The Grand Bargain

     I finally reached Arambol. The last bastion of the global hippie movement. The place where peace and love finally came to die.

     The tiny tourist village leading up to the beach was a cramped maze of blue-tarped shops that had yet to open for the season. Better that way. I parked on a small sand embankment next to only four other scooters. I removed my helmet and earphones before a single row of foreigners stretched out along the 21 Coconuts beachfront shack. I became self-conscious and ruffled my helmet hair. Except everyone was too busy staring into their phones to even notice. The blonde next to where I sat absently picked at a cucumber salad with eyes that never left her MacBook Air. I asked the waiter for the wireless password. It was nothing more than the name of the place. Except with no 's' at the end of it, clarified one Australian with longish hair and a small sling wrapped around his right forearm. Maybe it was his way of striking up a conversation. Maybe he had been expecting me to ask him where he was from, how long he had been here and where else he had travelled. The 'committed traveller vibe' Lonely Planet spoke so fondly of. I asked no such questions. There'd be plenty of jewellery sellers from Karnataka to keep him answering. In the meantime, a couple sitting at the table to his left picked up the conversational slack.

     I ordered a watermelon juice and two aloo parathas. Proudly. The curd was the waiter's suggestion - a compromise for his establishment's lack of coriander chutney. It would be extra. I accepted the charges and got back to reading. Quietly, Arundhati Roy had become the other Bengali teacher in my life. Never-ending lessons into the subtle complexities of Indian culture 101. Through her words I was stealing greedy glances into what was often bubbling beneath the surface. It sure beat travel talk. My breakfast arrived late and I ate until I could eat no more. The waiter had overestimated my appetite. There would be more leftovers for the dogs hanging out underneath the tables. I kept reading. 

     The beach was pretty much deserted except for the standard pack of Indian men horsing around in knee-deep waves to my far left. The lifeguards would soon drive over, turn on the loudspeaker and tell the tourists to cut it out in severe Hindi. And the Indians would emerge with heads hung low, like overgrown children. A brunette in a black bikini, meanwhile, dove through the waves to my more immediate right. The lifeguards said nothing. So I did the same. The sun was blazing. I managed maybe an hour in it and then ducked into the next shack over for a mango juice. The host who ushered me in was a youngish Nepali from a small town in West Bengal. He worked in Goa for maybe seven months of the year, migrating South with the trekking tourists around the Himalayas once the Monsoon was done. He'd go home when the tourists went home. He preferred tourists to Indians any day of the week - and maybe twice on Sundays. We spoke about the former North-Indian boss of his who drank his own heart under the table; about how things could go very wrong for an outsider looking for work in Bombay; and how he'd been dreaming of visiting Jaisalmer since watching some Bollywood flick whose name escapes me; and about the one huge Banyan tree just beyond the sweet lake behind Arambol's scenic cliff to our right, where one determined (and broke) Russian tourist slept every night despite all the mosquitos. Only the jewellery sellers from Karnataka interrupted the conversation now and again, persistent and unable to help themselves. Their daughters asked for cold Pepsis and then accused you of playing favourites if you obliged one. The restaurant manager shooed them away, the way you would stray dogs.
     I followed some cool music down the beach and set up shop next to a pair of girls so that I wouldn't have to worry about my things. We could take turns playing watchmen while the others swam. The redhead was reading aloud to the blonde, who was doing her best to pretend she was sleeping. They both looked like they had been in the sun way too long. Another jewelry seller from Karnataka had tracked me down. Sunita gave me the usual spiel about needing a little of my luck. There had been no sales for the last three days. She and her four daughters had pre-empted the tourist season. Except only the cops were around these days. They often confiscated their goods and refused to grant them licenses for any amount of money. Much easier to pocket funds from outsiders. I could relate.
     She thought I looked a little too brown to be Canadian. I told her that maybe India was starting to rub off on me. She laughed and showed me what she had. A silver ashtray with a folding lid caught my eye. It was already starting to bronze in certain places. She asked me to name my price. I asked her to name hers instead. She asked for 650 rupees. I repeated the amount like it was the craziest thing I had ever heard. I shook my head and told her she was in way over her head. My Italian mother had laid the foundation and India had taught me the pleasures of running a hard bargain. She laughed. I laughed as well. She asked me how much I had paid for the elephant bed sheet I was now using as my towel. I told her. She didn't believe me. She asked for my best price again. When I told her 100 she kept on laughing, although with more concern now. She started talking about profit margins and asked for a fresh start. One more price for each of us, she demanded. I told her I didn't need this ashtray. I took her hand and told her she'd have much better luck with any of the tourists who had just gotten here. We haggled and laughed some more. She asked me my final price and I told her I'd give her 150 but only because I had really enjoyed the company. I ended up giving her 180 because none of us had the proper change.
     She thanked me and I wished her good luck. I wished her a good season full of sucker tourists from the bottom of my heart. And I wished that no cop would ever bother Sunita or her four children again.

Popular mechanics.

     The last place I ever thought I'd be visiting regularly in Goa was a bike repair shop. But what can I say? Hazrat had a way with people - probably one of the most charming mechanics I ever had the pleasure of standing around uselessly next to. 

     At one point, the boy with the forever-shrugging shoulders (a relative, perhaps) suggested I sit down on the stool. Fair enough. The open-air garage was quite cramped as it was without having me, the useless white guy, poking around and pretending to know even the first thing about motorbikes. Hazrat nodded his head in agreement. "Yes, sit. Please." So I sat. There were some low-hanging clouds shuffling in anyhow and I was not interested in getting wet. My mechanic didn't seem to mind the drizzle. He continued to unscrew the panel from the front of my 2005 Honda Activa. He nodded, like a doctor might, when I told him how the headlight had been pointing more at the sky than at the road;  which, when combined with the non-existent hi-beams, made driving at night particularly treacherous. He made some joke then about shining unnecessary lights at the coconut trees and then laughed at himself. He was done in no time. Nothing but a faulty lightbulb. 

