Anjuna and Epicurus' problem of evil

So if you have struggled to endeavor on reading through my first post, I sincerely thank you for spending time on it and hope that it wasn't a waste of your time and that you laughed at least once or learnt one new thing that you didn't already know.

Anjuna

Somethings i forgot to mention that were nice about my experience with Ashvem first. I managed to do a little bit of hitchhiking along the coast. I've tried that once before in india in a place called Dharjeeling. It took me and my friend 3 hours before we got a ride. But once we got that first ride, we hitched rides for 60 km to the top of the mountain. Its the process of the travel sometimes thats more exciting rather than the destination. In the short span of time i managed to hitchhike, i learnt from a Russian that Spasibo means thank you and i came up with the theory that the easier it is to hitchhike in a place, the friendlier the people are. Hitchhiking in goa is incredibly easy and it so happened that my experience with the local people, consolidated my hypothesis. I suppose that it helps that it was in the morning, i was carrying a bag and a guitar and didn't really represent a conventional depiction of a shady character. Though i have to confess over the course of my life, there have been times where i'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have been caught dead being associated with me. I also forgot to mention that i spent some time in a beach nearby called Arambol playing Sitar. It was nice because randomly walked into a shop selling instruments, sat down, asked the guy if i play and he was like sure. Young kid from Delhi, been in Goa for a few years and he loved it. He left soon after i arrived and asked me to look after the shop for a little while. I said sure no problem and i was thinking whats up with this guy? I mean he doesn't even know me, we've only figured out what our regional backgrounds are like and i'm already taking over his job temporarily. Anyway his brother came and sat with me after about 10 ten minutes. Now none of these guys know how to play any of the instruments nor do they know anything about the instruments, like what kind of material it is made from or how to play something as simple as a flute. The brother hates music. But they've had the shop for 6 years. A business plan that was really well thought out. I mean it just couldn't have failed in a place like Goa. They were very nice to me though. Gave me a cup of tea for free. Made jokes about all the foreigners and i watched them in action trying to cheat people or entice them to enter their shops. A conversation would go something like this,

Brother: "Hello madam, why don't you take a look at what i have to offer,"

After a certain amount of skepticism, a caucasian woman walked in. She barely spoke any english browsed around and picked up an elephant Ganesha statue and asked how much it was.

Brother: "Madam for you I give you best price," he takes out a phone and types in 200.

She shakes her head and says no. She is almost ready to leave when our man says, "Ok you tell me how much you'll pay me"

She takes the phone and types in a figure of 50. Then he says, "No my friend, i cannot sell to you at that price. I don't make any money if i charge you this price. Are you Russian? Do you have a boyfriend?"

Goa is full of Russians. I don't know why but one theory i heard was the Russian mafia apparently moved into Goa. She says Bosnia and doesn't reply about the boyfriend question. Then Romeo, counter offers with a 20 rupee discount. She says no, and does the i'm about to walk away routine again. He stops her by stepping in front of her and goes further down and they finally agree at a 100. Im taking a negotiation course right now and this is a classic example of what happens with negotiations in India. When you go in to buy anything, your always charged by "skin tax." Basically if your white or if you dress in an opulent manner, you have to bargain much harder. No surprise there. What I don't understand though is people who go into a shop and take the first price quoted without even attempting to get a bargain. I knew this German kid who took a rickshaw from the international airport in Mumbai to the domestic airport, which is about 6 km away and costs less than 50 rupees. He got a tour of the city and told me that the meter at the end of the ride was like 500 rupees but he paid the first quoted price of 1500 rupees by the driver.

So I headed to Anjuna after a pleasant evening with some Spaniards, an Italian, a Swiss and a random group of poker playing Russians to whom I lost a significant portion of my money. In Anjuna i met Anand, Abhinav, Kim (a guy), Kunal and one more chap whose name is escaping me. Anyway i clicked perfectly with this group. Everyone is making jokes all the time and everyone loves music. Abhinav is studying classical music in Bombay. So when i brought this guitar, it was exposure to wonderful classical music again.

Anyway the day just flew by and in the evening we witnessed a phenomenal fusion performance. By a band called Kundalini Airport in a bar called Looda cafe. Imagine this, a french singer who sings in french, what i heard was maybe some latin or spanish and some indian language. Now he plays the harmonica, taps the tambourine and is a pretty decent sitar player. All of this is done with a mike that has this echo delay kind of effect. So it gives the sound a very spacey hypnotic sound. Also he dances to the music and moves his body in such a way that he is spiritually connected to the music. I felt as though the singer was the medium through which a higher being was communicating to the people. It was really quite a mind blowing performance. Then you have a super bassist, a guy who plays tabla, the western drum kit and a Didjerooo (i don't really know how to spell that instrument but its a cool Australian instrument if i'm not mistaken). Check out the north anjuna dream track on their myspace http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=386663234

By now its like 9 pm and we are all just grooving and getting into the mood of partying. Now just a quick background story. Goa was under potential terrorist threat according to sources from the media following the Mumbai attacks. So even though it was peak season, Goa was relatively more quiet than usual and people/media had claimed that there would be no beach parties allowed for new years. So these friends of mine knew of a party happening somewhere on a hill in Goa and they knew the Djs playing there so we headed for this party and it was absolutely dead. It was a dead scene there and i don't even particularly fancy psy trance music. So i had this bad feeling it might be an incredibly tacky new year. However after about 3 hours thankfully everyone started to see my point of view and we hooked off and went back to the main beach on Anjuna. We ended up parking our bikes in an absolute mess of a parking space near the beach. There was loud music going on from a bar called Curlys and we passed all these cops who were sitting around half asleep resting their heads on the end of the barrels of their rifles. Seemed like a dangerous way to nap. Anjuna had the craziest party i have ever seen in my life. All the freaks of the world had congregated for a mental party. I felt right at home. Everyone was intoxicated on a concoction of all kinds of uppers and downers. I begin to feel like i had walked into what was probably the world Johnny Depp envisioned in fear and loathing in las vegas when we walks into the bar. There were 80 year old men in diapers, transvestite whoppi goldbergs, pixies with the funny ears, centurions and princess gaiias, real gypsies, midgets, gentle giants, hippies from all over the world etc etc and everyone like myself, seemed to be having a great time. So the energy of this party was absolutely wicked. Goa is Great.

I'm taking a philosophy of religion course under a very good professor named Mark Nowacki and in our latest readings there is this argument from evil which i wanted to share with any of you. This is an argument a Greek philosopher named Epicurus presented regarding attributes such as omnipotence (all powerful), omni-benevolence (infinite goodness) and omniscience (all knowing) typically ascribed to God. It goes as follows

"Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and wiling? Whence then is evil?"

Think about it and in my next post i will give you some interesting rebuttals to this argument provided i remember to.