The Confines of Your Clique

One of the things I had noticed about the traveller’s life in India (and I don’t at all suggest that this is specific to India) is that people are both a lot less self-conscious, and lot less cliquish than in Australia. For example, if you are out in Australia, most young people are preoccupied with how they look and appearing fashionable. Furthermore, people rarely socialise outside of their own group. This true at the pubs and clubs, and it is even true at many of the beaches. However in India, few travellers are too concerned about how they appear to others, and socialising outside of the group is totally natural. To illustrate, if you go hang out Palolem Beach in Goa, there is almost zero hesitation to go up to a group of people playing Frisbee, volleyball, or whatever, and just ask to join in. I doubt any Perth locals would say the same of Cottesloe Beach. Likewise, those same Perthites could tell you that down at the Brisbane St Hotel, you’re not likely to join nor are you likely to be invited to join a group of people unknown to you. However, such an experience is far from uncommon while travelling.

The importance is perhaps not so much the location, but rather the situation. European travellers I’ve met in Perth have told me they find it a great place to make new friends, and how back home strangers are much less sociable. I think it is just that when you are travelling abroad, you have a type of social license that you don’t have in your hometown or home country. A foreign accent is great ice breaker.

Having said all that, it doesn’t mean cliques don’t operate in travelling circles; it is just that they are less rigid and serve different purposes. Travellers still hang around in certain crowds, but those attachments don’t serve to exclude others. At times while travelling, group structures can feel like they serve to compulsorily include people rather than exclude people. As I experienced numerous times in my travels, once a group structure forms, even if that group simply formed from being on the same bus or train and starting up a conversation, it can sometimes feel rather awkward to put yourself outside that group. This can be just as true for trivial issues as it is for less trivial. Where you stay, what method transport you take, and where you eat dinner all implicitly become somewhat subject to the group consensus. Departing from the consensus creates UNKNOWN risks to the integrity of the group structure. I emphasise unknown risks because back home you know your friends well, and thus not only are your groups structures more robust to individual deviations, but given you’ve known your friends for a longer time period, in most cases you will be instinctively aware of what deviations the a relationship can and cannot be tolerate. For example, sometimes through unfortunate coincidence, you are forced to decline consecutive invitations to a social arrangement from a friend. You will instinctively know how many times you can decline a social arrangement with an old friend or group of friends (even if you always have a genuine situational reason to decline) before they get pissed off and decide to cut you off for a while. I am aware all this sounds a bit reductionist or clinical, but nevertheless I think most of us operate like that at times.

In Palolem, I was now in an entrenched group. Every breakfast, every dinner, every evening was a given. Shauli, Shoham, Daniel, and I would always eat together, play cards (Yaniv) together, explore remote beaches together, and go out to bars together. Partly this was great, but there was a downside to this. Since Shauli and Shoham were a couple, and while I greatly enjoyed their company, I felt that hanging out with them so much hindered both mine and Daniel’s chances with meeting more single girls. I had been meaning to say something to Daniel about this, but I never did get around to it.

On Friday night we went to have Shabbat at the Beyt Yehudi. Every single person there except for me was Israeli – I was the lone diasporite. After Maariv, it was time to find a seat for dinner. There were a bunch of low oblong-shaped tables, with people sitting on cushions. I was looking around for suitable table (i.e. one with plenty of girls), when I heard Daniel call out “Hey Aantoni, we’re over here!”
Daniel, Shauli, and Shoham were seated, along with a few others. I had also just noticed a spare seat at a section of a long table that was composed entirely of girls.
“Umm, that’s ok, but I think I’m going to sit over there…” I mouthed from a distance.

And with that bold move, so began the most disappointing and in some ways distressing evening of my trip so far. These girls simply would not talk to me. Later on I would discover that at least two of these girls I was sitting with were man-hating lesbians (how I discovered this if for another time). By the way, I have nothing against lesbians, but lesbians who hate men are no better than men who are misogynistic or homophobic. Apart from not talking to me, they did not talk to each other all that much. They were not only rude, but they were also boring.

The only interesting thing to happen was that on one on occasion I seemed to draw their utter contempt for the most curious reason. Let me explain. The Yiddish that I know comes not from learning the language formally in school, but simply from exposure. As a result, I sometimes am not sure whether a Yiddish word I know has a Hebrew root or a Germanic root. Under normal circumstances, there is often no need to know this. However, I have discovered that most young Israeli travellers (and I’m only talking about the Ashkenazim here, I’m not even counting the Mizrahim/Sephardim) do not recognise a single word of Yiddish unless it comes from the Hebrew root – and even then, if you do use a Yiddish word with a Hebrew root, they will more often than not simply assume that you mispronounced the corresponding Hebrew word. Anyway, there was a dish of cooked carrot slices on the table, and I politely asked for them to pass them to me. I used the Yiddish word for this dish (tsimmes), failing to realise that it was not a word in the Hebrew vernacular. Upon uttering this request, they looked at me in a way that clearly indicated that they did not understand what I asked for.
“You want what?” someone asked.
So I just pointed with an open hand at the dish of tsimmes saying “Bevakesha.” Someone passed the dish of carrot slices, but the girls asked, in a strangely uncalled for hostile manner
“What did you say? What word was that?”
It might seem to you that they were just being curious, even friendly, engaging in conversation and showing interest. Well, I promise you, their tone was anything but friendly. I know it made no sense for them to be hostile, but that’s what makes this worth writing about.
“Sorry, I used a Yiddish word – Tsimmes – I didn’t realise it wasn’t the same word in Hebrew. What do you call this in Hebrew again? I’ve forgotten.”
They didn’t answer my question, but rather mumbled some disdainful comments to each other like “Yiddish!” And while they may not have said, they also exuded the following derisive sentiment about me: Galuti! Above all, they acted as if I was the weirdest geek they hadever met; as if I were someone who had just told them that my favourite hobby is translating Danish trigonometry textbooks into Finnish. Looking back, it’s little more than like a punch line of a not very funny joke, but at the time it was the most disconcerting experience I had endured since those giggling drunks I passed in the alley while walking to the hotel on my first night in India. In a way, it was worse than that, as then I was just a bit spooked out with the intial culture shock of India. But here there were no mitigating factors. Here at the Shabbos table, this was the last place or situation where I had expected to feel so uncomfortable. If truth be told, it was beyond uncomfortable. Their rudeness was, to use a word I hardly ever use, hurtful!

About the time dessert was being served, I abandoned my table and went over to sit next to Daniel at his table.
“Well, that was a failed experiment” I remarked. “They were the rudest and most boring people I have ever sat with. They didn’t talk to me at all.”
“May be they’re just shy.”
“No, trust me, it’s not about shyness; they’re just rude!”

Walking back from the Beyt Yehudi to the room, I told Daniel in more detail about what had happened, and asked him how common he thought these attitudes were among Israelis. However, he downplayed the whole thing, and I’m not sure he really understood what I had told him, saying that I had probably just misconstrued the whole incident. Either way, he was fairly indifferent and uninterested by the issue, giving it little more than a 15 second reply before moving on to an unrelated topic, like asking me my opinion of some girl who had been at his table.

