Salgãocar FC Were Coming to Town

February 11, 1999 was the day I had been waiting for all my life. It was my last day of school and, more importantly, Salgãocar FC were coming to town. Graduation party happened in the afternoon, as always, in the big art room with bamboo mats covering the floor and newspaper covering the windows. I remember every detail of my outfit that day. Blue and white Nike sneakers; tan corduroy trousers that used to be my brother’s and, therefore, had to be held up at the waist with a black belt; black tank top; and a light blue cardigan sweater that belonged to my mother in Paris and was over 12 years old. (Improbably, it was a pretty good look as far as the Orphan Annie couture of the day went.)

No one was leaving on the bus, this being the decadent high spot of our wilderness-school lives; everyone was staying later. But I got my backpack and slipped out at 4:00. For want of a better plan, I got off the bus at Richmond Circle and walked the entire length of Residency Road to get to the Park Residency Hotel. Indian football could only be mourned in the sad clichés of Deccan Herald sportswriters. It was unfavored by the media and the despair of its few meagre sponsors. There were four miniscule regions of the country where football meant anything, and Bangalore was not one of them. But to me the stadiums, the fixtures, the transfer rumours, Amal Dutta's Diamond formation, the struggle, and the glory were a heart-racing obsession in those years, and Salgãocar of Goa were my most favorite club. They were here to play what were referred to as (but never with much enthusiasm) “local giants,” ITI, in just the second or third ever National Football League.

It was a white hotel with a car park, potted palms, a marble desk, and an intercom. I walked into the lobby, painfully aware of the strangeness of my impending request (and my lack of legal majority). “You have the Salgãocar team staying here. Can I meet them?”
There was only the briefest flicker of puzzlement on the receptionist’s face, “Which... one of them?” Okay, that’s how it was going to be; I had to pick one... “Bruno,” I said without hesitation. He consulted a sheet of paper. The philistine had Bruno Coutinho living under his roof and he needed a rooming list to remember where! He dialled a number and was about to hand me the receiver when he suddenly remembered that they weren’t here; they’d left over two hours ago for a practice session. (It was only later that I learned, to my cost, that you don’t get to be a hospitality professional by being completely oblivious to the itinerary of your biggest and most important party of guests at any given time.)

Now I was slipping through a grill shutter, up the front steps of the familiar Karnataka State Football Association stadium with the peacock coat of arms on the gate. I entered its echoing vastness, the sweeping curves of grey concrete overhead, the stadium smell mingling with my trepidation. Through another grill at the far end, I could just see a strip of turf and some footballers on it. There was a musty, cluttered office and a portly clerk with long silver hair and a touch of madness in his eyes. “Are Salgãocar practicing here?” He said they were. Slightly incredulous, I pointed a shaking thumb back in the direction of the field. “Can I…” He shrugged. If he had known the expression, “Knock yourself out,” this is where he’d have used it. I walked out the shutters into the daylight; I was in the VIP stand.

There they were! The whole pantheon!

I saw Savio Medeira in the midfield. I saw Roberto Fernandez, that pillar of the defence. I saw S Venkatesh and Jules Alberto. I saw Juje Siddhi, black and splendid in the goal, hollering at the ball boys in perfect Kannada. And there was Bruno Coutinho, the then captain of the national team, and my highest god, in a Juventus shirt. I ran down the steps to stand on the paved boundary, right behind the bench, clinging to the wire work of the fence. I called his name; he turned with a smile and a wave. Two officials came striding by and one fell out of step and unfolded a plastic wicker chair for me. I did not sit down. I watched. Every pass and cross-in, the shouts and curses, the thump of the ball, heightened and amplified through the wide-angle lens of being level with the field.

I scanned the field for Alvito. There he was, left and forward, curly liver-red hair flying. He was just 19 that year, just transferred to Salgãocar, first time in the Premier Division, the left-footed rising star in the number 9 shirt. He’d been in the city the previous year with Sesa Goa in the Second Division League. I’d caught a glimpse of him walking down Victoria Road and stood leaning half out of the bus window staring after him till we turned the corner.

