TRAVEL\INDIA\letters\india3

GOA - WHERE THE BEST BEACHES ARE

The Flight to Goa

The plan was to stay in Bombay overnight and then fly to Goa where Vally's parents now live. As we walked to the plane to Goa, we had an experience that I think American airline passengers at major airports are generally spared. The cowling of one of the engines was raised, and approximately seven mechanics were "looking under the hood," seemingly scratching their heads. One carried a grease gun, another a enormous wrench. There was a big toolbox behind them, exactly like the sort you see in an American auto repair shop. We all filed dutifully past, not really that nervous just pretending to be, in jest. A British passenger in line in front of us imitating one of the mechanics made a tossing motion and said "I don't know what to do with this bit." The flight was fine. A choice of candy or fennel seeds (like you see at the cash register of Indian restaurants) is served before take off on all Indian airlines flights. (Gulf air served sealed moist towlettes). Each group of three seats is supplied with newspapers, although not all of them are in English. Indian airlines serve meals which are plain but nice-similar to the vegetarian meal on a US plane. The silverware packet includes sugar in a narrow paper tube, rather than our square packet and a toothpick. One of the nice things about being in India is that my vegetarianism is a non-issue. The coffee is awful. En route to Goa, they managed a full service on a 45 minute flight-I think there are more flight attendants (in saris) per passenger than on a US plane. Most of the passengers were Indian, but there were a fair number of tourists, German and British.

When I wrote this I was waiting to board a flight from Mangalore to Bombay. It was almost 2 weeks later. There was one other non-Indian in the departure area. Every seat in the waiting room was filled. It was hot and there was no AC, just overhead fans. That time they asked us to go out onto the tarmac and identify our luggage before it was put on the plane. Apparently this is done on some flights and not others, a function of the internal terrorist probability quotient.

Arrival in Goa and Driving in India (Part 3)

Our first impression as we deplaned in Goa was of the heat. It was in the high 90's. It was hot in Bombay too, but because of the pollution, the sun was not that intense. There was some sort of VIP on the plane, because there was a small knot of people in suits waiting with flowers. Vally's brother Tim and his brother-in-law Rodin were waiting outside for us. Vally went to greet them, and I waited with our carry-on luggage for our checked baggage. It took about 15 minutes for our bags to arrive. There are a lot a luggage carts for passenger use, no charge, but in the Goan airport they performed like the most uncontrollable shopping cart you ever tried to push. (Most of the rest in the other airports were ok). I figured out, though, that if we pulled the cart, we could determine the direction in which it went. At last, we were loaded into a van, and headed off to Caranzalem, the small town near Panjim (Panaji) where Vally's parents live. The trip took an hour. I remember two things from it. One, while driving in a very rural area we saw a cow chase a piece of newspaper across the road and catch and eat it. The second is that I got the full experience of driving in India-or maybe I had in Bombay but I'll tell it here. The open roads India are very narrow and vary from one lane with unimproved dirt shoulders (narrower than the one lane gravel roads that we had in Virginia) to one and one half lanes. They are rarely straight and visibility is minimal. Traffic is two way on all of them. Driving requires nerves of steel, excellent reflexes and a working horn. I can't imagine what it must be like during the monsoon when the shoulders turn to mud and the noise of the rain drowns out the horns. Passing a bus around a blind curve is routine-the oncoming driver is warned by the horn. There are often people walking on the road. Cows and goats as well as dogs are normal, as is the occasional bullock cart. Getting nervous is useless-blind faith is advised. Travel is a continuous experience of maneuvers that would cause a nervous breakdown in the US. What I have realized, after thinking about it, is that the difference is that in India all surviving drivers are prepared to take evasive action at any time, both on the open road and in the city, so sudden, unexpected moves on the part of other drivers are normal, whereas in the US, since no one is prepared, the same actions will cause a wreck. There is no concept of tail-gating, in the city the 3" minimum applies on all sides.

Also, there are only Indian cars on the road, no imports, not even British cars. There is currently a joint venture with Suzuki (the Zen) and one with Ford (the Escort) but most cars are Ambassadors (the Indian work horse) which are white and look sort of like an old Dodge-the ones with equally rounded fronts and backs, or Mahruthis some of which look sort of like a VW bus and are notoriously top heavy and Premiers (like Chrissie's car). The trucks are mostly Tatas (which look like dump trucks). There are no semis. Tata also makes jeeps (the sumo). There is another company which makes most of the buses which vary from the very old ones (see any Nationally Geographic with pictures of a battered bus loaded with native produce and chickens -although I didn't see the chicken part) to the modern Greyhound style. There are many competing private bus companies and classes of buses (e.g. video and AC at the best) as well as a state-owned cheap bus. Vally said that he thinks there are no private buses in North India.