Despite Daniel’s nonchalance, the lessons from this were clear. If you are in a social group and it concerns you that may be it is all getting a little too cliquish, don’t let it bother you. Also, do not try to extend yourself from the comfort zone that your clique provides you. Stay within the safe confines of your clique, and you’ll never suffer the contempt of a group of rude, boring, man-hating, galuti-hating lesbians! Stay within the confines of your clique and you to be assured that you’ll be protected from such a fate. Finally, the next time you hear any amateur social commentator such as myself making any disparaging comments concerning the existence of clique culture, you best remind ‘Joe Sociology Minor’ where we’d all be without our cliques!

The Profoundness of Silence: Memoirs of a Temporary Mute.

An interesting thing happened to me in Palolem. A combination of a throat infection, too much passive smoking (Shoham mostly – she’s practically a chain smoker), and possibly too much shouting in some boisterous games of beach volleyball and football resulted in the loss of my voice. Now, I’ll grant you that a lost voice in itself is not that interesting. I’ve lost my voice many times in my life, but this was quite different. Firstly, those other incidences were before adulthood, generally occurring mostly at the latter stage of a youth camp. Secondly, at those other times I had lost my voice, it was really just that my voice became quite weak and it was difficult to talk. However, in Palolem, I lost my voice in a totality that I cannot recall previously. Finally, and most importantly, I do not recollect learning anything interesting from those previous occasions.

Losing my voice was initially a very frustrating thing for me, for I’m not shy when it comes to giving my oral input, and it pains me to not contribute a remark or witticism when the situation calls for it. However, if I consider it from the perspectives of my friends, it probably sounds like pleasant relief from my interruption. Someone else could finally finish a sentence.

I first noticed my voice getting weaker while Daniel, Shauli, Shoham, and I (we had become something of a regular social foursome) were dining one evening. It became harder and harder to talk, but luckily we had moved from conversation to playing Yaniv, an activity that doesn’t require too much from one’s voice. I won’t go into the details of what Yaniv is, except to say that it is probably the most fun type of card game I have ever played, and there are few things cooler than giving someone an Asaf (ok, I understand that very few readers will know what the hell as Asaf is, but for the very few that do, I had to write that!). And by the way, all this is coming from someone who is not normally into card games.

As was typical, we started the game while waiting for dinner to be served (the service can be very slow, so it works as a nice distraction), After dinner was the perfect time to finish a Yaniv game, as it gives time for the food to digest a little bit before moving on. When the Yaniv was over, it was naturally time to find a pub. I indicated that I wasn’t that keen to go along, as there was no way I would be able to speak to people (i.e. girls) in a loud pub given the state my voice was in. Shoham countered that it was a good challenge to see if I could pick up a girl under those conditions. My voice was almost totally gone at this stage, and I was often resorting to writing things down on the disposable napkins that they had on the table. I took the pen we had been using to keep score during the Yaniv game, and I wrote on a bar napkin:

Hello, I’m not able to speak. However, I’m the strong silent type.

I showed it to Shoham who then recited it to the others, who were all keen to know what I had written. Shoham and Shauli were more amused than I expected. Shoham especially liked it, and she said she thought it had a good chance of working on a girl, as it was something very different, and apparently it was also wittier (to Israeli perceptions) than I had thought it was when I wrote it.

So off we went to a pub, and I was determined to use my napkin on an unsuspecting girl. However, and I promise it was not a case of chickening-out, but I simply did not see one suitable girl (i.e. single and attractive and in a remotely approachable situation) at the pub that night, which was rather unusual to say the least. I guess it was just had bad luck in pub selection that night. It was especially disappointing, as I had already decided in my mind that the napkin move was a no-lose situation. Embraced or rejected, it would have made for a very funny story. Not seeing any suitable candidates to try my mute act on, I decided that all that passive smoking in the pub wasn’t helping my throat condition, and I headed back to the room to get some sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I had expected my voice to have at least partially returned, but it hadn’t. I really could not talk at all. My voice was so bad that I made Whisper, the sidekick of the chief antagonist in the Bond film Live and Let Die sound like Frank Costanza by comparison.

Daniel and I met Shauli and Shoham for breakfast, and after I ordered through pointing at the menu and giving a nod to the waiter, I was only able to contribute to the morning conversation through writing comments on napkins. As this is a somewhat slow and cumbersome task compared to normal talking, I had to be select about my contributions. What I discovered from this was that it made everything that I did contribute seem more profound than I think it would have otherwise. For example, they were discussing relationships, and Daniel (who at around 25 was the youngest of our group, and who on an earlier occasion had revealed to us that he did not believe he had ever been truly in love with any of his previous girlfriends or any one else for that matter) was adamant that he could never stay in a relationship with a girl if he didn’t completely trust her. Up to this point, I had not made one contribution on the topic in the five minutes or so that they had been discussing it. I wrote on a napkin “Yes, but you have never really loved anyone before, so you can’t be sure. If you will be in love with someone but don’t trust them, only then can you know.”

Peculiar grammar not withstanding, I passed the napkin to Daniel. He read it to himself, and in his typical way, was not impacted greatly by it, offering up a shrug. However, Shauli and Shoham naturally wished to know what I had written, so Daniel then showed it to them, and their responses were along the lines of “Yes, that’s very true.” In retrospect, it was not simply that I was making so few contributions, although that probably was a factor, but it was what went along with each of these offerings. It was the anticipation, the waiting, them knowing a comment had been made, but not yet knowing what the content of that comment was. That was the key to the apparent profoundness to be found in a disposable napkin.

Also at that breakfast, Shauli told us about a strange and disturbing dream he had experienced overnight. It was impressive how he was able to recall such vivid detail, and he wasn’t even on Mefloquine! As he recounted the events of the dream, I took notes on a napkin. To my mind, almost all the incidents in his dream, disjointed as they so often are in dreams, seemed to involve having to protect someone of something. When he finally finished his dream story, and it was an impressively long recounting, I presented to him this napkin, feeling that I had quite possibly interpreted his dream, although I wrote at the top of the napkin the word efshar (possibly). I made a point of double underlining the word in an attempt to lessen the weight of my interpretation. Below that I had written in the second person narrative, that he had been travelling a long time now, and had been away from his home in Israel for many months. His dream reflected a feeling of either guilt or at least worry that he isn’t in Israel to protect some entity. I then drew an idea-tree suggesting three possible alternatives for what that entity might be.

-Mishpacha?

-Chaverim?

-Medinat Yisrael?*

i.e. Either his family, a friend(s), or the State of Israel? (after all, he was a fighter-pilot back home I reminded him, via my a footnote on my napkin notation). He read it, and then showed it to the others, who were eager to see what I had written. It felt like it was as if Freud himself had written it.

