On the Road to Paradise

The drive from Mysore to the airport in Bangalore for our flight this afternoon to Goa was about as harrowing a four hours as I’ve ever experienced; among other things, we almost hit a horse.

A pony leapt off the median right in front of our speeding taxi and if our driver hadn’t been so adept at slamming on the brakes (a skill honed to perfection over the previous couple of hours), we might all have been ready for the glue factory.

This was in addition to the early bout of road rage we experienced, an incident that culminated, following our taxi’s failure to pass a car that drifted into our lane, with both cars stopping right in the middle of the busy freeway so their respective drivers could yell at each other for a couple minutes while I tried shouting “shanti, shanti, shanti” to no avail.

And then, of course, were the myriad times we almost were driven under the wheels of huge hand-painted trucks, not to mention the innumerable occasions we converged upon spaces occupied by thousands of automobiles, autorickshaws, and motor scooters in hopes of emerging and inch or two ahead of them, all of this while the minutes until our flight was leaving ticked away inexorably.

But it’s all forgotten now here in the paradise on the Arabian Sea that is Betelbatim Beach, whose loveliness is such that it almost makes me wonder whether the seven hours of hellishness we endured to get here were all just a bad dream and which has me pondering the resilience of the human psyche; apparently, we’re pretty good at bracketing out the horrible once we’ve arrived at the wonderful.

Of course, it’s all about that arrival, but as I learned today, if we can avoid hitting a horse, paradise may be within reach.