Love at third sight
(Or, What can Goa teach you about finding love)

“Do you drink wine?”

“What’s the big deal about it? I’m down two glasses and nothing great is happening. I’m not even buzzing!”

“Try the third one.”

Let’s face it – time has come to go beyond the ‘love at first sight’ cliché. It’s ridiculous to be hanging on to the most hackneyed and superficial phenomenon in Mushville. It’s not fresh; worse, it’s alarmingly fake.

Which we’ve all realized. Because we’re all 30. When you’re 30, you love every one at first sight, till the subsequent sights tell you… “oops.”

But then, Harry met Sally.

And I started thinking about Love at Third Sight.

You know, there’s something magical about the wine that starts to make so much sense only from the third glass. Or the song, when you hear it the third time… or pancakes.

There are things that give you instant gratification. And then there are things that you got to develop a taste for. And as much as you are developing Your taste, that object (or desire) is actually, very subtly getting you Ready for it. It’s a kind of lead-in time for appreciation you could say.

And it’s very different from the Instant Gratification variety. It hits the spot a little later. But when it hits, you stay hit.

You’re in love, for life.

I can talk for myself here; the third time I met her, I found myself hopelessly in love.

Goa. Ooh, Goa.

When I first shifted to Bombay, I was secretly excited about shifting to a city closer to Goa. But then, as luck would have had it, in three and a half years this is only my third visit to Goa.

The First Sight:
We had a client in Goa who ran a rather prim property. And those days, I was writing their brochures. So just to cut to the chase, I was sent to Goa (with a client servicing friend, my guiding light). A meeting was fixed. I was told I’ll have to take the bus. At that point in time, I was ready to walk.

It was a July day (I remember people telling me Goa in July is a bad idea), and after 15 hours of sleeping in the bus, we reached Goa at about 8 in the morning.

And then we sat for the meeting and took the evening bus back. Period.

I’d heard a lot about Her. I just about met Her (she wasn’t looking that great, off season maybe) and I left for home, indifferent.

The Second Sight:
It was July again, 3 years later. It was with the office folks again, but on fun. Someone had struck a deal which got us parked inside a hotel in South Goa.

(South Goa: Relatively unexplored, almost-virgin beaches. Calm, quiet. More dogs than people. Not the Goa you know of. Dead.)

And since it was the monsoons and we didn’t have much to do outside the hotel, we spent most of the time gallivanting in and around the pool, playing the fool. And water polo.

Taking nothing away from the blast we had, it was, still, NOT Goa. I mean 45 drunk people are bound to have fun even inside V.T. Station.

I smoked, drank, drank, smoked, ate, ate, ate, slept, control c, control v…

This time She was there. And I spent more than two days trying to bask in Her warmth. She still wasn’t looking as great as I thought She looked in my mind. She was fun, but at the same time She was poignant. She was unmindful, pre-occupied.

Maybe She doesn’t like me, She’s just being polite.

Love at Third Sight:
The best things in life happen out of the blue. This is one old adage I’m not ready to let go off, yet. For it was a trip, straight out of the blue.

I knew I was going to Delhi for Diwali. 5 holidays clubbed with 2 ‘offs’ made for the longish Delhi plan… Till I heard about some people heading for Goa.

I mean, there are, always, some people heading for Goa, but these people, some of them I knew. And as I figured life that very evening, I figured I had my stay all organized. I just had to book myself in to one of those Birds.

Now, normally I wouldn’t do such a thing. I was already spending quite a bit to go to Delhi. And now, I was canceling, booking and rebooking at the nth hour, which meant I was blissfully juvenile about the Credit Card bill that’s going to hit me soon, very soon (when you read this, send me money).

And I knew then – this could be love - for you do stupid things only when you’re in love.

Between that evening and the next afternoon (my flight to Goa) there was an amazingly long, drunken night. Which, I must say, bridged the two rather well.

I reached Goa, went straight to the hotel at Baga, met up with the friends and went to sleep. Now, do not, not for a second, underestimate the importance of sleeping the day if you’re serious about making it a night.