After we had finished eating breakfast, Shauli and Daniel had some business to attend to, having to negotiate with a motorcycle hire guy. Shoham and I stayed behind at the breakfast café, and waited for them to return. Shoham started telling me a little about her personal history. I didn’t mind at all, and it was not in anyway uncomfortable, but given that I was unable to speak, I have neither recollection nor idea of how such a ‘conversation’ developed. Shoham would talk, and in my mute phase, I would just nod. She told me about her first serious boyfriend that lasted four years. She also spoke of some uncertainties she had about her current relationship with Shauli (she was 34, and he was 27 – she was going back home soon, but he was staying for several more months). She spoke about how she felt she was living the life typical of someone more than ten years her junior, and the uncertainties she had about what was going to happen in her life once she returned to Israel. All I could do was nod along, look empathetic (which I sincerely was) and on rare occasions write a brief comment or question for her on a napkin. I guess I came across as a very good listener! It was so unusual for me, as I am normally a compulsive interrupter, but on this occasion, I was forced to be the best listener I had ever been.

One story Shoham told me was unreservedly intriguing. A female cousin of hers in Israel once went away to a summer camp, where the kids on the camp came from all around Israel. While on summer camp, her cousin became friends with another girl of the same age. The two new friends discovered their fathers had many things in common. Both of their fathers had the same first name; both of their fathers were from the same place in Latin America; neither of their fathers were Jewish; both of their fathers were the same age and had the same birthday; both of their fathers had the same physical description. As the similarities mounted, they realized that both their fathers were the same person. That’s right, a whole second-family, with each family unknown to the other. As a result, both their mother's eventually terminated their marriage to him. However, it turned out they weren’t the only families he had. There were others still. Eventually, it all came out, and all of them (at least it was assumed “all of them”) terminated their marriage with him. From their experience, the ex-wives and their families later became friends with each other, and have frequently attended each other’s simchot – such as when one of the ex-wives has gotten remarried.

***

If the perception of profoundness amongst my friends was not enough to make me fantasize about life as a mute, the added bonus of the reaction I would receive from local Indians trying to sell me things certainly was. I would walk down the street, and when the street-side merchants would try to sell me something, I would use an improvised sign language to indicate that I was not able to speak. They might at that stage think I was pretending. However, once they saw me use my improvised sign language to communicate with Daniel, they would then just assume that I was a permanent mute. From that point, their fascination with encountering a mute would make them forget about their focus on trying to sell me something. In turn, I enjoyed their reaction immensely. In fact, I was enjoying being a mute so much now, that I was not at all missing having a voice, and was even a little bit disappointed when it returned, as it marked the end of this most novel and interesting experience. Perhaps in the future I could on occasions go around the place pretending to be a mute. Or is that like when Cosmo Kramer started wearing an eye patch because he thought it looked cool. I can hear George Costanza now “What? That’s like me getting a wheel chair to just cruise around in!” Thus I think I better give that idea a miss.

Not Everyone Loves Chanukah.

It was Wednesday night in Palolem, the sixth night of Chanukah. My new roommate Daniel and I went to the Beyt Yehudi for the candle lighting. After staying for a little while to enjoy the singing and jam session, Daniel prompted us to leave.
“Leave? Why? I think they’re about to serve a meal.”
“But we want to go to this restaurant where you can order steak.”
There are not that many places in India where you can get beef, given the Hindu reverence for the cow. However, the state of Goa, being an ex-Portuguese colony, is largely Christian, and thus beef is often available at restaurants.
“I don’t eat steak– I’m a pescetarian, remember?”
“Come on, we will have steak, and you can order fish.”
I didn’t know who “we” was at this stage. To my surprise, and in what seemed like another recurring coincidence, Daniel had somehow become friends with the couple who Marios and I had seen on the train on the way to Goa, and then had also sat at a table with in the pub the night before.

Just before leaving for the restaurant, Daniel said quietly to me that he had forgotten their names, and wanted me to ask them. I in turn told him that I had also met them before, and having also forgotten their names, I didn’t feel comfortable asking them. When we got to the restaurant, I suggested, without providing much of a reason, that we all exchange email addresses. That allowed us to rediscover their names. Shauli and Shoham. They had been in India at least six months already, mostly in the North. Shoham spoke English with a slight London accent, rather than a regular Israeli accent. I asked her about this, and she explained that she had spent a few years there as a child. Shauli was moderately tall, and was quite thin, a typical characteristic of a guy who has been travelling in India for a while. He also had a thick (but not long) beard, another characteristic fitting that profile. Later on, Shauli would show us a picture of himself not long before he left Israel. He was unrecognisable. His pre-India appearance was clean-shaven, reasonably solid build, and a buzz cut on top. In Israel he had been a combat pilot in the air force, flying F-16s. Now, far removed from that, he looked like a total hippy, carrying around his flute, which he played intermittently.


Daniel, Shauli, and Shoham all had good spoken English, and when in my company, they more often than not conversed in English for my benefit, although I never requested them too. In fact, I didn’t mind when they spoke in Hebrew, as it was good practice for me, and when possible, I would make an effort to use Hebrew too. Otherwise, I was quite good at speaking English with people who speak it as a second language.

At one stage, Shauli and Shoham were discussing in Hebrew something about the beauty of the Chanukah Menorah lighting ceremony as done by the Breslover shaliach at the Beyt Yehudi. I made some unmemorable comment, and then Shauli said something surprising to me, in English..

“But you know, in a way, I don’t like Chanukah that much” he opined.
“You don’t like Chanukah? What’s not too like? There’s no fasting, the food is delicious, mmmm latkes, sufganiot, and there’s no prohibitions against anything…”
“Yes, but it is about the Maccabees…I don’t like the Maccabees.”
“Oh, I think I know where you are going with this. I’ve thought about this before, although I don’t think I’ve ever discussed it with anyone. I can see how, from a certain point of view, not mine by the way, but some people who are some kind of post-modern revisionists might twist it this way…they might frame the Maccabees as the Al Qaeda of their time. You see the Greeks, they were occupiers, but they weren’t occupiers like the Romans were. The Romans occupied through brute force - they weren’t interested in the cultures of the lands they occupied. However, the Greeks were very interested in Judaism, from an academic point of view, not a religious one. But at the same time, they were trying to get the Jewish people to fuse their own culture with Greek culture. Thus the Greek occupation was as much intellectual and cultural as it was physical. And this was not always forced, but many Jews at the time embraced the Greek culture, which they saw as more modern and liberated – Greek culture and thinking was the most ‘modern’ of its time. The Maccabees took a stand against this cultural fusion or assimilation, “Ah, they were sort of anti-globalisation?”
Shauli commented
“Yes, in a way, they could have been seen as an early version of it” I continued, “And they didn’t just fight the Greeks, but also other Jews they saw as cultural collaborators….And while I don’t believe they were terrorists, I can imagine some revisionist moral relativists framing it that way.”
“That’s very interesting, but this isn’t why I don’t like the Maccabees” Shauli stated.
“Then what is it you don’t like?”
“In Israel, I support Hapoel. I hate Maccabi. They are our rivals” he laughed. In Israel, the most dominant sporting association is Maccabi, which is named after the Maccabees. Hapoel (which translates as ‘the worker’) is the next most dominanat. Both organization have professional teams in various sports in a number of cities throughout Israel.
“Do you support Hapoel in football or basketball?”
“Both…. You name it, if they are playing it, I support it. In any sport, I support Hapoel, and hate Maccabi”
“Ok, that’s the strangest reason I’ve ever heard for not liking something.”
“Yes, I know,” conceded Shauli, who was smiling broadly.