Vally's Parent's Place

Vally's parents live in a condo in an apartment complex-new, despite the mildew on the outside walls, and well-maintained with a pool and, most unusually, a lawn in the center courtyard. When we arrived, they were in the middle of a power outage and everyone had been sweating for a couple of hours. There is no AC, but overhead fans keep everyone reasonably cool when there is power. There are no screens on the windows, although there are windows which open out like cabinet doors. The overhead fans keep flies away pretty well, and there are electrical mosquito killers for the mosquitos. These are essentially like plug-in room deodorizers except the evaporant is some sort of insecticide that we didn't ask too many questions about. The pad with the insecticide lasts about 12 hours and since mosquitos come out at dusk, it is replaced nightly.

So, the jet-lagged travellers were greeted by a hot, sweaty family consisting of Vally's parents, his father's sister (Auntie Pauline) and husband (Eddie), his brother Bart (identical twin to Tim), Bart's wife Kavita, 10 month old son Emmanuel, Tim's wife of 3 months Zena, Vally's sister Linda (Rodin's wife) and children Nikhil, 7 and Caran, aged 20 months. Actually, Vally's father vanished almost immediately and his father's sister and husband made their hasty exits. Vally and his father have been estranged for a long time, and although he became able to be in the same room with us, after a couple of days, not a single word was exchanged between him and either of us during the 10 days that followed, although he did accept the bottle of Chivas Regal that we brought him.

Indian Homes

There are so many things I could describe here, but I will say something about Indian housing. Vally's parents have recently moved to a condo in Goa from their house in Nagpur. It is nicely landscaped and cared for. Because wood is scarce in India, apartments are not constructed with stud walls and 2 X 4s. Instead, at least in Goa, houses are constructed out of stone blocks which are hewn from the ground. They are intermediate in size between a brick and a cinder block-reddish sandstone in color and igneous in origin. The construction is similar, actually, to that of the new homes in Cuba-reinforced concrete posts and beams, filled in with stone blocks and mortar. The result is covered with a thin layer of cement to create a smooth wall inside and out. I don't know if the composition of the inside wall is any different from the outside. The outside is painted, white in the case of the condos, pastel colors in the case of many of the houses and shacks, all of which have similar construction. In Goa, however, because of the tropical climate, it looks like the mildew starts growing about 20 minutes after the paint job is completed and every building has blotches of mildew coming from the top and bottom and sides. Although I assumed that the lack of mildew resistant paint is responsible for the "neglected" effect, I was also told that it reflects Goan laziness. The place, even the newly built condo, would definitely look very different and much prettier without the mildew. Most of the roofs are made of clay tiles, also totally mildewed. The tiles seem less orderly than those here, maybe because the roof beams are not as straight.

The newer floors are all covered with a composition stone tile-I have no idea how it is made. It comes in white with dark and white stones, and also reddish with predominantly white and a few dark stones. In Vally's parent's place the tiles were white. In older homes, the floors were slate tile or even slate blocks that were never smoothed off. As a result the floors are totally silent, so people can walk around without making any noise. There is a tendency, but not a rule, to be barefoot in the house. Every home we have been in has had a similar electrical system. All of the room switches (1 to maybe 6) are located on a switch box which is mounted on the wall, about 15" higher than we would put a switch box. If there is a fan, the control (6 speeds in many cases, sometimes continuous) is also mounted on the box, as is an outlet. Both the fan and the outlet are controlled by switches. The switches are white rocker types, about twice as wide as our switches, and I have simply guessed, by throwing switches at random what controls what. In some cases, there have been switches whose function I never figured out. I don't think there are any other outlets in the room, which leads to the use of massively overloaded extension cords. In Goa, power failures were a daily phenomenon-some lasting hours, some lasting seconds. People have fluorescent lanterns with rechargeable batteries on constant charge ready for the power failures. In Pangla, where we went after we left Goa, power was simply out from 6-8 or 9 AM, and, much worse in a hot climate, 2-5 or 6 PM, as well as more briefly at random other times.

I have one more observation about the difference between India and US homes. I have already described the toilets, but actually in modern Indian homes I have only seen English-style toilets. However, I began to think of India as "The Land of the Flooded Bathroom." The logic of the bathroom is totally different. A bathroom has a sink, a toilet and a shower, however the shower is not in any way separated from the rest of the bathroom. The floor is white tile, and slopes downward to a drain. There is already a pitcher and a wall spigot with a waste can-sized bucket under it for toilet purposes, and if the floor gets dirty, people think nothing of sloshing the water from the bucket onto it. Flip-flops are standard bathroom wear. There are sometimes two doors, an ordinary one on the sink end, and a shower-stall type on the perpendicular wall. There is an on demand hot water heater (called a "geezer" but spelled geyser) for the shower, turned on by one of those switches, but only the shower and the faucet below it (another one in addition to the one near the toilet) has hot water-the rest of the sinks have only cold water. In many places, for some inexplicable reason, the hot water is directed only to the faucet but NOT to the shower. You take a shower by standing in the bathroom and turning on the water-the toilet gets wet, everything else gets wet, but it doesn't faze people here. The only way to keep things dry is to hang them on the far door or put them into the sink-the floor is out. The faucet below the shower is used for bucket baths and for washing clothes by hand (or having the servant do it), another operation that leaves the entire bathroom flooded. Vally explained that the origin of this is the traditional bath at the side of the well. A shower is called a bath, so if you ask for a bathroom you will cause confusion that will be prevented by asking for a toilet. We only saw an actual bathtub in one hotel room.

