On the way to the main road we saw one farmer who was using a slingshot to ward off the pigeons. The more ingenuous of the human scarecrows, I thought. There were at least fifteen of them in the fields today. Men and women of all ages. Cooing. Yelping. Banging on pots and pans. Sometimes running. Sometimes gesturing wildly in an endless shooing motion. And forever shouting 'Hey!' at the top of their lungs. All to keep these birds from eating their seeds. It seemed like such a futile existence. But then it's not as if I had any better ideas, at least not in the moment. So I bobbed my umbrella up and down and shouted at the closest birds I could find. The farmer wiggled his head approvingly as we passed him by. "Enjoy the rain," he shouted to our backs. The emphasis on 'rain' made it so that I wasn't sure if he was asking a question or wishing us good luck.
It was drizzling now and there was no breeze whatsoever. The sun was poking through the clouds, which made it feel even hotter and made holding an umbrella all the more ridiculous. Every taxi and rickshaw that passed us by was taken. I could have sworn the transportation here was on a continuous three-car loop. The words 'waste of time' hung in the humid air. The bus finally showed up and all frustration was forgiven. It wasn't so crowded for a Sunday and the music coming from the one lonely speaker reminded me of the antipasto plate during Italian weddings. I was told it was Goan. The bus sputtered and jerked along. We reached the Mapusa terminal, got off, took no more than fifteen steps and walked straight into the second bus, which was headed for the clinic. This one was packed tight. And the stalky conductor with the glass eye kept packing us in without mercy. At least he was fair in his craft, pushing longer-distance travellers to the very back and forcing two men in the first seat to squeeze in so as to allow one larger girl to stand where their feet should have been. It started raining heavily. Still I wondered if we were really better off inside this vehicle. Everyone was wet and it smelled like the bus had been idling for a month. It was worse than anything I had experienced in any Bombay train. I considered the likelihood of blacking out and decided it was fairly low. Only once the man in the florescent green polo was satisfied no more humans were available for packing did he whistle at the driver to get moving. It was a long seven-minute ride. Puji buried her nose in my armpit and I pressed mine against my forearm. When we reached the clinic he funnelled us out and then smiled at me, his head between the two doors, as the bus took off. He too was forgiven.
The rain never smelled so fresh. It made me think the air pollution in Goa couldn't be that bad. We walked up to the outdoor medicine counter. They were out of the rabies medication I had been prescribed. Again. At the entrance one elderly woman warned us against leaving our sandals unattended. Hers had been stolen and she'd have to walk home barefoot. The doctor who double-checked my prescription told me not to worry. The sudden switch was harmless and in brand-name only. She seemed far more preoccupied with figuring out how many shots I had already received and didn't seem convinced until she did her own math. Three, just like I had told her. It had worked out that all five shots would be on Sunday, which was ultra inconvenient given that everything else was closed on Sunday. I asked if we could make the last two a day earlier or later. No, she answered flatly with a smile, understanding exactly where I was coming from. "You shouldn't take Indian doctors and medicine SO lightly."
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