Oh Shit, it coming to an end...

Day three was the last day of our tour. None of us wanted to end this dream like trance that we were in, but everything good has to come to an end. Believing it to be useless to wrestle with fate, we saddled up to enjoy the last day of our tour.

We began our last day with a visit to a fort, I can't remember its name. But who cares, you spend one hour wandering about a place that looks like a house under construction, you begin to just want to get out. But maybe the fort wasn't so bad. It was just my freakishly big imagination and expectation that made it seem boring. I don't know why, but every time I go to a fort or palace, I am longing to see secret passageways, blood stained weapons and secret inscriptions left by people.

But we knew another place to chill out. We had seen a lake nearby with a board. Dolphin Ride.

No, you don't ride a dolphin, that would be too much. But you could see them up close. We boarded the boat and set off, with the elders constantly muttering, "You're not gonna see any dolphins. They're not gonna come near these boats. Think about it…"

Really? Really? Really? Really…Isn't it time we got a little bit of credit. I mean think about it this way, if dolphins didn't show up near these boats, would these guys have about a dozen boats by this lake with a tour titled Dolphin Ride??? Wouldn't they have gone out of business??

But a quarter of an hour later, we won. The glorious creature leapt out of the sea and dived back in, but not before all of us leapt up in excitement. It continued to give us glimpses, and then…

It bought a partner. That's right, and they executed a picture perfect somersault right before our eyes…

Oh yeah baby…

Nearly an hour later when we turned back to leave, we just had had one of the best hours of our trip, and we were sorry to leave. So, a turn back, a tip of the hat, and a wink for putting up quite a show… and then on.

We stopped by a mall after lunch to while away time. We split up and shopped till we dropped. Well, that would be a gross exaggeration. We had a little under an hour. I went to a bookstore and bought something which caught my eye and never left me eye. Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. We tried to go bowling, but it was packed with kids. Since none of us wanted to showcase our abysmal bowling average (0.00 for me, never tried…) especially in front of a group that could actually knock 7-8 out of the 10 pegs, we gently withdrew.

Our next and final stop. The railway station. Filled with Mario Miranda's gorgeous paintings, it was a sight to behold. But we learnt that our train was running late by several hours. This was the biggest disappointment. We could have just gone for some more sight seeing but we were stuck here. We decided to catch another train and leave. But not before we journeyed to the railway canteen. I had grown tired of the high class eatables and settled for chappati and paneer. But my photographer cousin hadn't, so he ordered a vegetable noodles. He has a huge appetite like mine, but for the first time he had to give up. I thought he was acting, but when I took a bite out of the noodles, I had to agree. Vegetable noodles. Try more like Salt Noodles.

But this was it. The end.

We'll end this the same way we started.

Margao.

10:00 PM.

6th January.

La Familia has left Goa.

Birthday in Goa (Part 2)

Not everyone gets to celebrate their birthdays with the entire family. And not everyone gets to celebrate it while on vacation. Still fewer get to celebrate it in Goa.

Me? It was three-upon-three for me on the second day of our Goa trip.

It dawned just like any other day, but with a huge difference. I was in Goa, and I had turned 20. Yeah baby….

We spent the morning beside the awesome pool. Yeah, they had a pool and a splendid one at that. I'll try to get some pictures of the pool here. The whole setup was great. You have a large pool filled with crystal clear blue water ( why is it that pools are always blue??? ). The sides of the pool were as green as they could be, with palm trees and hedges here and there. There were seats where you could lie down and relax, as a lot of foreigners were doing.

I had a slight aversion to water, so I stayed on the side, I stayed dry with one of my cousins who was clicking away madly at anything he could see. Grass, water, seats, flowers, the more mundane, the better. Come to think of it, our whole tour photo collection came up to just short of 12 GB. 2 SLR cameras can help, plus you've got an uncle and a nephew who can't give their cameras a rest. The result, I still haven't seen all the pics we took!!!