Where We Stayed

Although the rest of Vally's family stayed in the apartment, distributed between two bedrooms (5 beds) and the living room (one convertible sofa) and his dad stayed by himself in the third bedroom, we stayed in a nearby guest house ( a motel, sort of). This was about a 5 minute walk from the condo. It involved walking along a driveway, past a complex of attached one-room huts, with curtain doors, behind a stone wall and including several small children, chickens, a hen with baby chicks, a duck and a dog, onto a busy highway, past small tiled-roofed homes surrounded by various quantities of greenery but no lawns, across the highway (frequently terrifying) and down a lane which also had some one-room concrete and block huts and a common water tap where someone was always filling a water jug. Women sat around in the doorways cleaning rice. Small children played, and there was a slight stench of either sewage or pigs. Goa's domestics wild life includes a lot of dogs who hang out in groups of 5 or so, very mangy ones without collars and some, better-looking ones with. They are all of medium size and uncertain breed, typically mostly brown with erect ears. There are also pigs everywhere. I thought there were two types, one of which looked like a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, but maybe they were just terribly pregnant Goan pigs. The pigs are not large and they roam freely. I don't know if they belong to anyone. I did not see any cows in that part of Goa, just a few scrawny cats.

The lane crossed a road under construction, which we later figured out how to take to avoid the busy highway. There was a local bar-restaurant along our lane which we never investigated, and just before our room, a thatched hut, about 8 by 12, in which lived, at least, a man, a woman and two children, one of whom was a boy about 2 whose head was far too large for his body and who had a strange dull look in his eyes. They had a radio that they played at night, and she hung some dirty floor coverings on the line outside every morning. The lane ended at a beautiful beach, on a cove off the Arabian sea, about 30 feet beyond our room. Our room was actually built on the attached one-room hut plan, attached to at least one other similar structure, except the huts don't have indoor plumbing and their windows are much smaller. It was about 12X12 not including the bathroom, taken up mostly by two beds pushed together to make a sort of king-sized bed. The mattress, as was every mattress we have met so far, was thin and hard on narrow slats. Indian beds give an experience similar to sleeping in the floor, only you're up and it is a little more padded. The only other thing in the room was a small, low table and a wall-mounted mirror with a sagging red plastic shelf attached to it. There was a back door with a small porch opposite the front door which was approached through small corrugated-roofed lean to/car port. In the evening a fairly large, mangy male dog, who accepted petting but didn't expect anything, slept on the old burlap sack that was our doormat. He seemed to belong there. When it rained, which it did at first because of a cyclone in Andwar Pradesh, and his sack got soaked, he slept nearby on slightly higher ground.

Unfortunately, our room in Goa had only one window, so no cross- ventilation. There was a ceiling fan and, of course, the wall switches, which controlled the fan and two lights. The bathroom consisted of a sink and a toilet, with, of course, the spigot, bucket and floor drain. It also had a window. I didn't notice, until Vally pointed it out several days later, that the basic plumbing for a shower was there, above the spigot, but had not been installed. The floor was clean, but the rest of the bathroom was so dirty that I had to clean it. I wiped the sink and the outside of the toilet but never got to the tiled wall which was splattered with toothpaste spots and probably blood from the dental efforts of prior tenants, or the inside of the toilet.

There were 6 extra pillows, which we had asked for on the bed, and two that were supplied. We later learned that the bedding and towels were all supplied by Vally's mother and sister, who inspected the room and were horrified by the stained, unappealing sheets that were provided. We did not realize this until we unmade the bed and found the original sheets underneath. They were pretty bad. They also insisted that the owner put up curtains and gave us one of those anti-mosquito devices. The one thing that was wrong, which we should have dealt with right away, was that the fan only functioned on one speed "tornado." We had the choice of roasting or freezing at night, which did wonders for Vally's asthma and my sore throat. Finally, on about day 4, we said something to the owner and she sent someone over to fix it. This was an experience. He arrived one morning, about two days later, on a scooter, equipped, it seemed, only with a screw driver. The switch housing was, most unusually, imbedded into the plaster (I guess they do use a kind of plaster indoors) of the wall, so first he had to chip it out. He seemed to be proceeding without disconnecting the power, so we watched with some interest. Finally, after he got it apart, he turned off the main power switch, which was separate, and removed the fan control. We watched hopefully as he inspected it but then he said "wrong switch" put the whole thing back together and left. We figured it would be two more days before anything more happened but we were pleasantly surprised when we returned in the evening and the switchbox had been re-plastered into the wall, and the fan could be run more slowly (even if it did make a lot of noise at low speeds).

