Griffs in Goa

Monday 12th March

This is an editorial comment headline in the English Goan Newspaper ‘The Herald’  in response to an article a few days ago when two Indian Supreme court judges called for people in office who were found guilty of corruption ‘to be hung from lamposts’. 

This is a verbatim response from ‘The Herald’ just to give you a flavour of the debate here. It is written in a rather comic, convoluted English but stick with it if you can.

‘Thrash Them: Should Goa follow the advice put forward by Supreme Court Justices S B Sinha and M Katju that people who hold public office and are corrupt should be hanged from street lamps. Considering that corruption is an integral part of Goan public life and nothing happens if some palm is greased or some favour accorded to some politician, then perhaps this advice, which may sound drastic, be the cure for the states woes. Yes, while hanging from street lamps may take Goa back to the dark ages, some stringent remedies are needed to remove Goa of this scourge which is affecting way of life. Agreed hanging is a bit drastic and not possible in Goa but something needs to be done to stop this. The reason it has reached endemic proportions and no one party should be excused from this scourge because a finger can be pointed to many officials and ministers. Be it permission to hold rave parties, awarding contracts for festivals and even getting land sales passed, something has to be passed under the table and this has to stop. While hanging can be out of the question, who knows frustration may reach such a level that a public thrashing may be on the cards.’

  Whatever the papers say life continues its daily grind as normal for the local Goan people. We were woken this morning at around 7.30 am by the sound of men chopping down a coconut tree in grounds of the small-holding behind us. Hard work in this heat and they were still at it 10.30am. The house is a big square building surrounded by 50 or so coconut trees and a few papaya and banana trees. There are chickens and pigs running free. Somedays there is a lot of excited screaming and shouting emanating from elderly women who live in the house when the chickens decide to walk up the back steps to the kitchen and invade the house. While the tree was getting chopped up, two other men were untangling and repairing a fishing net on a very large unravelled blue tarpaulin. More hot work!! The only sounds from the garden except for the rhythmic axes on the tree is the monotonous ‘croaking’ of a Green Barbet high up in the canopy and a Magpie Robin blasting us with its tuneful virtuosity while sitting on a barbed wired fence in front of our kitchen. At the front of our apartment, one of our neighbours is cleaning her car, another smartly dressed takes her equally well-attired small son to church while her young Hindu maid, sits looking bored and lonely on the second floor balcony waiting for their return.

On Thursday night we were gate-crashed by a load of uninvited visitors. The spare bathroom and the lounge were the main areas of invasion. We sprayed vigourously with the very toxic HIT cockroach spray and quickly vacated the apartment to go for dinner. When we returned a few hours later 400 to 500 winged corpses lay strewn across the floor.

Lin left on Friday and we spent most of the day at the apartment. The excessive Merlot Port wine and the Honeybee brandy I had consumed the previous evening had its usual numbing effect. Late in the afternoon we went to Colva to return my newly bought glasses for repair again! We also had to pick up a replacement pair of sunglasses for Theresa as the first pair were faulty. I won’t bore you with my purchase but as usual it has involved many returns and disappointments to the Agnelo’s Optics shop.

After Colva we returned to Benaulim and went to the beach at about 4.00p.m where we met a lady called Debbie (who hails originally from Ashton under Lyne). She has been working in India for the VSO for the last two years for the princely sum of 8,000/-  (94.00) a month. She is passionate about the people and the country and has just got a new post working with an HIV charity which is based in Chennai. We had a very interesting discussion about India, its politics and left the beach at about 8.30 p.m to have dinner at the Meridian.

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.

Tuesday 6th March

We all had a fitful sleep last night, yesterday was cloudy, windy and very humid. It is forecast to be 39 degrees and I fear it is going to be even stickier today. It is funny how ones perspective on the weather quickly changes. At home in the UK, I would look out of the window and search for any sign of blue appearing in the typically leaden northern sky. Here, I look from our kitchen window and yearn for any inclination of a breeze in the papaya and coconut trees in the neighbouring gardens.

March 31st

Picked up my scooter today. We have hired it for a month, the cost 4200/- (50.00), it is worth it now as walking any distance in this heat is getting pretty unbearable unless you are by the sea. The scooter, an old Honda Kinetic, was not the one that I had previously agreed to have. They had rented out my scooter for more money, so consequently, I have to go back tomorrow night to pick up the very much newer and more roadworthy Honda Activa. When I asked why they did not do as they agreed there was the usual blank expression with lots of head wobbling that only the Indians can do. They even cheekily asked me if I would like to round it up to 4500/-!!! I declined. Everyone here thinks tourists are walking charity donors.

We stayed on the beach late and watched a beautiful sunset set off by the most cloud we have seen since we left the UK. Then home, stayed in and drank a rather nice bottle of Australian Cabernet Sauvignon that we mysteriously found in our fridge.

Thursday 1st March
Our friends, Den and Lin left here on Tuesday at 2.00 p.m and arrived back in the UK on Wednesday at approximately 8.00 p.m, nearly 30 hours – well done Air France!
Returning to the theme of last Monday’s blog regarding double standards and women. I read today that according to the United Nations there are 7 million people in India with HIV/AIDS ans the latest report from the recent National Family Health survey only 57% of women have heard of AIDS compared with 80% of men.There are two main factors for this, firstly, only 54% of women are literate (compared to 76% of men). Secondly, rural men visit prostitutes when working away from home in urban areas. There is a huge stigma attached to the disease and they will not discuss it even though they are quite prepared to transfer it to their wives on their return home. I have no information on the literacy rates or prevelance of AIDS in Goa. I am sure that the literacy rates are much higher here as it is relatively a wealthy state compared to the likes of Bihar or Uttarakhand.