If you want the most of Her, preserve the most of you.

The romance started later that evening – a joint on the beach and then a couple of beers. Which isn’t what it’s reading like.

It’s more like cool breeze, the sand, the sea, the colour of the sky which Bombay never sees, the beach-chairs, the umbrellas, the joint and –

The People: We’ll have to agree on this – the world’s most rocking places can be really disappointing if there isn’t the ‘crowd’ you’re looking for. I mean there’s something about having happy faces around you. And in this case, happy and (sun)burnt faces of some amazingly hot women… Sigh.

Where was I!

The Music: I’m a New Age Music freak. Yes I do like songs, but when I want to let go, I want my Trance. I love my Trance. Which was what they were playing. Rocking. Where was I again!

You know, there are places that you love and then there are places that make you feel that you belong here. This is where you’re supposed to be. And this Third trip to Goa made me feel just that.

Later that night I went club-hopping. Lots of my kind of music and people. Cheap alcohol (well after Bombay, most places are cheap) and great food almost anywhere). I made love to wine. I went down on my food. And it was orgasmic.

(A pointer here – there are two ways to go about in Goa. And I’ll talk about only one – rent a two-wheeler for 200 bucks a day and be a free-spirit. Honestly, I don’t know how else to do it. So for people who don’t know how to ride a bike, Goa isn’t GOA.)

If you want to explore her do not take the backseat.

Thanks to my well-planned ciesta, I made most of the night. That night, and the ones that followed.

Of course, not by any stretch I’m suggesting Goa By Night and night alone. She’s incandescent in the day and ravishing in the night. And this time she was knocking me off my feet. So what works for you, go figure.

I, for one, ‘OD’-ed. After the 7 a.m.-good-nights I was up and about to greet a 12-ish ‘hello’. It’s sunny, it’s bright and there’s so much out there. How the hell do you sleep for long?

The food: Just to put things into perspective, I’m quite a health freak. Carbs, greens, proteins, brown-bread, calories, BMI… is quite my vocabulary. I watch what I eat (it’s true, if there’s something unnecessary fattening on my table, I just watch). The last time I had something fried was when cooking oil was invented. I’m not too fond of sweets and Indian curries. Meet me at Subway or a salad bar, any day.
I lost it in Goa. There was no guilt involved in annihilating multiple plates of deep fried prawns and mussels, dipped in cheese and mozzarella. There was just a sense of peace and calm – that, if, there’s a Tsunami coming at us right now, I’d go down, content.
The Tsunami never made it, but every day, four times a day, I was ready.

The food, the weather, the people, the mood, the bike-rides, the shacks, the sun, the breeze, the playing-hide-and-seek with the roads, the music, the wine… wasn’t just fun. It was liberating.

She was all that I have never experienced in one embodiment. She was the one I could grow old with. Right out of the blue, She was the love I was dying to fall in.

And all of it - the third time around.

(I don’t know how it began. And I don’t know how it’s going to end. So this is just the middle part.)



He looked up to her, in a fake attempt to disguise his sadness, “So?”

“So? So what? You know what’s your problem? You think a lot. A lot more than it is really needed. It’s unhealthy, that’s what it is. The more you ponder over something, the more you’re letting that thing or situation confuse you. Because at no point in time, you’ll know exactly what to do. It’ll always be a choice between what you could have done and what else you could have done and what you are going to do... It is that complicated. And you can’t always sit and think over it. It’ll not ...” the telephone rings and She turns to take the call.

He goes back. To think. This is just one of those things that make you an individual – the right to think all sorts of things. Wrong things maybe, but so what. If you’re living your life through your mind and if everything you experience is a function of what your mind perceives it as, then what’s the harm in thinking?