Our Beach

We loved our beach. It was not a tourist beach, because the sand is silty and sticks to your feet if you get wet. We never actually went swimming there. There were wooden fishing boats pulled up on it-picture something the size of a motor launch. We never saw the boats go out. We forgot to bring any sort of time piece and the second night we were there the melatonin had worn off, we were wide awake and it was dark. We had no idea what time it was, but we were definitely awake. We decided to take a walk on the beach. There was enough light from the lighthouse across the cove and various other sources so this was not a problem. It was a wonderful walk-we could just keep going, which I had not yet realized is a luxury in India. There were fishing nets on the beach and people were scavenging small fish out of the nets. The serious fish were apparently already removed. Vally told me that two women were having a territorial argument. The local language is Konkani, which is Vally's native tongue, although he kept telling me that Goan Konkani is very different from Manglorian Konkani. Still he was able to communicate. Finally we came to a tourist beach (trucked-in (?) white sand which was much harder to walk on) and we guessed that we had gotten to Miramar, the next town, probably 1.5 miles away. It was still dark, so we got off the beach and walked into town. A few other people were walking on the main road, past a lot of guest houses and small hotels. We found someone with a watch. It was 5:10 AM. By then I realized that wearing flip-flops for this adventure had been a mistake and I had a blister under the strap on my left foot. I took my shoes off and we walked barefoot through Miramar. We hoped that maybe a tea shop or something would be open, but when we asked the phone booth attendant, he said that there was nothing (more about phones later). We walked back to the beach and back to our room. Most of the way back we walked in the shallow water-it was warm and wonderful. It was still dark when we got back to our room.

Finally, it was daylight and we went to the condo. This was our daily routine, get up whenever, and wander over to the apartment. That morning, we were a bit early and pretty-much woke everyone up. They took it remarkably well and luckily for them, after that we borrowed a clock and usually did not show up until after 9 AM. At the apartment we usually had coffee or tea and breakfast. Vally's parents have two servants, both part-time. I don't know of they are related but they are built exactly the same way, short, very thin and straight. One cooks and one cleans but since they were part-time, and the washing servant got sick, a lot of the cooking, cleaning and washing was done by Vally's mother, sister and sisters-in-law. The cook is named Dulcina.

In India, there is no breakfast food per se, although bread or chapatis and jam are not seen at other meals. Maybe certain dishes are found at breakfast but if so, I didn't see the pattern. It seems like, although there were fewer dishes at breakfast, most of the time we had leftovers or something that could have been served at dinner. The rolls we ate in Goa were really good, sweet and chewy-I have no idea what they were made of, maybe potato flour. At most meals, Vally's mother tended to make some dishes and leave them in insulated plastic serving containers on the counter top that divided the kitchen and dining area. Tea and coffee were also left in insulated thermoses. There were too many people for most meals to have any organization. I asked for yogurt (called curds here) and Vally's mother kept me supplied with homemade yogurt (very sour and thick because it was made from whole milk, but edible) which I figured would help protect me from stray bacteria. There was very little fruit served, except when we went to the market in nearby Panaji and brought some back, then it was gobbled up. I think this was a function of the fact that Vally's dad did most of the marketing and whatever he brought back is what was cooked and served. He didn't buy much fruit. There seem to be different varieties of bananas here, smaller and slightly bigger. The small ones sometimes have a very strong, slightly sour taste. We also ate little fruits called "bhera" which are the size of pecans although a lighter brown. They taste a little bit like crisp pears. We also ate one called "awlah" which look like marble-shaped grapes. You bite into one, but don't get far because there is a large seed inside, it tastes sort of astringent, but when you drink a sip of water immediately afterwards, the taste becomes sweet. This seems to be more for the experience than any possible caloric value. There were also tangerines which were really sweet.

We were in Goa for 10 days, and since that was written over after we left, I cannot give a coherent day-by-day account of our activities. The first trip we made was to a beach called Baga Beach. We hired a cab/van and went with Linda and Rodin and kids, and Bart and Kavita and Emmanuel. The van has seating for one in front, besides the driver, and a bench seat in the back, then some space behind the bench seat. Remember, we were 6 adults, two small children and one large child (Nikhil must weigh about 75 pounds). So, some of us were stuffed in the back, which was fine as long as the van was moving, but stiflingly hot as soon as it stopped. The driver wanted 350 rupees for the trip. He was angrily denounced down to 300 and even then, everyone was convinced that he was taking advantage of us. He produced a price list. It included waiting for us for 4 hours for 400 rupees. Rodin tried to get him to agree to wait for us at a discount, but he had had enough and refused. We figured we'd get another cab there, more cheaply. The drive was probably 40 minutes, mostly in the country but also through the nearest city, Panjim which is crowded and congested like any Indian city. I saw rice paddies for the first time, and learned to recognize them by their low dikes. Some were fallow and some had intensely green rice plants in them. This was the dry season, so only those with a really good water supply could grow a crop at this time. There were also crops of what appeared to be green and also red leafy vegetables which I had seen in the market. In some places there were huge expanses of rice paddies, in others small tile-roofed houses with a plot of land not much bigger than the average suburban plot around them, although bunched up, not arrayed inn a line along the road. There was very little wild forest, although there was some. The beach was very nice, just what you might picture, a strip of sand with a few palm trees. Near the road there were vendors and also a government-run bath house. On the beach there were beach umbrellas with 2 aluminum chaise lounges. They rented for $3 per hour (100 rupees), so we got a set. At the time I did not realize how outrageous, by Indian standards that price was. Keep in mind that the official minimum wage for laborers has just been promulgated and has been set at 35 rupees ($1) per day. I really didn't want to go swimming, so I spent my time under the umbrella pretty much. I was approached by several vendors-selling fruit, trinkets and one who was really persistent who wanted to give me a coconut oil foot massage. I probably should have given in to temptation on that one, but I was afraid that I would wind up with the sand sticking to me. Various family members hung out with me, and I watched the people on the beach. There were a few European tourists, older, grossly fat and burned pink. The majority of people were Indians, traditional Hindus. The boys went into the water, usually in their underwear, but most of the girls remained fully covered in their dresses and loose pants. Some waded in the water, pulling up their pant legs. Neither Kavita nor Linda went into the water, although Linda was dressed in shorts. Vally, Rodin and Bart went in. Nikhil was scared at first, but allowed Vally to take him in. Karan was ecstatic to be near and in the water, and the primary problem was keeping up with him. Emmanuel was the wrong age to be at the beach. If he was put down, he tried to put the sand in his mouth. Kavita, unfortunately, was more oriented to trying to keep him quiet than in recognizing his boredom and thinking of ways to keep him entertained.

