Every trip to India is rewarding because it’s the family time one longs for all year around. But this year was exceptionally outstanding in more ways than one. As a writer, contacts were made and Happy Days proved once again the safe place to delve into an editorial venture with the school newsletter, edited and formatted by yours truly. Deadline work can get intense, so when the time came to leave Shivpuri, the sorrow of parting from my family mingled with excitement for a new adventure: My very first trip to Goa.
When a seasoned but impatient traveler like my Dad and a chronically anxious one like me travel together it’s an interesting combination. As with any travel in India, the journey was as chaotic as the destination ended up being spectacular. With the horror stories one hears in the news about airports, it makes sense that security is extra tight, but the sheer volume of people does not combine well with disorganized officials.
While my only trip to America a few years ago had the ability to make me feel like a criminal for a genuinely forgotten water bottle in a handbag, the security personnel all over India are either visibly lazy or just plain chaotic when it comes to dealing with the masses. I could sense the annoyance coming off my Dad like a beacon of frustration and after being queued up multiple times, for first the regular security check and then another frisking just before boarding the plane, we were finally on our way.
It’s strange what random details about a trip one recalls when the determination to hold on to an event is there throughout any experience. For me it has been established that music is often what I tie my memories to in order to keep them more vivid in hindsight. For example on this trip, I noticed the booming speakers surrounding the poolside bar played a loop that I always most took notice of whenever the Hurts song Somebody To Die For came on. It’s the first of many things on this trip I recall because of fandom ties, since this is the song I named a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction after back in 2016.
Considering the memory problems I’ve been dealing with since my last brain surgery in late summer last year, I’m quite proud of myself for even remembering the book I was reading. On a Kindle as loaded as mine, the chosen beach read could have been a stereotypical fluffy summer rom-com, but it was actually pretty intense from what I remember now:
On the night of Alex Carmody’s sixteenth birthday, she and her best friend, Cass, are victims of a terrible car accident. Alex survives; Cass doesn’t. Consumed by grief, Alex starts cutting school and partying, growing increasingly detached. The future she’d planned with her friend is now meaningless to her.
Meg Carmody is heartbroken for her daughter, even as she’s desperate to get Alex’s life back on track. The Birches, a boarding school in New Hampshire, promises to do just that, yet Alex refuses to go. But when Meg finds a bag of pills hidden in the house, she makes a fateful call to a transporter whose company specializes in shuttling troubled teens to places like The Birches, under strict supervision. Meg knows Alex will feel betrayed—as will her estranged husband, who knows nothing of Meg’s plans for their daughter.
When the transport goes wrong—and Alex goes missing—Meg must face the consequences of her decision and her deception. But the hunt for Alex reveals that Meg is not the only one keeping secrets.– bibliotica.com Book Review
I admit I don’t recall now what the twist was, but when I saw quite a number of negative reviews online I remember being surprised because I was engrossed. This book was my attempt to branch out from the many kinds of love stories I usually read, mushy, tragic, usually predictable. What can I say? My taste in books and movies fits well together. But anyway, these peaceful and sunny days by a glistening poolside felt like the ideal place to branch out my reading and enforce a memory in my hazy mind of a few months ago.
One evening at the resort I got to meet a lot of Dad’s old friends and as with anyone who gets to connect with people who knew one’s parents before they were Mom and Dad, the experience was fun. But one of my absolute highlights was definitely the day I convinced Dad to take a walk on the beach with me and let me pretend for a moment I was a model. I’m not usually confident enough to enjoy being photographed but something about that beach was entirely freeing. Naturally my mind wandered to the significance of the ocean on my all-time favorite show, the often mentioned One Tree Hill.
My favorite couple on the show, Clay Evans and Quinn James, fondly known as Clinn, had a number of very significant relationship milestones take place on the beach, since the show was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. Quinn, who reminds me of myself in some ways and is my fictional idol in others, told Clay that she’d feared the ocean since childhood. When he assumed she meant because of sharks, she corrected him and said the immensity of it was intimidating. Strolling across the burning sand that day and staring out at the waves, I finally truly understood what she meant.
My amateur photography can never truly capture how small one felt watching the waves crash into the shore with rhythm like an actual pulse of nature. As I said about the air travel fiasco we faced, I live with anxiety and never know what will happen to set off a chain of irrational panic in my brain. But watching the pulse of the ocean, knowing it has been that way for millions of years, it was ironically a force of nature that put me completely at ease. The video below perfectly captures the symbolism of my favorite TV family that Goa let me experience first-hand. Quinn feared immensity when Clay’s first guess was sharks and that foreshadowed eight year old Logan’s fears, which actually were the looming sharks, sea monsters and jellyfish.
After four days of utter peace in the heart of a natural force harnessed by luxury, all I could marvel at was how much I actually enjoyed it, being a notorious homebody. I remember now many little things that I wandered around the resort obsessively trying to capture and I’ll never know if my memory has improved or the entire trip was just that awe-inspiring.
The poolside was my favorite place, oozing with the resort vibe of inevitable relaxation.
The individual cottages that served as guest rooms were adorable inside and out thanks to friendly room service and palm leaves. And that’s not even to mention the meal we had outside the resort one night, after a short drive around the local village. The menu was sickeningly full of puns and yet somehow adorable. With my obsession with sampling the Italian food no matter where I go, the appreciation was limited to the wording of the menu card and a fancy octopus-shaped skewer holder but very cute and somewhat cheesy nonetheless.
Behold below a taste of the pun-tastic menu that had everyone groaning before we ate anything.
It’s no wonder I’ve spent every minute since getting back from India in early February on a strict diet, but coming back from an atmosphere of such serenity and relaxation demanded a dose of discipline. My favorite part of coming home this year was definitely the fact that I got to make my sister, who is addicted to sunshine and tanning, insanely jealous. Experiencing snow as late as April this year after starting 2018 in India and on such a heavenly vacation was definitely hard. But now the experience has been made I can just be grateful it gave me the urgency to capture that specific atmosphere in words sooner or later. Hold on to that feeling is the one lesson I take away from the trainwreck of my Glee days for a reason!
Have Courage And Be Kind 