Celebrating Holi In Goa

It was the month of February. My younger sister had her birthday in the last week of Feb. So me and Madhu decided to invite her to Goa for holidays. Our plan was to show her the places around and also celebrate her birthday. My sister, Shraddha was very happy. She took 4 days of leave from her work. I booked her ticket for the overnight bus from Pune to Goa. The bus usually reaches the Mapusa bus stand around 6 am and Morjim was 1-hour drive away. On her birthday she had planned to come to Goa. That day I woke up at 5 am and left the house on my bike. It was still dark and pretty cold outside. I was wearing my jacket which wasn't enough to stay warm while driving through the cold breeze. My shivering hands and body were shaking the bike so much so that it was looking like the bike also was shivering from cold. I enjoyed driving a bike in the dark when the road would be empty with the silence around it. Some kind of mystery would come to life in those roads when it would get dark. I reached Mapusa at 6 am and Shraddha's bus came at 6.15. We started on our journey back to Morjim. I was showing her places while driving. That was her first time in Goa on a bike. We reached home around 07.30. By that time Madhu had made nice breakfast and coffee.

Shraddha was happy to see the house and the surrounding. She was surprised to see how my life had changed. We both came from the same traditional social conditioning background where life was aimed at getting settled. Settled means marriage, kids, house & car. I had fallen off from the mainstream route and was enjoying my off-road trail. She was amused to see how I and Madhu had decided to live our lives in our own ways. Madhu would often insist on her to leave her job, do something of her own and live like us. But I guess not everyone in the world was a nutcase like me and Madhu. In the evening we celebrated her birthday. We stayed till late at night in our balcony enjoying with our friends. Next day was Holi, the festival of colours. In Goa, Holi was celebrated on a grand level. Till then I had seen only Indians celebrating Holi. But that time there were many Russians and they celebrated like crazy. It was fun to see locals and foreigners together throwing colours on each other. We enjoyed with our friends in Morjim. Later we decided to go to Arambol beach which was 30 minutes drive from Morjim. We had only one bike so we went triple seat. On the way, there was one open club playing really good party music. That was full of foreigners. One could see from the road itself that everyone was dancing. We went inside and spent some time dancing like 3 black dots on a white paper. After a while, we headed for Arambol.

 

Arambol was a crazy place. If one wishes to see the craziest people in Goa then Arambol was the place. When you visit the flea market in India you would find Indian sellers and shopkeepers. But in Arambol there were foreigners who were selling things. Everyone was unique in their craziness. They had some weird tattoos and piercings on different parts of their body. They were wearing really unusual cloths. Some were dancing on the beach alone just by themselves. Arambol had a complete Hippie vibe. I was amused to see a different breed of people who didn't give a damn about what people were thinking about them. They were hippie at heart. I felt like in a way I was also walking on the same path, not that extreme though. Arambol was famous for its Drum Circle where a group of percussionists from all over the world would come and sit in a big circle on the beach. While they would play some killer beats in that big orchestra, people would dance in the middle of their circle. We did join the dance. It was out of the world experience to dance in the circle which was surrounded by high energy percussionists playing the drums with all their energy and heart. The loud beats would come inside the circle from all the directions like powerful sound waves and it would explode every cell in your body to dance till the last drop of your blood. People inside the circle would just go crazy while dancing. At some point, the energy of everyone would just get so condensed into one that the dancers would disappear and only dance would remain.

Arambol Had The Capacity To Shake Me Out Of My Mind.