The long and winding road

Narrow lanes meandering through utter wilderness are a peculiar feature of the Goan landscape. You see them everywhere, suddenly branching off from a main road, veering off into the great unknown.

I drive down one of them, wondering.

The lane curves lazily through some paddy fields and empty land, in absolutely no hurry to get anywhere. Suddenly it turns sharply to the left and then soon after sharply to the right. Thereafter you swing wildly from left to right and right to left.

What could have possessed anyone to build such a crazy road when the distance to be covered as the crow flies is no more than a hundred metres?

The engineer and the entire road crew must have been drunk.

Or maybe it was deliberate, a thoughtful gesture to the many men known to stagger home drunkenly. The zigzag road, after all, naturally follows the path a drunkard would weave. If the road was straight, wouldn’t the poor fellow end up in a ditch? Wouldn’t he do himself some serious damage? Might not his poor wife end up widowed?

Might not the crooked road also reflect some very crooked thinking? A long winding road is likely to have a bigger budget and therefore a bigger cut for all those involved in building it.

Then again, maybe it’s just a way to bolster the statistics. How else can a small state end up with so many more miles of roads?

Whatever, it forces you to drive like a doddering old man in an ancient Fiat, so that you have all the time in the world to gaze about. Sometimes these lanes meander through a wild jungle of cashew trees, passing only the occasional dwelling. Sometimes through flat lands dotted with grazing cows, low hills in the distance. Sometimes through the hills themselves. It’s all very pretty. And a city type used to rushing about might never otherwise get a chance to simply relax and look at the scenery: at waterfalls in the monsoons, the sudden glimpses of sea, the green paddy fields. Sometimes you’re so busy looking at it all that you almost go off the road.

Where do these lanes go? Those that meander towards the coast inevitably hit some stretch of beach. The ones going into the interior climb into the hills or end in some little village unused to cars.

Rarely do you pass anyone on these winding lanes, other than an occasional bus.Yet the roads less travelled are there. And that makes all the difference.