To Goanet - The first sight in Panjim during my drive home from the Dabolim airport last evening was that of two tourist buses offloading products of their metabolism on the Miramar beach, near Sharda Mandir.
The buses bore number plates of Karnataka and Maharashtra, and the irrigation trajectories included not only liquid jets in projectile motion but also middle-aged mamis squatting in their billowing sarees. For a nanosecond I had cognitive dissonance thinking that some bunghole of warped spacetime had deposited me back in the uric acid-friendly outdoors of Bangalore. A hundred metres later, the paanwallah, presumably ejected a few weeks ago, had, like Murali Karthik, made a handsome comeback. So I was back in the Collector's office this morning. His Highness intoned that he is vested with all the powers to enforce civic discipline. There are laws in the books about no-urinating no-shitting no-spitting no-encroachment etc in public spaces. Why, I asked, weren't these laws enforced? Let's just say that the answer was in the form of a couple of coughs, pauses, a glance at the cell phone, and finally a stare at the ceiling suggesting an Einsteinian mind deep in thought. I later learnt that the paanwallahs have found a benefactor in a city councillor. He is building his vote bank paan by paan. Warm regards, r