It's a small world in Palolem

After a shower, I went back down to the beach to see the sunset, bringing along my camera, in an effort to capture it. It was still a little bit before sunset, and there were some Indian guys playing cricket on the beach. The great tidal movements leave a large area of firm sand that is perfect for beach cricket. I wanted to play with them, but I needed somewhere or someone to leave my camera with. I saw a tourist sitting down nearby. He looked about 40, wore glasses, and most importantly, was holding a baby. It seemed like a safe option. I asked him if he would be there for a while. He would be, at least until after the sunset, so I left my camera with him, and went to play some cricket. They soon let me bowl, and I immediately proved a destroyer with my yorkers and off-cutters, beating the batsman with my first couple of deliveries, and then dismissing him caught and bowled. The batsman had mistimed the shot, and skied it into the air. On taking the return catch, I threw it back up into the air in an ecstatic celebration, a la Roger Harper in the prime. While, my bowling proved a success, when it came time to bat (they had a batting order), I gave a poor showing. Maybe it was the fading light combined with my bad eyesight, maybe it was the suspect bowling action of the fast bowler, but I played and missed at the first delivery, blocked the second one, and then top edged the third one, providing an easy catch to the fieldsman at short mid-on. Regardless, it was something of a spectacle, as I was only foreigner in the game, and I raised a few curious looks from the various tourists who walking up and down the beach. I must confess to it being a source of pride for myself, being the only foreigner willing and able to play with the locals. In some ways, although to a lesser extent, it was a bit like when I was the only foreigner to have ever joined the karate dojo in Ichinomiya Japan. I played on for a bit longer, succeeding again as bowler, and failing again as a batsman. As the sunset approached I retired from playing due to the diminishing light, not to mention that if I sweated anymore I was going to have to take another shower.

I went over to the tourist with whom I left my camera. He asked me how I knew how to play cricket. I told him that I was from Australia, where it is a popular sport. He then asked me where in Australia I was from, so I told him Perth.

“Oh, I have been to Perth, maybe about five years ago. I have some friends there.”

“Really?”

“Yes, they manage a cafe.”

“Do you know where it is?”

He couldn’t remember the name of the area it was in. He mentioned the name of a woman, but it was unfamiliar, then he mentioned the name of a guy “Dror”

“I know a guy named Dror, but I don’t know anything about a café, but maybe he used to…may be Dror Snir?”

“Yes!”

“That’s unbelievable! I play futsal with him every week.”

“Futsal? What is this?”

“Five-a-side football…umm… kadur-regel katan, l’chamesh ishim… I didn’t know him when he was in the restaurant business, but anyway, he’s got some importing business now. In fact, he’s in China right now on business.”

We exchanged a few details about Dror, and confirmed for each other we both talking about the same guy. We were both quite excited at the amazing coincidence, or just at how small the world can be.

“Please tell him you met Ronny.”

“Hey, I’ll take your picture and show it to him”

“Yes, take my picture, then show it to Dror, and ask him ‘Do you know this guy?’”

“Ok, I will definitely do that.” I took my camera out of its case to take his photograph. “Hey, is this your kid?” It wasn’t, he was just baby-sitting the shaliach’s youngest kid.

After taking some pictures of the sunset, I headed over to the Beyt Yehudi to celebrate the fifth night of Chanukah. There I bumped into Daniel, an Israeli guy I had briefly met the night before at the Chanukah celebration at Beyt Chabad in Mumbai. In Mumbai, he had told me he had been born in Moldova, but his strongly Zionistic family had moved to Israel from the Soviet Union as soon as it had become possible for people to freely leave. That was around 1990-91, when he was about ten years old. He has said that in Israel he tried to always be friends with real Tsabras, and not other émigrés from the USSR; that way he didn’t grow up to speak Hebrew with a Russian accent. Apart from Hebrew and English, he also could speak Russian, and had decent conversational Spanish too, from traveling in Central America. In Mumbai, he had become heavily involved in discussion about photography with the French photojournalist (keep saying that word in a French accent), trying to learn as much as he could to improve his own photographs, and as a result, we didn’t speak much more after that.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were coming to Goa.”

“I didn’t know either, it was a last minute decision.”

“We must have been on the same train, but I didn’t see you. What carriage were you in?”

In India, especially in the high season, it is not easy to get a reserved bunk on a train unless you book in advance. Daniel told me that he had just turned up to the station, bought a general ticket, and then asked a conductor to find him a vacant bunk, paying him the difference. Does the conductor just pocket it? Possibly. Probably. We discussed our respective accommodation, and somehow resolved that from the next day we would share a room, since a double room generally costs no more than a single room. We arranged a time and place the next morning to meet for breakfast, with the idea that after breakfast we would sort out the accommodation.

“Hey, shouldn’t we synchronise our watches?” Daniel asked, just as he was about to take off for the rest of the evening.

“What are you talking about? Why do we need to do that?” I asked, totally puzzled.

“I don’t like to be kept waiting, that’s all...It’s a thing I have”

“Ok, but how much out could our watches be? Like 2 minutes? It’s not a military operation. I’ll tell you what: I’ll make sure I’m a few minutes early tomorrow morning, instead of undergoing a watch synchronization, ok?” I laughed.

“Ok, if you say you’ll be on time, that’s fine, you’ll be on time, I’ll see you tomorrow then. Have a good night.”

“You too, layla tov, see you tomorrow.”

I must mention that the Chanukah celebrations at the Beyt Yehudi in Palolem were really beautiful. After the menorah lighting, and a meal, the shaliach would hand out a whole bunch of percussion instruments to everyone, from bongo-style drums, to tambourines, to instruments I knew no name for. Some people also had flutes. It was a quite a scene and a sound as all the Israeli travelers sat around on mats and cushions, singing Chanukah songs, and jamming with their instruments. At one stage, a local Indian guy who sells drums on the beach brought his own drum along (as well as his young son) and joined the jam session. Him and the shaliach really seemed to be feeding off each other’s sound.

