Goa, Nov. 5 -- STEVE CORREA

An elegy for a land I love I knew you before I knew your name, before I un derstood what it meant to belong. You were the red earth beneath my feet, the coconut palms bending in the wind, the scent of the first monsoon rain and familiar voices calling me home. You were never merely a place. You were a way of be ing. I remember the old an cestral house, its walls hold ing generations of laughter; the lanterns that softened the darkness; the cool wa ter drawn from the well; the sweetness of fruit from a neighbour's tree; and cousins running through village lanes as if time had nowhere else to go. I remember the church bells, the whispered Ora pro nobis, the Temple lamps glowing in the distance, and prayers risin...