#274: With love from Goa
Dear reader,
I write to you from Moira, where I’m cat-sitting+home-sitting amidst palm trees and cats that bring home geckos and a kitchen with a bench. In the past five days, I have developed a love for:
grinding pestos and chutneys in the granite mortar-pestle
feeling more at home in someone else’s space than my own
reflecting, not over-thinking
URRAK! (however one chooses to spell it)
observing birds from the balcao and discovering their names
daily foraging walks and the returning home to capture my finds as compositions or cyanotypes, featured below:
There’s so much brewing, in terms of ideas, coffee and the general sprinkle of magic in the summer air. 5 more days here, and I know it’s just going to keep getting better and better.
Poetry Corner
Four poems I read this week that moved me deeply.
The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean from Which We Came by Mary Oliver
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give
gifts and withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,
and so, no doubt, can you, and you.It’s Time to Find a Place by Eunice de Souza
It’s time to find a place
to be silent with each other.
I have prattled endlessly
in staff-rooms, corridors, restaurants.
When you’re not around
I carry on conversations in my head.
Even this poem
has forty-eight words too many.What Matters by Terry Kirby Erickson
What other people think of you,
what they say, are burdens
no one should carry. Lift a spoon,
a cup, things that fit in your hand.
Carry on a conversation,
pick up a baby. Listen to the wind
when it whispers, nothing else.
There is no one watching you,
no one straining to hear what
you say. The present has arrived
and you are in it. Your heart
is pumping. Your breath moves
in and out of your lungs without
anyone’s help or permission.
Let go of everything else. Let
your life, handed to you through
no effort of your own, be all
the proof you need. You are loved.Waiting by Leza Lowitz
You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,
catapults you into doing all the things you've put off
the great things you're meant to do in your life,
but somehow never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift
the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.
Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry, the dishes the job –
it all stacks up while you keep hoping
for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.
Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.
But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty. Or fifty. Or sixty...
and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom
when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,
it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,
and when caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die –
and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it's because the thing is too small, too small,
and it needs to break out.
And midlife walks you into that wisdom
that this is what transformation looks like –
the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,
the yearning and writhing and pushing,
until one day, one day
you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn
and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful
just as you are.
A collection of Goa links
Glimpses of everyday Goan life from Rohit Karandadi’s animated short Modo De Vida: A Goan Sketchbook + follow him on IG!
Gorging on Afrah Shafiq’s Tumblr page, Love And Other Outdoor Games
Hurrah! It’s Uracca Season in Goa (this newly converted uracca drinker devoured this piece on Goya Journal)
Read: The Wise Fools of Moira and Other Goan Folk Tales by Lucio Rodrigues ^ (What a great find on Archive.org)
Creating Home-Grown Gods: Angelo Da Fonseca’s Cross-Cultural Paintings (a lovely find on Daak)
“To be able to cook for yourself, to truly know and see a raw potato transform into a fried plate of sabzi was an inexplicable feeling that I had never experienced before.”
-On mothers, kitchens and burdened memories of peeling potatoes by Ayushree Nandan“ I am learning now that I’m a part of this small wild world, not apart from it: I too am being constantly formed and reformed.”
-Richa Kaul Padte, The Year in Practice Walks (read on Hazlitt)
Reminders / Announcements
The Strange Co. x The Alipore Post cup on sale!
I’m collaborating with The Strange Co. for a special discount on The adventures of Dino, Rani and Spoony cup I designed for them. Use ALIPORE15 at checkout for a 15% discount + free shipping. ❤️
Goa Poetry Workshop this Sunday (4 spots left)
4 spots left for my upcoming poetry workshop at Prose Patisserie and Cafe, Goa on 21st April, 4pm to 6pm. (DM me on Instagram or reply to this email to sign up.)
Goa feels so at home right now + I’ve visited Prose and loved their vibe and urrak and lemon tart (Mmmm!), so I’m really looking forward to this one. 🍰📝
Workshop Alert: Varanasi Poetry & Art (for ages 7 to 15)
I’m doing a Poetry & Art workshop for children aged 7 to 15 in Varanasi on June 3rd and 4th at Mysticeti’s Centre for Art & Storytelling. The workshop aims to introduce children to the art of poetry, fostering their ability to express reflections and observations about their surroundings and self through original poems and foraging activities. The culmination of their efforts will be the publication of their collective work.
If you know anyone in Varanasi who may be interested, do let them know. It’s a whole new workshop format I’m experimenting with + there’s some amazing facilitators and artists lined up as part of Kid’s Club.
I’m so excited to send this one out into the world. :’)
Here’s to the susegad way of life,
Rohini
Such a delightful, wholesome read this one!
What a wholesome issue! This letter has made me miss Goa even more today!💜