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If you are a writer, you will always find a story or a story will find you almost as if someone had set up a moment for you to look at and pointed, “Take note..remember this..write this down.” On an unplugged holiday after almost a decade when I refused to carry even a laptop with me and could not even use my phone after a while..I saw stories scattered everywhere in Candolim, Goa. The long-limbed woman (Spanish perhaps) bronzing under the sun, taking business calls in a firm voice..sipping a tall, cool drink, alone and seemingly content. A woman in her 70s, from Europe perhaps, beautiful and upright in a swimsuit, making her way everyday into the sea, swimming for a while and then sleeping with a towel under her and over her face in the sand. Two women, one white,  the other brown, unselfconscious of their middle-aged bodies in happy bikinis, running into the ocean, waiting for the waves to knock them down and then playfully giggling like children, their hands locked, their faces alive and ecstatic. A tall, athletic man from a distant country, taking time to everyday build a little castle and a tidal pool with his granddaughter’s plastic shovel and a toy bucket.
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Old couples with much travelled faces on sun loungers, reading books on Kindle, or just sitting in the beach shacks, drinking beer and chatting up other old couples, clicking pictures near the Christmas tree stuck in the sand, laughing. Young couples (never ever Indian), stealing an occasional kiss, swimming, running, falling, floating in water. Honeymooners (always Indian), never going  into the water, walking on the shore chastely, holding hands and clicking two dozen pictures of each other against the sea..never in it. The brides always in appropriate beach clothes like skirts, shorts and hats and with red wedding bangles weighing down their wrists. The young grooms, in shorts and weighed down by a camera and an expensive mobile and a bag carrying perhaps a laptop.
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Joint families (always..always Indian) fussing over wet children, dressing and undressing them loudly, arguing with each other about what to do next, where to eat next, how much to pay for two sun beds and if  they were priced too steeply at Rs 200 along with an umbrella, calling the attendants with an, “Oye, kidhar gaya? Idhar aa..” And Raju, whose job was to gently accost visitors to the beach and ask, “Sunbed? Only Rs 200 for two with umbrella, all day..” Raju, who managed four such pairs of beds and earned Rs 2000 in a month and was happy to serve his guests cool drinks, food and conversation.
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And ofcourse, there were the foot massage experts. Temporary tattoo painters. Trinket sellers who sweet-talked me into buying things I did not need. A young boy from Darjeeling who plays soccer back home, studies hard and then comes to Goa during the Christmas season to work as a waiter and earn some money. The father and son who sell ice lollies and once hid their iceboxes under our sunbed when they saw the police.The stories about how every shack owner, every vendor has to pay through their nose in order to do business. The towel sellers. And the strawberry vendors.
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The celebrity jewellery designer, playing in the sea with her two kids and gently, tenderly washing their faces with mineral water after each dip. Biddu, the musician walking into the beach with a friend, his clothes as bohemian as his music once was.
And young kids in their 20s, speaking Gujarati and English, smoking and drinking, discussing the music at the last Sunburn festival and laughing at overtly sexual jokes.  A young white couple coming to blows outside a supermarket and then walking away, hopefully into a sunset, hand-in-hand. An Indian woman, who lost her temper when she was asked at about 1 am to leave the pool at a resort because it was late and she was possibly drunk. And for the next 20 minutes, her obscenities targetting everyone especially white tourists who came to “her country” and told her what the hell to do!
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My son also saw a white woman being groped, another being heckled to the tune of Fevicol Se and then two white women being videotaped by two Indian men . He told me in disgust, “I am not proud to be Indian..not after seeing all this.”
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And always, in my thoughts was a young girl who had not yet passed on and was battling for life at a Delhi  hospital. And I looked around and worried for the young women I saw walking alone to the beach in rainbow sarongs. I worried for the white woman who danced with her husband in a shack late at night where four Indian men sat, drinking beer and one of them removed his vest and started dancing to a Rowdy Rathore hit. Did these women know the codes of safety in India?  You never ever attracted attention, never wore what you wanted to wear and never ever “asked for it.” Yes, right, you never ask for it literally but will the men watching them understand that? For them a woman who is fearless must be taught to cower. Must be taught to be afraid. Should there have been more police presence on the beach and at the night flea market where I saw wide-eyed and happy women from all over the world, dressed the way they wanted?
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And amid all this, did I remember my story? The truth is, I was happy to not have any. Goa is not an experience you can fully enjoy without forgetting yourself. But yes, I was present. I was there. In the bazaar packed with little restaurants humming with lights and music and conversations till late into the night. I was present when I watched my son take pictures from a moving car..of a lit up casino ship and later of sunsets, thickly whipped, creamy waves, wet and gleaming sand swathes, footprints, para-sailing parachutes, steaming soup in a blue china cup in a restaurant named after a cat.
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I was there on Christmas eve, in a dress I have never worn before, with my son when the sky burst into fireworks. We released wish lanterns into the sky and strangers from all over the world smiled at each other and nodded their lit up red party horns. We saw fire eaters that night, miles of shacks bejewelled with stars and happiness..the kind you cannot put your finger on or touch with a laptop keyboard but feel. I realised that night that happiness is something accessible. It is about daring to do something new. Going to a place you have not been to in 15 years and twiddling your toes in the cool, forgiving sand. It is about spending six days with your child without worrying about work, without social networking. About watching him swim by himself while you sit on the shore, eyes fixed on his distant, bobbing head. It is about fullness that does not come from a full day but emptiness.
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So yes, I was there even when we whizzed across the foam and fury of the afternoon sea in a motorboat..and I for the first time felt the heart of the sea..pulsing..roaring..big enough to overflow into any emptiness.  A tug and a jolt and son and I remembered Life Of Pi and then we rose up buoyed by a parachute into the heart of the sky..as if we were linking the ether and water..the two forevers merging into one. This was the year, I realised..when I broke a few patterns. I hope to break many more in the year to come. And that perhaps is my story. The one I have found and hope to keep.
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All pics courtesy Aryaman M Parashar
 
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Reema Moudgil has been writing on art, theatre, cinema, music, gender issues, architecture and more in leading newspapers and magazines since 1994.  Her first novel Perfect Eight ((http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc )won her an award from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University. She also edited Chicken Soup for Indian Woman’s Soul and runs  unboxedwriters.com.  She  writes art catalogues and has scripted a commissioned documentary or two. She has exhibited her paintings in Bangalore and New York,  taught media studies to post graduates and hosts a daily ghazal show Andaz-e-Bayan on Radio Falak.