September 11: Partying in Goa

I spent my first day in Goa (the 9th), a wee bit shell-shocked. I arrived at the Goa train station at 5 AM, having not slept so well due to the whole roach thing. A rickshaw took me to a handful of hotels until I found one I liked in a town called Colva. I got a little cottage next to a pool, and fell asleep for a few hours before going for a walk on the beach.

The beach I was entirely unable to walk on.

It turns out that this was impossible.

Not only was I swamped by the prettiest, craftiest salesgirls you ever did see (I can't even talk about how much they fleeced me for) but every guy on the beach wanted to take their picture with me. The girls -- my new best friends, (you know like the kind who stick their knife in your back in junior high -- did I mention how they fleeced me?) -- told me not to let them take the pictures. "They will tell everyone back home that you are their girlfriend!" Since I am not concerned about my reputation back in Calcutta, I decided not to let this bother me. But it did make it hard to walk down the beach.

In the end, I went back to my hotel and lay down with a book next to the pool and let them soothe me with fresh coconuts, and I thought affirming thoughts to myself about how it is OK That I Just Hide In My Hotel If I Want To, Dammit. I also thought grumpy thoughts about how Goa's reputation for being a happy-go-lucky, party state was ill-deserved, and that it seemed to have turned into a sort of us-against-them, tourists vs the locals mentality.

The next day I met Rahul.

Rahul as it happens, felt the same way. He is a 23 year old banker, originally from Rajasthan, who now lives in Dubai. He came to Goa alone for a three week vacation because he'd heard it was beautiful. He really wanted to try weed for the first time, too. So far he had been disappointed on both scores.

"Dubai is CLEAN," he said. He was as alarmed by the litter everywhere as I was. And, due to his Indian coloring, everyone was looking at him blankly when he tried to buy pot. Like he was a narc or something.

I met him in a money changing store, and instantly claimed him as my beard. I walked down the beach with him -- and no one talked to me. They were probably whispering things like "Western slut!" behind my back. But no one approached me. Not even the girls. (Did I mention that while they were fleecing me, they started yelling at each other in -- Hindi? Kanada? -- about the prices they were charging me? And then, later, one came to my hotel crying and made me walk back to the beach and order the others to share the money equally? Junior high, I tell you.)

Rahul told me that he had been wanting to eat at a beachside restaurant called Kentuckee -- a nod towards Americans, apparently, in an attempt to conjure up Kentucky Frid Chicken. But, he said, it just didn't seem like the kind of place one went alone.

The cowboy-hat-wearing, Yamaha-playing, crowd-bantering singer.

So we went. And I got my taste of Goan partying. First, we ordered cocktails with cashew feni and coconut feni in it. Feni is the Goan prize liquor. Straight cachaca -- just so you know -- is infinitely more tasty and less alcoholic. Feni is scary scary stuff. It induced Rahul and me to start requesting songs from Emmanuel -- the cowboy-hat-wearing, electric-keyboard-playing singer. We also sang along. Loudly. We sang along to Summer of 69 (click here, if you want to hear a .wav file of the song), Hotel California, In the Air Tonight, Against All Odds. Rahul ordered us tequila shots, which I had sense enough not to drink, but by then we'd acquired a new friend and I passed my shot off to him. David from Australia, age 67, had sat down at our table. David is the kind of guy who sends in letters to magazines about how he has come up with a brand new, cheap way to power all space craft with only solar energy. I know this, because he told me that he has come up with a brand new, cheap way to power all space craft with only solar energy. He is also the kind of guy who thinks that he is all about peace and calm and that it is the rest of the world that is screwed up. I didn't believe him since he told us stories about how a) the Indian police had recently thrown him in jail b) the Cuban police had thrown him in jail c) he had ridden a motorcycle to the hotel he'd stayed at for a night and threatened the landlady who'd kicked him out and d) his daughter won't speak to him.

He also complained about India. I didn't like David much, but I felt priveleged to have met a genuine specimen of the kind I'd heard Goa was filled with. He was one of the old-time hippies who have made Goa their home but who do nothing but complain about the Indians.

Rahul and I kept right on singing, and occasionally rolled our eyes about David. I was planning on leaving the next day for Hampi, but Rahul had rented a motorbike and was trying to convince me to stay and drive around Goa with him the next day. He was as starved for good conversation and interesting company as I had been the day before. Part of me wanted to stay -- India is known for offering hidden gifts when it destroys your plans, and I had found out that day that a landslide had destroyed the railway bridge to Hampi. I was planning, instead, to leave on a bus the next day. Perhaps the cosmos was speaking to me and I was supposed to stay here, find some nicer beaches, experience the beauty that everyone claims can be found in Goa?

I looked at the umbrella in my feni drink. I looked at Emmanuel's cowboy hat. I looked at the anklet I'd bought from the girls on the beach. I looked at David.

I had to tell Rahul no.

Posted by karenceliafox at September 11, 2004 01:22 PM