I’m sitting in an empty lifeguard chair on an deserted stretch of the beach in Palolem, Goa. The time is just closing in on 7 AM. The air is cool and damp and the sounds of the surf are all you really hear except for the occasional barking of the orders from the lead fisherman getting ready to go out for the morning. Few people are up so it’s a very tranquil place to be. The street dogs are all over the beach playing some strange game that seems much more fun than their normal fight for survival. It seems that their is some kind a bounty on trying to knock down the lone traveler with a camera too.
The dichotomy of this scene is me sitting in this serenity with a laptop. I used to put pen to paper but I suppose, like this beach I have given way to the evolution of the modern world. I watch the fishermen get ready much like they always have, building fires and tending nets. . The changes come in the form of a motor and some brightly colored football shirts but the routine is the same. Sometimes you have to wonder which was a happier life. What was this place like a hundred years or more ago? Everyone was doing their things to survive and I argue they didn’t feel this pressure of a western world pushing down on them. Not that envy and jealously and want are exclusively a western things. They aren’t, but there is no doubt that it is harder to explain to a child why they don’t have the same things they see on TV now then it was to explain the situation a hundred years ago.
A game of Cricket is developing among the locals down the beach and women are walking by on their cell phones. Time to find some coffee because the beach dog games are over. I guess they have to go back to the real world too.
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