Blog by: Lata Advani Viseu

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
Freewill – Rush

In the nineties I quit my job and Louie and I flew to Brazil for a month to travel around to see the beautiful country and meet up with some friends that had moved there a year before. We met up with Louie’s cousins who he had not seen in decades, stopped by to see some of our old friends and made some new friends along the way.

The cold long winters in Toronto and the fact that after going through all kinds of tests trying to have a child, it looked like that was not going to happen so we decided to take a leap of faith and moved to Brazil to start a new life.

We fell in love with a beach town called Porto Seguro in the state of Bahia, met a lovely real estate agent, Ligia who became a close friend and landed up buying a piece of land there. A year later we packed up a container with all new furniture, appliances and our belongings to live by the ocean in Porto Seguro.

We found a place right in the middle of the most touristy street, in the centre of the town called “Passarela do Alcool” translated as Alcohol Road where they served exotic fruits mixed with alcohol, beautifully displayed. There were outdoor night clubs where they played music every night. The weather year-round was to die for and the ocean was right there.

We opened a store, painted it bright red and called it “Gandhi”. We sold all the usual touristy souvenirs, along with exotic knickknacks, bags, skirts and other items made in India. Everyone crossing the river to get to the island had to pass by our store.

Locally, we met some amazing people including a couple that befriended many locals and who later turned out to be international crooks. That was probably the most exciting and interesting part of our almost a year of living in Brazil.

This young couple spoke fluent Portuguese, English, French and Italian. A few days before they planned to leave Porto Seguro without paying rent where they were staying, eating on credit at different restaurants, borrowing items from all the kind folks in town, they began telling us sob stories. It began with them telling us that he had cancer and only had a few months to live so they were travelling all over the world.

Louie and I agreed to let them borrow our bikes and lent them our video camcorder among a few other things because we felt sorry for them. The next day, a whole bunch of local folks came to our store with the police to tell us that the two gorgeous crooks had tried to borrow a friend’s car. This friend was the only one who was suspicious of them and refused to lend them his car which at that time we thought was selfish and mean of him. They ended up taking the inter-state bus with our bikes, camcorder and other items, never to be seen again.

Around that time, I became pregnant and we had to consider many things including the quality of education and healthcare in a small beach town. I had begun missing family and friends back home too and the cold winters did not seem to matter anymore. We decided to sell everything and move back home to have our daughter in Toronto. We literally sold every single item except for my treasured books and photographs and some clothes which we brought back to Toronto.

There was an older lady who came by the store and wanted to buy the few sarees that I had saved. When I asked her what she was going to do with them, she taught me a great lesson that day. She said she and her husband would frequently dress up and take out their finest China and the best bottle of wine when it was just the two of them and celebrate life. When they had their friends, children and grandchildren over, they used their regular China and inexpensive bottles of wine. She said to me, never save your best treasures for special occasions, make your day-to-day life special together. I can picture her wearing a saree having a romantic dinner with her love.

I am glad Louie was always up for adventure and ready to drive into the sunset with me. In some ways being impulsive has made me open to try many things but at the same time I have made a lot of mistakes when I was younger but those mistakes have helped me grow and learn a lot of important lessons.

Life is so unpredictable, do what your heart wants to do because if you decide to wait for the right time, it may be too late. If you choose not to choose, you are still making a choice not to choose.

“You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.” – Deepak Chopra

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” – Steve Jobs

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“People always ask me, ‘What is it that you regret?’ And I say, ‘nothing, because I could not buy what I’ve learned.’ And I apply those things to my life I learn. And hopefully, hopefully it helps me to be a better human in the future and make better choices.” – Katy Perry

“Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.” – Richard Bach

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