Speling probblemms
Friday 26th: Today is India Republic Day.
Getting the correct spelling can sometimes be problematic even for native speakers but when English is not your first language there can often be comic consequences. I know a Kashmiri guy in Candolim who had his shop sign painted with ‘Trager of Haven’. It should have been ‘TIGER OF HEAVEN’.
In the back of a menu in one of the beach shacks is a list of the cocktails you can find anywhere: Pina Colada, Tom Collins, Screwdriver, Bloody Mary, Love on the Rocks, etc. Nothing unusual there, however, they have tried to be enterprising and add their own creation using the local firewater Feni but I don’t think they have really hit the spot. They wanted to invent something romantic to drink while watching the sunset and I think they were aiming for ‘Feni On The Waves’. Unfortunately they wrote ‘FANI ON THE WE’, little imagination is needed to guess what that tastes like!!! Mmmm… interesting little number, a rich yellow colour with ammonia on the nose……
Sheet or Bust
hello Blogger number 2 here!
Today Nick has a bit of Delhi Belly and a heavy cold and some other things that hypocondriacs suffer from so I decided to take the bus into Margoa to do a little shopping. I caught the bus from Maria Hall 6/- and sat at the back wedged in between a western tourist and a local Indian girl. The bus did not get too full, so I was able to see where we were going for a change. It was a great ride, the driver was playing some good Hindi tunes and I watched other tourists tapping their fingers and nodding their heads to the rhythms blasting out of the speakers on the bus. Each time the driver neared a stopping area he would switch off the music and hoot like mad to let all around know he was stopping. Once passengers were on, he would put the music back on and off we went on our “hippy trip” to town.
My first stop was the Big G super store which is aimed at foreign and Indian tourist where they have more assistants than shoppers. I went straight to the swimwear section on the 2nd floor, passing by several assistants who all acknowledged me with “good morning madam”. They had a good selection, which I was glad of because the swimwear I brought away with me is now wearing very thin. I asked if they had XXL bust size (about size 14 in England) in a bikini. They had not but they did have it in a swimming costume. I had a look but there wasn’t anything offered that I liked, they all looked like something my grandmother would have worn in the 1960’s – really old fashioned. I then went up to the 3rd floor for the kingsize sheets and pillow cases I needed. The assistant came straight away, so I told her what I wanted rather than search for it myself. She took me to the section and showed me a king size quilt. I explained again that I wanted sheets and she told me that it was a sheet? “We call those quilts in
England” I said, “Do you not have sheets with pillow cases?” She said again that what she was holding up was a sheet, and that they did do other sheets, but didn’t have the King size in stock. I thought I would try the market area, so walked down through the town, stopping at a few shops on route. I stopped at Anand Timblo House of Textiles on station road. The owner was very helpful and showed me a few sheets and also showed me 100% cotton material. He said that he would cut 2 x 2½ metre lengths and get them stitched today. I agreed and said I would be back in ½ hour. I looked around inside the local market where they sell everything imaginable. As I wandered around I was asked by women sat on the floor with baskets of fruit if I wanted Papaya? I was also followed by a very persistent old man with an embroidery set who would not leave me alone, he kept shouting madam look, look! I eventually told him “maka naka” which means no I don’t want in Konkani, and he stopped following me straight away. I then spotted a bakery and bought a chocolate Swiss roll, freshly baked and 2 spicy vegetable patties costing 16/-. I couldn’t wait, so ate my patty straight away while it was still warm, delicious! I bought a newspaper and had a drink in a small bar opposite the textile place before going back to collect the sheets. The proprietor sent his assistant across the road to check on my sheets and offered me a tea while I waited. We discussed where in England I came from and the weather. The sheets were ready and he and his assistant held them out to show me that they were the correct size they cost 500/- for 2. I also bought 2 pillow cases 40/- each and a single blanket for Nick 350/-. I was really warm and coated orange (from the dust outside that was all over the plastic blanket holders) by the time I had finished, so I decided to get a tuk tuk home instead of the bus. The driver asked for 150/- but I only offered 80/-. He said no but his boss said yes! He was a bit miffed about it and would not take me a foot further than Maria Hall where I had asked for (2 minutes from the apartment), so I got out and didn’t tip him. I made us a milky coffee when I got back and we had it with the chocolate Swiss roll – marvelous!!
