Palolem, revisited

November 13, 2006

Fortunately, I can make a better report of this beach myself.

Whatever was up with people yesterday (and I do include myself in that population) – the fights, the unsmiling eyes, the shabby shacks – seemed to have eased with the setting of the sun, and Manny and I found ourselves sitting up on the rocks above the beach, in a fine little restaurant, sipping Mohitos and chatting about this and that. As Manny put it, the beach was filled with people “just doing their thing”, whether that thing be sublime or shallow, a pile of Indians and foreigners gone to the sand and sun for a few days.

So the shock factor as we move from place to place continues, and whatever scales were covering my eyes fell away as well. It’s all right, it doesn’t matter – there is no spiritual core here, nothing beautiful bringing people together en masse, and perhaps there is no place to meet people in their hearts as there has been in so many other places we have visited here in India… or maybe we have not found it yet. There are a few yoga centers. Still there are more people in transition than there are in pilgrimage, to be sure. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

There is a beach a few kilometers to the north, which a rented motorcycle might bring us to without much effort (and hopefully few scars). Apparently very calm, more like the Palolem of a couple of years back, it could be a nice fall into a more natural setting.

Meanwhile, there are a few pictures to tease the eye, in a new Goa album…

Places