When I first moved here, I’d eat at Gunpowder in July, one of the few places open year-round. You could skedaddle to Assagao, and try out some pretty nifty shirts at No Nasties or check out the absurdly talented Australian duo who run the design outpost of Rangeela. In the areca palms, glowworms make a dancing net. The days are lazy, without structure, ellipsis points in time. When my friends visit me during the rains they marvel at the intensely Marquezian landscape, vines that crawl over and disguise old ruins, bird cries at daybreak that sound like witch’s laughing, gauzy strings of sunlight that tumble out of jamun trees. This is one story in the larger tapestry of Goa stories about the rains, and it is one about that tremendous force of loneliness particular to this season, the sort that can prepare you for everything.
![skedaddle vine skedaddle vine](https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.webconnex.com/53/rf-calednar-header.jpg)
When the family returned in September, a skeleton was dangling from the ceiling.
![skedaddle vine skedaddle vine](https://www.skedaddle.com/uk/classicroad/uploadedImages/holiday/982/_Holiday.982.21520_main.jpg)
Tying a jute rope to a kitchen beam he strangled himself to a forlorn death. That year the loneliness of the Goa monsoon proved insurmountable. Right before the rains his family would stock up on his rice supplies they’d see him only in October, when the skies cleared. In those days the long rains were a long theatrical spectacle: achromatic skies, strikes of thunder, a lattice of lightning, thick, cold downpour that didn’t let up for days.The man who killed himself was mentally unstable his family left him in the village house to fend for himself, while they were stationed in nearby Mapusa. The older residents on our street tell me this was during the monsoon. Around fifty years ago, on the lane I live on in Goa, a man hung himself.