Bombay-Goa, Bom-Bombay-Goa!

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Bombay-Goa

Bombay-Goa, Bom-Bombay-Goa

Namaste from Goa!

Receiving Sad News:

It began as any other day. Awake at 5.30 am, I began blogging and checking out Twitter with the awareness that I would need to finish packing, showering and get dressed for 9.15 am Mass.  A call from Dad, at that point (it was just past 7.00 am and Dad rarely calls so early) gave me an immediate hunch that he was about to give me the news of the passing away of my sister-in-law Lalita’s Mum in the US. She had been ailing for two months after suffering a very serious stroke and had been in a hospice for the entire period.  Her death, while expected, is still a hard blow for us all as she was really a very lovely person and someone whom it was difficult not to like. I then also spoke to Llew who was the first person to have received the news as he was at their place delivering food right after they had received the news of her passing.  I called Lalita in the States and had a chance to condole also with her sister Pearl who came to Connecticut from South Carolina when she had been told that her mother was in a critical condition. It seem that God has answered our prayers of the past two months by taking her peacefully to her heavenly abode. 

Getting Ready for Departure to Goa:

For me, things went pretty much like clockwork after this as I did everything on my To-Do List before moving my case, my computer, etc. off my bed to strip it down. I placed all my bath and bed linen in a my big laundry bag and left the house for church with a stop en route at Dad’s to drop off my laundry which can be done while I am away in Goa. I am so grateful to Dad’s housekeeper who does my laundry, then sends it off to the dhobi for ironing. By the time I return on Friday, it will all be ready to be picked up and fresh linen placed in my apartment.

     Mass done, I picked up a vada pau for Russel and took it home to him. Dad and I spoke about A. Alice, who, he told me, is to be cremated in the US as per her wishes. Dad was very sad indeed as he had always thought fondly of her.

A few minutes later, I said my goodbyes to Dad and Russel and returned to my place. I still had a few last-minute things to pack, a couple of urgent emails to send off and I had to clean my apartment before I left as I do not want to come back to an untidy place. If I keep the doors and windows locked, very little dust gets in. When all was done, on track, I left my place to try and find a rickshaw to take me to the airport for my 2.00 pm flight to Goa. I found one which then took me to my building where I loaded my case and my backpack and left for the airport. 

Flight to Goa:

The man drove like the wind—which he could do as today is a Sunday and there isn’t a lot of traffic. Back at the domestic airport for my Indigo flight, all went smoothly. My flight left the gate on time but we were held up on the runway by Air Traffic Control due to traffic congestion! Anyway, we landed in Goa after a very uneventful flight during which time I wolfed down a broon filled with the Tandoori Chicken Salad that was leftover from my lunch with Lynn at Bandra Gym yesterday.I had also carried a Lindt Dark Chocolate Raspberry bar with me and it made a great dessert after a really tasty lunch—so much better than the crap they sell at exorbitant prices on the aircraft.

Ride from Airport to University of Goa:         

As instructed, at Goa Airport, I took a cab from the Pre-Paid Taxi stand. A word about public transport in Goa: In two words, it sucks! In two more words, Big Time. In Three Words: It is non-existent! There is some kind of underhand nexus between Goa’s politicians and the Taxi-driver’s union, which has kept Uber and Ola and other private taxi companies out of the state. This means that the taxis have a monopoly and can charge cut-throat prices. I paid almost Rs. 1000 for a 45 minute ride (in Chennai, I had paid Rs. 366 on entry and Rs. 206 on departure to Uber for a ride of the same length and distance—so you can just imagine how much of a killing these taxi drivers are making by holding passengers to ransom, literally). 

Still, because all my expenses will be reimbursed by the organizers of the conference, I will be spared this expense; if I were paying from my own pocket, you can just imagine how infuriated I would feel.  There is, by the way, a bus service run by a company called Kadamba (the website is pretty current) that charges just Rs. 100 in an AC bus from the airport at Dabolim to Panjim; but its runs are very few and far-between—about 6 per day from the airport. I landed at 3.15pm. The previous one had left at 2.15pm and the next one was scheduled to leave at 5.15pm–the huge inexplicable gap left me in the cold (which was why I had no recourse other than the taxi).  

The driver spoke very good English and was very nice. He was not sure exactly where to take me and when we reached our destination, he actually stood out there and waited for me to go up to Reception and make sure we were at the right pace. A thorough gentleman of a driver and so rare these days! What a lovely man! Like so many of the Goan men I know!!!

    The ride to Dona Paula, where the University is located, was lovely. In many way, Goa is not nearly as different as many parts of my lovely little Bombay suburb of Bandra—still all swaying coconut palms and Arabian Sea waters.  Dabolim airport is in South Goa which is neatly demarcated from North Goa (where most of the action usually is!) by the mighty Zuari River which was once the main waterway for the transportation of mined metals—today, apparently mining is no longer carried out in Goa. North Goa also has its own river—the Mandovi—that flows right through the capital city of Panjim. We drove alongside the coast for a long while seeing waves lap small sandy beaches, we crossed the Zuari that seems to be a dumping ground for old mining barges, we caught sight of one white-washed Portuguese church in a tiny village. I was in Goa all right! The warm winter sun shone golden and glorious over the land as we sped along and arrived finally at the campus of the University of Goa.

At the International Guest House:

That’s when the driver waited for me to make certain he had brought me to the right place. My God! I had the start of my life. It literally was in the middle of nowhere (exactly as my cousin Blossom and her daughter Menaka had told me last week in Chennai as they have both stayed in this place before). I was being put up for the duration of the Conference at the International Guest House on the campus of the University of Goa—which makes it very convenient as the conference sessions will be held in a building just 50 meters away. In a place where public transport (or any transport) is problematic, this is an excellent location and one that my friend Ashley had recommended.

