Not quite a Goan rhapsody!

It's been almost 3 months since I settled into our itsy-bitsy house (it has a garden okay!) in Goa.
So far so good.

Synapse, the agency where I'm masquerading as a copywriter has been remarkably nice - letting me use the garden as a make-shift pottery studio and being reasonably tolerant about my Bollywood fixation.
Am still trying to decipher writing emailers, web banners and internal communication missives.
Today I was asked if I could write about debt and equity.
It's a paradigm shift in more than ways than forty-two.

When I'm not solving issues of national concern (like - does this have an apostrophe?), I'm pottering around.

Literally or otherwise.

There's the elusive pottery show that I've planned for October, the myriad entrepreneurship plans that present themselves to me at regular intervals and of course, the eternal question of what's for lunch.

Time in Goa functions differently.
Yes, I know, it's the state of legendary lethargy, but it's a bit more complex. Okay, a lot more complex.
Interestingly, Goa isn't defined by the people who live here.
No. It's defined by those who don't. And further by those who want to.
So, I won't shatter any illusions - it's gorgeous, has great food, is laid back, lazy even.

It's all that and more.
It's illogical. Just as greedy as your next nervous metropolis.
And it's parochial too.

Again it's what the rest of us (yes, am an immigrant again!) have made it.

It's no surprise that your average Pereira or Pednekar views the outsider with healthy amount of disdain.

Most of my kind (by that I just mean immigrants, not out of shape media also-rans) that I've met seem to be here seeking something quite ambiguous and vague.

It's not enough that this state provides a rather good standard of living at possibly one half of the effort needed for the same in say, Mumbai or Pune, people of my ilk who've immigrated here are still looking for something they wouldn't recognize if it came and bit their behinds - cause they have no idea what they're really looking for!

I'm no different.

I often find my new home extraordinary and exasperating at the same time.
I love the fact that I can actually swim in the sea I drive past every morning.
But I can't understand why a café in the capital city of Panjim would be closed on a Sunday!
I get excited about being able to actually reach a place minutes away from my house IN minutes, I relish the thought of leaving home at 5.40 for a 6 o'clock movie. But I find it irritating that the grocer down the road shuts shop at 7pm and won't deliver anything home. Not even for extra money!
I find the rains absolutely spectacular! Except that every shower results in the electricity being cut off.

Dutifully almost.

Am not quite sure about my feelings towards the tourists though.
Maybe it's because I was one of them not so long ago.

But I oblige when tourists ask me to click their photos against the surf (everyone has a Goa Facebook album na?!) - that's usually followed by them saying a breezy 'Thanks, enjoy your holiday'.

And then, I love that longing look they give me when I tell them that this is home for me.

Yup. Just like the state, I'm defined by those who don't live here too.