After hanging around at the jam session for a while, I left, walking back to my hut. On my way back, I walked passed the hut of Paul, Marios, and Ricky. Paul and Ricky were going to sleep, but Marios was hoping to go somewhere for a drink. I wasn’t quite ready to sleep either, so the two of us went to look for a suitable pub. There are several pubs along the beach, and we found one that seemed relaxed enough, named “Café del Mar.” Most of the tables had a nargileh (water-pipe) set on them, a sure sign the pub was catering to Israelis. The television screens were showing cricket, perhaps to cater for the English tourists, but more likely just for the benefit of the local staff. I ordered a White Russian, and though they didn’t quite have the exact ingredients, they managed to make the drink up with approximates. While we were waiting at the bar, I heard Marios exclaiming to someone “Hey, I remember you. You’re from the train.” I turned around, and he had bumped into the very hippy-looking Israeli couple we had seen on the train, the ones who had asked us if we minded if they smoke. They nodded at his exclamation, and somehow, just from not much more than that minimal encounter, the four of us then all took our drinks and went to sit at a table together. Still concerned about an interaction with the Mefloquine, I limited myself to one drink for the night, and then headed back. Besides, I had begun to feel a bit tired, and I didn’t want to oversleep and keep Daniel waiting the next morning, particularly after I had rebuffed the watch-synchronization process.

The next morning, I met Daniel for breakfast at a café by the beach. I managed to get there before him. The Canadian couple was there, finishing up their breakfast. I inquired as to the quality of the food, and they said it had been fine. After breakfast, Daniel taught me one of the numerous card games popular with Israeli travellers, and we then played that game with some people at a neighbouring table. It was the time to sort out the accommodation so I suggested that Daniel first see my hut, as it was quite a nice, and thus the simplest thing would be for him to just move in to there.

“As long it has two beds it should be ok.”

“Yes, it definitely has two beds in it already.”

“Good, because I like you, but not THAT much.”

“Don’t worry, by coincidence, I feel the same way” I continued the joke. “By the way, on a different note, I have several duplicate keys for my padlock, so I can give you one of them, and then we won’t have to worry about who has the key.” In India, almost all budget and mid-range places use a bolt and padlock (I never once came across a place that had an internal lock in the door). They give you the use of a padlock when they rent you the room, but smart travellers use their own.

Daniel saw my hut and it was to his satisfaction. When we exited the hut, I happened to see Sambi walking by, “Mr Everything’s Possible,” the manager who had been so cheerful in his desire to hook me up with various vices the day before.

“Hey Sambi, this is my friend Daniel, he’s going to be sharing the place with me, ok?” I said this with no expectation whatsoever that there would be an issue.

“Fine, but now it’s 600.”

“What? No, still 500. It makes no difference to you.” I said. I knew Paul, Marios, and Ricky were paying a lot less, albeit without an en suite bathroom.

He wasn’t in his cheerful mood of the day before. He seemed pissed off about something, may be nothing to do with the matter at hand.

“No, 600.”

“We’re not paying extra. Either 500, or we’ll go elsewhere” Daniel cut in.

“Fine, get lost then! Six hundred or get lost!”

It was most un-Indian of him to not negotiate, as well as very unlike his accommodating personality of the day before. On principle now, I decided I didn’t want to stay anymore. I made a mental note to avoid staying at any future places where the manager offers to hook me up with drugs and prostitutes. We went and looked around for some other places. We found another similar hut in a neighbouring complex for 400Rs, and we decided to take it. We walked back to get Daniel’s stuff from the place where he had been staying, and on the way we walked passed another accommodation option - rooms in a building, as opposed to huts. For curiosity, we enquired about the price for a double room with two beds with an en suite bathroom, and it was also only 400Rs. We looked at a ground floor room, which had it’s own little verandah section, and seemed very nice. Apart from the bathroom having more water pressure than the bathroom in the hut, the room seemed so much more secure. It even had security bars on the windows. Compare this to the situation of a straw hut that anybody could just punch a hole through the wall of. We both wanted to take the room, but I was not comfortable with the idea of reneging on the previous place we had just agreed to take ten minutes before. “Don’t worry about it, that’s no problem” assured Daniel.

“Ok, but then you can do the talking when we go back and tell him.”

When we went back to the previous hut complex that we had intended to stay in, Daniel simply said to the manager we had spoken with “I’m sorry, we can’t take this place anymore – we received an offer we couldn’t refuse.” The poor old guy just shrugged. Daniel repeated, “This is very nice, but I’m sorry, we received an offer we couldn’t refuse.” I don’t think Daniel was at all aware that he was semi-quoting from The Godfather film.

Journey to Goa

I was booked for the 10.50pm train for Goa. Having checked out of my hotel, I went down the road to the Beyt Chabad. They were to be celebrating the 4^th night of Chanukah there. Every night of Chanukah, just before the large Chanukah Menorah is lit in the ground-floor courtyard, a lot of local Indians (especially little kids) gather around behind the large gate that separates the laneway from the courtyard. I guess it is a curious spectacle to them, as these strange foreigners light their big candelabra and sing songs in an unknown language. Before too much of a crowd had gathered outside of the gate, I noticed two innocent looking boys standing there eagerly awaiting the spectacle, having got themselves a front viewing position. One of them looked about seven or eight years old, and the other one looked a few years younger. The older one appeared to be looking after the younger one, with his arm around him in a protective manner. I asked them if they were brothers, and they were. I decided to take their picture with my camera, and then I showed them their picture on the little screen on the back of my digital camera. This gave them a bit of a thrill, which was my original intention of the exercise.

After the festive meal in the courtyard, I got some information about Goa from an Israeli guy, whose name I think might have been Binyamin. “Is your train going to Panjim or Margao?” he asked me. I had no idea. I took out my ticket, and saw that is was Margao. “Does it matter?” It did. Panjim is in North Goa, and Margao is in south Goa. We each took out our copy of the Lonely Planet, my copy in English, and his in Hebrew, and examined our maps of Goa. “If your train stops in Margao” he showed me “the best place to head for is Palolem.” I asked him about places to stay in Palolem.

“When you get to Palolem, you will see on the main street, a sign pointing you toward the Jewish House.”

“The Jewish House? What’s that? Is it like Chabad?”

“Yes, it’s like Chabad, but different. They’re from a different organization, but it’s similar. Anyway, you can go there, leave your bag there, and then there are lots of places to stay close to that.”

As it was my first time to take a train in India, and the CST station in Mumbai is so massive and hectic, I decided it was best to get there close to an hour early. I took a cab from Colaba to the train station. When I got in the cab, I said to the driver “CST station. 15 Rupees, ok?” He nodded and said ok. Unfortunately, I didn’t have exact change. When we arrived, I gave him a 50Rs note, and waited for my 35Rs change. He tried to pretend that the fare was 50Rs instead of 15Rs. We had a heated argument, and I initially refused to get out of his cab until he gave me change. Eventually he gave me 10Rs change. It was a stalemate, and I decided that given the discrepancy was now not even one Australian dollar, I would just ‘learn from the experience.’ I got out his cab, making a mental note to myself to have exact change next time. A porter in his 20s approached me. He was with a more senior man, perhaps his boss or supervisor. He tried to negotiate a fee for carrying my bags for me. He wanted 50 Rs. I knew it was way too much. The more senior man tried convincing me it was reasonable fare, as the train was along walk from where we were, on the other side of the station. I was happy to carry my own bags, but the problem was I had no idea where my train was, I had no experience with the Indian railway system, and the chaos and size of CST station in Mumbai result in it not being the easiest place to navigate through. I therefore reluctantly agreed. He picked up my large backpack and carried it on top of his shoulder. He would have carried my smaller bag too, but I insisted on holding onto that one myself. I think we had walked for less than 30 seconds before we came across these industrial looking trolleys, the kind you might move a stack of crates around within a warehouse. He put my bag onto this trolley. “What’s this? I thought you were going to have to carry my heavy pack kept the whole way. If I had known you were just going to have to push a trolley….” He just smiled, and we kept walking. It did prove to be a very long walk, and if he hadn’t had the trolley, it probably would have been worth the 50Rs. When we finally got to my train, he found my specific carriage for me. It was still quite early, and he decided to sit with me on the platform, just outside the carriage, as if it was part of the service to baby-sit me until boarding time. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted. We sat down together, and he asked me how old I was and whether I was married. I answered these questions, and then returned the questions back at him. He was 25, and wasn’t married, but would be getting married next year. “Oh, you have a fiancee?” He didn’t have one, but his parents would be arranging his marriage the following year to a girl he doesn’t know. After five or ten minutes, he told me he had to go. I paid him the 50Rs. He then, almost in an embarrassed fashion, informed me that there was another 10Rs to be paid as a “trolley charge.”

