Goa...

That was where I was last... for perhaps the third time this year. Floods, viruses and horror stories could not keep me out... and two weeks back into civilization and a place with no beaches, I am already wondering when I can head back there.

Goa is the one city in India where normal rules do not apply. Everybody loses a little bit of reserve and puts aside that mask for a little while. So you've families with packed picnic lunches on the beach, mommies in wet saris and papas in old underwear herding squealing kids... There are honeymooning couples with henna fresh and black on the woman's hands and bangles clicking from wrist to elbow walking down in her really cool bikini...

College students wearing cheap glasses bought from the stores just off the beach, enjoying the freedom of their first real vacation away from parents, checking out all the other girls on the beach...

Foreign hippie backpackers with their India obsession wearing cotton pants and a ripped kurta, covering up bikinis and hair done in dreadlocks... foreign couples like any other indian couples except they invested in a swim suit...

And there is us - the travelers, the normal backpackers. We could be from any country... with a touch of hippi-ness and a touch of... something else...

It strikes me now that I've never really seen all of Goa since that first time I went there. I did the proper tourist thing then, with a water bottle, a cap on my head and my 3 girlfriends. Visited the old Churches, those famous scenic tourist spots where film stars jumped to their death - in movies, did water sports and shopping.

And since then? I've stuck to Baga, Calangute and Anjuna. My three pieces of paradise in India. Or perhaps Anjuna is the real piece of paradise. Now I only wish that I would stop hearing that one blasted line - are you really an Indian from India?

I don't look anything but Indian. South Indian at that. And I still get those questions. Sigh.

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