The practice session ended. The team were winding up, sprawled on the turf resting or packing up their kits. Bruno strolled over to me, wearing the revered green and white team jacket. “How are you, all right?” He asked, smiling good-naturedly. Dizzy and slightly nauseous, as a matter of fact.
I faltered, “I’m a huge fan,” and he obligingly signed the piece of paper I offered.
“You study here in Bangalore?” he asked without looking up, in that sweet, sweet Goan drawl that I came to know so well: one part father-figure, one part flirtation. I asked if I may take a picture of him and he smiled for it. Then, as if my cup was not running over already, he casually handed the camera to Seby Coelho as he passed by and asked him in Konkani to take a picture of the two of us. He put his arm around me and the awesomeness is frozen in time. “Come to the game on Sunday,” he told me and I wished him luck for it and he ran off through the gate in the fence.

I was standing on the edge of the turf now and when I looked up, the angel-faced number 9, Alvito Rolando Correia D’Cunha, was standing in front of me in all his glory and he said, “Hi.” I had always thought he would be arrogant and superior (and I adored him for it all the same) but he blushed perceptibly now, right down to his hands. I asked if I may take a picture of him and he smiled shyly for it. As most of the team filed past and up the stairs on their way out, Alvito stopped and turned and asked my name. His exact words were, “Your name, please.”

I was among the last few players walking through the grill, into the building, and out into the evening. There would be hell to pay when I got home so late. As the last of the light faded, a thin rain began to fall, as if in tribute to the club that would go on to win the League, and the orchestra took up My Cherie Amour in my head.