I found a Receptionist who was not sure I had been reserved a room. I put him on the phone to one of the administrators with whom I have been in touch during the past few days and he confirmed that I was in the right place. The place looked absolutely deserted! It turns out that the rest of the conference delegates will be here tomorrow. They are local professors from the Government College in Quepem and will be put up here for the duration of the conference. For tonight, I will have the place entirely to myself. But I was assured that it is safe and that I would have no problem.  

      My room was opened up, the AC was turned on (although there was no need for it as it was very pleasant), fresh clean water was provided for me. I have a small single room (with a single bed!) with attached bathroom, a desk, a TV set and a wardrobe. The room has a little balcony which is really quite cute. Overall, it is about as large as my studio in Bandra! 

I wondered whether I should move to the International Center as this place does not have WiFi! Huge disappointment this, but at least I have my own data plan on my phone and I do have access to phone calls. The International Center is better equipped; but having moved into this place, I decided to stay put here. Another one of the organizers came to see me to make sure all was well. He brought his wife Jennifer along. They visited with me in my room for about ten minutes (such a lovely couple) before leaving. It was, as they say, all good. 

A Visit to Former Bandra Friends:

A little later, I made a call to very close friends of my brother Russel—they are a brother and sister team called Clare and Joe who left Bandra about ten years ago to relocate to Goa to live a retired life. Russel was very fond of them and used to visit them every evening at their home which was very close to our parish church.  Russel still misses them very much. He gave me their number and told me to try to visit them if I could. I called them and they were very welcoming. What was great was that they were literally just a mile down the road from my accommodation and with a short rickshaw ride, I would easily reach them—provided I could find a rickshaw in this isolated location.

As it turned out, my friend Ashley who lives in Panjim and who is also presenting a paper at the conference, was headed to see me too. He had hired a rickshaw for the evening (based on an arrangement he has with the driver who shares a last name, by the way, with the current Prime Minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar as they hail from the same village in Maharashtra!). Ashley retired as a Senior reporter from the Times of India and was, for ten years, the Goa Corespondent of The Times. He and I go back at least four decades. We were teenagers together when Ashley and his family lived in the same building in Bandra (his father was on deputation to the Reserve Bank of India where my Dad also worked). I grew every close to him and his siblings (Cheryl, Marisa and Denzil whom I have mentioned often in this blog). Ashley shunts up and down between his apartment in Bombay and Goa as his independent research projects still involve the two spaces. At the conference, he will be speaking on O Heraldo, a Portuguese-era newspaper that shifted to the English medium in order to survive after Independence from the Portuguese.  This sort of work is right up Ashley’s alley as he is a historian himself having done his MA in History at the University of Bombay at the same time that I was doing my MA in English. 

             Ashley arrived as planned and we drove to Clare and Joe’s place where we spent the next 45 minutes. They were wonderfully warm and cordial as they also remember Ashley and his family. They gave us the Grand Tour of their home—this turned it to be a Dupleix flat in a building of just two stories. And it was a truly humongous home. It has three bedrooms—one on the main floor and two one floor above. Each bedroom has an en suite bathroom. There is a huge (really massive) living room cum dining room and a mammoth kitchen. Not to mention sprawling terraces and wrap around balconies. I was stunned. This is simply too much house for two siblings—both unmarried and with no children! They told me proudly that the home has already been willed to their local Catholic Church!

We talked about Russel and his current health situation, about my Dad and about them and their own woes. Clare has become accustomed to the quiet pace of life in Goa, but Joe still misses Bombay and its social life. They both lamented the lack of domestic help—they now rely on Nepali women who come in to do their daily household chores— and the lack of drivers. As Joe does not drive any more (eye problems) and Clare never did, their car lies unused while they tussle with rickshaws! They offered us lovely Alphonso Mango juice and nibbles and then it was time to take leave of them. I was really delighted to have been able to see them after maybe fifteen years!

Clare and Joe recommended a place close by for Goan food called The Goan Room. Our rickshaw took us there and we had the place to ourselves for at least an hour—the crowd began to trickle in at about 9.00 pm. That’s when party-happy Goa wakes up!

Ashley and I caught up on all sorts of things as we ordered Chicken Xacuti and Vegetable Caldine (surprisingly, a green color) with pao, the typical bun-like Goan bread (“Maka Pao Zaai”—“I would like some bread”—is the phrase that has led to Sandra from Bandra being called, jocularly, a ‘Makapao’, recently abbreviated to a ‘Mak’ as in “she’s a real Mak, men!”) The food was delicious and went really well with cold nimbu soda as Ashley is a teetotaler. We are both excited about our presentations at the conference (although both of us were informed about our participation in it just a week ago!) and about the official launch of my new book, Goa: A Post-Colonial Society Between Cultures which will take place on the second day of the conference in the presence of a number of the contributors who have arrived in Goa for the conference from Brazil, Portugal, etc. Ashley has also contributed a chapter and he was the person who found us the publisher, Frederick Noronha, who will also be at the launch.

Dinner done, we left. I was dropped to my place by the rickshaw driver, after which I took leave of Ashley and returned to the eerie quietness of my room. It was not long before I brushed and flossed my teeth and went straight to bed.

It had been a very strange day—started with bad news but ended as well as I could have expected in Goa to which I was returning after exactly ten years. The last time I had been here was when I had brought 22 women from Southport, Connecticut, on a trip to India that had included the tour on the Palace on Wheels but which had first begun in Goa.

Until tomorrow...