Believe it, yo.

     I'm not exactly sure what I was doing ankle deep in that soggy grass field. 

     The peacock had gone silent. He stood tall and narrow, perched elegantly on the tiniest branch of one Tim Burton-esque tree that was at least a football field's length from the back road. The zoom lens was useless from this far out. And standing halfway between me and that bird was one chocolate brown bull on one really long leash and one King Cobra horror story, still quite fresh in my mind.

     Amit urged me forward. No need to worry about snakes now that it was raining, he explained. The bull was equally harmless. I trusted the guy. But by the time I had reached the bull Amit was gone. His own bull, Mario, who'd been standing by himself in a similar field since morning, would need to be fed some dry grass. Puji would be my eyes and ears now. She glanced out worriedly from underneath her umbrella and asked if she should come along. No need, I called back. I passed the bull without incident. He looked gentle enough. I kept snapping every twenty soggy steps or so but the peacock was still too far away. I finally reached the small hill. The tree loomed overhead. I thought I should snap one last time before making my final approach. Except the peacock decided enough was enough and flew away. And that was that.

     The bull was less permissive on the way back. He started toward me as if to intercept me, the way a righteous bouncer would to some guy wearing the wrong pair of shoes. It seemed so useless, what with all the empty space. Then he charged. It was just for a second but I ran straight back toward the hill. Puji yelled in the distance. This was another animal I barely understood. I thought I might be trapped there and contemplated who amongst us would be faster in full flight. I took a second, larger detour and this time I cleared him without further incident. 

     On the way back to relative civilization we met a local man who confirmed many of our suspicions. Yes, this was a great place to photograph dancing peacocks and, yes, there were plenty of snakes slithering through those fields. Harmless, the snakes were. But then he went into what sounded like an old village tall tale about one particularly vengeful female Cobra that had come back in the middle of the night to kill the man who had killed one of her babies. She had stalked him amongst all of his sleeping family members and sunk her fangs into his arm. I didn't know reptiles to be so passionate. The unlucky man, who was African and nearly six and a half feet tall, had succumb to the poisonous venom - despite his apparent super-human strength - when a doctor at the hospital had prematurely removed the tourniquet from his arm. 

    It was the kind of story you wanted to believe. But then it was getting harder and harder to figure out exactly who and what to believe in this crazy town. 

Death from below.

     I was making coffee and very much looking forward to my last Rosetta Stone Hindi lesson for Unit 1 when I heard Amit's voice just outside the front door. He knocked and my heart sank a little. It's not that I didn't enjoy his company every now and then. I just preferred advanced warning.

     We went to sit in the hall. He looked a little more serious than usual. He broke the news very matter-of-factly. One of his very good friends had died yesterday. He had been bitten by the 'wife' of a King Cobra while working in the paddy fields, not far from the same nursery that was chronically short on ivy creepers. He died there, alone, maybe two hours later. The tourniquet wrapped around his leg suggested he had known it was a snake bite. But the fact that he had chosen to continue working (there was no one around to prove that working theory) suggested he hadn't take it seriously enough. A quick call for an ambulance and this 28-year-old would still be alive. 

     Details were sparse and Amit didn't seem too interested in getting to the bottom of things. He barely spoke as he sat on the chair cross-legged, playing drums on his ankles. The silence was uncomfortable. How to console someone I barely knew? He asked me for plain hot water. When I brought him the cup he took a sip, sighed and insisted it felt like he was drinking chai. He brought the hot cup up to his face as if to relieve a headache. I thought he was going to cry. Instead he asked me if his eyes were red. I noticed only then that his hair was uncombed. I suggested that if anything would happen to any of my good friends I'd be absolutely devastated. The words sounded empty as they left my mouth. Amit just stared blankly at the collage behind me. More silence followed. 

     Finally he asked me which three of the maybe dozens of smiling little girls I found the prettiest - to have as my own daughters, I presumed. I answered. Then which boy had the biggest eyes. Then which looked the most Nigerian and then the most Jamaican. I was even more uncomfortable with the random hypotheticals than I was sitting in silence. In my head I considered my initial reaction to the 'organized' trek into the South Goan forests in search of the great King Cobra. It had sounded interesting at the time - an adventure in a state sorely lacking in anything of the sort. Not so much anymore. 

     I asked Amit if he was okay. He wiggled his head a little and rubbed his eyes with his hands. I still wasn't sure if that meant yes or no. 

Of bull and man

     On the way to check out a scooter, Amit pointed out one particular bull in the fields whose frame he hoped his own young Mario might grow into someday. He had the protruding hump and slender stomach of a potential champion. They briefly stared at each other. Then he drove on.

     The fact that Amit shared many of the same physical attributes he looked for in a bull was not lost on me. He too was short and stout, his thick shoulders resting on a slim torso. Full power, as he liked to say. Krishna, the owner of the nineteen-eighty-something Vespa, was the exact opposite; a tall balding man with a sizeable paunch resting on an otherwise thin frame. About as threatening as a dairy cow.

     He showed us the bike and my heart sank. The original paint was faded beyond recognition. It looked like one of those retro green pastel fridges the US army furnished in model towns used for nuclear weapons-testing. The left side of the platform was almost entirely chewed up by rust. I wasn't exactly sure what spray painting was going to do for this vehicle. Amit failed to get it started and then told Krishna we'd think about it. He gave me the lowdown in the car. This bike would need a lot of work (no shit) and wasn't worth my time. The other problem was that I had no licence and no registration. He suggested I get all my papers in order first. I immediately thought of Kishor's brother-in-law and then quickly erased any notion that I might be able to fast-track my way out of this one. Goa had burned me too many times already. 

     I wanted a motorized two-wheeler as soon as humanly possible. I explained this very simple fact to Amit over Chicken Cafreal, which we had in a small shack next door to the same nursery that had yet to deliver my ivy creepers. It was a cozy little joint. Behind the counter a newspaper pinned to the wall had an ad that asked if Now was the right time to invest in a small-cap fund? He suggested I bring 'the Puja' to eat here sometime and dipped his roll into the curry. I looked at Amit. He knew exactly what I was talking about too. This is the same man (we were the same age, I always kept reminding myself) who had told me he loved nothing more than to just ride endless roads to nowhere when he needed to clear his head. The stuff Harley-Davidson commercials were made of. My ambitions were milder. I just wanted the freedom to travel on my own. And I wasn't about to go exploring South Goa on those rare days the sun decided to show its face on a bicycle. I made that much very clear. 

     Amit smiled and his childhood friend did the same, displaying a mouthful of crooked teeth. He was looking happier now. 'The Amit' did not problem solve very well on an empty stomach.