There were also some white cows on the beach who followed the fruit vendors and ate the leftovers. In general, in India, cows, goats and dogs eat the leftovers. In the cities, the leftover leaves and hulls in the market are put in piles or in low dumpsters and the cows and goats come to pick over them. Only the coconut shells are sometimes kept separately and put in piles to dry and be pounded into fiber.

Getting Back From Baga Beach

Since we had taken one way transportation, we had to go looking for a cab to take us back. When we finally did get one, the driver said he wasn't allowed to go past a certain point, and that point was not where we needed to go. He suggested taking us to where there was a ferry, and we could take the ferry and wind up close to home. It seemed like a good idea. He took us there (in another Mahruti van) and dropped us off. After we got out, we found out that the ferry wasn't running that day.

Tender Coconut

They were selling tender coconut there, so we had some. If you have even a little bit of money, it is hard to go very far on populated main roads in India without finding an opportunity to buy some food. Tender coconut (which I first had in Mexico) is a green coconut and you don't have to go far to find it either. The vendor lops the top off with a machete by holding the coconut in his left hand, in mid air and swinging the blade down with his is fingers which are wrapped around the coconut. Its impressive. Once the top is lopped off, he plunks in a straw and hands its to you to drink the juice. Indian straws, by the way, are thin and made of the thinnest plastic possible. Drinking through them takes skill, because if you suck too hard the straw collapses instantly. Anyway, once the juice is gone, you give it back and he risks his fingers again to chop the coconut in half. You use the lopped off top to scoop the unripe coconut meat out and eat it. The juice is "interesting." It tastes exactly like you imagine unripe coconut juice should, a little green and a little sour. I don't like unripe coconut-it has a gelatinous texture and a watery taste.

Riding the Bus

Since the ferry wasn't running, our only alternative was to take the bus to Panjim and take another bus to Caranzalem. So I had my first ride on one of those cheap local buses. It was an enormous step up to the bus itself, and there was a sense of hurry, like the bus driver was getting out of there as soon as the last person had one foot on the platform. I stood for awhile, then got a seat. Either the windows are all open or there aren't any, I don't remember. There is a horizontal post down the middle of the ceiling of the bus for holding on. The seats are covered in some sort of vinyl and are hard, slippery and lumpy. There is nothing about the way they are configured that in any way facilitates staying seated on them. Otherwise, the ride was fine and was the ride on the next bus. I expected people to stare at me, the only non-Indian around, but they didn't. On the second bus I remember that there was a sort of conductor who collected the tickets and kept track of where people wanted to get off, although again, you had to be quick.

Anjuna Beach

Vally and I went to the famous flea market at Anjuna Beach. This is an event that takes place every Wednesday when the beach itself is converted to a bazaar. We hired a cab (Mahruti van) for the day (essentially-there, back and waiting up to 4 hours for us) at a cost of about $12. As we came close, the road became even more crowded than usual-mostly with rented scooters driven by foreigners, many of them young women. I kept remembering the guide books admonition that basically, unless you want to come home in a box, there is no reason to rent either a car or a scooter in India. The flea market was large and crowded, with many people competing to sell the same articles but also a great variety of merchandise. Most dramatic were the Kashmiri tribal women, with their bodies almost totally covered with silver jewelry and spectacular red embroidered clothing. I can't begin to describe what was on sale but most of it was not being sold by the people who made it-bangles and blankets and rugs and statues and necklaces and pillows with mirrored embroidery. I found the whole thing very overwhelming and I had a hard time with the high-pressure salesmanship. I felt like I had to really close myself off from connecting with people in order to resist and that, as well as the heat, was very tiring. At the same time I knew that these people really were terribly poor and needed every rupee they could get. We did see a fully decorated sacred cow and a few ordinary ones. I wound up with a massive headache. We bought a few things, including a drum which we got for $3, down from $12. We felt really badly about it afterwards. Although in Matthew's opinion, we paid too much.