My Trekker Story

I actually asked for the Trekker. Having learned to drive already at the age of 15 from my father (normally law-abiding but he had his priorities), I enrolled at the driving school—as everyone does—just to ease the road to getting a valid license. So, I figured I might as well have a good time while I was at it; I didn’t want to go on pointless sojourns at 5 kilometers an hour in an 800-cc hatchback. I was sitting in the tinted office of Philips Driving School, the turbines of bureaucracy humming drowsily, when it lumbered into the gravel RTO Complex parking lot outside in the white-hot afternoon. It didn’t look like any other roadworthy vehicle of our time (and indeed it wasn’t). It had a disproportionately small, sloping snout; small round headlights and a plain, slatted grille; and a high windshield at a steep angle, almost intentionally designed to fight aerodynamics. Its boxy, wide body was the same shade of grey as everything from the glory days of Doordarshan (Bajaj Chetaks, Godrej Almirahs, BDA flats, safari suits, et al.) No doors; just a vertical bar on either side that presumably held up the roof (i.e., a canvas flap with no sides.)
The instructor was about 87. He had watery grey eyes, a toothless smile, and a small quantity of wispy white hair on top of his head. He spoke to me in Kannada and he was fondly called ThaTha by everyone in Indiranagar. I think the driving school allotted an instructor per so-many-KG-body-weight of the car because everyone else had one and I had two. My other instructor was younger; his purpose was to sit in the back and chat with ThaTha and me, and I have always believed that his name was George.
The sounds and smells of driving hung all about the Trekker. But not like now. The smells were of diesel and hot Rexene upholstery, the sounds of the juddering and creaking engine and the rattling gear stick that rose storklike and naked from the floor, and various other loose body parts. You had to shout over it. I looked down at the bare metal sheets bolted together for a floor while driving and, in one spot somewhere in the region of my feet and the pedals, I noted with a touch of alarm that I could see the road zipping away under me. (I tried not to do that too often.)
The rule of Philips Driving School was that you don’t let the student handle the gears in the beginning; you operate them, along with your duplicate set of clutch and brake pedals, in a disconcertingly unpredictable fashion. ThaTha dispensed with this rule the second day out, and from then on it was all, “Haak’amma, fourth-u!” which I still hear his voice lifted up in joy when I’m doing 80 on Airport Road. He would guide me through the quiet streets of residential Indiranagar in the afternoons, lined with leafy trees and granite gutters. He made me reverse, park, parallel park, U-turn, “full cut maadi,” and then there was nothing more to teach, so we started working for Mr. Philips.
We would go to his white, Spanish villa in a quiet corner of Defense Colony, with the rounded tower-style frontage and the pink bougainvillea pouring down from the top of it, almost to the street. I would park in the middle of the deserted road in front of the roomy garage by the side of his house and ThaTha and George, bantering with Mr. Philips’s domestic staff, would make trips in and out carrying armfuls of plastic jerrycans, which they would load in the back of the Trekker. Some days, when the last one was loaded, they would go back in and bring me long slivers of cut cucumber sprinkled with salt and red chili powder. Then I would drive the bouncing, rattling empty jerrycans—so far down Old Madras Road that we could see the hanging bridge—to a suburban filling station that was, for reasons I thought it best not to inquire into, the favored watering hole of Philips Driving School. (The first day, the station employees smiled at me in the lofty driver’s seat and said, “Yen’amma, jeep wode’stia?” though this was fairly self-evident, and then they got used to it.) We would have all the jerrycans filled with petrol for the driving school cars and take them back to Indiranagar.
On days when we didn’t have to do this KR Puram moonshine run, ThaTha would let me go to the Outer Ring Road so I could let it rip. He and George would put their feet up, fire up Bristols, and chat while I drove. Some days they would make me park outside Srinidhi Upahar on 12th Main on the way back home and we would all have a cup of tea. Some days we would go up Old Madras Road into town—it was still shady and tree-lined—and drive around Ulsoor Lake, the Gipsy Kings playing in my head and an exciting monsoon wind just starting up in the late afternoon.
My driving test was scheduled for a Wednesday, but nobody could say what time. You showed up at the RTO when it opened and you took your chances. Standing in line for the forms, I bitterly noted that I was the only Keatsian 18-year-old “alone and palely loitering” and all around me people’s families had turned out in numbers to lovingly support them on their special day. (I particularly resented a certain Reena Hyacinth John who’d come with a passably attractive husband or boyfriend in tow; and a motorcycle helmet. Was the woman never satisfied?!)
After doing the paperwork I went out back to find the only family willing to take me in: the Trekker crew; my RTO family. Only one other boy was scheduled to test in the Trekker. He looked like the skinny, young truck drivers’ assistants you see on the highway, and rather unhappy on this day. The road behind the Complex was being used for the testing. The Regional Transport Officer was routinely humiliating people into forgetting basic traffic safety, starting with the bikes and gradually moving on to the Santros and Marutis. If it was in order of size, we would have a pretty long wait. I sat with ThaTha and George and other miscellaneous members of the driving school staff who came by to say hello and share their lunch with me as morning turned to afternoon. At some point, mumbling an explanation that I didn’t understand over his shoulder, the slip of a boy jumped down from the Trekker and scarpered. I asked ThaTha why and he said he got cold feet. This anecdote was shared with each successive visitor and each time, ThaTha and George hooted and guffawed at the memory, “Who gets cold feet for a driving test? Who?!”
The afternoon heat peaked and the examinees stalled, crashed gears, forgot their hand signals, drove on the right, and hit things. The RT Officer would be nicely prepped for me... My turn came last of all and so a large mixed audience of dejected failures and unconnected gawkers had gathered. ThaTha and George got in the back and the RT Officer next to me. I made a false start in my nervousness but quickly composed myself and set off in the direction the Officer grumpily indicated. He purposefully asked me to go the wrong way down a one-way street (it was not a trick question), which came out on CMH Road. Then he put out his hand and ushered me across the road, contrary to all traffic, and made me park in a no-parking zone on the other side. He got down and headed purposefully into a juice shop and barked at us to state our preferences. ThaTha and George went to assist with the glasses and someone thrust an ice cold mango juice at me. After he partook, it was like a weight was lifted off his shoulders and the RT Officer became positively cheerful. Everyone was upbeat as we turned back towards the Complex and the RT Officer took his leave, with a cryptic assurance that I had passed.
Random well-wishers from the driving school and RTO trickled by to congratulate us and ThaTha and George asked if I wasn’t going to buy them any sweets, but I figured I knew what they would really like. So I went across to the “condiment” store that also functioned as my Manipal bus terminus and asked for a 20-pack of Benson & Hedges and I didn’t care what Mr. Holla thought. They didn’t have any so I had to settle for Classic Milds. ThaTha and George only smoked Bristols and Scissors and he gasped at my extravagance and refused to accept them. He finally relented only on the condition that I smoked one with them before dropping me home. “I’ll drive today. You just sit back like a princess and relax.” So I did. ThaTha shook out a cigarette for me and gallantly gave me a light (benki) and I smoked my first cigarette, legs crossed elegantly in the passenger side while he drove me home (and George came along for the ride and to say goodbye). I was a princess; the princess of the RTO; riding shotgun in a 1977 Hindustan Trekker with no doors and missing it already.

