorate an old high-ceiling Portuguese villa for a few months and maybe set up a leafy breakfast nook where they can bake fresh bread and pay the meager rent.  They run the best spots in Anjuna, missed by even my trusty Rough Guide, and still cling to an underlying Goa, whether real or imagined, despite being surrounded by the vulgarization of their ideals in the luxury hotels and, worst of all, the locals who try to take endless advantage of foreigners, while their welcome presence indicates how rare and cool Goa might once have been.

Holidaymakers

Paradise is palm trees, sun and a scooter.  On the evening of my 2nd day, Misha accompanies me on the scooter up to my high school friend Becca at Mandrem Beach Resort, an sand & shore inlet that could've been the set for a Leonardo DiCaprio film.  B's come in from Mumbai, the big city, and she's been living in the convent on the cheap, and following 90% of the rules... Mischief beckons.

After dinner we dare to cross the rickety bamboo bridge over the tidal flats that night.  Becca's managed to befriend every stray dog in sight and we gently coax them across the make-shift bridge, glowing lightbulbs dangling over a fast moving current... of 3 to 4" deep.   The stars are out in force and the sand is cold underfoot, but ultra-soft.  Becca's named each dog "Molly!  Oscar!!" and they're responding! We come back to the tidal crossing and the tide's come in.  Pants are rolled knee-high.

On the scooter ride down to Anjuna and less sublime room rates, we pass over the Siloquiem Bridge and can see a river cut through the verdant Goan inland.  Also we pass through small villages with old white-washed Portuguese churches and Christmas & New Year's decorations.  There's  ubiquitous 5-point stars pointing down, hung upside down, as Bobby tells me later, originally as a colonial protest and then by convention. The Goan place names on the road signs - Anjuna, Arambol, Chapora - are soaked in sun and Latin flavor.

Back in Anjuna, Beck's and I watch the sunset at the beach shack Lillipot while sipping Cobras, Hindustan's best brew, on bamboo lounge chairs.  Lillipot is pumping smooth French house via live DJ at all hours of the day and night and the sun goes down in a blaze of pink and yellow.  I spot one of the Nepalese waiters - they come down for months-long high season and sleep in the restaurant.  He's gently opening the plastic wrap on a new mixer from Radio Shack.  "New Year's," he says.

Later that night we met with Bobby and her friend Alex P... there is another! Also this Israeli guy Shai who struck me as total sketch that night but after we became mates and he showed me around the Goa underground and had the most amazing streak of backgammon luck I've ever seen.  (Shai - you know those dice were loaded!)  That night Beck's and I went as low as you can go in Goa and splurged on a 100 rupee room (about 2 bucks) right on the beach.  Misery is a 100 rupees of hospitality in Goa.  At some point you just need to laugh and dream of Mr. Clean.

In the middle of the night, there was bang and loud scratch over the tin roof.  Becca and I shot bolt upright. She maintains it was a monkey and squirrel fighting, but I'm sure it was a thousand rats.  Ahhhh, paradise.

The next day was Christmas Eve Day we brought Bobby and Alex up to Mandrem for some rest and relaxation.  Becca in her infinite holiday wisdom had brought a Nerf-like football and we put together a real American Christmas Eve day pick-up two-hand touch game on the beach in India. 

We coaxed in a trio of vacationing Portuguese (one in his tightie-whities which drove B. crazy) and established some basic rules such as downs, kick-offs and off-sides.  Also, I'll never forget Manoosh, or "Charlie" as we dubbed him and to which he responded with enthusiasm, our Indian Troy Brown, diving for the end zone passes with his super lanky brown body in speedo and oversized fake Oakleys.  Totally uncatchable, his role in every play was to cause confusion, which he excelled at.  (Becca- we totally would have won if all our players understood English.) 