A Family Outing for Dinner

We got to Goa on a Sunday. I think it was Friday that we celebrated Linda and Rodin's ninth wedding anniversary. We all went to a restaurant in Panjim, was called Giordano's. We took the bus while Tim and Zena went ahead on the motor scooter to scout things out. No one actually knew where the restaurant was, but we got off the bus in approximately the right place, and then asked directions. We were in the air-conditioned room, which was semi-dark and had our long table and two small tables. With its stone floor and tile and masonry walls, it was very echoy. We ordered appetizers and drinks. In general, at least in Vally's family, the evening is the time to have a drink or two and relax, although neither of us participated in the ritual. Anyway, people ordered whiskey and liquor (and sodas) and I was astounded to see that the minimum serving was a quarter bottle. I estimated that must be 4-5 shots. So that's what each person consumed, including Vally's mother. Vally wasn't very hungry because he was getting over the consequences of his initial attempts to eat everything in sight, so he entertained the children, who otherwise would have been bored and miserable. Chrissie and Chriselle had come by this time, on the catamaran. The catamaran is a fast boat that plies the route between Bombay and Goa in about 7 hours. Its cheaper than flying and much faster than the train or bus. It holds about 400 people. The sea was not supposed to be rough, but it was, and the catamaran contained 400 very seasick people, many of whom were throwing up. Chrissie, however, was not in the least bit seasick, and he was enchanted with the food. He ate his lunch. He ate Chriselle's lunch. He considered asking the woman next to him who was throwing up if he could have her lunch, too, but thought better of it. I found this story hilarious.

The food finally came. I ordered a prawns (shrimp) chilly fry, after consulting with Vally about how "hot" that would be. He assured me that it would be fine. It turned out to be the only thing I was served in India that was too hot for me to eat. I got some rice in a vain attempt to cool it down. No luck. Finally, Chrissie ate the prawns for me.

Food in India

When I first met Vally he was concerned that I would find his cooking too spicy, and that food would be a serious incompatibility. I can now report that nothing I was served in India, with the exception of the prawns chilly fry, was hotter than Vally's cooking, and only a couple of restaurant dishes came close. Everyone was worried that I wouldn't like their cooking, but I didn't find it the least bit strange. Vegetarians don't live on meat and potatoes, even here in the US, and we tend to gravitate towards ethnic cuisines anyway. The food was basically familiar: rice, chapatis, puris (fried chapatis), idli which are sort of like dumplings, made from fermented ground rice. We only had bread in Goa. There was usually a fish curry (since I said I would eat fish) or some or steamed or fried fish. I got more used to eating fish with bones in them than I had been. There was always some sort of boiled vegetable, spiced with onions and mustard seeds, and often a dal (lentil soup) which I already knew how to eat as a cross between a sauce and a side dish-on your plate, not in a bowl. There were dishes involving rice, onions, garlic and spices. I drank tons of lassi, which is thin, sweetened (comes spiced too) yogurt with a little bit of cardamon in it. Mango lassi, which is served in every Indian restaurant in the US was never offered in India. Fruit was often offered for desert, although less often in Goa. Because of the season, we had a ridiculous amount of fruitcake. We had a couple of truly incredible meals in restaurants and a lot of really good meals in people's homes. I did learn that north Indian and south Indian cuisines are very different, although north Indian food is available in the south and vice-versa. Still its better to stick to the local specialty. The Udipi restaurant typifies south Indian cuisine. The average Indian restaurant in the US (say "the states") typifies the north.

I had said something before about breakfast. I should add that eggs were always offered, so probably people do eat eggs for breakfast. Also, I saw the children eating corn flakes, but this involved pouring warm milk over the corn flakes and mashing them to a hot cereal consistency. Cold food is considered unhealthy, so maybe that's why.

There is one more Indian food I want to mention here, it is a drink called toddy. Toddy is produced from coconut trees. Here's how its done. Someone climbs up the tree and cuts the stalk where a new coconut is attempting to form. Then a collecting pot is attached and the sap is collected, I think overnight. I think the same stalk can be reused for awhile. Vally says that a tree can give a liter a day of sap. This sap is toddy. It is drunk fresh and early in the day. By noon, it is starting to seriously ferment. I did not like toddy. To me it tasted like an upset stomach.

