A slice of native Goan life Moneycontrol.com 2006-05-09 12:39 As a youngster, I went on some very hep vacations. Every year, I was carted off to Goa, kicking and screaming. I had no desire to leave the electric excitement of Mumbai and my village, Moira, was one of the last to get electricity, thanks to a dispute between one of the local old ladies and the men installing the electric poles.
I have just spent the last few days in Goa, much to the envy of my friends. I was there at the invitation of Divia Kapoor of Literati, a bookshop in Calangute, to launch my book, 'Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb' (Penguin India, Rs 295), commercial break over, you can now relax! And so I divided my time between being a Goan in Goa and being a Mumbaikar in Goa. Being a Mumbaikar involved huge amounts of work, hiring cars and hurtling off to have lunch at the Figueiredo Palace in Loutolim, where two old-style Goan aristocrats let you wander around their beautiful house, enjoying the genteel smell of old money and privilege, before sitting you down to an authentic meal cooked by one of them, a Portuguese chef. It also meant visiting Diwar, a pretty little island in the middle of the Mandovi River and poking about in old graveyards with forbidding signs over the gates saying, "We're waiting for you." (The other great graveyard sign? 'Aaiz maka, phaalea tuka' or 'Today, it's me. Tomorrow, it's you'.) Later, as the evening drew to a close, it meant sitting on a patio with friends and discussing Dinesh D'Souza's politics, while sipping ginger tea. Yes, ginger tea. Obviously being a Mumbaikar in Goa means a huge amount of alcohol because alcohol is so cheap but being a Goan playing a Mumbaikar in Goa, means you try and dismantle some of the stereotypes. It also meant tracking down Chris Perry's music recently released by HMV on CDs at VP Sinari for a friend and buying feni from Venite's for the same friend. Being Goan in Goa is sitting in the balcao of my cousin Maria Angelica Cordeiro's home in Moira and looking out over an indomitable patch of green. It's about watching an old man harvesting the mangoes that are still growing in a house that has been abandoned by its owners who live in Mumbai. It's about walking down to the Moira Club (which is called the Associacao Academica although the most academic thing that happens seems to be a calculation of the trigonometry involved in carom!) and watching the youngsters perform a song from 'Bluffmaster' for Family Day. It meant going off to see the new suspension bridge at Corzuem, the bridge which was inaugurated in time for the International Film Festival in Goa, and on which dinner was served for everyone who wanted to come. It meant noticing that Goa does not seem to have a coherent policy for waste disposal, but then as my friend Rahul Srivastava, social researcher and writer, says, "What place in India does?" That in one line - Goa is a happy-go-lucky, chalta-hai metaphor for the rest of India. Jerry Pinto (The author is a poet and editor. His last book was 'Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb'.) http://news.moneycontrol.com/india/newsarticle/stocksnews.php?autono=213 736 ~(^^)~ Avelino _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list ([email protected])
