A letter from India *
“Where in India?”
“Goa.”
When I first saw the sea it was so beautiful. The whole of Anjuna Beachit was a dream; it was my fantasy. It still makes me want to cry to think about it. But it’s tears of joy because it was so beautiful. It was something that was so beautiful that… I didn’t know I wanted it… I didn’t know it existed, I was looking at a piece of art, and saying “Oh my God, this is beautiful!”. It was towards the end. The last… the last month… the last few months . . the last weeks, it was the end and I’d be coming home and I’d see the sunset from the road, and I’d stop in the middle of the road, with my dog, and I’d sit on the ground, and I’d hold my dog. And I knew I’d have to leave my dog, because I knew I didn’t have the money to take her back to New York. So I had to leave my dog, I had to leave Goa, I had to leave my house, I had to leave my dream, I had to leave everything. And I would just sit on the road in the dirt, and look at the sunset, and it was so beautiful… and I just… it was such a loss; it was such a loss. And that went on for a few months, a few weeks, `cause I knew it was coming. And then it just got worse and worse. I ran out of money. I couldn’t feed the dog. The insects took over the house; there were bugs everywhere. But I had the date, and I was waiting for that date to come. And it came. And I left, and that was the end. I thought it was the end of my life.
I missed Goa terribly for years after I left. One night in a New York City parking lot, I Looked up and saw a full moon. I mourned the full moon parties of the home I’d lost and hated the asphalt and concrete beneath my feet. I hated it and hated New York and hated everything in my life that wasn’t India.
Marcus Robbin, Interview with Cleo Odzer, January 2000, Goa, India
