Goa: On Fruit Salad and Mental Snaps

Woah. Looks like I've been in Goa eight days now and all that's on my camera are that dopey shot of me on the moped and this one of the big ass fruit salad I ate for breakfast:

But whatever. I'm on vacation. If I want to give the camera a rest and watch the waves crash in and play guitar all day, I'm a-gonna do it, by God. Y'all can kiss my grits.

You see, I'm trying to sort out my growing disillusionment with travel photography. Especially in India, but really on any trip, how can you possibly capture every last detail or bright color or cute little kid? How can you possibly capture half of them? And who are you really taking photos for, anyway? People hate sitting through slideshows! And you know you'll never get around to making prints!

A fellow traveler reminded me a few weeks back that your camera 'comes between you and the experience.' Major truth in that, I think, illustrated in a story from yesterday.

I woke up with an actual plan for a change: Hire a scooter and take it down to Panjim, the capital city of Goa, a cool 25 miles away from Arambol, where I've been staying. Had this guy Ashton from L.A. come along. A bit of a leadfoot, Ashton set the pace, so we got there a bit sooner than expected. All I'd planned to see in Panjim was this old cathedral the Portuguese had put in (they ruled Goa from the time of Vasco da Gamma all the way to the 1960s'!). Ashton played along, but when we'd climbed the church steps and he told me he had been raised Catholic but was now an atheist, well, it kinda sucked the fun out of that one. Still, we had time and petrol enough to cruise over to Old Goa, which was more churches, but eventually old Ashton had to admit they were rather nice.

But the major excitement of the afternoon was yet to come. The sun refused to move from the highest point in the sky, egging us on to keep exploring. So we did, employing the tried and true strategy of riding till the road forks, shouting out the name of the next town with an inquiring pointer finger, then continuing on. (Mapusa? Left? Ok!)

On the second-to-last leg of this strategy -- looking for a place called Siolim -- we found ourselves in the middle of a curious neighborhood. Quiet, windy streets shaded by endless palms, and these brilliantly colored houses with gardens and porch swings. I want to say they had porticos, but really I don't know what that word means. We figured they were built by the fat cats from Lisbon before the locals gave 'em the old boot. Wonderful little houses. We stopped asking the way after a while, just drifting through those quaint avenues.

Thing is, ordinarily I'd be stopping every two minutes to take about a million pictures, baiting the residents to come out for a quick pose, or waiting till that kid was petting that puppy and turned toward me just the right way. But this time I didn't. Maybe it was Ashton's lead foot imploring me to keep up. Maybe I just liked the wind on my sunburned face as I rode past. Or else maybe -- and I think this might be it -- maybe I was just satisfied to keep the camera in the bag, to look around me and take a few 'mental snaps' as my Dad likes to call them.

I mean, why is a photo necessary to remember something? Isn't it almost a crutch, a way of embalming the visuals to save you the work of re-imagining them later? Especially these digital cameras and their confounding convenience: Take five shots to make sure you got a good one (you can always Photoshop it later!), then put the moment behind you.

Dunno. Maybe with this experience I've broken through. Maybe when I'm back home, closing my eyes and putting my mind to it a bit, I just may be able to put myself back in that old Portuguese neighborhood. I might forget just what color paint the one door frame had, or whether there was a woman sweeping her portico or not, but if I just meditate on the general feeling it gave me -- that serene, shady breeze -- I'll have a decent little memory for myself.

But whatever, here's that fruit salad again. It was pretty goddam delicious:

Just sit tight. Tomorrow I'm meeting my Dad in Chennai! Together we'll be visiting the Bethania projects across the next two weeks. Talkin' 360 views of grinning, leaky-nosed kids wearing matching uniforms. Should be back to my old sorts by then.