En route to Bogmalo, there's a tree in a meadow. Or a field, I'm not sure if "meadow" is tm-ed by Wordsworth and his naturalist ilk. It's a lonely tree, with tattered remains of things flung there by urchins, lovers and old maids - the trifecta of ceremonial littering - hanging down on it.
At Bogmalo, on a rocky outcrop to the North, below the navy base, there's another lonely tree - a palm, it's fronds fluttering in the August torrents, or drooping in the dead heat of April.
Back when campus life was still young, and we were infinitely more stupid and less snobbish, there was a lonely tree in the ground that now sports a sub-standard cricket field. It was surrounded by a field of sun-blanched grass that swayed with every gust of wind. They cut it down - and burned the grass, to boot - so the land could sport, as noted, a sub-standard cricket field.
The owners of this blog, their once and future friends, and no doubt many others, have spent at least a moment reflecting on at least one of those trees. And now, when I think of Goa, of BITS, of the corridor, the images of tattered shoes on blackened boughs, fronds tossing and turning in the breeze, rippling yellow fields of grass, always spring to mind. It's some sort of indefinable parody of the maudlin lives we've led for the past three years, but I can't imagine how.
I'm going right back to Goa, touching down on the 4th of next year. The trees will be waiting - the two that survive, at least. So will all of Goa, but it'll never be the same, will it?
I don't know why I wrote this, but it makes me sad. And nostalgic, which is just "sad" tarted up with memories and rouge. And a little bit hopeful - if the past held this much promise, who's to say the future is bleak?
Purple
-
* I*
There's a pain that hurts
and pain that heals;
A pain that stings
like angry bees;
It may be one
that leaves you sore;
But never a pain
did I w...
10 years ago
