'And he growed and growed and growed'

     After nearly two months of half trying, I finally got my ivy creepers.

     I found them at some nursery we had discovered Sunday on the unintended ride back from a desolate Morjim Beach, via the crowded Mapusa. It's not like we knew every nursery in town. But then with the scooter our tiny neighbourhood only got tinier as we pushed out further and further from its epicentre. It seemed to defy the laws of physics. With every passing day, our own little universe seemed to be both expanding and contracting at the same time. 

     I've had more than enough time to digest the feeling of being back home. Back in Goa, my home away from home. The night Chandrakant came to collect me at the airport following one frustrating plane delay after another, I felt my chest loosen up as his rickshaw rumbled and snarled through the deserted streets of Saligao. Rajasthan and all its tourist-savvy foot soldiers were already fading into a comfortable distance, where they could be scrutinized, laughed at, accepted and bundled into entertaining stories for friends and family at my own leisure. Goodbye self-righteous Brahman priests and your pay-as-you-go Hinduism. Goodbye clever street musicians who insisted they were interested in nothing more than good conversation but then clawed and scratched for everything but. And goodbye clueless hordes of Indian clothes-wearing foreigners. Everyone so desperate to find their trinkets, spirituality and good times in this colourful jungle. Scrawling their two-day old impressions in daily planners for tourist handlers to use as testimonials for the next batch. You could all go on feeding on each other without me. I was done having to figure anyone out. And getting figured out, for that matter. 

     There was none of this nonsense at home. Whatever personal discoveries Puji and I made we made together. Whatever prayers we offered we offered privately, free of hassle. And it didn't cost anything more than the price of the stick of incense. You didn't have to smudge Vermillion on your forehead or wear any bracelet to prove your spiritual papers were in order. There were no special chants and no clever hymns. Whatever insight and wisdom we gained from each other was always on the house. Maybe this was not the grand adventure everyone would be expecting me to be having. It didn't always make for the flashiest story or the most dazzling pictures. But it's exactly what felt right in the moment. For me, there was nothing more spiritual.  

     And so I sat in my little balcony garden this morning and planted those ivy creepers. I let my brain go blank. I dug with my hands and carefully dropped in several shoots that had been abandoned to root for way too long. I sipped the rest of my coffee. I watered all the plants, rinsed my hands and then rinsed the entire terrace clean. Finally, I would be able to watch the vines grow. Especially now that the sun was starting to shine. The clouds were still there in the background. But even they were slowly receding.