In many ways, art and research are both cyclic processes that are continually informed by experiences with Place. As I experience Goan village life as a foreigner, I reverberate with pieces of the scenes I encounter – and become affected by their happenings. This post describes such a scene, and has found its way into my art projects with students at the school I am researching with. Using a “junk cycle” as their canvas and leftover house paint as their medium, the students re-imagined the ways in which they engage with waste.
Riding on my bike, I explore the depths of Siolim
Excited, curious and hopeful as the wind in my hair
Humble, Goan villages –
Family homes of tin sheets, dirtied blue tarps, dried leaves of coconut trees
Barely held together by fishing ropes
Their floor is the earth – shared with dancing kittens and jungle bugs
The women have hair that is tightly kept, and eyes that are fierce with knowledge
– of the happenings of this place, of their duties to hold it together
they watch me carefully as I pass by, hanging laundry with firm arms of soldiers
Clothes dry with the salty air that breathes with the Arabian Sea
Bouncing about, children carry young siblings
Cradled on bony hips, babies are naively thrusted into adventure
Youthful boys pull two wheeled wagons stacked with heavy bags of rice
Wooden frames creaking in age, hoisted into movement by tired metal wheels
Comings and goings of local men
– dark faces dusted with sand, yellow teeth and blackened collars
Fishing poles in hand – long sticks with wire and squirming bait
Carried by bicycles from some ancient era
Rolling out of a time capsule
– rusted brown with an ear-piercing screech that announces their presence
Quickly moving, chickens squawk and scramble out of their way
Life is bustling and the sun is high with the energy of a mid-Indian afternoon
As if strategically placed in the middle of this lively performance is a dusty, white dog
The mismatched focal point of this scene
– skeletal
Sitting with the hunch of a hundred year old veteran
Staring at the ground, blankly as its bony carcass sways
– slowly as the saliva that spills from its mouth
It moves as if it is underwater
drowning in a small pool at the center of a busy circus ring
– held up only by some gravitational miracle
Watching this animal suffer is what Death looks like, in its most unforgiving form
a body so vacant that even the flies acknowledge its time is up
but it sways on, holding a fragile place in the theatricals of this village
Temporal
And seemingly unnoticed
The starkness of this encounter – the parallels of life and death – slap me in the face
squeezing the blood out of my stomach with the sensuous hands of a curious child
I look away
And drive on
What else is there to do?
जीवन चक्र
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