Christmas Day I had to say goodbye to Becca who had to be back in Mumbai for school the next day.  She's studying a special Indian school of Occupation Therapy which she'll bring back to disadvantaged kids with disabilities in Ithaca. Bobby, Alex and I celebrated the day with a lobster dinner at Lillipot, which they caught for us on special order the night before. Cooked, it was a light orangey-red... pretty good, but couldn't hold a claw to a Cape Cod classic.

That night we danced the night away under the stars and fireworks at the world famous Nine Bar, which hangs over Vagator beach.  Wow, what a sound system.  And the moon shimmered on to the ocean horizon like a silver road.

Touching Down in Goa Town

Before meeting Michael in the airport terminal, I knew 2 things about him immediately.  The first was that he was young and worked in IT.  As we were traveling from Hyderabad to Goa, this wasn't so difficult to surmise.  The second was that he was little crazy.  The Hawaiin shirt and sway to his walk were solid tip-offs.  "You are going to Goa?"  he said to me in his thick Russian accent.  I told him I was and we chatted.  He was from a city near Moscow with an air strip and often went parachuting, for fun.  The cross-country twin prop pulled up to the terminal gate and he said,  "Perhaps we will parachute from this airplane."

Michael, or traditionally "Misha" as Becca dub him, was on a 3 day holiday before returning to Moscow via Frankfurt over Dec. 25.  Although, I learned over dinner the next night, this was not such a big deal as he celebrated the Orthodox Christmas in early January.  We shared an empty row on the ultra-cheap Deccan airlines, where you pay 20 rupees for your peanuts and the guy by the exit row jokes around with the female attendant about opening the emergency exit on the tarmac. 

We touched down over the endless miles of palm fringed beaches and green sea and split a cab with  a salty Isreali woman who been coming to Goa every winter for 8 years.  I'd booked a place at the Orange House in Anjuna, in the center of Goa, where hippies converged in the late 60s and have been partying ever since.  The Orange House lived up to its name with a fresh coat and white trim, and the room had a spectacular balcony that looked out on "downtown" Anjuna - which consisted soley to of a Church (Goa has been Christian since Portuguese Colonial times) and 2 grocery stores Oxford & Orchard.  The former being a nice upmarket option where, over the course of the week, I picked up fresh chocolate croissants, imported goat cheese and fresh focaccia pizza. 

Without further ado, Misha rented a scooter and we were bumbling down unpaved roads toward Anjuna beach, with the steady thump of techno music growing louder as we approached.  On our way, we passed through the bamboo skeleton of the Wednesday Flea Market, with empty stalls illuminated in the moonlight for a few kilometers, before the road emptied into the parking lot of the deserted Chaikoffsky's Cafe.  Misha was ecstatic.  He'd already found a Russian spot and was ready to wait all night for his countrymen to show up, but I convinced him to follow me to Curlie's - an Isreali hangout a few meters down the rocky, unlit beach (ouch!).

So we came up on this mad rave scene about 2 hours after touching down in Goa.  The hippie legends appeared to be true, if mutated in this electronic form.  There were a few hundred people dancing and laid out on straw mats on the beach, watching the moonlit waves, and collapsed in bambo chairs in a dusty, smoky haze.  Actually, the scene was a little gross - I hate to rehash the stereotype but everybody looked liked they needed a shower. But I met a few interesting people, including Bobby, this British girl with dyed dark red hair and Edward, a Swedish guy with a puff-up haircut. 

The place was predominantly Isrealis, but they were anti-social.  It's the right of passage to come to India after serving in the Isreali military and they come mostly hell-bent on partying hard with themselves.  Actually, they've caused quite a big problem with disrespect to the locals and even the Knesset has debated on how to improve Isreal's image in India.  Later I did meet one really likeable Isreali though, Misha, and we played a few intense games of backgammon later that week.

My first night, I called it in early.  Misha and I had had a few Kingfisher beers (worse than Bud, it's all that's available in most bars) and set out for a late night snack.  We winded up at Tin Tin in Tibet, having the most amazing grilled tiger prawns with lime.  They were giants, about 8 inches, and only $1.50!