Goa

Firstly, Frank is back. (!!!) It’s sad, but true. Or maybe it’s good really. I mean, he’s only a lizard and I am in India. He was here first. I am also now positive he is way more scared of me than I am of him: I found my nose 6 inches from his nose and screamed at the top of my lungs into his tiny, ugly face. I think he is now morphing into the Beethoven-type because he has probably gone deaf on my account. He will soon grow long scraggly white hair, and begin writing concertos dedicated to the memory of the recently departed Charlotte (and if you don't know who that is, I can't help you).

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Secondly, recent adventures: Last Thursday some friends and I got onto a bus headed for Goa, a small state on the western coast of India. The bus itself was interesting: 20 hours long and smelly and hot. In all seriousness, I can't believe it didn't rattle apart. Anyway, Goa was once a Portuguese colony back in the day, so it has a different feel to it than the rest of India that I've seen so far. It is beautiful and open, breezy, with clean beaches, and really warm water, lots of green palm trees, and blue skies. We did yoga in the mornings, slept in a straw hut on the beach, ate delicious food (I now like tomatoes! huge news), bought pretty clothing, and watched the sun set while swimming in the surf. On the first day we walked up a dune onto the main beach, paid the first hut we saw for 2 nights and didn't walk down that dune until we left to go home.

I ate a pineapple with my leatherman knife (thanks Spence!) white sitting in the sand. And I went swimming in the Arabian Sea (now added to bodies of water I've touched my toes to).

But Goa, while relaxing and beautiful, is also really strange, and somewhat disconcerting. The whole state has become the hot-spot destination for extreme hippies from all over the world. Being white there isn’t special: not to Indians because there are so many other white people living there; and not to the other white people, because, well that’s where they live and I just look like a poser trying to have a nice weekend, and why would they be interested in getting to know me? While it is nice not to be stared at for a change, it place has an unfriendly, too-cool-for-you feel to it. It does not feel like a part of India. The types of clothing, the manner of behavior, the entire system itself, functions like a vacationers island paradise, not a state in India. While relaxing and beautiful and a nice break from the insanity of usual India, Goa itself is almost sickening in how cool it is, (or how cool it thinks it is). It filled with one dread-locked, tan, fit, yoga-doing hippie after another (Will you would have been sick). It felt like a new kind of pressure to look the part of this other type of being trendy. While there are elements of that world which are intriguing to me (to most people I'm sure: I mean, who doesn’t want to move to an island paradise and do yoga for the rest of their life?), I can’t help but feel that the Goan life is a cop out—that it falls short of really doing anything.

Let me explain. In my time in India so far, thoughts about what I want to do with my life are always popping into my head. I am torn between the ideas of a successful life and a happy life. And is financial stability necessary for happiness? What about a combination, please? But somehow the two (happiness and success) don’t coexist in my image of my future (though I am sure that such a combination will—no, HAS to—happen). Anyhow, I would love to jet out of all responsibilities, move to an island where I could work on a farm, teach yoga and live the rest of my life meditating on a beach. But that’s not really productive; on top of which, I don’t have the resources to make that feasibly happen. It strikes me also, that such a life, while enjoyable, is in fact extremely selfish. I have gifts to offer the world in that I have visions of ways that things can be better, and I have two hands which I can use to make those changes come true. So it is selfish to put my own yogic bliss above doing something real with my life.

This sounds preachy again. Why all my blogs are about these huge questions about my life and my future, I don't know. If someone knows how to turn that part of my brain off, please let me know. I apologize, but Goa makes me think more about all this. It is full of people who are purely enamored with the idea of peace, unity, relaxation; and it seems to have become too caught up in it’s own chill vibe; to have forgotten what it wanted to do in the first place. It is not a part of the country in which it exists. It is a bubble for white people to retreat to and forget what they left behind. It is selfish and it hogs the beauty of the west Indian coast for rich white travelers with deadlocks and tattoos instead of fanny-packs and cameras.

This is not to say that all of Goa is like this; not to mention that after 3 days I really shouldn’t be making such bold and universal statements. So Sophie, shut up...No, sorry I can't. and it's MY blog anyway, so psh. stop reading if you want.

Right. Like I say, the fundamentals of that life are intriguing to me; I guess what I find so unappealing is how the ideals of peace, harmony, and spiritual realization have become warped as they are realized in the Goan world (as I observed it). And of course, none of this is to say that I did not full heartedly love every minute I spent just lying on the beach, eating organic food, doing yoga in the sand and swimming in the ocean as the sun set. It was remarkable and lovely and I would do it again. and stay longer next time.

But I would never live there. If one day I have the means and desire to forget about the real world and move to a place where I can just relax and do my own thing, in search of the meaning of my life, I will choose a place that allows me to integrate into the world, people, culture, ideas and customs of that place; not a place that does it's best to pretend it's not part of India.

I'll be putting photos up soon, until then, I hope everyone back home is having a good end of February (it's a leap year, so all you 4 year old leap year babies, finally get to turn 5!) I miss home, both New York and Boston, and I miss the familiarity of faces that I love in those places; but this experience is wonderfully challenging and stretching and I am increasingly happier that I chose to come here.

Love from all the way over here to all the way back there (where ever your THERE is, whoever YOU are).

Om shanti
xoxoxo
sb