Evening was when it began to rock. For me. For years, I never celebrated my birthdays, I never had a cake or candles, I never took photos or anything. But now, I had my entire family on my 20th birthday with a cake ready to be cut, with candles!!!

The chocolate moushe cake was purchased by my sister. But we had forgotten to keep it in the fridge. The result??? Nothing much, the cake just got gooey. Sticky. But who in the world cares, right???

We lit the candles, I had happy birthday sung out for me, I blew out the candles (ooooppps, forgot to make a wish…then again, at that point, could I have wished for anything more???), cut the cake, and then the photo session began. We began shoving cake down each others throats and posing. We had to hurry, a taxi was waiting to take us to a Saturday Night Market.

The market was held in a huge ground and it was laden with stalls, some managed by Indians, others by foreigners. Who am I kidding, it was mostly foreigners. We split up into groups and began window shopping, minus the windows. After some time I got tired of just looking, I went into a shop and enquired about the price of a T shirt, the ordinary kind. The kind you normally get off the streets in Kerala for Rs 200. I asked the price, I was prepared for anything under Rs 500, but the lady swept me right off of my feet.

And not in a good way.

One thousand eight hundred, for all the shirts here…

Oooops. Well, I didn't need a T shirt anyway.

After the price shock, I didn't buy anything. My uncle bought me a T shirt for Rs 400 after heavy bargaining. That's when I realized, foreign shops, fixed price. Indian shops, anything goes. Bargaining is the law.

That's just about it. We moved around the ground for a long time, then returned.

Day 2 gave me the best birthday I ever had in my life.

The final day, day 3 comes later...

Let's Go To Goa, Baby… (Part 1)

It's been nearly two months since this trip occurred, and I was too lazy to actually blog about this, I had my lab exams, I had my new semester start, and then someone reminded me I was grossly overdue. So here goes, and thank God some memories never fade away…

Goa. One of the most sought after holiday destinations in India, hell, the whole world. We were all lucky to have been able to go there and enjoy. And me? I should have missed the whole trip if it hadn't been for a crazy roller coaster decision making process. But that's another story.

Lets rewind, shall we.

4 January.

6:00 AM.

Margao.

This is where it all began. We alighted there and the first thing that flashed across my mind was "My God, I am actually here. And I promise you that I am gonna enjoy every damn bit of this".

That, and the fact that it was cold. Nothing I couldn't bear, but I was more concerned about having left my incredibly warm jacket back home. Comfort, not so much. Style, a whole lot. As we got out of the station, I saw my uncle turn back with a smile and say something I couldn't hear. I heard my cousins laugh. I couldn't hear why, but as I moved forward, I saw it too. There was a guy there with a board in his hand. And the board had my uncle's name written on it. Never, for one second had any of us expected the resort to send someone over like this. Plus, I had never been escorted by someone like this…

We reached Primo Bom Terra Verde resort at around 7:30. This was awesome. I don't think I can actually go about describing it, so here are some photos to show you…

The first agenda of the day was breakfast. Everything was damn expensive but hey, you wanna enjoy, you gotta pay up here. All of us cousins collectively decided we wanted to break the routine breakfast style aand ordered English Breakfast. Full with bread and butter, beans in ketchup, bacon, ham and eggs. I was excited about having these things for the first time, but that was until it actually showed up. I dunno, the sight of it just didn't appeal to me, or my stomach. As my cousins binged on what they called a delicious dish,I contended myself eating the traditional poori-bhaji.

Well, now that we had filled our stomachs, we wanted to do something to digest this. The resort offered a mini golf facility and allowed us to fish off their ponds. We tried our hands at both, with varying levels of success. Mini golf was easy, for me that is. While I watched my cousins going into double digits on the score board, I was leisurely hitting my way to victory. (Hey, before you start to question, the one with the lowest score wins, okay….)

Then it was fishing.They had only one fishing rod, not counting the one that *someone* had broken by swinging it wildly and hitting a fan, so we all watched eagerly hoping that some fish would bite on to our bait(bread) and we would have our first successful fishing quest.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

A few of us left.

