How To Travel When Bipolar — Part 4
Wait, I thought there was a downsid — whoops, there it is.
Shortly after the bus enters Goa, your inner digital compass begins to signal GOA in block letters typically reserved for nuclear strikes. You wake up with a jolt, because you only ever wake with up with a jolt anymore, and the first vision to greet you is that of a jackfruit tree. There are two things to be gleaned immediately from this: number one is that jackfruit grows on trees which is the kind of thing that should’ve been obvious to you from the get-go but wasn’t, and two that this definitely is a fantastic omen as far as omens go because damn it if they aren’t delicious.
Memories of jackfruit coated in herbed chickpea flour, basted and deep fried, shock you into straight up nostalgia, not that you need an excuse to get all sentimental about the past. This used to be your grandma’s chef-d’oeuvre, and even your unadulterated hatred of that old cow didn’t stop you from polishing these off like melon seeds. Doesn’t matter which grandma, they were both inimical old cows filled with unfathomable conceit.
It also brings memories of ma. She rarely ever got things wrong when it came to food.
(Uh oh, time to bottle all ancillary feels the hell up, posthaste, for your destination approacheth.)
The bus driver hustles you out with a totally earnest ‘it’s two minutes away’ and drives off, blowing dirt in your sweaty face. Your first brush with the flip side of Goan susegad occurs shortly after. You see, susegad has long since been associated with Goan indulgence, tolerance, and lively dispositions. Concurrently, it also stands for lassitude and caprice. It is because of the latter that time and distance do not work in Goa as they do in the rest of the world. ‘It’ turns out to be a lot more than just two minutes away.
You arrive at the doorstep covered in gunk, some day-old and some freshly acquired during the ‘two minute’ distance. Before you can let yourself in, you are full-body tackled by the most spirited tyke on the planet. You give up all effort to stay upright and just lie on the cobbled verandah, being licked clean by this shaggy dreamboat. It is in this state that you are discovered a little while later by the household help.
Your absentee host has left instructions for you to get comfortable, as if you need a note to tell you that, but comfortable you get. A good scrubbing and an even better meal of some legit crab curry later, you pass out right there on the couch instead of the bedroom lovingly prepped for this exact purpose.
You come to due to a gentle tap-tap-tapping on your bare shoulder. It’s a woman in her early (late?) fifties with cherub cheeks talking faster than you do and fussing over the humidity that has prevailed because you forgot to turn the AC on. She is also your host for the remainder of the trip. Still woozy from your nap, you open your eyes with some trouble, and focus on what she’s saying. Apparently you’re going to the movies, which is exactly the kind of thing one plans on doing on their first visit to a tropical paradise.
The movie is forgettable in spite of being part of a popular superhero franchise. Perhaps even because of it. Also forgettable are your host’s tales of the Normandy shores. You see, a bonafide francophile, Libby* has had no reason to come to like her surroundings since she moved to Goa. You find this terribly funny because people from everywhere move to Goa in hopes of ‘fixing’ their lives. They come here and find casual alcoholism, among other things, whereas Libby ditched hers and found God instead.
A thoroughly one-sided conversation about God later, you are back in the house and looking for an out. Pretending to want to sleep always works in your favour, so you decide to put it to use one more time. You find success but only after Libby has stood in the doorway for what feels like a hundred years to finish her piece about God. She asks you a question and you say yes, having not been listening in the first place. This seems to sufficiently appease Libby into leaving you alone.
Sleep deserts you that night entirely and fine tendrils of worry begin to spread across your perceived world. In your endless stupidity, you swore off your medication nearly a week ago. You hoped for a better state of mind to come to you organically, with a healthy pescatarian diet of shrimp and the sea. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
The very next day you dash to the beach, although dash may be overstating things a little bit. You amble to the beach using the local bus service. A little mismanagement of your resources has ensured that those buses and your feet are your only means of transport. This is not a problem except these remaining resources are dwindling at breakneck speed and soon your only choice will be to remain indoors and use your imagination to see the sea that is only a half hour away. But that is a problem for future you.
At the beach, you sit on the rocks for awhile and watch a group of fully grown men holding what looks like a seance. Their wives take turns waving at them from a shack in the distance, before returning to wipe the chins of the many children floating about. Hand in hairy hand, these men and their shirtlessness and drunkenness form a combined state that you thoroughly envy. You wonder if they know how fragile human existence is; how the least bit of self-awareness can completely stunt your life. Do they realise we are hurtling through space completely self-immersed, while paradoxically waiting to find something bigger than us? We all secretly believe that when we encounter this entity, it’ll actually just be one of us (preferably our very own self). Centuries of shitty storytelling has led us to blindly believe that pollyannish ‘it was you all along’ platitude.
You have your doubts. You know we have the intelligence to inquire into the truth of our existence but you wonder if they know that it only makes everything worse.
From the corner of your eye you spot two of the frolickers surreptitiously break away from their seance-y circle and take shelter behind a rock on your side. Hairy hands on hairy backs, in the small shade thrown by the rock and the crashing of the sea, they share a kiss. It lasts only a second and they rejoin their circle one at a time. Before scampering off, Hairy # 1 turns around for a fleeting moment and looks at Hairy #2 in a way that breaks your damn heart.
Right there on that stupid rock, momentarily outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation, you begin salting the seawater further with your own saline outburst and are, in that way, wedded forever to the sea.
*Not her real name, doy, but close.