I’m sure those great Indian sages who sit on thorny chairs or daggers Think that they are sitting in a Jacuzzi. And then they levitate. How do you think they do it, huh? You’re undermining the importance of thinking just because you don’t think much. Or is that what you want me to believe? Maybe you also think. Think all the wrong things. The decision to not think is also conscious thinking. And I’ve noticed that it’s not as if you don’t think. You think and you tell your mind, “No, I don’t want to think about it. I want to think about something else now.” So in essence you run away from your own thoughts. “This thought is bothering me, therefore I’m gong to go to that other thought.” Just like you’d stand in front of your wardrobe and decide, “Umm which one, today?” Which tells me, if you could generate dresses like you generate thoughts, I’d never go out with you, forget it.

So you run away from one thought and take respite with another. Because, yes I know, “There’s no point thinking about it.” See, that’s the difference between you and me. You are closed. I’m open. You don’t want to think because the possibilities don’t matter to you. You’re done. And I’m about possibilities. And it’s never too late.

You don’t start. I don’t end. And I have a very strong reason why I am this way. Because I don’t think about world peace. I don’t think about hungry children. And I certainly can’t think of winning the Miss Universe pageant.

There are just a few, very few things worth thinking about. And what I’m doing with you happens to be one of them. You react one way to a beautiful flower, and you react one way to a bud that enters and blooms into an orchid inside your mind. Its existence becomes an integral part of your thinking. And then what you...

“Sorry, long call. Winding up, you see. Good things coming to an end...” What She said didn’t register, but He came back from his zone and looked at her. He wanted her to listen to all that He’s been thinking. As if the voice she was speaking to on the other side of the telephone, by some miracle said the exact same things that he’s been thinking. There were days where telephone lines would get mixed up. And you’d hear strangers talking. Why can’t that happen between two telephone lines and a person external to this network?

That it didn’t happen, was evident from her face as she gave him another quizzed look, “You look dazed. Want some coffee?” “Coffee, what a noble idea, coffee,” he thought, “ever since I quit smoking, I’ve been on this diet of twelve black coffees a day. Nicotine. Caffeine. Divine.”

“Yes coffee. Great. Let’s walk to the vending machine, I’m tired of sitting around.” He lied though. He could never be tired of sitting next to her. Just sitting next to her. Without any rhyme or reason.

Sometimes without even talking to her, just outside the line of her vision. It was his way of meditating and finding something he had no clue he was looking for.

He knew exactly who he was looking for - Someone who’d, someday, just stop him. Break him down. And build him over. Someone who’s universe was bigger than his. And deeper. And there she was as if not just two-third, but the whole Earth’s one ocean. Where everything could live. And when he sat next to her with his whole world of desert and sand, it coexisted with her whole world of waves and water. As if to become a much bigger world of beaches and seas. This world always overwhelmed him.

He hadn’t felt anything like this since the day he discovered he could sing. Life’s deepest discoveries happen out of blue. One moment changes everything before and after that moment. Till another such moment arrives. And life is what happens in between.

This moment had also come unaware. It suddenly crept and jumped at him, scaring and comforting in the same breath. He always believed that you don’t really have to spend a lot of time with a person to know him or her. He had always been a reader. He had practiced and mastered the language. He had read her too, or so he thought.

Till this moment arrived. And she read some pages from his book, pages that she had been carrying not knowing they were his. Destiny! Yes. But what next?

“Get up! You look dazed and stupid. What’s it about me that brings out the moron in you,” she yelled. He was looking at her, so he just smiled and said, “You’re too cute.” She frowned, she didn’t get the connection, and the reply wasn’t logical. “Okay, let’s go before another phone call comes.”

The coffee was nothing special, besides, he thought, maybe this was the last cup of coffee He was having with her. The thought unnerved him. He always knew that a situation like this would arise some day. And not just her, it could be with anybody. Anybody he liked. And he had prepared to handle this situation and was confident because he had full knowledge of this situation.

He got scared, “does this mean the bricks that I’ve laid in my defense, my spiritual immunity - they are on shaky grounds? All the hard work, restrain, practices, all of that don’t mean a thing?”

“Or is there a force so strong that what you have and what you don’t have don’t matter. It’ll just come and blow you away. Sometimes it takes you and makes you travel with it. Sometimes like a twister it just takes you and drops you at some point. And if you survive that, you wonder. He resigned to the fact that this was one such twister.