Vally's Friend Peter

On our first cab ride, to Baga beach, Vally had asked the cab driver if he had heard of a man named Peter D'Souza (no relation) who is on the faculty of the University of Goa and whose father was V. Paul D'Souza who owned an explosives shop in Panjim. Actually, he had and he promised to get word to him that Vally was in town. Vally and Peter were close friends in college at St. Xavier's College in Bombay. A few days later, just as Vally had gotten Peter's number in another way, he called and invited us to spend the day with him. This was on Saturday. He came and got us in his car, a Premier like Chrissie's and took us to his wonderful house in nearby Dona Paula. It was in a community of faculty houses. When we got there, his wife was away (I don't remember what she does, but it is important and has something to do with social progress), and the two servants were at home, preparing Xmas pastries and keeping an eye on his 3 children, a boy 6 and two girls, aged 2 and 4. The house was very beautiful-whitewashed (needs to be done annually) and on two levels. Everything felt open and light. The children were playing on a huge, second story stone patio, probably 30 by 20, which was accessible from both the living room and the dining room through folding doors which were wooden and had glass panes on the upper half. This kind of door seemed standard in "good" houses and Vally's parents apartment had similar ones leading to the larger of their two balconies. Peter's house, which was accessible through an iron double gate across the driveway, was beautifully landscaped on the outside in tropical plants and beautifully decorated on the inside. I wish I could give you a better description. It was the first place we had visited where there was an aesthetic, rather than a functional focus in the decor. We stayed briefly before leaving to take the 6-year old to an event at school. Peter is a fallen-away Catholic, and was, even at Xavier's. He is a brilliant intellectual with a spiritual hunger that is constantly being thwarted by his intellect. Still, he sends his son to Catholic school and is comfortable with his son's religious education. The two little girls were not happy to be left behind, but they were.

After we dropped his son off, we went to Panjim where Peter had to check on some things involving the family business, which is now a paint store. Then we went for chai. I really liked this chai. Here's how you make chai. You put some water in a pot and add some milk then bring the whole thing to a boil. Then you add loose tea and sugar if your want to, and let it boil briefly. Allow to steep and pour through a strainer into some sort of insulated container. The relative amounts of water and milk vary all over the place so chai is different every time. I like it best without any water, then its like tea-flavored latte. (The day I wrote this, in the convent in Delhi, we had chai with some grated ginger added to the boiling milk. It was very good.) It is common to have a milk "skin" at the top of the chai. Every time we have gone anywhere in India, we have been offered chai. If you make brief visits to several people, it can become overwhelming.

Anyway, we had a really good time talking with Peter. As I mentioned he has a wonderful mind, and just watching it work was delightful. He is a political scientist who has chosen to get out of the academic fast lane and have a better quality of life in Goa. He is still important and gets consulted frequently, goes to an occasional international conference, etc, but he could have been at the absolute top of his field. He has made this decision but I think he still agonizes over having to choose between success and quality of life. We talked about "life, the universe and all that" and by Peter's reaction we could tell, and he later said, that in Goa he doesn't get a chance to have that kind of conversation. I told him what I had seen about Indian child rearing, which I haven't written about yet but can be summarized this way: In the US, at least in "enlightened" families, the child and especially the child's body is seen as belonging to him or herself from birth, whereas in India the child must be taught that he or she does not belong to him or herself but to the parents and the family. How this is conveyed and achieved is the stuff for another installment. Peter agreed, and said that there is a lot of ignorance about the needs of children here. We talked a lot about spirituality and how to access it. We had a delightful time. Later, as those who got our e-mail message know, he took us to meet a physics professor named Dr. Bhat (another Xavierite whom Vally vaguely remembers) who is the university internet guru. That's how we sent the message.

An Evening Walk in Goa

Peter had to leave us to attend a costume party, so we left the University of Goa on foot, headed for Caranzalem. It was a few nights before Xmas eve and we were walking in the moonlight on a tropical night on a half-deserted road in Goa while most of you were doing the American Xmas thing. It was a long walk, and by the time we got to Dona Paula, we were getting tired. A cab stopped and Vally asked "how much." The driver wanted 120 rupees. Vally decided that was too much, but as he drove away, we began to feel a little silly for quibbling. The next one wanted 100 and we took it. We were probably about 1.5 miles from the apartment. We got there abut 10 PM.

Getting Enough Sleep

One of my greatest frustrations is that I require a lot of sleep, 9 hours a night. This was virtually impossible in Goa. It would have been nice to get to bed early, but in the condo adult life started after 9:30 PM when Vally's dad and the children went to bed and the adults relaxed with a little bit of alcohol, talked and sometimes played charades (called what sounded like dam sharad). We escaped, eventually, but sometimes it was at 1 AM. Life at the guest house started at daybreak when the surroundings woke up. Sometimes, I could sleep as late as 8:30 AM, but then the "chamber maid" showed up with her broom (more on Indian brooms later). She swept through, sloshed water on the bathroom floor, wiped the bedroom floor with a filthy damp rag and picked up our trash. Our enthusiasm for her efforts was considerable dampened when we recognized our trash, dumped in a pile under a nearby palm tree. She was a tall, thin, very pretty young woman with a gold stud in her nose (standard in India) who had the most amazing smile. She was invariably trailed by a girl about 3 and a boy about 20 months old who was still nursing. We hired her to do our laundry, for which she charged 10 rupees (30 cents) for 4 pieces. The accounting was never precise and we are not sure she knew how to count, but it worked out somehow because we gave her more than the minimum. We gave candy to the kids and a 100 rupee tip to her before we left. I couldn't communicate with her because she spoke only Kannara because she was from K-although Vally says she spoke a different dialect than he did.