Some interesting headlines in yesterday’s paper.

‘GOODY DONATES ‘DIRTY MONEY’ TO POOR’ – (reference to Jade Goody) from the ghastly Big Brother show.
‘MURDER CONVICT STONES JUDGE IN COURT’ – Double murderer concealed a rock in court then threw it and hit and injured the judge while he was passing a guilty verdict.
‘HUBBY SELLS WIFE’S KIDNEY TO BUY TRACTOR’ – a very sad but not too uncommon tale from Pakistan. A man badly beat his wife so much that she had to have an abortion. He then took his wife ‘to hospital in Bahawalpur on the pretext of treatment’, where she was operated on by doctors who allegdely deprived her of one of her kidneys with the connivance of her husband. He used the money from the sale of the kidney to buy a tractor.

Monday 26th

The weather this morning is very cloudy with a heavy dew and what appears to be mist. The humidity is rising and the sun feels a lot hotter. Tomorrow is forcast to be 37 degrees. We have new neighbours. An Indian family moved in a couple of weeks ago. The woman must be pregnant because her morning wretching reverberates through the complex. They are loud and have a strange annoying habit of washing all the daily pots and noisily hang them out in the communal back yard at or around midnight. Since they have moved in the back yard is becoming a litter bin. They did not really initially ingratiate themselves to us by using our washing lines without having the courtesy to ask. I feel the rubbish problem will only get worse. As I have highlighted in previous blogs,the disposal of rubbish is a continual problem here.

Wherever you go here you will come across Indian males urinating, particularly by the side of the road. It seems to be a national pastime. Anytime night or day they can be found watering there surrounding area. It really is unnecessary and rather disgusting. There seems to be perverse double standards at work here. I have never seen a woman do this, in fact, women are not allowed to show much flesh at all, when they go for a swim in the sea most are fully clothed, yet a man can strip off to his ‘Y’ fronts when he wants to, go for a swim and then piss wherever he feels like. 

Sunday 25th

We went down to Agonda with Den and Lin on scooters. It took about an hour and three quarters including the ferry crossing. Some of the road has vastly improved since our last visit six weeks ago. A very visible indication that elections are imminent. The local papers especially ‘The Herald’ report every aspect of the forthcoming elections, last week it highlighted electoral roll irregularities with the headline ‘Voter demands to know whether she is a man or a woman’.  The road from Assolna to Betul had been resurfaced to an unusually high standard, most of the time everything is done in a cheap, shoddy fashion.  Sometimes it is downright dangerous! Another item of news in ‘The Herald’ which caught my eye was the disastrous outcome of a road widening scheme in a village in South Goa. They had widened the road but failed to move the electricity poles so that they were now in the middle of the carraigeway with the consequence of multiple crashes. There is no such thing as coordination between agencies here and no-one knows when the poles will be moved to the side of the road.

Agonda is a very, very quiet place. Some of the bars are already closing because of the lack of tourists. The locals blame the lack of tourists on the possible threat of Al Queda terrorists in South Goa issued by the Israeli and Indian governments back in December. It is apparently, a favourite place for Israeli conscripts to come and relax after their six month stint in the army. Agonda is the place if you want tranquility. The 3kms bay is surrounded by hills of Cashew, Almond and Coconut trees. I have been told that every morning there is an unrehearsed acrobatic display by dolphins in the bay. This is very much an unspolit part of Goa and long may it remain. A strong northeast wind got up in the afternoon and we spent a rather pleasant couple of hours in a very basic but friendly shack which served very cold Kings beer and tasty vegetable dishes.

Last night we all had the best fish dish that we could remember ever having. We had a Red Snapper at the Seaview shack. It must have been two foot long, it was cooked to perfection and it only cost 600/- (7.10p).

Tuesday 20th ( Shrove Tuesday)
The week before Lent is Carnival time in Goa. There has been the usual discussions and denials in the newspapers about the local big-wigs allocating funding to their political supporters but this only was relevant for Panjim and Margao, the two main cities in Goa. In Benaulim there was no such funding available as far as I am aware. The floats were very ‘Heath Robinson’ but charming all the same. They mainly consisted of lorries packed to the gunnels with exuberant young Goans. These lorries were preceded by even more excited young Goan males on scooters and motorcycles. They were painted in various colours and some wore masks or were in drag. There main aim was to drive as fast and as dangerously as possible which had the unintentional result of clearing the road of pedestrians and spectators. The procession meandered its noisy way down to the beach car park where the usual traffic confusion and chaos ensued. This was followed by music, dancing and drinking into the early hours.
We went with Dennis and Linda to Fiplees Restaurant for a meal last night. We were presented with a rather obscure different menu from the usual one. On the top it had in big bold letters ‘A price hike was inevitable’ – after enquiring what this meant we found out that the increase for the night was due to the carnival but nowhere on the menu did it mention carnival. We were “entertained” by a dreadful male and female duo singing (with far too much echo and reverb) along to backing tracks. TG & I had the worst meal since we have been here. Dennis, in true Brit abroad fashion ordered two lemon pancakes and one chocolate pancake for his main course. The waiter courteously smiled and obviously thought he was insane when he tried to explain it was ‘Pancake Day’. Pancakes are available here every day!

This is a typical menu that can be found all over Goa. As you can see it is wide ranging and caters for vegetarians as well as meat-eaters. This was taken outside of Rafael’s in Colva.