Goan Dinner

Yesterday I was so much more at peace after talking to Mark on the phone. It was the first time we had spoken since I left on my adventure.
Afterwards I bought a train ticket to Cochin for tomorrow, November 6. I am one day behind "schedule" but that's fine. I feel very comfortable here on the beach. My new friends, Suzanne and Ronald, moved from their guest house/hut at Bakti Shukir to my place at Papayas. From the outside Papayas looks like a little bit of a mess. They just re-opened for the tourist season on November 1, but the beach is much more quiet than Palolem.

Every room is named after a fruit. I am in Mango. I forgot to mention that at Quiet, every room was named after a planet. Guess what planet I got? Yup, Uranus. Awesome.

Last night, Ronald, Suzanna and I walked 40 feet down the beach for a lovely evening. We watched the sunset and enjoyed a fish feast. We ate grilled tandoori fish and traditional Goan Xacuti fish.

The restaurant first showed us the fish. We had a choice of lobster, squid, some other gooey sea creature, kingfish and snapper. We chose the snapper. I will try and upload the photos. I have tried twice but it may be the computer that I am using.


During dinner we talked about all sorts of things. Ronald is finishing up medical school and he is specializing in gastro-intestinal stuff and other digestive medicine. It is fascinating to me. He is very interested in Kashrut. So whenever he is in SF I promised him that he could get all the details from my Talmud-savvy friends, including my husband.

Suzanne works in low-income housing in Rotterdam. She is also a big fan of yoga and Pilates.

Ronald asked me when I thought I might die, hopefully of natural causes. I am not sure. I only got to know one of my grandparents. Before he asked me this question I had been reading a booklet that I had picked up at Sri Auribindo Ashram entitled "Death". Don't worry , this was one of four booklets that I picked up. I don't buy into many of the things he says, but I enjoy sitting on the beach reading about these greater topics. He asks the question "why is there death?" assuming that the soul lives on forever. Personally I don't believe in reincarnation, so worshipping cows here in India seems odd. Auribindo talks about death being a impetus for us to get things done. He calls it Aspiration. I just think that without death, we would be lazy. We wouldn't have a Deadline. As we get older, we see the frailty of life. We become weaker. We see our parents age. More people around us hit that deadline. That deadline gives us a sense of responsibility to make changes in this world that will hopefully improve life for those in the future.

While in Sri Lanka I met a woman who said she had no qualms about working for an unethical company or for a country that supports injustices against women, people of different faiths and people of different sexual orientations. She became angry with me when I said that it would be difficult for me to even be friends with someone who gives such a big part of their life's energy to a cause that could harm others.

In SF Mark and I are so lucky to be part of a greater community full of ethical business-people, teachers, doctors, spiritual leaders, healers. I wrote earlier about Barbara Marx Hubbard's theory of how the butterfly emerges out of the catipillar. My friends, my associates, my colleagues are making that blueprint on the catipillar's cacoon so that the butterfly can emerge.