Found Mine

“At this time, ocean sailing is off because there is a 3-person-minimum requirement, which we don’t have,” the administrator at the office tells me over the phone. “Of course, once you’re there you can always canvas for more people, if you’ll pardon the expression…” There’s nothing like an ill-timed pun when the light of your sweet anticipation has just been rudely put out.

That night, I wait at the pick-up point, poised to turn back and go home at the smallest opportunity. To my slight disappointment, the bus arrives and the coordinator with it. I’m only relieved to see another girl onboard, who seems to be my age and looks fairly amicable. Soon after we set out, we sink into our respective phone conversations and she tells her friend, “Well, at least there’s another girl onboard, who seems to be my age and looks fairly amicable.” Standing forlornly outside a motel in Tumkur while the others eat, it has come to light that I’m a whole decade older than her—so—that ship has sailed, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Dona Paula is the first good thing that happens to us. Of course, the Bournvita Boy has installed the only two girls on the trip in the one room that is not yet ready—so we have to stand on the road for half an hour—and is on the ground floor so everyone on the other side of the street can look into our bathroom. In another masterstroke, he takes us to the Forest Department restaurant in Campal for lunch where, above the decorative bridge over the drainage channel, there is a grey, stuffed apparition hanging by the neck on a clothesline noose—strongly reminiscent of a bloated, rotting corpse—with tribal chalk markings on it, including a pair of snakes advancing on its crotch.

In keeping with everything else so far, the Bournvita Boy schedules for the girl and the kid and me to have our pre-diving pool session last, and while we wait, Ajey’s dad comes round to tell me that it’s off because the pool will close by the time the first batch gets done. So, because the omens of death were not quite strong enough at the restaurant in Campal, the girl and I sit in the sun on our doorstep singing Red Hot Chili Peppers Otherside at the top of our voices. Evening comes and a new fear has gripped me: I’m going to get my period. Now. Forget sailing; forget diving; before I even have my pool session. “Don’t over-think it and stress about it,” the girl wisely tells me, “it’ll only come more.” (From that moment on, of course, it becomes my entire world.) I busy myself looking out for travel agencies—and identify one in Miramar—so I can go home on the first flight out tomorrow and kill myself at my leisure. I am dimly aware of being taken to Baga, where you can’t see the beach for the creeps. The girl and I gratefully find a not-safe-for-swimming spot, flanked by the ridiculous red Coast Guard flags, from where we have a semi-unrestricted view of the sea and the sky. The Bournvita Boy outdoes himself by finding us a restaurant even worse than the last for dinner.

