Anjuna Beach

I had come to Goa expecting to see Ibiza with a ritualistic, hippie and tie died twist. Gap year students and frazzle haired longstayers, pounding music and henna tattoos, heonistic and plastic and mildly stupid all at once.
So this evening, it being Friday, I decided to brave the beaches to see what the massed rows of bars that sentry the edge of it would offer up. Trance I presumed, and probably fire poi and dreadlocks and other such things. On arriving however I was non plussed, the beaches were all but deserted - the odd straggler and a couple of quietly speaking huddles of locals aside - and the bars mostly empty. A few had a bit of a gathering going, twenty or thirty folks in little groups chatting but nowhere near full. A couple of the establishments forlornly blazed green lazers out into the night sky, calling out to Batman or whoever to bring the punters in.
As I walked the beach front I found more of the same, hundereds of empty seats and dozens of aimless and bored waiting staff. It seemed somehow cruel that a beach this pure and a sky so clear and a man such as myself so willing to open my mind to hedonistic and titillating adventure should be so uttely wasted. It is th high season damnit! To stave off depression I rationalised that I had a very good meal (as all my meals have been) and a pleasent walk around town, and that I could just go home and do a bit of reading.
And then, just as I turned into the homeward stretch 2km up the beach a siren call drifted up into the night air. The amplified sounds of blues guitar heavily distorted walking a frenteic beat, accompanied by the wailing of an electric lead. Oh this was Anjuna I recalled, and this was where part of the sixties happend - nudist beach and acid and all. So I thought as I hurried hopefully, surely this was a group highly attractive young people with flowers in their hair and love in their hearts gathered to witness a jam, carrying the baton onward from their forebears.
I followed a sounds and a path to find The Searock Tavern, a wide squat building of blue concrete and densely packed with people that sits on the Cliff at the north end of the beach. It turned out that there were flowers, and from the enthusiastic jiggling and swaying and clapping I could feel true open heartedness, so my hopes in part had been answered. But these were no young people, no new hippie progeny. These were old young people, the same people as in the sixties, their spirits in stasis yet there bodis withering throught time. But wow - they were still here! Or had come back on holiday...
A crowd of Mick Jaggers and Joanna Lumley's sat and drank and smoked and crowed. Skin seared and pallored by thirty years of sun worship and a lifetime of smoking, hair thinining and tied by bandannas. Immediately it was obvious that a youth speant listening to the Grateful Dead does nothing for teaching you how to dance in time.
Yet this was the undisputed party champion of the strip. Dozens whooping and hollering, the crowd spilling out onto the street beyond, there was real energy in the air. And the music was good, very good, a duo lead by an emaciated and hunched guy with a husky voice treading a line between the Doors and Hendrix. At one point a guy with a trumpet came on and they started doing some latino numbers.  A couple of ladies who looked at least 60 writhed on the dancefloor. I stuck around for a beer or two and had fun soaking up the undimmed passion of it all.
Still, it being a Friday, I could have murdered a bit of drum and bass....

Republic Day

The centrepiece of Republic Day is a two hour parade salute to the President. I caught it on television today while packing before catching the train down to Goa.
First there is the standard military element. India's combined military forces, the second largest in the world numbering at an impressive 1.5 million, march past in a way that is British or American in style. Whirling battons, silly walks, the whole 19th century deal. Even one of the commentators (I am watching it on TV) speaks in a very plummy British accent. It vaugely hints of everything I deplore about colonialism - the militaristic triumphalism and grand posturing, something which seems to have filtered into Indian political culture even in rejecting the presence of Britain and the other western powers. Even the backdrop of Dehli is reminiscent of Washington or Whitehall. Obelixs and Greco-Roman forums glint pale beyond the marchers.
What follows the military procession is more cheering however. Floats representing each of the 28 states of India, showing off various cultural customs or proud social activities. And then government departments get a shot at a performance - from schooling to the health service to the bizarre and mildly terrifying performance of the Department For Disaster Management where men in chemical suits tend to dying patients while errie sirens emit from speakers.
All together - representations of hazardous death aside - it is cheesy, and sacchrine sweet, images representatives of every part of Indian society jollying along together in a show of unity and tolerance which does nothing to reflect many manifest challenges confronting the country. Yet for me there is something about the attempt at togetherness that I find very appealing and disarming. The all prevelent cynacism that colours national discourse back in the UK is a luxery afforded through experiencing so little risk. The stakes are higher out here,  and stability and prosperity something to be achieved rather than assumed, and this requires images of hope.
And one thing that was brought home powerfully was the sheer diversity of India - Chinese style dragons and tibetan monks on top of the floats from the very north of the country vie with the traditional dances of the south. There is such richness here on a level that I had just not considered before. Sure I knew north varied from the south and the east from the west. But in actuality each state has a different cusine, culture, ritual and language to the next.

