I feel like writing something. I'm not sure what yet. I assumed that as soon as I began to type, it would come to me, but it hasn't yet and now I am just browsing through facebook and stalling for time.
While I am waiting for my mind to catch up with my fingers, I'll tell you about the difference between roads in Mumbai and Goa.
The roads in Mumbai are much the same as most others in the Metros. Especially in the city. Curbs. Asphalt.Polluted.Noisy.Traffic signals with wall-to wall beggars, hawkers or hijras. Sometimes a random street that is poured concrete or one that is all paving blocks. Pedestrian sidewalks where pet animals have left their steaming piles in the early morning smog. Most ordinary.
The special roads in Mumbai are the ones that lead out of town. The ones that lead back into Goa. They are both fun to speed on and oh! the drive.......
In the winter you roll your windows down. If you have one; you can pop the sun roof. If you are Rahul Gandhi, you take the top off your Gypsy.If you are Salman Khan you take off your shirt and flex your man-boobs. And if you are Jaideep Deoshtale you ride your motorcycle.
Take the NH4 to Pune, turn onto Nipani, Amboli and then take a road with a tilted road sign or no road sign at all. It will more than likely immediately start to go up or go down. There is likely to be a field and then a thick wooded area. Watch for the arrows that tell you to prepare for a turn. Most of them are bent in half.
The smell of foliage permeates the car. You cannot help but stick your arm out the window and hold the door with the flat of your palm. The ones with no regrets stand up through the sun roof and make like Leo and Kate in that “Titanic” scene.
Passing Amboli at sunset-if you time it just right, you'll pass a field full of fireflies as they begin to flicker. When your car drops down into where the road goes down into a small valley, you can feel the temperature drop. And the cold is chased away as the road climbs back up again where the heat of the road fights off the chill.
Once you pass Sawantwadi, there is curve after curve that will take you on to bridges that they say can only take one car at a time. Sometimes the signs that tell you to slow down are mere suggestions. Other times those sign have been run over by people who don't take suggestions well. Just be careful. Of course, there is nothing like the feeling of making it though a curve that you thought for a split second you weren't.
When you see another car, honk – it’s considered good manners.
You've probably had your music system on. Turn it off. Take in the sound of the wind. Of the trees passing you by as you pass by them. The hills and twists are short lived as you can't drive too far without bumping back into the NH17 and thence to Goa.
Go ahead and take a lap through Mapusa. And another through the billboard fields of Guirim. Drive past where The Royal Circus tents were pitched during Christmas and New Year. Loop back around and head out to Porvorim and O’Coqueiro –the restaurant where the infamous Charles Sobhraj sat; and once sitting was nabbed. And then cut right onto CHOGM road and drive past Nelsons’ Picnic Restaurant and down into Green Valley and finally home.
Summer is almost here and the Cashew trees are flowering, and those pesky crows up high in their nest are crapping all over the gate.
Aah! Peaceful night, broken only by the chorus of stray dogs yapping and howling at the moon… a Goan Nocturnal Rhapsody.