A Family Outing

The day after our moonlit walk, the whole family rented a school-bus sized bus ($24 for the whole day including 90 free km) for the grand tour. We went to a famous lake called Mayam Lake which was so crowded (it was a Sunday) that we left after 20 minutes, although Vally bought trinkets for the kids and we had tender coconut. We wound up at another beach called Vagator Beach. Vagator used to be THE place to be when Goa was the major international hippie scene-drugs, sex, rock 'n roll-come to Vagator. However, the locals finally tired of this and reclaimed their beach, so now it is a family beach. There is a restaurant/guest house/food store at the entrance to the beach. The bathroom was back in there somewhere and on the way we passed the guest house rooms-they were terrifying-black holes with wooden frame, plywood platform, bare beds. They seemed dirty and unlivable but maybe it was my imagination. The bathrooms were Indian style and marginal. The cafe area looked out onto the beach through a big opening in a thick masonry wall, with a table attached in the inside. Vally's parents and Kavita (who also wears a gold stud in her nose, although its mainly a Hindu custom) stayed there, sipping sodas and eating Indian snacks. The rest of us went down to the beach. There were no umbrellas and it was hot and sunny. I must interject here that it was overcast for the first few days in Goa, which is very unusual. I suspect, once the sun came out, that daytime temperatures were, pretty much in the 90's and nighttimes in the low 70's. We wore shorts the whole time.

Anyway, once on the beach, I decided I would go into the water. I changed into my bathing suit under a large towel while hoping that the towel, which was wrapped around me, would stay there. With Linda's help, I covered myself with maximum-strength waterproof sunscreen. The water was warm, and got deep very gradually (or suddenly if a wave came). The surf was relatively calm. Although I can swim, I am not a water person. I had a good time jumping waves and everyone was in good spirits. Zena does not know how to swim so she was a little nervous. We re-grouped at the cafe area which was just at the edge of the beach.

By this time, a small struggle had evolved between the family and the driver of the bus. I don't even know what the issue was, something the driver didn't want to do, but everyone went into "the driver is trying to shirk his duties and/or cheat us so we have to yell at him and bully him to make sure he doesn't" mode. The driver retaliated by failing to slow down over the speed bumps which come at the beginning and end of each village. We happened to be sitting on top of one of the back wheels. Never have I been bounced that high! We wanted to have lunch at a fancy restaurant in Panjim called Cujeros but by the time we got there at 3:30 it was closed. Instead, we went into the heart of the city to an "Udipi restaurant" for a "snack." It was called Kamut Restaurant, and it was the same place that Peter had taken us the day before for chai and actually almost next door to Giordano's. Many of these restaurants have an "air con" area upstairs, as did this one, so we opted for aircon.

All Indian restaurants also have a place, at the back or the side for people to wash their hands before and after they eat. I have been scrupulous about washing my hands here. Traditionally, Indians, at least in the south, eat with their hands. In the restaurants, it seemed like most people still do so, but many use utensils. The right hand only is used and it is held in a crooked position so that the fingers point towards the body. Rice and whatever else is being eaten with the rice is quickly scooped up, and then some people roll it around in their fingers to form a ball which they pop into their mouths, while others skip this step. Given this situation, one would expect that an enormous number of napkins would be necessary, but actually there aren't any on the table. I guess people just lick their fingers and wash their hands when they finish. So, anyway, we all had snacks at the restaurant, and chai. I had samosas which are, as most of you know, fried potato and onion and spice-filled turnovers, approximately the size of a small apple.

We had dismissed the driver at this point, telling him to meet us at 8 PM when we were going to make another attempt at Cujero's. Vally, his mother and I took a rickshaw taxi back to the apartment while everyone else opted to go by bus (fare 2 or 3 rupees). It wasn't too bad for that short distance and no one goes all that fast in India, so we probably did not top 25 mph. (Matthew was in a Rickshaw taxi that hit a rock in the road and fell over, but that was later when he came to meet us at the airport in Nagpur. He wasn't hurt, although the driver may have been.) When the company called before sending the driver back, they said it would be 100 rupees more because it was at night, and Rodin refused to pay extra. The driver was supposed to charge 800 rupees for the day, with a 500 rupee deposit. At that point the deal was over, and the company did not get the other 300 rupees. By the way, people often refer to rupees as "bucks" and the highest denomination is 500 rupees, which means that, in essence a $15 note is the biggest currency you can carry. This was put forth as an anti-corruption measure, there used to be 1000 rupee notes.

I decided not to go to Cujero's because I was exhausted, so I went to bed, and Vally went with the family. It was his treat anyway. Although some people found their food absolutely incredible, others did not like it, and the evening was dampened by the fact that from the time the main course was ordered, which was AFTER drinks and appetizers, to the time it was served was 2 hours (slow service even by Goan standards) and there were 3 tired children there during the long wait.