“Trolley charge?” I laughed “The trolley only made it easier for you! Hey, I really don’t mind that you ripped me off once, but you don’t think I’m going to get suckered twice in a row, do you? 50 rupees was pretty good fee for you.” He nodded and smiled, as if to acknowledge that he had been a bit ambitious asking for the dubious ‘trolley charge’.

I boarded the train, and found my bunk. There are many different classes of carriage in India. I was in “sleeper class.” Sleeper class means that it is open-air (not having A/C, which wasn’t needed this time of year anyway) with a pair of three tier bunks in each subsection of the carriage, with each bunk reserved for a specific passenger. Fortunately for me, in my subsection were three guys from Europe traveling together, who were also going to Goa. They introduced themselves to me. There was Paul and Marios from England, and Ricky from Holland. The passengers for the other two bunks were to be boarding at later station. Marios, a very laid back individual, noticed the vinyl upholstery on his bunk didn’t look that clean, and was futilely trying to wipe his bunk clean with a paper napkin. I had a large tube of anti-bacterial wet-tissues, and offered it to him and the others to take a few tissues each if they wanted to wipe down their bunks. The wet-tissues were very effective and much appreciated. We all then took out our bicycle chains and diligently chained our backpacks to our bunks. We discussed the possibility of theft, and I said I thought it was unlikely, given that there were four of us, and the odds are that all four of us would not happen to be asleep at the same time. In very little time, the three of them were all asleep and I still found myself awake.

I’m not sure how those guys slept so easily. There seemed to constantly be people walking up and down the train shouting out the name of whatever food product they were selling, such as chai, coffee, sandwiches, samosas, or omelets. I was using my small bag as a pillow, and it was feeling rather uncomfortable. I think it was the small shesh-besh (backgammon) set I had that was sticking into the back of my head. Eventually I managed to get a bit of sleep.

Somewhere in the night, I had what I believe was a Larium (mefloquine) produced dream. My Larium dreams start off as normal and pleasant enough, but always seem to have a horrifying and bizarre ending. To cut a long dream story short, in the dream I had helped organize a Chanukah party that had been great until an unwelcome guest had shown up whom I recognized as a perverted exhibitionist. I tried to evict him from the party, only for some witchy-women (who were confederates of the exhibitionist) to try and stop me. They had their hands on my face, and I was feeling suffocated and also had the feeling that they were digging their finger nails into my face. I awoke at this stage, gagging for breath, and though I realized it was dream, it felt so real that I had thought it must have been inspired my physical stimuli. I looked up and down the carriage to see if some beggar was aboard and had put their hands on my face while I was asleep. I couldn’t see anyone in the carriage who didn’t appear to be sleeping, so I put it down the Larium, and tried to get back to sleep.

When the morning came, with still a couple of hours to go until the train reached our destination, we unchained our bags and collapsed the middle bunks so the bottom bunk can be used as bench for sitting. This is the usual practice. Unfortunately, being the morning, I needed to urinate, which meant having to brave the train toilet, and its stench of decomposing urine. With the daylight, Marios and I were keen to look outside the train, but found the view through our windows a bit limiting. We went to section between carriages, where there was an open door to which we could look out from. I noticed that the air was very hazy. I wondered where the pollution came from, since we weren’t in a motor vehicle infested metropolis anymore. While there, a very hippie looking couple (from appearance, they were almost certainly Israeli) came to where were standing and asked if we minded if they smoke. We gestured that we didn’t mind. Officially, smoking is not permitted on the trains, but they were intending to smoke, holding the cigarette out the open door. “Be my guest.” When I returned to our seats, Paul, as he was often doing, was rolling a joint. He offered me, but I declined. An Indian man was there with his daughter, as they had boarded during the night and taken the two other bunks. The man offered me some Indian style chips, which I accepted, but felt bad, as I had nothing to offer in return. I made another mental note to pack food on the train with me for such occasions.

The train arrived at Margao around midday, and as it turned out, Paul, Marios, and Ricky were planning to go to Palolem. As Palolem was where Benyamin had recommended going, it was all the more reason to go along to there too. Between exiting the train, and walking to the carpark in the train station, we had befriended a Canadian couple. All of us wanting to go to Palolem, we looked to get a taxi-van to take all six of us, instead of trying our luck with the public bus service. I negotiated with a guy, and got him down to 500Rs, which seemed ok given that it was less than 100Rs (AU$3) per person. Well, in fact it was 100, since when it came time to pay the driver, Ricky paid him with a 500R note, and we all gave Ricky a 100R note, without change being returned from Ricky. The van ride to Palolem lasted for about an hour, and was very bumpy. During the trip, Paul took out the joints he had been rolling and had a smoke. He offered to everyone but no one took. I said I never smoked on account of wanting to preserve my short-term memory. This led to a discussion on the adverse effects of marijuana on short-term memory, and even Paul admitted that his memory is probably terrible from smoking pot at a frequency that generally exceeded once a day, although he required Marios to remember for him how often he smoked. The Canadian girl was from Indian heritage, though not her partner (presumably her husband), and I discussed with them some of the problems I had encountered from my night out with Sarita. They didn’t offer me any real insights, however.

The taxi dropped us right at the main junction of Palolem, and amongst a sea of other advertising signs, I noticed a big sign in Hebrew, transliterated as “HaBeyt HaYehudi 100m” and with an arrow pointing the direction. It was just how Benyamin had described. Wearing a large backpack in a place like Palolem functions as billboard on your back effectively stating: “Please come and approach me and try and persuade me to take up your offer of accommodation.” After I realized this, having had a number of touts approach me, I decided to do as Benyamin recommended, and go and take my bag to the Beyt Yehudi (Jewish House), before looking any further for accommodation.

