RUSTIC WANDERER

October 2022

Jezebel is lyrical, even rhapsodic, but it doesn’t quite go with my grey beard and the general supply of hair all over. I’m far too monochromic, hairy and prosaic.

Mormon doesn’t sit smoothly either, I’m not that prosaic. Jay is abrupt, Pansy too ambiguous.

Now, Emigrant does describe my perpetually itinerant lifestyle but I am certain that there is something more rousing for me out there.

I have secretly nursed a lifelong aspiration to change my plebian name. After years of seeking randomly, I finally find inspiration in an unlikely place, when I am not looking – that’s how inspirations typically work.

On a sunshiny day of no significant purpose, I decide to be at Sunaparanta, a centre for the arts. I do not have the rarefied sensibility or vocabulary to relish the finer things in life, particularly those with exclusionary price tags. I still like taking their pictures.

I set off with my camera bag, hat and water bottle. Past the casino-lined tourist patch, up a winding byway where the buzzy world gets shed behind, I see her.

She sits there, the old blue and white mansion, grandly and quietly, a few steps from the green lawns and the imposing mahogany tree. They watch, the tree and the mansion, like perceptive and tolerant grandmothers.

I walk up the stairs looking for art, artists and visitors. Not one in sight. I see an office room.

‘Good morning, ma’am. Am I allowed to take pictures here?’

‘Take pictures of what? There’s nothing right now.’

She explains that Sunaparanta is not an art gallery. ‘We host shows and the next one begins in two weeks.’

I am disappointed but not deterred. Sometimes the real thrill in photography is in finding a composition in the commonplace.

‘Can I walk around and see for myself?’

She asks me a few questions, then suggests a spot out in the open. ‘It’s our little butterfly garden.’

Carnival on Wings

I scurry off, carefully following her directions. Left into the building, through a bereft gallery room, into the courtyard café, right into a short corridor, and I am there – looking quizzically at wild shrubs of lantana and buddleja.

This ‘garden’ is no bigger than a two-seater sofa. A sprinkling of colourful little flowers with one aimless lemony butterfly, not much else. There is some consolation in the fact that at least one other creature looks as lost as me.

I ask the cleaning lady in the grey uniform where the butterfly garden is. ‘You need to stand and wait,’ she says, and continues mopping.

The sun is getting strident.

Yes I’ll stand and wait, I tell myself, but not more than five minutes. I sweat and dehydrate easily, turning into a desiccated leaf. If in my next life I end up enjoying nature photography as much, I’d like to be born with some camel qualities.

I don’t have to wait much. They come as if on cue, as if Pingal the cleaning lady has told them that audience has arrived. Late morning has begun to feel like early afternoon. Matinee show.

This little place metamorphoses into a village carnival with all the colour and all the incessant feasting and flitting and flirting.

They all come in quick succession: Common mormon, Painted Jezebel, Chocolate pansy, Grey pansy, Spotted rustic, Common wanderer, Tailed jay, Common emigrant. They hop from one flower to another, drift off, zigzag back. Some get busy chasing potential mates.

A Blue-banded bee weaves in, dodging the butterflies. A quaint creature I have never seen before makes a guest appearance. It has thick black whiskers stuck to its rear, a red band, and transparent wings. Pantomimic.

I find out later that this is a Pellucid hawk moth. The taxonomy for butterflies and moths can go from uninspired to whimsical.

I sit, stand, squat, sprint, bend, anything to get close enough without causing disruption. A fly on the wall.

At one point I turn into a statue when a cavorting mormon lands on my tummy for some rest. Romance can get tiring, specially in the muggy midday sun.

The suitor finds her soon enough and they resume their mid-air affair. I am left with pollen on my tee. I feel like a tree with etchings of love.

Even those with wings that are torn – one emigrant is in shreds – partake in life with equal zest. They must make the most of the brief time they are granted between caterpillar and dust.

I have been out here for an hour and half, soaked and burnt. Time for a café break. I sift through the shots while sipping a chilled berry smoothie. I go back to the garden for a while. The carnival is in full swing.

On my way out, I thank Justina for guiding me to what has turned out to be far richer than any painting and sculpture exhibition: live art, au naturel, eclectic, free to all, priceless, not to be owned.

The artists are unknowable, or a matter of faith. The audience decides.

Whose Goa?

Goa, I am beginning to see, is much more than a playground of the rich and the restless. I used to be one of them, an irresponsible and entitled tourist with time and money to purchase yet another sensation.

My current visit, one that I keep extending, has been different. My guides have not been fellow tourists who feel compelled to instantly ask and advise: Are you in South Goa or North Goa? South is this and North is that. Have you tried this restaurant, that nightclub? You must rent a scootie.

I am tempted to ask: To complete the picture, in an open floral shirt? With a girl in a short skirt riding pillion, shooting a selfie video, hair blowing in the wind?

Pure delirium.

Then the two words we utter as we bask in the afterglow of a romanticized history: Authentic, Portuguese.

We present Goa as two homogenous stretches of authentic Portuguese artefact, a box of historical curios. We add, in real time, with bated breath, to our esoteric Intagramable instances. We wait, in real time, with bated breath, for the likes and the emojis.

Goa, meanwhile, goes on.

My guides have been Goans who neither ask nor advise. They don’t talk of North and South as if they were two different continents. They take me along in their rundown cars, windows rolled down, to their villages and farms, fests and forests, ferries and wetlands. They show me, with great joy, their fishing tackle.

We talk about the next secret spot far from the madding crowds. I get taught some Konkani, which I immediately forget. We lament the politics, construction, casino commerce, reckless tourism, and then we continue gazing at the wondrous sprawl: Rivers and rivulets, natural spring water, sea, Sahyadris.

‘In the February 1999 issue of National Geographic Magazine, Goa was compared with the Amazon and Congo basins for its rich tropical biodiversity,’ says Wikipedia.

In these 23 years – not even a pinprick in the span of human history – too much has changed. Ask any Goan.

Here’s hoping that we leave some of it unsullied, that we let nature be, that I get to live out the new name I have acquired for my new persona.

It’s a combination of the two of the several species that fluttered around me that fortuitous morning: Rustic Wanderer.

~*~