Rains in Goa

It's midnight on a typical rainy August day in Goa. I am sitting in our "aangan" (courtyard in the middle of the house), feeling the rains... it's such a deep experience, so many memories evoked by the sounds and the senses.. difficult to capture or describe, and yet, so powerful, so all-consuming...

The rain is probably the one thing I miss the most about Goa when I am away...



The tip tap of the large drops on the roof, many of them falling off the chikoo tree in the aangan, along with the wet and heavy leaf falling down.. or maybe a small twig or a baby chickoo.. that sudden louder noise on the roof.. the dampness all around, the clothes, the floor, the air itself thick with the humidity... the debris on the floor...

The leakages from the roof.. the buckets and pots under them, trying to minimize the water all around...



And the best part - the greenery all around - the overgrown weeds, the grass, the earthworms, the beetles - bright red and black beetles that look so so beautiful - in their hundreds.. walking to the fields through the grass, unmindful of the snakes and the insects and everything else that now seems to be a big issue for the city-dweller in me!

Things may change in Goa - my village is no longer the same. There's so much haphazard construction - except for the roads, there are hardly any open spaces left - compound walls fencing of every part of the village, all our childhood playgrounds now the victim of commercialization and development..

Thankfully, the rains will never change - and as long as I can sit here in the aangan and feel it, I will be the Goan I always was.....