It’s cold in Goa at 7:30 am. We are going to have our pool session at the resort that houses the dive shop. Edina asks the kid how old he is; he says 12. “And you?” “29,” I say. She blushes, and decides not to ask anyone else. (I am used to this, having long since acknowledged that there are two kinds of people: the ones who think I’m a kid and the ones who, after being disabused of that notion, ask my mother why my caçare hasn’t yet taken place.) Edina gives us wetsuits for the cold; pushes her blonde highlights out of her mask; teaches us in her soft voice. Ajey vaults over the 3-foot fence with our release forms. We are already dry by the time we walk out to the Dona Paula jetty with our regulators and buoyancy control devices over our shoulders to get on the boat. I have avoided getting my period, with a little help from my friends (and a lot of help from Farmacia Salcette). As the boat ploughs and rocks out of the Zuari delta into the emerald Arabian Sea, and we are within sight of the Grande Islands, we start to see the dolphins. Deliberately and joyfully they jump out of the water all around us. Sadly, the Bournvita Boy has neglected to tell the seasick lubbers in the group that Avomine takes about a half hour to take effect, so this is also about the time that the hurling starts. (Hurling is always funny when you’re not the one hurling.)

Now we are anchored, bobbing diagonally in the midday sun within swimming distance of the islands, getting ready to dive, strapping the BCDs to the tanks and connecting the regulators. The girl decides not to dive in her wetsuit. “You should put a wetsuit on her,” Ajey quips (meaning me, the little one). “Why didn’t you wanna wear a wetsuit?” He asks as he’s strapping my weight belt on me. “Well, first off, it didn’t fit me; I was swimming in it, if you’ll pardon the expression,” I tell him, just to see him laugh again. Brown eyes, deep like the sea / They roll back when he’s laughing at me. Now he’s laughing at me because the weight belt goes twice round my waist. He makes me spit in my mask and I can’t wash it because I am now seated, immobile, with all the gear strapped to my back and my arms flailing uselessly like a T-Rex. Ajey leans over the side and cheerfully washes it for me. Netrani is still fresh in my mind; the first time I saw Ajey. (Thankfully, it was not the Plain White T’s but Henley that popped into my head on that occasion.)

Off I go, tipping backwards over the side, bobbing on the surface, waiting for Edina, the girl, and the kid to regroup. We lower ourselves down the anchor line. Edina deflates our BCDs and we swim, four abreast, hand in hand, around the bottom. I listen to my rasping breath in the silent, turbid, blue-green world. We see red whips and mushroom coral. We see a scorpionfish camouflaged on the ocean floor. We see a honeycomb moray, most of its length hidden under a rock as always. I am completely turned around under water and when Edina brings us up, close to the anchor line, and inflates our BCDs, I don’t know how we got here. Someone relieves me of my tank and my BCD, someone hands them up to the boat, and someone hauls them aboard. I eventually come out of my trance, take my fins off under water, hand them up, and clamber up the ladder.

I put my green shirt on, and my own mask, and go back in to snorkel. My bliss! I swim out towards the rocks and float almost motionless, propelled by the sea alone. I see the familiar, grey sea cucumbers lolling on the floor; innumerable blue line groupers; red soldierfish; a tiny, flitting, electric blue fish that no one can name; and a sea urchin the size of a basketball, among many. Some hick from the group is attempting to snorkel, thrashing about in circles around the boat as if it were the Corporation Swimming Pool, so it’s no longer safe in the water. I take a break in the boat. Ajey is back from the dive and is attempting to yell snorkeling instructions to the hick in the water, but his voice is lost in the wind and he gives up mid-sentence, our eyes meet, and a resigned smile is exchanged. I go in again when the coast is clear, (if you’ll pardon the expression.) The kid swims out with me to look at the sea urchin.