     I asked him if he had any Vespas for sale. Italian Vespas.

     Italian Vespas? He was smiling more broadly now. They had such bikes in England? I let it slide and reminded him I was from Canada. I explained that there were Italian Vespas in Montreal but that scooters were generally more rare because of the winter. We had already discussed the weather conditions back home the first time we met. That was the night it had rained massively. The night I had met everyone at Goa Streets. The night I finally got my scooter.

     Hazrat had been the only guy willing to take a chance on me. With no international license and without any prior driving experience. It had meant a lot to me. Things had fallen into place since then. I had written my first news story in maybe ten years. And now I was mobile.

     So I didn't mind it too much when Hazrat told me I'd have to come back again tomorrow morning at ten sharp so he could go down to the local permit office and get me my pollution certificate. 

Different world, same problems

Dear Customer,

Thank you for using My Services on http://myservices.relianceada.com/.

We would like to inform you that your payment of Rs.1,099 on 18/07/2013 11:56:25 is Failed (or) Cancelled.

Please try after Sometime.

Thank you for choosing Reliance, India's No.1 Network.

Regards,

Customer Care
Reliance Communications

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Yes, I know. I tried at least ten times to pay online. I had to end up traveling to Mapusa to recharge my data card in person.

Why don't you guys try figuring out why your online payment system is so unreliable to begin with? After all, your company is called RELIANCE, right? And when you figure it out, please let your staff know. They seem to be as useless as this email.

Thanks for wasting my time.

Rob

It's me against you, rain

     I wish I had wrote this yesterday.
     I'm back to feeling guilty about not writing every day - even if I have only been writing every day for a whole three days now. I know. (What the fuck does anything have to do with Vietnam?) It really shouldn't feel like the end of the world. Probably not worth the word count. Except I told myself I would write no matter what. Even if nothing happened, something always happened. 
     And plenty happened. I might look back on the day I was sitting in the quiet darkness of the Goa Streets office. The small backup generator at the newsroom's entrance was powering something other than the lights. I retreated to my iPhone notes, writing words that would likely never see the light of day. Words that might never make it to their intended recipient. I finished before the murmur of conversation stopped. A door opened and good news followed Puji out of the darkness. Even though I could barely make out her face, I was looking at the weekly's new managing editor. Not a bad deal for a girl with no prior print experience. I was very happy for her. This was exactly what she needed. But then my own fears came out to play. Now I would have more hours, days and months to fill than previously calculated. Would those hours get filled with music? With writing and for whom? With driving around aimlessly through the Monsoon countryside on a scooter I had yet to buy? Or something else; something I hadn't figured out just yet?
     On the walk back home a light drizzle fell with hopeless abandon. It rained over the visit to the vegetable stand, the roadside chilli burgers and the celebratory bottle of Rose that spent the better part of the night in the freezer, unopened.

a newsroom for two, please

     I had woken up with a strong urge to read the Atlantic. It had been too long. I wanted back in that loop. I was immediately inspired by Dispatch #2 from Paris, which Ta-Nehisi Coates delivered in a style not unlike my own. Maybe I could write something similar from here. I already was. I had been updating my journal religiously for two months now. Why not publish snippets of it here and, maybe somewhere down the line, there. I ran the idea past Puji and she agreed. She reminded me to contact Harpers as well - the long shot of all long shots - and I promised I would. Something had clicked in my head that morning. I was tired of being a nobody writer. I wanted to have people cling onto my every word. I wanted to go back to Montreal a different person.
     Who wouldn't, right?
     And in a funny way, hanging out with Puji all day, listening to her track down sources and introduce herself repeatedly on the phone, reminded me of my own freelancing days. This was her first assignment for a local paper ever. I hadn't thought seriously about publishing anything for the last seven years. Now, suddenly, it felt like we were running our own little newsroom, working on very different stories with very, very different deadlines. I wrote quietly and she worked loudly. Every five minutes she had another question or something she wanted to run by me. A constant menace to my concentration, she was. I was the kind of person who preferred working uninterrupted. Puji had her own way. Habits from the CNBC newsroom, I assumed. And it wasn't just the way she worked. It was the way she was. Often, when it got too quiet, she would call out Robbie, repeatedly, until I answered. I'd let my name hang out there for a little while. Just to bust her balls back. And when I'd ask her what was up, she'd simply look at me and smile.
     So I was simultaneously immersed in both her story and mine. She asked me what questions to ask so-and-so local official and what I thought about a particular story angle or sentence structure. She would get off the phone with a chest specialist and fill me in. When the school headmistress in Sonsoddo didn't return her call, she let me know. When the CEO of Fomento Green, some mineral resource company operating in one of the more hazardous corners of Goa, got angry with her for making 'false and baseless allegations' and then proceeded to ask her if there were domestic issues at home that might be responsible for such unacceptable questioning, from a woman no less, she let me know. And when she later discovered that this same man was himself a former environmentalist and the cousin of the very same doctor who had levied said baseless allegations, she let me know as well. I probably could have written the story myself but I played the role of editor instead. I was learning enough just watching her work. She was very good with people. She listened attentively and asked poignant questions. She would always repeat whatever the person had just said when jotting down a quote. She researched tirelessly and wanted to pursue every possible angle. She was a natural reporter.
     And even if it was the writing part that she dreaded most - the part I dreaded least - I knew that it too would come more naturally with time. So while she spent the better part of the day researching, I spent it writing and rewriting. And dreaming of better stories to come.

These scarecrows are real lifelike

     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."