Escape
When I was nineteen, I made my first non-familial trips out into the world that was accessible with an overnight bus or train from Bangalore. Gokarna was the second place I visited, during that time. That first cutting of the thread, or cord, is one of the most miraculous things that happened in my life. I remember it like this: unfolding into blackness in the night, waking up in the sun, bewildered by the distance, how far away I was from everything, the fact that I sometimes needed to walk thirty minutes to make a phone call back home – which I didn’t, very often, because I wanted few reminders that my stay there was impermanent.
Maps
My internal map of Gokarna, back then, was this: two roads meeting at a T. Then it became more like an F, when I started walking further. Whatever the letter, it stayed simple. Streaking out from this T/F/Central zone, were tiny paths leading up to the hills, marked with arrows. Like in old treasure hunt maps, these signs were not bold fixtures; instead they appeared like a saving grace on the sides of buildings, in tiny corridor-like lanes and on large rocks along the coast, just when you need them the most. Closer to the sea, they spread like tendrils of hair, some of them leading to the entrance of a beach, some into the forests, some nowhere at all.
Side note
A path is not a road, and neither is it a street. A path is something to get lost on; like roads always take you somewhere, paths don’t follow those rules, they’re not obliged to take you anywhere. You can walk through a forest for two hours and not have any exciting close encounters with elephants, tigers or deer.
Summer
Gokarna was a lot like summer for me. Like chasing the tail of a goldfish in a dream. Always out of reach, always in sight. Maybe it’s hard to register that you are really there, maybe you don’t even want to believe you are, because summer always ends and you’re sent back to school like nothing happened, like life hadn’t changed dramatically, like your soul hadn’t shifted a little bit from its hiding-place.
And coming away, as you spiral further and further away from it, as you spill into the pit itself; you see it, out of the corner of your eye, flashing in and out of your vision, the tail of the goldfish.
Dreams
I had a few dreams in Bangalore, of Gokarna. Sometimes I mixed it up with Goa. Often I was there, but not really there, but I dreamt of this moment of looking back, seeing the beloved thing turning into a pillar of salt. I would see the water swilling, darkening, spilling into a great red plastic bowl. I would see beaches getting eaten up. These could’ve been environmentalist dreams, and also more selfish ones, the fear of loss.
Sometimes I dreamt the other way; that I was spending my days in Koshy’s, the Big Nipple of Bangalore, wallowing in greyness and then I would look outside the window and great billowing clouds of dirt-coloured water would be rising in the streets, Koshy’s in the middle of a flood, a tsunami.
The lovers
Travelling with lovers is risky. Especially if the sea is next door, purported pr pretended drownings are possible; arguments are tainted by watery sunsets, made to look more final, more deep, more tragic. You notice the passing of the years, the loss of innocence. As events in themselves.
You feel cheated if your gifts of prior knowledge are not well-received. You feel like you may never go back, if a relationship fails. You resist going, then you go, you try, you fail, all sorts of things happen that have nothing to do with the place at all. And all sorts of things happen that are marked irrevocably by the place, and the place is marked irrevocably…
In retrospect, I would say it was worth the risk.
Change
Change is such a silly word. It’s so simple, so neutral, like as though anything ever is. Gokarna changed many times over in the past ten years that I’ve known it.
What this means is, many things died, were lost, are remembered. Some things were destroyed, pulled apart – cliffs, paths, some things were trashed. Garbage, crap, flowing down the hillside like a stream. Some things were wilfully dismantled – serenity. Some things were pleasantly discovered, like kingfish cooked in banana leaf in a shack-café. This came with the loss of serenity, with the mushrooming of enterprise.
Some things came up like a shock – a concrete structure on the beach, a multi-storeyed hotel. It looked ridiculous when it came up and it still does, though it has attained a mildly respectable layer of grime.
Some things are even more complicated. A barrier rises on the path from Kudle beach to Om beach. This barrier is some sort of peculiar establishment for day travellers, covered in mosaics and decorated with frilly stones, giving an eerie sense of long-dead civilisation. All around, there are admonitory signs. Don’t smoke, don’t drink etc. It gets a little harder to cross over each time. Day travellers flow in and out of this place, down the steps, into the beach, rows of cars are parked on a road which was once a path.
Drunken-wild-eyed men form a majority of this flow. They come in gangs, of twenty or more it seems.
Now I am sorry for the space I lost, as a woman. Walking around alone or with someone, at night, in the day, not paying too much attention to my clothes, sensing no hostility in the air. All of that comprised a space, of which there are very few in this country. Now it is gone. I look at the man-gangs, joyfully partaking in the harassment and humiliation of a smaller gang-member, and I feel bitterness and regret.
And Kudle beach becomes a yoga beach, every second shack offering something by way of exercise and self-awareness, but it is still calm, the hills still seem to hug the beach close, the sense of shelter is complete, and when you squint out of the corner of your eye, you see some lost lagoon, some filmy escapist paradise, and you have to shake your head and gather up some smell of stale shack to remind yourself that you are really there.
Self-awareness
Or growing up. The last time I visited, I found some mysterious change had taken place inside me. I was comfortable with the fellow traveller, comfortable being alone. Sometimes I was alone and in company at the same time, and that was also fine. I didn’t resort to cigarettes for survival, didn’t hide behind a cloud of smoke. I tried to swim, I let this heat pour into my body like some deep oil massage. I was complete. I was happy.
Leaving
When I was younger I used to huddle through this moment of leaving, clinging to end of the holiday, resisting every step to go back. In my new-found adulthood, for the first time in my life that I almost danced out of a place. There is a difference between change and destruction. Many things, in the guise of being changed, are actually destroyed. Obviously, something has to die for something new to grow, but surely not everything?
When I was younger I used to huddle through this moment of leaving, clinging to the forest, to the hills, to the last glimpse of the sea. This time, they all came together, like music, flowed into something like harmony, and I didn’t leave so much as get carried by the wind. When I was younger, I used to huddle through this moment of leaving, clinging to the last glimpse of the sea like it was summer, like chasing the tail of the goldfish in the dream. This time, the air was blue, the sea was blue, and I was swimming through the moment of leaving, like a goldfish in a dream.
