Anindita Sengupta

July’s been terribly hectic, in terms of actual activity as well as inner shifts, and the blogging always suffers at such times. First there was the very rushed, very rainy trip to Goa. For once (oh irony!), I actually managed to fall asleep on the train, only to be woken up at 8 am and told that the train was not going any further. We were in Hubli. Landslides had blocked our way into Goa.

What struck me is this — there was no announcement on a PA system, no officials busily informing passengers what to do. Everything worked on word-of-mouth, each passenger telling the others, the news traveling from one end of the train to the other like a wave. I scrambled out of the bunk, followed the long file of groggy, excited passengers onto a rattle-trap bus. The journey was fun. The roads were beautiful and intermittent rain pearled the gigantic windshield. There was music on my iPod. There was Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions when I bored of the landscape, which was seldom. There were excitable boys playing Dumb Charades with wild gesticulations. The woman next to me peeled bananas and chatted about her home in Margao, her IT-professional son in Bangalore, and her husband who refuses to go anywhere anymore. The TC accidentally dropped his clipboard on me and just missed goring one eye. For the rest of the trip, he gave me sheepish grins which I returned with the ‘I’m such a good person that I forgive you’ look. Such drama! If the journey had lasted much longer, it would have become a love affair.

***

The string of buses stopped for brunch (dosa and sheera) at a wayside place just before Karwar. One of the passengers — a woman traveling alone — went to the loo and her bus left without her. She had not told anyone where she was going or that they should wait. She had not registered her presence in some manner — and it’s easy to be invisible when you’re alone. Anyway, she did the sensible thing of getting onto our bus. She seemed poor and elderly though she might have been middle-aged with the prematurely haggard look that hardship brings. She was frantic about her things left behind on the other bus. For the next four hours or so, she begged the TC to find out, cried intermittently, even struck her chest in worry and fear. I wonder what her bag contained. What possessions, what valuables, what earthly things. All her money for the journey? Jewels she had carried to some wedding? All the clothes she owns?

Our TC called a few of the others but he clearly did not know all the numbers. Finally he told her she would have to travel to Vasco where all the buses would terminate, and then hunt for her bag. She asked if the buses would be traveling back to Margao where she wanted to get off. He said no. She looked stricken, realizing she would have to spend the extra money to get back on her own. For her, it was not a good journey.

***

I got off at Margao, took a cab to my hotel and got there at 4 pm, only two hours later than anticipated. The next two days were spent in sinful indolence and soul-baring talk (I was meeting my closest friend after years). Goa itself was beautiful — wetly green and fecund, bleak and stormy all at the same time. Palolem beach had one and a half shacks open and a straggle of kids playing football.

In one of the shacks, the deadpan manager turned out to be a lech, full of roving eyes and roving questions. I was short with him. My friend astutely pointed out that our food would now be laced with spit. We retreated to the other shack where the waiters were more discrete. We drank cocktails and ate king fish. All the beach dogs were inside to shelter from the rain. They nestled near our legs or sat at the edges of the shack like sentries, or dosed in small pits they had dug for themselves. The plastic sheets covering the shack flapped in the wind. The sand between our toes was dark and gritty. We talked about college and life, the last ten years and now. We watched the sea roil and seethe.

I took a flight back to Bangalore because all trains on the southwestern route had been canceled. More landslides. So I didn’t have time to finish the second book I had taken along, Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Oh, but instead, I used the extra time to lounge around the hotel. I saw a huge chess board with its horses dripping rain water. And I drank beer in a pool while it was pouring, my tiny spot covered by a gazebo while all along the rest of it, sharp needles of water rose upwards like steam. I’m not complaining.