Night on the Beach

We think up a plan, of spending the night on the beach. Lots of the shacks have restaurants attached to them. We find a place, that seems to have good music. One friend orders a beer, the rest of us observe her drinking the beer. A couple on the table next to ours, seems to be having an intense discussion about life. A lone man sits on the table behind ours and drinks the night away. It is so interesting, that so many human lives with different stories exist parallelly. Everyone has a story. Everyone has problems. Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to love somebody.Later we buy some bread and chips (to make ourselves potato chip sandwiches) We find some waste newspaper and an empty spot on the beach to settle down. The beach looks deserted. It is past midnight. The barking dogs and late party goers keep us company. But the night is still young. At least we still thought so. That night we had a real conversation. Something about being 20, and having hour long conversations seems very appealing to me. 

Uncertainty and the longing for acceptance mixed with the infinite choices of life and super ambitiousness. Anything is possible. Yet nothing seems possible. I cannot seem to focus on one task for too long. I wonder why? Why do I always have to run away? From projects, from people, from school. I bring this up in one conversation. Books, songs for the night, human radios, life back at home (wherever that was currently) were some of the other hot topics that night. Three hours went by in a jiffy. We wanted to be macho and stay up on the beach for the whole night. We planned to wake up with the rising sun, like a warrior returning back home after war. Let us do this.  We take turns to walk the stretch off the beach, and also wet our legs in the ocean water. The waves seem stronger at night. I feel they can just pull one of us into the ocean and take us away forever, to another beautiful world. By 4 am, we are half dead, we need to sleep. We decide to spend the rest of the night at the only open restaurant on the beach. Loud music and a wild party is still on. I doze off on the chair as soon as we sit downI am woken up an hour later and we head back to the shacks. I try convincing them for another hour. But I was the one that slept not them. So we decided to rest for an hour and then wake each other up for sunrise. 

I wake up, the one hour of sleep helps. Both my friends are in their deep sleep zone and decide against the morning walk down the beach. I did not get a chance to see the sunrise, apparently the beach is on the wrong side. Or the beach is a sunset type of beach. We were not the only ones that had all night plans. Empty bottles, torn shirts, leftover newspapers tell so many stories. Things have stories hidden in them too. What happens to a coin, as it moves from one individual to another? What happens to a plastic bottle from industry to consumer to industry again. I look out into the ocean and know that even the water out there has a story. Everyone has a story. I wish I listened more. There is so much to learn from the world around you. 

That day we woke up late, and had a normal day. We sat on the rocks to watch the sunset that evening. It was beautiful. Tomorrow we leave Palolem. 

We pack our bags and decide to walk to the nearest station. Bad decision in this goa heat. But we all are a good sport, so we play along acting like we are all okay with it. But yeah, I guess Leg 1, of the Finding Myself trip went by alright. Did I seem to get closer to the ultimate answer. Not too much. 

18th March 2015

We stop at a restaurant close by, to have breakfast, first thing in the morning. We order everything we can and then we meet the Man. Vivin seems to have done it all. He owns the restaurant and on further inquiry, find out that he is quite the Indiana Jones come James Bond character. Or maybe we thought he was just too cool. So he earned a lot of money working in hotel management in five star hotels around Australia and South East Asia. He travelled all he could. He told us his passport, had an entry stamp from almost every nation on this planet. We were a bunch of 20 year olds on a backpacking trip during a college break. Travel was the ultimate escape plan from the normal daily routine of our lives. Vivin was the Man. The Man that did it all. The Man we all wanted to be. Square spectacles, beach shorts, folded sleeves, formal t-shirt and your own restaurant near one of Goa's coolest beaches.  This was the life. He gave us his number, and told us to keep in touch. We walked out wonderstruck. Oh wait he also dropped us to the nearest station. 5 more points to Vivin and his legend.

My friends plan to take a bus back  to Hyderabad from Marmagaon. We take a train from Palolem, to Marmagaon. From Marmagaon, we take a bus to the local bus station. Over there we part ways. They catch a bus to hyderabad. I am still unsure where I will end up. Then I remember. 

Sat-chit-ananda
@AbhishekShetty_

Solitude, Boats and Boredom

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_

Writing, Swimming in the Ocean and Talking to the Stars

I grew up on a healthy dose of National Geographic travel shows. I was such a romantic. A travel writer once wrote back to me. This was what he advised me, pack your bags, travel a lot and write about it. I knew that already. Why was he stating the obvious. Or maybe the best self help advice, is always just really obvious. Maybe it is just common sense. I spend the afternoon reading bill bryson and vs naipaul. You have to understand what is out there, before you want to transform it. 

Food and Reflection

I am in Palolem, Goa. After a long afternoon nap, I wake up by 4 3o pm. It is still blazing hot. I am drenched in sweat. The stupid fan did not do its job. Ughh. Wash my face, change my sweat drenched clothes and walk out of the shack for some lunch. I settle down at a beach shack come restaurant, with an open sea view. Buy some rice and chicken, for my starving stomach. Then just wait. Look at all the people out there on the beach. There is so much shade here, there is none there. Can you store some in a jar and sell it on the beach?

Riding into Palolem's Beaches

An hour into the ride and I realize that I am carrying 10 kg's of weight around, with me. Now I know why, all those travel websites advised you to travel light. The bags were weighing down on me. The sun was weighing down on me. Then it happened. The wind took my cap away with it. We were riding away at the speed of light. Stopping for a fallen cap, was not an option. But this left me exposed. The sun was out to get me now. It was 1 pm on hot march summer afternoon in Goa. We had two more hours to reach our destination. After an hour, I thought I would die. I did not want to the policeman to stop, but as soon as he did, to refill gas, I breathed a sigh of relief. I put on an extra long sleeve shirt (bad idea), and covered my head with a handkerchief.

Goa and Hitchhiking

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist scholar, spoke about "why you must understand the root cause of suffering of another person to really be able to give them love." But it is hard to really understand another human being. I wish I could. It has been a long time since I sat down in front of another being, looked them in the eye, and really listened to what their heart told me. We all had a life goal to achieve. Sitting down for a conversation would interfere with our productivity.

The train leaves the station. I try using my laptop. I already regret bringing it along. It is too shaky. I shut it down and read Bill Bryson for a while. Bryson is such a fun writer. Soon I fall asleep. I like Keroauc too. He was a master wordsmith:

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” 

Mumbai - Leaving Home

Sometimes words are not enough to describe how you feel. Sometimes words are not enough to describe why you do things. I wish I could use sounds and colors. But now I have words. I will have to start somewhere. So this is where I start. This is a story of journey I took around India to understand why Learning is Beautiful. Maybe it is also an attempt to help me understand how the road can become a metaphor for life.

'You start the adventure with a childlike enthusiasm.

A joie de vivre

Then you are on the road

Alone. Hungry. Lost'