Third Day in Palolem. Expect my
friends from Hyderabad, later in the afternoon. Eight - nine hours of sleep
sure fills you up with energy. Ah! Sleep. Is there a more noble endeavor. You
close your eyes, lie down on your back, and dream beautiful dreams. Scary ones
too. But mostly beautiful. It is 8 am. I don't know what to do. So I read. That
is how I plan to escape boredom. By reading my way into a better world.
Sometimes you feel like, every book has been written just for you. Like the
characters in the book are talking to you.
In person. I feel like sometimes nobody
wants to talk to you. You may expose too much of yourself. You must be strong.
You would chat comfortably for an hour or two on the internet. But in person,
even fifteen minutes seems intimidating. My room is so messed up. The loo
broken. Insects all over. Holes in the floor. It seems like the shack may come down
any moment. I buy some oranges and wait for my friends at the bus stop. I offer
another soul, standing at the bus stop, one of my two oranges. I am such a nice
person. I sacrificed one half of my breakfast for a complete stranger. We find
shacks for them. My landlord plans to charge them double the amount he charged
me.
We bring it down to Rs 300 per night. The trick is to never give in.
Sometimes, you have to just walk away and act like you are not interested. But
don't walk too far away. Walk away really slowly. If the person you are
bargaining with calls you back, go and buy it for whatever amount he offers
you. It is much lower than before. If he doesn't call you back, you turn back
and tell him this, 'Okay Bhaiya, Aaakri Bhar, Kitne Mein Dogey?' Hopefully he
will consider your plight and reduce the price.
They rent a beach chair and take an
afternoon dip in the ocean, we catch up on good old times. At Palolem, you can
hire a paddle boat and that is exactly what we planned to do. We get some basic
training and then are off on our boats into the wide blue ocean. We stick
together for a while and then go off on our separate ways. The waves are not
that strong and we are thought a technique to paddle over it.
Wouldn't it be
fun, to just swim out into the ocean and never come back? Nobody would even
know where I have gone. Nobody would even care. Everyone was too busy anyways.
But then my friend calls out to me, and interrupts my escape plan from the
world.
The sun setting in the distance makes the landscape in front of us, even
more beautiful. But all good things come to an end. I was a little sea sick to.
Maybe good things come to an end, because you get sick of good things too. Such
a pain to paddle back. When you climb a peak, you also have to reserve some
energy to climb back down. Why didn't I think about this when I started
paddling out into the ocean. Urghh. After fifteen minutes of paddling, we reach
the shore. Unfortunately, the paddle company's base is at the other end of the
beach. The boat seemed really light on water. But it seemed like it weighed a
ton, on the beach. We have to pull it for a good three hundred metres.
Then our
paddling adventure came to an end. We have pizza that night, and shop a little
bit around Palolem. It is nice to have people around. Nice to not be alone.
Then I wonder why we long for company? Why do we like being around people?
Sometimes, when I am around people for too long, I long for solitude. Urghhh.
Why the conflict? Why can't you just be fucking normal? I remember meeting a
couple in Mumbai that have been married for 60 years. Wow, I wonder, what is
must be like, to be with somebody for so long. Do you love each other more as
time progresses? Do you stay together simply because staying alone seems painful?
It is nice to fall in love. But I am sure nobody falls in love, while
thinking about staying together for the next sixty years of their life. Don't
people get bored of each other? Ever?
Sat-chit-ananda
@AbhishekShetty_
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