Sunday morning and I begin to stir, the dinosaur rumbles into life, these last few days after several years of always waking crazily early I am instead waking several hours later than usual, what is this I wonder, why the change, a month into my time in India? Why now?
There’s an unfamiliar sound outside my apartment, and it takes a while for me to realise that what I’m hearing is rain, the sound of rain hitting the dry earth. I lumber out of bed and onto my little Goan balcony and watch & listen. This simple act of nature that countless times before in England would have brought irritation, or dissatisfaction here in India on a quiet sunday morning takes on an altogether different sense. Perhaps its the almost super reliable nature of the weather now here in late november, every day brings sunshine, rain is rare, very rare, and when it does come it feels like a kind of magic.
And there I stand on my balcony like a child, totally absorbed watching big lumps of rain hitting the earth, sending up little explosions of soggy red earth, and with time comes wave after wave of scent, parched earth breathed into life and carried on the breeze and I lose myself there.
After a shower I hop on my scooter & head out for a ride, along my way down a country lane I am startled by a stray dog that races out from the undergrowth, it runs alongside my bike & I’m horrified by what I see, half of the top of it’s skull has been torn away, by what I cannot imagine, I see flesh & brain and bone and wonder how this poor creature can possibly be alive, let alone run at full pelt. It races off again into the undergrowth and disappears from sight, A knot in my stomach comes quickly, feeling for this poor animal, sensing it’s pain & unable to help it in anyway.
After a while on the road with images of the dog haunting me I park up at a little cafe by the sea, order coffee and gaze out over the water watching the waves rolling in. I think of the contrasts between big city life and those other worlds where man & nature meet. I love big cities, human creations full of life of hustle & bustle, but there in those megalopolises with their oceans of concrete sometimes I’ve forgotten that nature & life are there. When you step away from City life then you begin to remember, we are not top of the tree, life does not revolve around us.
Life is not some peachy picket fence calmness, but instead a realm of savage beauty, untamed & churning, we are a part of it and it of us.
fiftyfreeandsingle 