The Bulls and the Bees
Wednesday 24th
Yesterday we left the apartment at about 9.30 to walk to Colva but we were pleasantly delayed. At the front entrance to our complex were some guys who were selling honey. Attached to the front of the complex building and totally unnoticed by us was a huge bee swarm. The Indian guys had enterprisingly scaled the three storeys and released the large honeycomb and its contents into a big red bucket. They were scooping by hand the golden honey into all types of containers to enthusiastic buyers. The taste was superb. Theresa returned to the flat and returned with a saucepan which they filled with half a kilo of fresh delicious honey. The cost just 150/-, (₤1.50p). Later in the afternoon we went to the beach and left about 5.30. The road back usually is quiet with little traffic but yesterday it was chock a block with parked scooters, motorbikes and cars. In a field beside the road there was a mass of people and on the roadside there were more looking on. There were people up coconut trees and there were people racing down the road to add to the spectacle. The spectacle being a Bullfight. Two black shining male Water Buffalo were locked horn-to-horn in a bovine tournament of brute strength. They were closely surrounded by hundreds of Indian men. There were no protection barriers and the mass of bodies moved like a flock of starlings in unison with the big bulls thrusts and counters. On the periphery young boys were running to the nearest watering hole to fill buckets of water to throw over the beasts to keep them cool – a bit like sponging down a boxer. There is no fight to the death. The loser is the bull which eventually runs away. Bullfights are illegal and just being caught as a spectator can mean prosecution by the authorities. They are quickly arranged affairs and the word gets around rapidly on the betting grapevine. Up to one lakh 100,000/- (over eleven hundred pounds) can change hands. After about an hour the defeated animal ran away up the road towards the village making tourists and locals alike dash for cover to get out of the way of its flailing horns.
A police road sign on the way to Colva ‘Driving Rash Causes Crash’ - nobody takes any notice.
Fireworks
They love fireworks in Goa. For any reason and quite often for no reason at all, fireworks will be set off. They are not like the over regulated, over priced and rather disappointing fireworks that you buy in the UK. These are the high explosive big bang type and any spectator should be acutely aware of their unique unpredictable nature. On Monday night the Seaview Shack put on a party for some twenty or more guests to celebrate someone’s eightieth birthday. At the end of the meal the fireworks show began with Alwyn the waiter, lighting the fuses. Towards the end of the display Matthew the owner decided to help. He lit the fuse but instead of the firework exploding upwards it went sideways and burnt his hand very badly. He tried to relieve the pain by burying his hand in the cool sand, he was also screaming in agony. He is still in hospital. Matilda, Matthew’s wife has a lot to contend with now. She teaches in the primary school from 7.30 a.m till 1.30 p.m then works in the shack until late at night, sometimes to the early hours. In between she has to look after her two daughters and visit Matthew in one hospital in Margao and visit Pedro (Matthew’s brother) in another hospital. Pedro had a heart attack in the shack just after New Year. Not a great start to 2007 for the Fernandez family.
Skål din gimla Baver
Yesterday Pete from Sweden and Silvia from Norway took the train to Bombay and will be back in Scandanavia in five days time. They were excellent company and I think the picture speaks a thousand words.
‘Cheers you old Beaver’.
Big Brother
Unfortunately we cannot get away from some of the crap shown on UK television. The dreadful Big Brother show has made the national headlines over here for several days with the Indians questioning the UK’s attitude to racism. Yes, we have racist bigots in the UK but so have they over here, in fact today, there has been serious headline grabbing inter-communal riots in Bangalore with Muslims being on the receiving end of attacks and arson. There is an undercurrent of racism here in Goa too and I get a feeling from talking to the locals that they do not like the Kashmiris (Muslim) and the Karnatakans (Hindu) and would like them all to go home. However, cynically the Goans don’t mind accepting rent from the Kashmiris for their shops and having the Karnatakans doing the menial cleaning and labouring jobs.
Swimming and Calangute
Sunday is always busy on the beach with Indian tourists far outnumbering westerners.Their antics in the water is comical, lots of screaming, shouting and hand-waving. For many, it is the first time they have seen or been in the sea.
Calangute is a dirty, tired holiday destination for package holiday makers and the town is chosen by out of town Indians who arrive there by the bus load. Indian visitors are blamed for the litter which is everywhere. They are also the victims of frequent drownings that occur on the Goan coast. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have any knowledge or respect for the sea and many venture into the sea intoxicated. Calangute and its southern Goan equivalent Colva often have fatalities. On New Years Eve students from North India drowned at Colva, to date only two bodies have been recovered.
The Strange Paradox of Indian Life
Everywhere across Goa there are adverts presenting a different way of life to the everyday Indian, most of whom can only dream and wonder what it must be like to live the life of luxury being portrayed at every opportunity. Adverts on buses, on the walls of buildings, on lorries, every five minutes on the TV and on huge hoardings in paddy fields. 70% of rural Indian earns less than a dollar a day yet the adverts show very light skinned people drinking Smirnoff vodka or Indian whisky with grand names like Directors Choice, while on their mobile phone booking a flight for Goa to Jaipur with Kingfisher Airlines. How strange it is the poor do not rebel en-masse and say “I want that too”.
