Holi – the festival of colour
Lin, who is now staying with us, went off to meet her parents this morning. They are staying in Colva. We decided to go to the Gois shack on Sernabatim beach between Colva and Benaulim. The waves were very big around midday and it looks as though the previous nightime high tide had been really high – I wonder if it was anything to do with the lunar eclipse. I was never any good at physics (probably not aided by the dreadful Ivan Greenslade) who taught me. I always remember him shouting at me in class, “You are a cow boy, what are you?” And I had to reply to the amusement of the rest of the class that “I was a Cowboy sir”. Grammar school in the sixties – I didn’t learn a damn thing!!!
Today I met a guy from Yorkshire who has been living out here for seven years, who has married a Goan lady and who has a young son. He is a Physical Training instructor and teaches Yoga at all the big 4 & 5 star hotels, such as the Taj Exotica and the Radisson. I am fully aware that some of my blogs have been a bit of a ‘rant’ about how downright dishonest things can be here. His assessment of the situation confirms my own personal observations. The PT instructor is having a home built here, mainly for his Goan son to have some roots here. He would not advise anyone to buy here. Even though he is married to a Goan, he still has to play the demeaning, infuriating and relentless game of bribery and corruption to get anything done. He is keeping a diary/folder of all the riduculous and corrupt things that have happened to him here with the intention of writing a book.
We have been hassled quite a bit today by Hindu women who wanted donations for their carnival to celebrate the ‘Holi’ festival of colour. Their carnival seems just to consist of throwing coloured water over everyone. Lin got ‘pinked’. There are no carnival floats and all the money they collect pays for the food and drink for the party in their houses. As usual, someone else pays.