I walked about 50m down the road, and then another “HaBeyt HaYehudi” sign with an an arrow that pointed toward the direction of the beach. The Beyt Yehudi resembled a large Bedouin tent with a small housing structure attached. The tent area was covered with rugs, mats, various cushions, as well as small tables designed for people sitting on the floor. I saw a few toddlers playing there, with haircuts to indicate they had religious parents. I removed my shoes before entering. As I did this, a guy appeared who was obviously the shaliach, stating it wasn’t necessary to remove my shoes, but I did anyway. He was a fairly tall guy, and looked very much like a hippy in all manner of his dress and appearance, except that he was also wearing tzitzit and long payes in his hair. I introduced myself to him in Hebrew. Because I said I was from Australia, and much more so because my Hebrew is inflected (or that should that be ‘afflicted’) with an Australian accent, and is generally of an appalling standard, he replied to me mostly in English, although I could tell that he wasn’t such a confident speaker of English either, so I did my best to reply to him in Hebrew. He was very friendly, said I could keep my bag inside. I asked what time they would be lighting the menorah, and he told me 7pm, and that there would be songs and food afterwards. I then asked him if he was a Breslover, and he said yes. He was somewhat surprised by my question. “You know about Breslover?” Not really, I said, “Just a little bit.” I added that I saw the film Ushpizin, and he asked if I liked it. I said I thought it was very good and interesting. He nodded with satisfaction. I left my large backpack there, and set out to find a place to stay for the night.

I found the others from the taxi-van. The three guys were staying in a beach shack for 300Rs total. The shack, with no bathroom, was suitable for only two people in that it had two beds. They actually offered me to also stay in there with them also! The Canadian couple had also got themselves a beach shack in the same group. The guy running it, calling himself Sammo, approached me. I asked if he had a shack with it’s own private bathroom, and he did, for 500Rs. I took a look and it seemed very nice. It had a balcony with chairs and hammocks, and two beds inside. The bathroom didn’t have much water pressure, but at least it seemed nice and clean. I figured I would stay there for one night by myself, and then see if I can find someone to share with for the following night. Sammo asked me if I wanted anything else, like drugs, women, etc, he could arrange it. “Everything’s possible!” he emphasized. I declined, saying the only service I might require is a laundry service.

By the time I had my room, I was so hot and sweaty that I was desperate for a swim. The three musketeers were all now taking a snooze in their hammocks, so I decided to hit the beach by myself. I had a swim to cool off, and then not yet having anything to sit on, I just walked around on the sand to dry off. I saw group of Israeli guys, some playing cards, others playing shesh-besh (backgammon). I approached the guys playing shesh-besh.

“So, are you guys playing for money, or just for fun?”

“We are playing for fun, but we can play you for money if you like” they smiled

“No thanks, I’m new here, so I’m not yet looking to make enemies by taking all your money.”

“Ok, you can play the winner, for fun” they laughed. The two guys playing shesh-besh introduced themselves. They were both named Asaf. Asaf-1 had dark curly hair, and Asaf-2 had lighter and straighter hair. After a game or two of shesh-besh, it was decided to play a game of football (soccer) on the beach. The playing personnel consisted of a mixture of those Israeli guys, plus some Indian teenagers. I played on the team with the Indian teenagers. Asaf-2 played on the opposing team and was a very skillful player. After we finished playing, some of us took a swim to cool off. While in the water, Asaf-2 told me he had been selected to play with a professional club when he was 17, but then he took up smoking cigarettes, and from then his fitness was never good enough for that level. He sighed when he told me this, looking downward, with a facial expression that said he was wishing he could go back in time and not make that mistake. I didn’t say anything in reply, but I couldn’t understand how a guy could have had that talent and opportunity, and then ruined it all by taking up smoking. After the swim, I said goodbye to those guys, saying that if they turned up to the Chanukah celebration that evening, I would see them then.

.

Meeting Sarita

Having said goodbye to Aaron and Sandra, I went back to the hotel, had a shower, and a brief rest (catching up on the news on cable television). I had arranged to meet my penpal Sarita at 5pm at the corner of Henry Road and Colaba Causeway, the nearest intersection to where I was staying. I had never seen her before, so I didn’t know who I was looking out for, and like all intersections along Colaba Causeway, the sidewalks were madly congested with pedestrians, amongst other things. She had seen a small picture of me before, the one that appears automatically when you chat with somebody on MSN Messenger. She had never entered a picture into her profile, which is why I had never seen her face before. After waiting about 15 minutes on the street corner unable to find her, I returned to my hotel room to phone her mobile. As I didn’t have a phone, she had no ability to phone me. She said she was running a bit late, but her train had now arrived at Churchgate station, and she was getting a cab. After another 20 minutes or so, I went to call her again, as she should have certainly been there by now. It seemed she and the cab driver were lost. Incredible that the cab driver couldn’t find the place, considering Colaba Causeway is only the absolute main street in Colaba. I gave her more precise direction, and returned to the street corner. After another 15 minutes or so, not able to find her, I went back to my hotel room for a third time. She told me that she was there at the corner waiting for me, and was also told me that she was wearing a black skirt and a white top. I went down, and we immediately found each other. It was almost 6pm by this stage. “Sarita?” “Ant!” We both laughed a bit, and then I suggested we walk to somewhere else.

For some reason, I had unconsciously developed a mental set that I was looking out for a girl in traditional Indian dress. Sarita was smartly dressed wearing fashionable and modern western clothing - a long but figure-hugging skirt, as well as a figure-hugging top with very short sleeves. Girls dressed in such modern western ways weren’t even being considered in my mental radar as I had previously scanned the crowd awaiting her arrival. She had a slim build, about 5’7, dark skin, and facial features that at least in my mind, weren’t stereotypically Indian. Later she would tell me that her parents are from Varanasi, so I thought perhaps heer facial features were more typical of that region.

She took my hand with hers as we walked. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but she smiled, so I simply returned the smile. While walking, two guys holding hands walked passed us, a sight I had seen many times since I had been in India. I had assumed it was no more than an indicator of close friendship, but was not 100% sure. I decided it was the perfect time to find out, so I asked Sarita about this. “It just means they are friends” replied Sarita. “So, they are just like us then?” I followed up, but that was the end of the dialogue on that matter, and we both smiled as we continued walking in no specific direction.

Whenever some tout or beggar would approach us, Sarita’s personality appeared to change instantly, and she would sharply tell them to get lost. Her personality would then appear to instantly change back into the warm friendly person she was to me. Likewise, when we went to a restaurant for a drink (non-alcoholic), she appeared to speak to the waiter in a terse fashion, almost as if she was speaking down to him.

It was when we were in the restaurant that I really noticed other people were staring at us. In this part of Mumbai, foreigners are very commonplace and thus one is unlikely to be stared at. However, the sight of an Indian girl out with a foreign guy was clearly a different matter. People were not just staring out of curiosity, but also out of a disapproving attitude. As we walked back toward the hotel after the restaurant, I was no more aware of the disapproving looks such as the ones we received from a group of girls in their early twenties who walked passed. However, far from bothering Sarita, I was getting the feeling that she actually revelled in the attention, although she would never explicitly admit this to me. I think it was somewhat similar to an older man who dates a much younger woman. On one hand, his contemporaries might look on disapprovingly, but also a little jealously. It’s conceivable that the older man takes some satisfaction from the jealousy of his contemporaries. I think Sarita took satisfaction in believing others were jealous of her. If this perception of mine sounds a little conceited, it isn’t that I necessarily think that I am that special, it is just that I have a certain western appearance, which in the context, did make me special.

