The only reason I love my
profession is that I can travel; at the cost of my client. So this is the part
of the year when the world is in a fix to travel to Goa for it takes a fortune
to make a 3 day trip while I get a fully sponsored trip. But to my dismay, I
don’t have a very happening team and stay in Madgaon which is really a ‘gaon’
which barely represents the life in north Goa.
However, I like this part of Goa
too; the part which I would never have explored if I visited Goa only with
friends. Visiting temples, churches, museums, etc. is fun too. Sometimes it is
good to be sober in Goa and be in the real world. After all, I must not forget,
I have come here to work.
I love staying alone in hotels;
there is no obligation of getting up early and getting ready nor do you have to
feel conscious about the way you sleep and may royally snore or just sing aloud
and dance like no one is watching. Free wi-fi is an add-on to the pleasure of
living alone; you are alone, yet you are with everyone.
I sat with my laptop open in
front of me just to discover the battery draining out quicker than my energy
left for the day at 8 in the night. The only accessible plug point was in front
of the mirror besides the idiot box. So you can visualize an idiot facing an
idiot box and another idiot in the mirror. It is funny to watch yourself work.
It feels like you are working twice and should be paid twice though the idiot
in the reflection is just a reality checker who keeps you reminding to look
into the laptop whenever you accidentally look up; it is a check point for the
ever-distracted creatures like me.
And when I finally get to work,
after my day dreaming sessions end, it was dinner time. My team decided to have
dinner in the restaurant downstairs. One of the team mates, having a weird drinking
taste and the combination, orders a large beer. He believes in having an
unusual mix of cocktails, I guess; orders soup. We all order sizzler which does
not really look like one but the contents taste good separately. By then the
colleague drinking has already overdone his quota; atleast everyone else felt
so. But he was not done; he ordered a sizzling brownie. The brownie arrived
after 10 minutes by which time my dear friend was fast asleep on the dinner
table! The astonishing part is, inspite of the sleep trying to take over his
senses, he manages to complete the ice-cream topped with chocolate sauce and 2
brownies at its base.
I am back to my room and for an
hour. It is time to sleep. I lay chatting with my girlfriends. We are 4 of us
from school who can go on and on for hours not realizing that something like
time even exists. A trip down the memory lane goes on endlessly till we fall
asleep.
But it is just not a comfortable
night; the head being snuggled by the super soft pillows. I wake up 4 times,
walk around like a ghost and again try to go back to sleep; and now it is
already the time to wake up.
It is just a myth that women take
longer to get ready. My dearest beer laid colleague is late and I sit staring
at the TV, thinking of the loss of sleep time caused by this delay.
Day at work goes smoothly and our
super efficient team completes work by 4 pm. With a couple of extra teas and
coffees during the day, we decide to bid goodbye to the sun from Colva Beach.
Sunsets are irresistibly photogenic. I am never contented with the visual
pleasure of the beautiful journey of the drowning sun. Excited, I get into the
car. The driver takes us for a joy trip which unexpectedly ends at our hotel.
We discover that he had not been informed to take us to the beach. This
confusion and miscommunication came at the cost of me keeping my never dying
thirst for watching sunset unquenched; though it was still a feast to watch the
twilight of the dusk.
We return to the hotel room.
Today I am bored of watching the idiot in the mirror, so I decide to watch the
idiot box instead. Watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. for the nth number of time, I am
enjoying the peace of being alone.
8 pm we all assemble and depart
for dinner on Benolium beach. An elegantly designed white canopy and a candle
lit table is the place where we decide to fill our tummies. I am facing my back
to the sea and my eyes staring at the moon. It felt that the moon was having
fun playing peek-a-boo with me, hiding behind the clouds forming a golden border
on the black veil. As the moon set in, the tides became stronger. The playful
yellow moon and the sound of the fiercely flowing waves in the background was
the highlight of the trip. Any food served in this atmosphere tasted good. We
had ordered for pasta with white and red sauce in penne and spaghetti
respectively. The waiter arrives with the desired dishes and places it on the
table saying “This is penne and this is spaghetti”. The reality spoke up and
both magically turn out to be penne. The walk back to our car was yet another
game – the sand trying to suck my leg and I try to pull it back. Nature’s
delightful treatment was a great way to end the day.
Next morning it is time to wander
around Goa. Since my age was half of the age of the next youngest team member,
our interests differed a bit. We went around temples – Mangeshi temple and some
other Laxmi temple. I somehow wonder how people can keep so much trust in these
stones but not in themselves and their loved ones.
On our way, we stop by the old Goa
Church and Dona Paula in Panjim. We halt to buy some cashews.
I ask my sir if they mind having
pizza for lunch. Everyone unanimously agrees. I, being the only tech-savvy
person, start searching a good pizza place in Zomato. But the generation gap
also causes a gap in your choices and my sir announces we will go to the
traditional pizza place – Dominos.
With heavily stuffed bellies, we
proceed towards the airport. Almost 2 hours before our flight departure time we
are here to kill time and some mosquitoes if we manage to find them. Check in
is a bit different in Goa as compared to Mumbai; showing the technological gap
between the metropolitan cities and Goa. There is no check-in kiosk, there are
baggage tags issued at the check-in counter. We proceed towards security check
and successfully scanning through our baggage, we make our way towards boredom
of waiting.
I read my newspaper and book.
Then we find a queue being formed at the boarding gate. We promptly queue up
just to find out that it is not for our flight. Airports are amusing;
glamorously designed shopping malls, highly priced food and the most useless
creation in the human era – water fountains. If you are really thirsty, the
basins of the water fountains are thirstier. You actually understand the
meaning of ‘do boond zindagi ke’, when the water passes through your mouth and
you are able to just taste water standing in an awkward position.
Finally we board the flight. It
looks like we have got into a crèche; every third seat had a 1 odd year old and
every 4th seat had a 4-5 year old. Kids are stress relievers when
they’re happy and stressful when cranky. As a blessing, it was only an hour
long flight. And we land in Mumbai.... Home sweet Home!
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