------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre Ph:2252660 Website: www.goadesc.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Press Clippings on the web: http://www.goadesc.org/mem/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------- Is this where the CM of Goa dines? ---------------------------------------------- by Tara Narayan
From the sound of it the Chief Minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar, is desperately in need of a home! While passing by Mapusa last night a friend asked gleefully, do you want to go and see the gaddo which Manohar Parrikar patronises every night to drink fruit juice and tuck in omlette-pau?
Who can resist this bit of opportunity to gain an insight into the eating habits of a Chief Minister? Just outside the dilapidated, ghoulish-looking cinema house of Alankar in Mapusa there's a narrow street with half-a-dozen well-entrenched stalls doing indifferent business in fruit juices, fruit salads and sundry snacks like omelette-pau and tandoori chicken.
The street stretch is lit up by loosely strung naked bulbs and even on first impression one can see rotting fruit, leftover litter and nauseating grime everywhere. Hey, everything here including the vendors can do with a major wash-up! There's the smell of late-night eating and drinking in the air and one finds oneself asking anew, "Is this where the Chief Minister of Goa dines?"
Manohar Parrikar speaks of cleaning up Panjim and Goa. He can begin with what the rumour vine says, "Is his favourite streetside gaddo corner here in Mapusa". Scrawny red tandoored chicken gleams as it hangs at a stall with the legend, "Evening Point, Tandoori chicken, Chinese food"; next door is an omelettewallah who's set himself up with piles of eggs and local pau (all out in the open on a greasy table top), nearby hot plates sizzling away with cooking meat curries. It is here apparently for Rs 8 a plate.
Manohar-bab relishes an omlette soaked in chicken gravy, and fruit shakes from one of the fruit vendors opposite, where a closer look reveals dirt-ingrained mixers with even dirtier, chipped mixer bowls. Despite a veneer of inviting colourful fruit decor lining the stall dozens of banana stems, apples, sweet limes, pineapples, musk melons, water melons,mangoes, even pomelos (pink grapefruit) a feeling of revulsion and nausea shudders through one.
Unwashed plastic and aluminium vessels in the background, piles of leftover fruit peels and juiced litter tumble out from makeshift bins. Is this a licensed streetside eating out place or an illegal filthy haunt for diseases like jaundice, diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera to flourish?
With the current focus in the media linking the jaundice outbreak with abysmal sanitary kitchen and cooking conditions in restaurants, eateries and streetside gaddo joints in Panjim, surely someone should ask Manohar bab about his favourite eating place which he patronises in the middle of the night almost every other day in Mapusa?
Not that one does not sympathise with what seems to be his daily dilemma about where to wind up his nights. At this his favourite streetside gaddo corner in Mapusa, however, from the looks of it, he is asking, no, begging to join the growing list of jaundice victims in Goa! -------------------------------- HERALD 25/8/03 page 1 --------------------------------
======================================= GOA DESC RESOURCE CENTRE Documentation + Education + Solidarity 11 Liberty Apts., Feira Alta, Mapusa, Goa 403 507 Tel: 2252660 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] website: www.goadesc.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Working On Issues Of Development & Democracy =======================================
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