Why do India's mornings have a different colour? Why do they smell differently?
They are greener, browner, redder than ours. The sleepy view from the train window opens up another world. Somewhere in the distance a blue and white glitter. The ocean. Meadows in all colors of green and yellow. Then burnt ground again, it seems that a flamethrower has gone over it.
Small houses, fragile from a distance. A road. Men in white robes on old bicycles.
Tivim in Goa
Goa is big and long, it is difficult to find the right stop. With luck, I choose the right one and get off at Tivim. A roaring TukTuk takes me to Calangute.
It' s a relaxed ride through the palm forests, meadows and swamps, past the colorful people, past sewers whose stench rising into my nose, past dried out brooks, and garbage on the roadside, past stalls and shops, and carpets spread out on the floor with all sorts of stuff.
This is India. As I think I know it.
But as always, when I arrive at a place where I've been before, I'm amazed to realize what I've forgotten.
My gaze drifts into the distance, I try to recall memories, of villages, of streets, of houses, of churches. In vain. Then I turn to the faces, maybe I discover a familiar one, but no, they look like all the others. The strange feeling arises that this is a foreign country, that everything is only imagination. I am here for the first time, because India is new every time, and you realize you can't come back here.
You have to experience it anew every time. Perhaps you also have to endure it anew each time.
Or is that just a stupid excuse for a bad memory? I have the feeling that I have lost something, perhaps the ability to remember. I who was always proud to remember even the most meaningless events and places.
That too is India. It gives a lot and takes a lot.
Calangute Beach - cool sand under bare feet
The way down to the sea is a first highlight. I smell the sweet aroma of the blooming red bushes on the wayside (bougainvilleas?). I feel the heat rising from the sand, the warmth of the sun on my face. I hear the distant screeching of the gulls. I see the blue sky, the withered hills, the palm trees and grasses.
This is the way a day has to be.
The feeling of the cool sand under my bare feet. I stand still for a moment, enjoying the gentle touch, but only to the point where the shadow gives way to the bright morning light. From one moment to the next the sand is charged with heat, startled I jump to the side until I find my flip flops and breathe a sigh of relief.
Now there is the feeling that I was looking forward to. There is blue sky and red sand everywhere on the way to the beach. Where you can hear the barking of the waves splashing on the shore from a distance. And flowering shrubs.
But something is different here. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's in my mind, maybe it's the interaction of the senses. You have to experience it.
The sign on the side of the path shows me the way to the countless shacks on the beach.
Valkomna! Dipl. Kock!
So nothing can go wrong.
A few minutes later I'm sitting in the shade, the sea, blue and wild at throw distance, the rippling of the waves at my ear. A cup of coffee, a pineapple juice, a banana pancake in front of me on the table.
It doesn't take more ...
I just sit there. I'm glad to be there. In the right place. That's how it is now, at this moment, on Calangute beach, feet in the sand, gazing at the sea swimming under the hazy gray sky. It looks the same as always, and yet everything is different.
Slowly silence sets in. Maybe it's the environment that slows down old thinking and speeds new thinking up. The look to the sea is less and less interrupted by the things one should do. The rational mind is silenced, others things have their say, bring buried memories to light.
While I am sitting there, not thinking, doing nothing, as a Buddha on the beach in Goa, so to speak, strange, elusive scenes of earlier times emerge from the depths of memory.
A tenth of a second or less. And for a tiny moment something familiar appears, a warm feeling of recognition. But it cannot be captured. It disappears the moment you want to grasp it. It can be a melody, a face, a smell, a picture, and for a snippet of time everything is there that made up the moment.
A bike on a narrow path. The feeling of infinite freedom. As it was then. A long time ago. A face. As in a dream. A face in seconds. Then it's gone. And I don't even know who it could have been.
Wonderful and sad at the same time, because you have the feeling that you are cheating on something important.
I wonder what to do. Do I stay here until darkness falls? Actually, I don't need anything at all. Just sit and marvel. About the world that looks so wonderful from this perspective. Is that what you're looking for when you leave? Or am I still in the same place, at home, and the world revolves around me? Maybe everything is just a vision. The pretence of false facts. Maybe we live in the Matrix. Everything is just imagination.
And then the reality is back
And while I'm still lost in strange thoughts, reality catches up with me again. No matrix. No imagination. No vision.
This is also a reality. It is less beautiful than the blue sea and the sound of the waves.
There's this old woman with the baby in her arm. Undeterminable age, maybe 60, maybe only 40. A tiny, shriveled woman, tender in build, with begging clear eyes. As always in these moments of shame, I put a 10 rupee note into her hand and avoid her gaze.
That too is part of this day.
And of our world ...
P.S. Matching Song: Baggersee - Der moderne Mann
Here to follow the trip ...
