Vagator Beach

I spent yesterday afternoon at Vagator Beach with a friend, soaking up some rays.  For me, as I am a translucently pale powdery white boy, "soaking up some rays" means "huddling under an umbrella lathering my few patches of exposed skin with SPF 50."  Even this proved to be problematic, as I felt the beginnings of those hot flashes that are the early warning signs that if I don't reduce my sign exposure post haste, I could ignite.  So I moved to the beachfront cafe behind where me and my friend set up our beach chairs and ordered a lemon soda.  A beachfront cafe in India means a bunch of tables set up underneath a potholed canopy with a rickety wooden bar in the back.  I pulled out my bible, the Lonely Planet guide "Southeast Asia on A Shoestring", and commenced research session #141 for my upcoming adventures through Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia in March through June(ish).

Soon a crew of twentysomething Indian youths (I can't believe I just typed "youths" to describe twentysomethings!  I'm officially an antique) sat down at the table next to me and commenced some heavy drinking.  The drunkest of the group, who was sitting directly diagonally and to my right, eventually got too wasted and too curious to leave me alone, and invited me to have a drink with them.  Initially, I resisted but he was persistent and I agreed to drink another.... drum roll!... lemon soda.  They regaled me with tales of U.S. culture, and seemed particularly enamored with Stifler from the gross-out teen comedy "American Pie", who they affectionately referred to as "The Stifmeister" -- a term I never expected to hear at Vagator.  They turned out to be college students on leave from their school in Pune, an affable bunch, one of them preparing for a post-graduation software job in Bangalore.  Eventually my friend Dan tired of roasting under the sun and joined us.  The same drunken Indian couldn't stop repeating how he thought Dan "had beautiful eyes".  It wasn't a gay thing, it was a weird thing.  It's not at all uncommon to see Indian men, straight men, walking along the streets holding hands, although I haven't quite figured out why this is such a common phenomenon.  I've been told that this is related to the fact that Indian men are allowed only limited contact with women prior to marriage, and this also results in sexual experimentation between straight men who have no other outlet for their growing sexual desires.

I knew Dan vaguely from classes in Philadelphia, although he moved to L.A. years ago.  Imagine my surprise when he showed up while I was eating breakfast that morning, out of the blue, on the other side of the world, calling me by name!  He was kind enough to show me some of the more important sites in Anjuna, the part of Goa where I'm staying.  Giving directions in India is challenging, because there are hardly any street signs and almost no roads seem to have names or designating marks.  All you get is the occasional sign with the name of a neighborhood and an arrow pointing in the appropriate direction.  The directions to the yoga shala were an exercise in unintentional comedy, because they contained  mandates such as "take a left at the house with the red trim down the dirt road behind three houses".  Scooters are the preferred mode of transport in Goa, so I found myself zooming down the streets, helmet free, trying to deal with driving on the left side (damn those Brits) and negotiating the onrush of cars, rikshaws, derelict free range dogs, cows, scooters, motorcycles, pedestrians, goats and huge antique buses packed wall-to-wall with people that look like leftovers from mid-twentieth century museums.  The rules are murky and flexible but essentially simple: the bigger the vehicle, the higher the priority-- with the exception of cows, who drivers avoid no matter how drunkenly the animals wander across the street.  Drivers constantly lean on the horn on the roads in India, but it's message is entirely different from the way we use it in the States.  You honk your horn when you're passing on the right side, or when you're approaching a free-for-all intersection and want other cars to know you're on a potential collision course, or when you want a slower moving vehicle or pedestrian to get out of your way.  There's never any anger behind the honking.  I find myself having a lot of trouble adjusting to this new way of honking, as I can't quite shake the fact that it's obnoxiously rude.  The roads are horrendous, an exercise in barely controlled chaos, and like the rest of India, I'm continually amazed that they manage to function as well as they do. 

Comments

[Heather]

Ah yes, the first glorious stories of days on the beach while the rest of us toil away! I'm glad to hear that American culture, via American Pie, has had such a positive influence abroad!

[Geetu]

I know that drunken Indian. he is an old friend of mine.

[Jenn]

The 1st Part of this made me smile a great deal over coffee on Saturday Mornin

[Another Jenn]

What an amazing story about running into an old acquaintance in India. Small world indeed! Thanks for keeping us updated on your travels. Oh and by the way, Left Hand Path?? Are you going Satanist on us? ; )