When we were almost back at the hotel, Sarita asked me what my room was like. I told her truthfully how I had a really nice big room the first few nights, but as I hadn’t reserved it and the hotel was close to full capacity, I had been forced to move to a small room that morning which wasn’t as nice. She expressed a desire to see what the room looked like, so I her invited her in. When we walked into the building, the guy guarding the entrance (to keep out undesirables) called something out to her in a language I didn’t understand, presumably Marathi (the primary language in Mumbai), and presumably something not very polite. Sarita replied, shouting something back in the same language. I looked back, but she motioned me to keep walking. When we got inside the room, I immediately asked her “What was all that out about?” “Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. Tell me, I want to know what was said!”

“Nothing.”

“Please, tell me!”

“He just asked how long I was going to be staying in the room, and I replied ‘not that long’.” I wasn’t convinced, and now the warnings that Almora had given me back in Perth were at the forefront of my mind. “I think I better walk you back to the main street to catch a cab.” “Ok” she resigned. We walked across to the other side of Colaba Causeway, away from the hotel, sat down at a bus stop and talked a little, but the mood was now a little strange. “Are you ok to get home by yourself? Is it safe?” “Sure, I can ride in the ladies’ carriage.” Eventually, we said goodbye, and I she took a cab to the station.

As I walked back into the hotel, this time by myself, one the door guys made some comment I didn’t understand, which I assumed to be related to earlier incident, and which I also assumed to mean something like “Have a good time?” in the sarcastic connotation. I stopped, walked right up to him, and said “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Did you say something?” He didn’t reply, but the guy with him tried to gesture that he didn’t say anything, but I continued, challenging him “No, you said something, but I didn’t hear. Why don’t you repeat it to me now while I’m listening carefully?” He was may be about to say something, but the other guy, sensing confrontation, started to try drag him away, saying “Nothing, nothing” as if he were breaking up a potential bar fight. “Oh, because I could have sworn I had heard something” I continued, “Oh, you were asking about my friend, weren’t you? She just wanted to see what the room looked like, that’s all, nothing else.” I said patronisingly.

N.B.

At this point, purely for future reference, I should point out that there are certain things in life that one would should not publicise to all and sundry, and I would not write such about such things to be published on a freely available website. Quite simply, I am above that. It would take something like a GENEROUS BOOK DEAL for me to abdicate from these high principles of mine.

Chaos bringing people together

Making friends amongst travellers in India is really easy. For a traveller who arrived here alone, such as myself, the thanks is owed to the Indian railway system. I think it is the fact that we all feel so much at the mercy of this cumbersome, confusing, congested and often unreliable system. This results in independent travellers feeling so joined together. Not that I am complaning. I understand why the railway system is like this - it is a huge country, largely poor, and it is heavily populated throughout.

As I said, the upside of the railway chaos is that it draws travellers together. I had arranged to meet my pen-pal for the first time on Sunday evening. As a result, I decided that I would try to book a ticket to Goa for the Monday night. The overnight train from Mumbai to Goa departs Mumbai at 11pm, getting to Goa about 12 hours later.

In Mumbai, there is a special queue for travellers applying for tickets on the tourist quota. My first task that Sunday morning was to find that queue (ticket window) - the central train station in Mumbai is massive! I saw two very attractive European looking girls in the station, and I approached them to ask where the tourist counter was. They were very friendly, and told me they had just found the tourist counter and bought tickets, so they related to me exactly where to go. They told me they were from Argentina (from memory), and on closer inspection, they appeared to be identical twins. Damn it, i should have asked them that - it would have kept the conversation going longer.

On finding the tourist counter, i joined the queue, which was not very long, but very slow moving. The noise levels in the station make it very difficult to communicate with the ticket officer behind the plexi-glass, and the strong Indian accent only makes it more difficult when the customers are non-Indian. It should be noted that there are many Indians who appear to speak perfectly good English from a vocabularly and grammatical perspective, but the strong accent (often far stronger than the normal Indian accent of Indians who live abroad or work in call-centres) can literally make it seem like they are speaking a different language altogether. In front of me in the queue were couple about my age. The guy (Aaron) was from Austria, and the girl (Sandra) was from Peru. They are both doing their masters in "peace studies" somewhere in Austria, and are trying to work their way down to the south where they have some project to do related to their studies. Apparently, they are to me mediating in some conflict. But for now, they have their own conflicts to deal with. Firstly, with the Indian railways system. And secondly, like myself, Aaron is suffering from a bad sore throat. They hold my spot in the line, and I go to look for throat lozenges for both Aaron and I. I also go to enquire about buses, in case we can't get on a train, which are often full. I return with both western style menthol lozenges, as well as these curious tiny black Indian pills in a green vile. Aaron tries really likes the Indian pills, vowing to buy more.

Aaron and Sandra discover that it is not enough to have money and passport - a tourist needs proof that they have acquired Indian currency legitimately. Either a receipt from a legitimate money-changer, or an ATM receipt. They have neither, but I have fortunately kept my ATM receipt, on the advice of an Israeli I had met at Chabad. They give me the cash for their tickets, and I buy tickets for all 3 of us using my ATM receipt. Unfortunately for me, they are wanting to leave that night, but I can't leave until the following night as I don't know what time Sarita and I will be finishing our evening. Nevertheless, the friendship struck up in the queue led to us going out to lunch together as well as doing some browsing in the markets. They had just arrived in Mumbai, while I was already a veteran of a few days, so I was acting as something of a guide to the Colaba area. They had flown in to Delhi, where they had a day, and then a flight to Mumbai. They told me that Delhi was far worse than Mumbai (well, at least Colaba and Churchgate area) in terms of poverty and dirtiness etc.

Not long after this conversation, we came across the body of a man lying on the sidewalk. The body was covered up except for the head and feet. There were flies all over the body, and I asked Aaron and Sandra sincerely “Do you think he’s just asleep, or is he dead?” Sandra reflexively replied “No, I don’t think so, it couldn’t be, he’s just asleep.” But Aaron and I moved in for a closer look, nodded to each other, and then Aaron looked back to Sandra, who had maintained her distance, to indicate that he did think the man was dead. No longer being our first day in India, we all pretty much took the discovery of a corpse in our stride, and moved on, without giving it too much more discussion. Context is everything. I doubt if the same thing had happened in Australia or Austria for that matter, that we could have been so casual about it as to continue on our way to find a nice place to eat lunch.

When I say goodbye to Aaron and Sandra that afternoon, it was really quite heartfelt considering the brief amount of time we had known each other. We said to eachother that hopefully we will bump into each other in Goa, but I know realistically that probably won't happen, as neither of us has even decided what part of the Goa region we are going to.