Back in the boat, everyone is done and we raise anchor and head back. Ajey is in the hull area and, for alliteration’s sake, the boy is bailing bilge water with a blue bucket from the bow. When he’s done, he’s spread-eagled in the hull, getting dry and holding forth to a guy from the group who is palely recovering from being the most violent hurler of the lot. After he’s dry, Ajey comes back to sit next to me on the starboard edge. Holding onto nothing, we sway with the boat. The Bournvita Boy’s regulation bread and jam are proffered. While the hurling is still a tad too fresh in everyone else’s minds to be able to look at food, Ajey and I enthusiastically share the bread slices, folded in half, dipped into the plastic carton of Kissan jam that he holds between us in his left hand (because nobody thought to bring a spoon or a knife on the boat). We haven’t eaten like this since we were in school. We talk about channel markers, the first International Film Festival in Panjim that we both lived through, saltwater crocodiles in the Andamans (that we both lived through, but an American girl last year was not as fortunate), Internet marketing, the Madgãocar Salvage Co., Ulsoor Lake, Moorish Idols versus Indian Ocean Bannerfish, the squash courts at the Marriot versus those at the Navy installation….. On dry land, “back to the room where we began” that functions as dive shop and classroom, we crowd around Edina to look for fish we saw on the Hungarian language chart on the wall. The regs and BCDs are being washed and sorted for the family that’s studying PADI level 1, who are going to use them next. I promise Ajey I’ll be back for PADI level 1 in October, and I mean it.

The girl and I make a plan to “put escape” from the Bournvita Boy’s prohibitionary Goa T-shirt sightseeing tour and get drunk. We identify Menino’s on the harbor-front and sit on the first floor balcony looking at the tourists acting stupid in the square. They don’t have Kings beer at Menino’s so we hop next door to Sea Pebble and sit in the back terrace that gives right on to the water, with all the lights of the ships across the bay. We talk about the decline of rock, camping in Mudhumalai, New Year’s Eve costume parties, swimming routines, the Leela Barista versus Café Matteo, our grandfathers’ dogs, piezoelectrics, our tattoos (hers Beatles-inspired, mine ocean-inspired), guitar tabs….. Despite the decade that separates us, the girl is my musical alter-ego. She says she learned from her grandfather. The live duo with a guitar and a synth that are playing in the restaurant are our musical mind-readers. We talk of the Beatles; they play the Beatles. We talk of the Eagles; they play the Eagles. We talk, if derogatorily, of Bryan Adams; they read us wrong and actually play Bryan Adams. We talk of Denver; they play Denver. We talk of Clapton; they play Clapton. The Bournvita Boy is frantically trying to call us. His first trip out and he’s lost the girls. They play Stand By Me and the girl tells me it is the exact same chord progression as the later (and much inferior) Sean Kingston Beautiful Girls. So we sing Beautiful Girls over the chords of Stand By Me.

At 6:00 am I am still in bed. The girl hugs me and takes my number and leaves for the airport to be home in time for the first day of college. I give the Bournvita Boy’s morning sightseeing tour a miss (of thronged historical monuments that I lived next door to for years) and have a perfect Goan morning instead. I hear the most familiar bicycle bulb horn on some street nearby and run outside with Rs. 5 to buy polli from the guy with a big cloth-covered basket on the back of his bike. I sit on the doorstep listening to Chris Rea, eating the tough, floury, whole-grain bread, washing it down with Frooti as the sun climbs higher in the sky. A boy in skinny jeans with a faux-hawk and disturbing piercings flings O Heraldo into the guesthouse lobby with expert precision. There are Brahmini kites here; they are more common than Common kites. There are multitudes of sparrows. There are jeweled sunbirds flitting through the trees on the other side of the street. I have a fleeting glimpse of a bulbul. I hear Coppersmith and Green barbets in all the trees, but never see them. The Bournvita Boy calls from Reis Magos or the Aguada Fort or wherever he is and informs me that I have now been entrusted with the entire responsibility of coordinating the sailing trip. He sends me Ajey’s dad’s number, I save it as I receive it—Arun—and then dial. A man answers and I recite the entire litany and it’s my Arun maam and he’s all at sea, if you’ll pardon the expression. I overwrite the number rightly as “Ajey’s Dad” to avoid all confusion and try again. Ajey’s dad gives me the lowdown.

