Tamse, you little bugger

My heart pines for Goa. Not in the uber-emo way I whined about hating engineering in the last post (any military dirge jokes will be met with the contempt they deserve), but in more of a there's-no-place-like-home sort of way. And unlike a certain homesick Konkani civil engineer in English, August, I'm not reacting through horrible paintings of boatmen in Vietnamese hats. But I do miss Goa. Even the humidity and the rude bus conductors. Come to think of it, I probably would give my appendix to be pushed to the back of a tiny Goa bus with 45 others, while laughing at the sign saying '11 Standing'. Then again, I'd probably give my appendix for the chicken rolls at the shop behind the Indian Coffee House in Jamnipalli (Tara has promised to treat me to one for carrying her bag today, so I think that the vermiform one is safe for a few days yet). It is an organ I don't put too much of a price on.

I've always looked at myself as intrepid. I pride myself on being able to live anywhere, with anybody. I am a Bengali (a rather proud one at that) who grew up in Chandigarh, with parents who took me to most of the states in the country. I often styled myself in the image of the rootless outsider, with no real native place. Of course, I wasn't an Army kid with a father who got transferred every month. I lived in one place. But home to me wasn't Chandigarh, or Kolkata, or Kumarhatti or Timbuktu. Home was wherever my family was. It still is, but ever since I moved to Goa, it seems more often a home away from home.

There are a lot of things I love about Chandigarh. It's clean. It's organised. It's where I grew up. But it has no soul. It's lost in a sea of Jats in pimped out BMWs stalking girls with blaring rap music (the depressing part is that it works), and mega-sales and "Ooh, I want a Guchhi bag!" Culture is restricted to Shiamak Dawar dance workshops and housefulls for, well, Housefull. Again, as I said in the last post, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not me.

In Goa, I finally found what I had always been telling myself I never got: acceptance. Not just in college, but everywhere from Porvorim to Palolem (okay, I haven't been there, but the only other alliterative place I could come up with was Panaji, which restricts my geographical acceptance radius to less than 10 kilometres). Forgive the cliche, but Goa is not a state, it's a state of mind. It wasn't just acceptance; in Goa I found a place that moves at my pace. At the risk of sounding like a neurotic foreign tourist discovering myself, I fell in love with the food, the language, the music, and the people. I found heaven at Ronnie's in Cortalim, and I found Bogmalo, which is somewhere between where I want to be put out for the vultures when I die (I'm still torn between whether to use coconut chutney and beef vindaloo as stuffing) and where I'm going to open a shack with my retirement fund. I saw the stunning beauty of the Vasco-Panaji bus route in the rains, and the exhilaration of Carnaval. Ultimately, I guess, I fell in love with Goa because of all the friends that I made.

I love Goa. And I want to go back.

(I guess I knew this post was coming the moment I wrote the last one. Over the last few months, every time I think about how much I despise engineering, I remember that without it, I would never have come to Goa. And I really need to stop clicking on New Post without thinking of what to write. I must sleep now; I need to report in the Bake Oven tomorrow morning)