ps. Brillantly, now as I watch they have ten daredevil riders teetering in formation on a single motorcycles pretending to be a migratory bird. Genius.

Homely Mumbai

Dobi Ghat - where the washing is done in Mumbai

The most expensive private residence in the world

A view of Mumbai from the hanging gardens

It is about half six in the evening and I am on Marine Drive, and the view around the claw of the bay is beautiful - a hazy glitz lended by the light smog that is jostled by a  breeze that drifts over the water, dozens of towerblocks rising up into the blue cloudless sky. The air tastes only slightly acrid, and smells only mildly of fumes and toxicity - much better than London fares in 32 degrees of heat.
To my left as I head north is the majestic sweep of Chowpatty Beach, and on the concrete hoarding that seperates me from the sand thousands of people sit chatting and eating stall food. Boys, mostly domestic servants so I am told, hold hands in friendship as they walk along the concrete. Everyone seems to be catching the post work sun - great wealth in designer gear strides alongside begger's and vendor men on the pavement.
I am trying to hail a cab with no luck so I follow the general meadering up this great artery, still arrested by the cityscape and the languid activity of the people, occasionly waving my hand in hope for a lift. After ten minutes or so a taxi pulls alongside. The driver does not know where I am staying. We debate this a while, and I scan a painfully inadequate and tiny map of Greater Mumbai in my Lonely Planet to try and give him a neighbouring street or landmark.
"Can I help you?" a voice says. It lilts in that Indian way, and is also mildly clipped and interrogative, showing a thread of poshness. A women of perhaps 22, clear skinned and fresh faced, is addressing me. I notice that she has an engaging way of moving her head expressively as she talks - a motion that seems part California valley girl, part ubiquitous indian head waggle. I had seen her down the road trying to flag down a cab to no avail, and in my strategically sound yet unsentimentally British way passed ahead to outflank her.
I explain the situation, and unfortunately she does not know the road either. I rack my brains for the name of the main highway close by, but turn up a blank. A thought comes to me - remembering I had seen the building the night before while walking. "It is near the most expensive private residence in the world" I say, "the..... . Antilla, I think?"
      "Ah, I know it." she says and jumps into my cab, so I follow her in.
      It's the sort of thing that rarely happens in London, the sharing of cabs. I mention this to Jade, as she tells me her name is, once we are on the move. "In India it happens all the time, neccesity really - at rush hour there aren't enough cabs to go round". I gaze out at the vast sea of yellow topped black taxis that clog every artery of the city and this statement is hard to believe. But then you look out at the tower blocks that stretch for miles, and the slums that grip to the clear spaces of the suburbs and you can credit the thought again.
      Jade and I talk for sometime as the traffic turns a fifteen minute drive to a forty five minute one. She works in Bollywood as a set designer, although she is working out her notice period before going to college to study psycology. Mumbai is a city of students, dozens of colleges and universities, tens of thousands of graduates, ambitious and bursting, like the towering residence up in the sky.
And despite the intensity of the hub bub and the crush which I thought would come down on me there is a homelyness here. Perhas because I have been lucky to stay with such a great family - the parents of a friend who have treated me like a king - but also there is a warmth in temprement that, if Jade is right and is born of neccesity, has flourished in a vistor's eyes to be genuine.