When the group comes back, the Bournvita Boy officiously directs me to instruct the ones going sailing, so I tell them what Ajey’s dad told me, warming to my theme as they hang on to my words quite seriously. The Bournvita Boy accompanies us to the jetty with lifejackets for the other two; (not for me because of his trust in my newly elevated status as co-coordinator). I sit on the road, leaning on Ajey’s Indigo Marina in the first slot of the harbor-front parking lot, waiting for Arun. A lovely old man who’s Ajey’s dad’s old navy friend, with red sneakers and a soft Marathi accent, who refers to all seagoing vessels as “she,” is coming with us, too. We take turns motoring out to the sailboat in a non-descript green three-seater. I go first with Ajey’s dad. Of my many hats that we discuss, I’m wearing my JunglEscapes one today. We hop on to the sailboat; it seats six. It is beautiful; white, with a 20-foot high mast. We use the sails and the wind right from the off. We never touch the backup engine; I never even see it. We are eating up the nautical miles, bowling along over the swell in the afternoon sun. Ajey’s dad teaches me to operate the foresail. Pull the ropes taut so it doesn’t flap, but not too tight that you don’t get the thrust of the wind. You feel it in your hands. He teaches me to secure the lines in a jam cleat. I teach myself to tie a cleat hitch. He teaches me to operate the tiller and he gives me a home-made masala paratha. When we are within sight of the beach that we are supposed to swim out to, we tack! All duck as the boom swings across the deck; I scramble to bring the foresail round.

It is all in vain, of course, because the techie hicks who are with us decree that there is no time to swim to the beach for our little picnic and we have to turn back. Well, at least we get to tack again! Ajey’s dad’s friend tells us of the coral tracking project in Lakshadweep and of the loading miscalculation that sank a ship in Marmugão. We are on a steady course back to Dona Paula. Ajey’s dad sends me to go perch right on the very nose of the boat, with nothing but a few inches of hull between me and the sea. “Rest your head on these and lie down and listen to the water,” he passes me both the lifejackets. I lie back with my feet skimming the water, looking up at the gulls and occasional airplanes and one fishing eagle. Ajey’s dad comes to lie down on the lifejackets, too, feet astern. He tells me that when Ajey was in the 10th grade (or was it 8th? fathers never remember what grade their kids are in) he sailed in this very boat, with one other person, from Goa to Bombay. “Hugging the coast, of course,” he says, “They slept just like this at night.” And there was no engine backup then. “Weren’t you worried?” I ask, “About Ajey?” I mentally see him shrug. That’s just how he grew up, he tells me. I wonder if it’s too early or too late to ask this man to adopt me.

We are within 100 meters of the jetty now, and it’s time to switch boats. Ajey’s dad knows I was cheated out of my swim to the beach so he offloads me here and carries my bag and Crocs to the other boat and lets me swim Dona Paula harbor. They overtake me close to the shore and he makes me put my Crocs back on because there are barnacles in the shallows by the jetty. Once out, he gives me a towel and I so don’t want to ever take my leave of him, but I have to as he turns in to the dive shop and I make my dripping way on to the guest house.

Nothing in the world enjoys the 100% rate of success in making me cry like the road out of Goa. It doesn’t fail this time either. I will dream of Dona Paula for days, and half-wake up in the early morning thinking I’m still there. For now, I’m woken up periodically with less pleasant thoughts by the telescopic hoola-hoop (that the kid’s mom wisely purchased in Calangute) falling on my head where I’m curled up in the rear seat with everyone’s baggage. I will carry this secret baggage around for a long time. It whispers to me when I stare at the MEG boats on Ulsoor Lake. It passes silently between us when I teach SCUBA symbols to 5-month-old Aria. (I think she gets them: “Okay,” “not okay,” “don’t do that,” “kick.”) It speaks to me in the car through a song on the radio like Bumblebee; through the Dire Straits, through Don Henley, through Rod Stewart, through the Goo Goo Dolls, through Train, through The Killers, even through Sam Sparro when my guard is down: If you’re not really here, I don’t want to be either / I want to be next to you; black and gold, black and gold, black and gold.