As the new year approaches I often get innundated with all these ideas by people for a pre new year bash or a trip. The argument all these years has always remained the same, one last trip as the year ends or the last party of the year before we celebrate the year end. As much as I pretend to be burdened by these ideas they are actually the things I look forward to the most and not the new years party. A sort of anti climax, one can say, to all the party trends that mark the end of the year.
This year was a bit different though. I was in a different place, being trapped between life decisions that range from one end of the world to another, covering ever inch of the spectrum, be it visible or infra red or ultra violet. I wanted to get away from the violence in my head.
The usual ways were tried. Cheap booze in an expensive party, a DJ that wouldn't stay on the whole event and a hangover that added to the morbid mess that marked my December. Friends came over. Over booze, food and really sleazy jokes dreams were shared and hopes shattered. It was building up brilliantly. From places to go to designing your own planet. A painting you could deface to monuments you wish were pubs. A brilliant thought process it is of an alcohol addled mind.
The whole debauchery ended with me waking up and with two friends driving up to daman near the gujarat coast, with two other compatriots seeking an excuse away from the mundane life back home seperately on their way. How it led to daman I don't remember, I doubt any of us do. A cold december night and the warmth of rum can do that to you.
It had been a long time since I did something like this. Like the words of a song at the tip of the tongue this trip had been stuck the whole year round at the back of a laundry list of things to do and excuses to cover them up later. Yet eventually ,if not finally, it broke free like the song it was meant to be.
Daman, for those who do not know, is not Goa. You wont have shacks selling commercial music and games and what not, along with cheap booze and companionship of visitors from abroad. There werent any events to go to. No parties to attend. No planned dancing. Nor the occassional acid trip. Daman is the solitude found in the middle of a crowd. No hip and happening beaches. No churches you 'have' to check out. No film scenes to be replicated and mocked up into a digitally enhanced photograph.
Daman was naked....all its glory simple and for all to see.....
The drinking being over powered by the need to eat bullet chicken and prawn koliwada, followed by the walk to the beach for pan and that Edge Of The World Peg as you watch the waves crash upon a non existant shore under your feet with the moon half lit by the sun and half by our own need for a symbolic night. That marked the first night at Daman.
The morning brought woes of its own with the sun burning us and pushing us further to explore our own little nook of freedom. A secluded beach in a village in this small town, hardly explored, hardly trampled. The people were old veterans of the land. Taking joy in the familiarity that the place brought to them and the sense of escaping a nightmare of monotony. They were our companions, each enjoying the silence of the other.
As we soaked the sun and the cheap alcohol on a sun kissed beach where none but us sat, crowned in our silence marking the peace that the solitude of this place had brought upon us, we read a little, danced a little, slept a while, played ball, tried to pet a camel, rescued a camel, broke a car, made a friend and watched the sun set on a holiday from our lives that we have yet to recover from.
The drive back was short and fun though I doubt we ever left....
