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.