Wait.

Still waiting…

I began wandering off…

Only one stoic survivor left…

The waiting continues...

Okay, the plan is off officially. Either these fish are too smart, or we are lousy fishermen. On second thoughts, you should've seen the ponds. In spite of being regularly changed via an outlet, this thing was as dirty as it could get. We could blame it on poor visibility for the fish.

Okay, okay, I admit. You must be rolling your eyes thinking about some thing. What is synonymous with Goa? What is missing here?

The beach.

The Baga Beach was a literal stone's throw away from our resort. We walked to the beach at around noon in shorts, and there was only one thing in our minds. Were we still in India??? You couldn't see a single Indian around any more. All you could see were numerous foreigners sunbathing.

Well, we didn't come here to ogle at them, we came here to enjoy. There were numerous rides into the ocean, including paragliding right over the ocean. But none of us were so adventurous to do that. So we went for a motor boat ride.

In minutes we were wrapped up in life jackets and we were sailing over the ocean. This would've been an ordinary boat ride if it wasn't for the waves, and out boatman. As the waves came rushing towards us, our boatman would perfectly time the wave and ram the boats' hull over the wave. The waves would shatter there, spraying us with beautiful shining drops of water like shreds of glass. As the waves got bigger, the water would literally engulf us and we were wet, brother. Our mouth was full of salt water and we were spitting it out, seconds before we would get our next shot.

We wanted to go on forever, but all good things must come to an end, and we returned back to the shore. Wet, and covered in sand, we retired to the resort. The beach adventure was over, but there was more to come.

The evening was dedicated to a cruise over the Mandovi river. There were around a hundred passengers on board, and the DJ was playing songs after songs and urging people to come to the stage and dance. Since none of us were actually into dancing, this was easily the low spot of the tour. But hey, we're on a cruise over a river with scenery all around, how low could it go?

That was how we spent well over an hour. Clicking away at scenery and posing for each other.

This was how day one ended.

Day 2 later...

Moving...

Moving can give you a whole new outlook on everything around you, and sometimes even within you. Whether it is out of a country, out of a state, out of a district or even a slight dislocation from one house to another completely and absolutely encompasses the same basic thing.

Pack and Leave.

I've been staying at one place, say P, for nearly 3 whole years. And now I had to move to a place nearby, say K. And what this truly means is a complete change in my rituals, my time-table and my entire life. And above all it meant that I had to search for and pack every single item I had come to possess in these three years. And boy, did I find them!

I searched for two whole days, and accumulated quite a lot of stuff. Stuff I used for maybe a day or two. Stuff which possessed some other-worldly quality due to my pack-rat mentality. Stuff which could come of some use sometime in the not-so-near future.

Basically stuff I didn't throw away.

But now the question was, what to do with this capharnaum? Do I take every single one of them and feed my pack-rat mentality some more? Or do I throw these away against all of my evil forebodings?

It was decision time.

I fell to my pack-rat mentality again and heaped a lot of things, old magazines, newspaper supplements and what not until the number of bags just exploded. But this is not what I wanted to talk about.

It was when I shifted through the stuff that I realized what psychometry meant. I had heard the term during a broadcast of "So Weird" and somehow it stuck. It meant the ability of certain objects to explain their history to those who touch them. Suddenly I felt the rush of emotions and memories from about 3 years back. To the time I moved to P in the first place. To the lengths my parents had gone to make me feel at home. To the money they spent without a thought.  I could recall all of that as if it were yesterday.

How much do parents suffer to make you happy? And how much do you return them? How much of love do we owe them? How much do we really give them?

Thank you God, for giving the best parents anybody could ever hope for.

I started on a different note, and got off somewhere, but the fact is I have moved, and am now settled. Moving gives you a new perspective, a look back at all the things you've done, and what you should have done, and a chance to make amends with you past and extend a hand to the future.

A chance to start afresh.