The rich guy pulls up in his big four wheel-drive car, sits at a restaurant table, puts a cigarette in his mouth and shouts to the waiter to come and light it for him when his lighter is on the table in front of him. He is saying to everyone, I’m rich and you have got to know I’m rich. This behaviour has a long intertwined history of caste, class and snobbery and it is the way that Indians accept unquestioningly this attitude that I find very difficult to understand.
Inter-faith like inter-caste marraiges are extremely rare and arranged marraiges are still the norm. A girl at the Internet cafe asked me the other day if I was in a ‘love marraige’ which she wanted but her parents forbade. I thought how sad not to be allowed that fundamental choice. This is in a way is how India functions by knowing your place which automatically denies choice, choice which the advertisers unrealistically portray that everyone has.
Rough Justice at the Meridien
There has been a couple of thefts recently with bags being stolen from single women tourists. Nothing much has been done about it and consequently nobody has been apprehended. Tonight a taxi-driver had some money stolen and all hell broke loose. The taxi-drivers identified the culprits (out of state Karnatakan building labourers) and when one of them was searched he was found to have a large amount of money on him. Apparently, one was the thief who would then drop the money off in a safe place for collection by the other. There were about eight to ten taxi-drivers outside the restaurant who set about beating up the one who had the cash. A tourist from inside the restaurant shouted ‘call the police’ which infuriated the taxi drivers and they angrily shouted back that the police would just ‘put the money in their back pocket’. A lot of shouting in Konkani (Goan) then ensued when several local women got involved. I have no idea if the taxi-drivers were telling the truth about the reason for the violence and I have no idea what happened to their victims. I did find it a bit ironic that nothing was done about the crimes against the tourists but when the taxi ‘mafia’ had money stolen, it was swiftly remedied. The irony being that they rip-off unwitting tourists everyday without any comeback at all.
The Meridien is to close in a couple of months because the lease is up. I hope it opens again and that it keeps its high standard of food and service. It is consistently, the best eating place in Benaulim.
The sad demise of Candolim
Tuesday 16th
We decided to have a few days in the resort of Candolim in North Goa. We know this now not so small village from past holidays and in the twelve years since I first visited Candolim it has changed beyond recognition and unfortunately for the worse. All the excessess and influences of the onslaught of package tourism have changed what was once a pleasant quiet resort with a few beach shacks into a mini Benidorm. The once sedate Canara beach road now has pavements (something it didn’t have before) lined with glitzy glass fronted Kashmiri jewelry shops. It is also littered with far too many bars, some of which have big screens which just show endless football matches.
The beach has now got wall-to-wall sunbeds at horribly named shacks. For example,the enticingly named the Rovers Return advertises traditional Goan fare such as the quarter pounder and steak and kidney pie and the beach sellers have become more numerous and more enterprising selling anything from cakes to pedicure.
It is so sad to see Candolim like this and it is easy to be cynical about who is being exploited by whom. Back-packers point the finger at cheap charter flights and package holidays and some Goans dislike the greed of their fellow countrymen. The truth is probably a combination of both has contributed to it’s decline from rustic charm to pure commercialism.
Candolim is still a great place to come if it is your first time to Goa and you want something sanitised and you just want plenty of sun, cheap goods and you are not bothered about the cost to the environment (it must be added that many local residents of Candolim apparently are not concerned either). Candolim is not Goa anymore and if the Tourism Ministry in Goa permits the same lack of concern in encouraging more of the same in south Goa, then Goa will become a far less of an attractive prospect for the more thoughtful and discerning tourist and they will go elsewhere.
We planned to stay three nights but we had enough after two. We stayed in the Ave Maria guesthouse. It is featured in several package holiday companies: Inspirations and Travelpack being two. The room cost 600/- (approx 7 pounds). The shower and the loo worked properly. It is a strange fact that often one of the most important factors when travelling is the state of the bathroom facilities. There is nothing worse than a ‘bum loo’ (no apologees for the pun). The weirdest thing about the Ave Maria is how holy it is. Everywhere in the building there are signs of the owner Maria’s piety. On the walls of the porch there are several garlanded pictures of Christ. A few doors along the ground floor is an open room which has several large garlanded statues of Christ, a large red lightshade in the shape of a cross, candles, a Crucifix, a sofa and strangely a tank full of tropical fish. Prayers and chanting emminated into the night from somebody, probably Maria. We did not feel worthy enough to stay there.
