This was a good decision. Another long train journey. More re-hydrating powders and snoozing, reading and recuperation.
It is funny how things work out. Things seem to be so random. There doesn't seem to be any reason for things working out the way they do.
One of the subjects I took as part of my university studies was "Sociology of Law". It was a bit of a soft option. It was all a bit woolly and I never really grasped what the point of the course was. It was very difficult to revise for the exam at the end of the second year because I couldn't really say for sure what the course was about. I don't know how I passed. Anyway, the point is that something came to mind that I think I learned about in that course that might be of relevance here. For some reason the phrase "intersecting teleologies' popped into my head.
I had not planned to be on the train to Goa. The only reason that I was was because the illness that had begun in Pushkar had laid me so low that the plan to visit Mumbai had had to be abandoned. I found myself sitting next to, or possibly opposite, a European girl with whom I struck up a conversation. Her name was Jeannette. She was a German from Berlin who was on her way to a rented house in a village near Calangute in Goa. She invited me to stay at her house.
So what were the chances of that happening? You could get into a pretty heavy philosophical discussion trying to understand how these things happen and it's not a discussion that would be helped by smoking any dope. To tell the truth I can't remember very much at all about teleology. My recollection is limited to a vague idea that some things happen for some causes and other things happen by reason of other causes and each of these have their own teleology. From time to time there is an intersection of teleologies bringing about different events.
I'm not sure about this at all. I have been off to research it and it hasn't helped much. It would be nice to put it into a nutshell but you can't. Wikipedia (which may not be the soundest reference work) has quite a bit about it. It says: "A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists."
I am tempted to say "whatever", who cares? What is true is that for a lot of random reasons I was on this train and for a whole lot of totally unconnected reasons Jeannette was sitting opposite. It was a simple coincidence but a lucky one, I think. Synchronicity has something to do with teleology.
We alighted the train at Madgaon and took a taxi to Arpora and Jeannette's amazing house which was in a Portuguese style. The rooms were enormous.
We are now nearly where this blog began. We had arrived in the morning and after dropping our bags Jeannette and I went next door to Ute's house. This was Ute Schutz mentioned in my first post. She was super cool and super good looking. What's more her house was even nicer than Jeannette's. Ute gave us breakfast after which we returned next door to clean up.
The bathroom had no running water. It had a well and you pulled up a bucket of fresh water from the well and then just tipped it over yourself. This is, I believe, called a "mandi" because "mandi" means to bathe. It is something that takes time to get used to doing but after a while it seems like the most natural thing in the world and now whenever I am somewhere hot a mandi is something I look forward to.
Arriving in Goa was turning point on my trip. This was a holiday. The weather was lovely and warm and we were by the sea. There seemed to quite a community of cool cats who populated this place. On returning to Ute's kitchen next door there was a Canadian guy there. Spliffs were being rolled up and I could tell that I had arrived in some kind of paradise. Plans were being made for the evening and before too long we were off out for something to eat.
I was ready to eat something. I couldn't really remember eating anything substantial since the blow out that made me ill nearly a week before. I must have eaten something but if I had it was probably the usual yellow dal, aloo ghobi and rice with chapatis that can be advance ordered when on the trains. This evening I had stuffed crab at "Electric Cats" on the Baga Road a restaurant featured in the LP guide but also actually frequented by these "locals". After eating we went to Tito's which was a happening sort of beach bar.
I was riding pillion on a motorcycle being ridden by the Canadian guy whose name escapes me. Everyone was smoking chars and it was the most chilled atmosphere you could imagine.
It had been a long day and eventually it was decided we should go home. It was already "home". Before we got back on the motorcycle the Canadian guy warned me that if a policeman should try to stop us there was no way he was going to stop. It seemed that although hash was in plentiful supply and everyone seemed to be smoking it, it was just as illegal here as anywhere else and the cops hung out on the roads to stop tourists and make as if to bust them. Of course the "bust" could be negotiable. It depended on how much money you had.
The Canadian knew what he was talking about because as we sped back to the house, sure enough, there was a policeman with a lathi standing on a corner waiting to try to stop us. It would have been disastrous to be stopped and busted. Just as he promised the Canadian didn't even slow down. The cop was standing at a junction where we had to turn right. The cop brandished his lathi at us but we swerved around him and sped off. It was a scary moment. The lathi could have snagged the front wheel, we could have come off the bike. It didn't, we didn't. We got home unscathed.
So ended my first day in Goa. I had a giant double bed and hung my mosquito net over it and crashed.
