Culture Clash

Om beach. About an hour's walk south of Gokarna, which is a lovely little town on the northern coast of Southern India. Pretty peaceful like that. Lots of establishments along the beach with cheap, simple and clean accomodation and an attached restaurant/chill-area overlooking the seafront. No one's in a hurry, nobody's blasting crazy fast music, nobody's shouting their heads off, and everybody's friendly and all.

But man this place is a circus. First one of the local guys who runs one such establishment doesn't want to give me a room because I made the mistake of speaking to him in local dialect - I should have of course spoken in accented English and pretended to be from Haifa for the best in obsequious Indian service. Eventually I do get the room - don't take it personally, Don Corleone would have said, it's just business. Indians don't fit in here. And just to prove the point, some local boys from nearby towns show up and make a big spectacle out of staring goggle-eyed at every bikini in sight from point-blank range. Wow this show's starting to warm up now. Most of the (non-Indian) backpackers are of course here to unwind after their tryst with the mountains earlier this summer and spending their last few weeks in India chilling out on the beach, learning yoga, wearing meditation beads around their necks, rolling spliffs, looking for spiritual connections and enjoying open air showers under banana trees. Discovering India. Some bizarre pocket of India devoid of anything which most Indians know as India. Don't go to Half-Moon beach today, one girl says, lot of Indians coming in boats. Ah ok, thanks for the warning. But then the Indians show up again in throngs and start photographing the bikinis and striking up elegant conversations - Hi frand! Where from? Superb, the Plutonians are striking up conversations with the Martians on Jupiter. Angel thinks it's just one big slapstick comedy - if you can separate yourself from it a little bit, come enjoy the masquerade! Go to hell says Lord K, back in Bangalore this morning, Gokarna is for people who can't deal with reality. We laugh like mad cos he's just jealous and he's just joking. But no doubts, it's a lovely beach, and I met some lovely people, and inspite of having just an extended weekend there I'm feeling a lot better today.