Three years ago, I moved into a flat ten minutes away from the beach in India’s smallest state. Until then, I’d mainly lived in metropolises—places that sputtered with ambition and dust and gnarly traffic jams. Goa’s capital city, Panjim, is a charming city I’d grown to adore over a number of visits. But to uproot myself from Delhi and relocate there? I had so many questions. How reliable would the internet be? How would I get around? I would need to learn to drive a scooter to manoeuvre it through Panjim’s endless one-way streets. And what about health care? Shortly after we relocated, my husband fell sick. At the neighbourhood clinic, a young man in a sparkling white lab coat asked us what was wrong, labouring over our words with a blank expression I found distressing. We left with a dubious prescription and never went back.

• Tags: Goa, India, Issue 28, Supriya Roychoudhury