Today I woke up just as dawn was breaking.
I laid around in bed for awhile listening to the sounds of the day beginning around me; the ravens fighting the stray cats for rights to the best garbage, dogs barking, the girls sweeping the earth outside with long brooms made of palm fronds. Finally willing myself to get up I dressed quickly, went through the complicated routine of brushing my teeth and washing my face without using tap water and went out into the world. I walk barefooted down the beach in the lovely pink light of dawn to the yoga shala, passing herds of cows sleeping in the sand, always in the company of friendly stray dogs.
I taught 8am class to 15 students, most of who have now become my friends, demonstrating for 90 minutes how to correctly do sun salutations and the proper alignment of paravita trikonasana or marichiasana. Its hard work, teaching an hour and a half long yoga class twice a day. Keeping up an almost constant dialog without repeating yourself too many times, remembering to mention dristi, bandhas and breath counts, adjusting students both physically and verbally, and maintaining a pace that challenges advanced practitioners without killing the beginning students. I love the challenge, however, and am so proud of myself when after class I have people coming up to me saying it was the best class they have ever taken.
Afterwards, a group of us always go for breakfast at the Little Fatima’s General Store. It’s a tiny hole in the wall run by Agonda’s longtime matriarch Fatima, a little old woman who everyone (westerners included) respectively addresses as “Antie”. The room’s three small tables are always full and so we stand outside chatting in the sun and waiting for some of the Indian laborers to finish their puji (chickpea and lentil breakfast) and file out to wash their hands at the outdoor sink. I order the same thing ever day, water porridge and fruit salad, but I can’t resist grabbing a few hot, fresh veg samosas wrapped in pieces of newspaper to munch while we wait. This spot is the main hub for anyone who has been in Agonda for more than a few weeks. It takes that long to realize that the cramped and kind of dirty little store is really the best place for breakfast and lassis in town, and as we eat there is a constant stream of friends and familiar faces passing by. Mounted on the walls all around the room are shelves overflowing with packets of biscuits and bags of oatmeal sugar, and dry goods. While you sit there is always a little old Indian woman dressed in a sari reaching over your head to grab something off the shelf, or a boy in his brown school uniform asking you to pass him some biscuits he cant reach. Everyone shares tables and benches as there is so little room, and the conversation usually includes everyone in the restaurant. After paying R60 for my entire breakfast I wander back to my room, only a minute’s walk away, and change out of my yoga clothes.
The only real thing I have against Fatima’s is that all the coffee they serve is instant, so I order a cup from the bar at my place and sit down, chatting with the Nepalese guys who work here and have all become my friends. Its already 11, in between the breakfast and the lunch rush at Jardim a Mar, so about ten of them are all grouped around the bar, smoking, drinking coffee and reading the paper, laughing and talking in rapid Nepalese. Kumar, the head chef challenges me to a game of chess and the next hour is spent locked in a serious and bloody battle, with the rest of the guys looking on and shouting advice. Miraculously I end up forcing a draw.
A good way to spend the morning.
There were dolphins in the bay today and I lounged on the beach for a while watching them, soaking up my daily does of sun, and swimming when I got too hot. Getting to the water is sometimes an ordeal however, as the midday sun turn the sand into a bed of coals and if you walk too slow you burn the hell out of your feet. To be safe I take the 20 yards or so at a healthy trot…
By mid afternoon I am getting hungry again, and for the last two weeks have had a standing lunch date with a group of young travelers like myself at a place just down from my house. At 2 pm when I show up they are already there and we all order the same, veg thali. Thali is a serving of day fry (lentils) and three or four tiny portions of different vegetables always served with rice, a chapatti and a papadom. They all come in individual containers resting on a tin platter about a foot across, and a banana on the side for desert. You dump everything together onto the platter, mix it together with your hands and have fun eating the messy rice with your fingers and scooping the particularly soupy bits up with chapatti. I’m sitting with two American cousins, Steve and Bobby, who run a tour company in India and have been staying in Agonda for the last few months while they scout out the best places to organize trips to in Goa and make contacts with reliable taxi drivers. There is a pair Australian girls next to me who I met in my yoga class and not only work on yachts in the Caribbean and Med, but remember me from when I was bartending in SXM. John, a sweet pothead from the UK who has no plans ever to return to his homeland and Benny, a lovely young gay man on a spiritual journey around India for six months. The last person at our table is Eloise, an incredibly a beautiful young Italian woman who came here on holiday months ago and fell in love with a gorgeous Indian lifeguard. His parents don’t approve, but they are going to get married. While we eat our thali, we trade travel stories and talk about spirituality and our previous lives, the ones back “home” that just do not seem real anymore. Somehow, every day we always end up discussing how big the world is, how many corners of the globe there is still to explore.
I have to excuse myself hours later to get to my evening yoga class, teaching five more students in the baking late afternoon heat. We do a mellow practice, its just too hot for the full primary series. By the time I get home its almost sunset, but there is still more than enough time to join the Nepalese guys for a game of volleyball on the beach. I’m useless, but they tolerate my company anyways (most likely because I am wearing ali baba trousers and a string bikini top). However the game transforms from volleyball to soccer and in the light of the setting sun I surprise them all by stealing the ball and scoring about a million times. Its almost dark when, sandy, sweating and soaking wet from getting slide tackled in ankle-deep waves, I make it back to my room.
Every time I walk in my door I light a stick of nag champa and now I have come to associate the smell with comfort, privacy, with home. Freshly showered and dressed in fairly clean clothes I walk down the road a ways to a plywood stand sagging under the weight of fresh fruits. A tiny woman with a huge gold ring in her nose smiles and wiggles her head at me, I wag mine back in poor imitation of the famous Indian gesture and look to the piles of papaya, stacks of coconuts small round watermelons and sweet melons, pomegranates and avocados, big baskets of sweet limes and bananas, and the very first small and stunted mangos of the season. After a thorough examination of every single papaya on the stand I finally select one I like and pay her R20. It’s the best dinner I can ask for on a hot night after a long day of living the life that I do on the beach in Goa.
