Snippets from Goa

Snippet 1

On the lookout for the famous eatery Martin’s we prowled around the dark by-lanes of Goa on a Saturday evening ...eight women divided into two cars. Ours was the pilot car since I was the one who had called Martin’s ahead of time and booked a table for dinner at 8:30. The man who spoke to me over the phone assured me he would give me directions once I reached a specific area. As agreed I called him when our cars had reached Margao but weirdly enough he could not for the life of him understand which location we were calling from. The directions that followed were hilarious to say the least.... I was asked to go straight ahead and take a right turn at the junction where a road map was pasted on a signboard....go straight ahead till you reach a chicken shop (he said!) and then take a right after the shop and keep going till you reach a railway track....cross the tracks and head straight till you reach a church and then take a left........ after that....get this....ASK SOMEONE where Martin’s is!!!! I was appalled at his directional skills and stopped calling him. Needless to say that we were hopelessly lost and reached Martin’s at a quarter to ten....thoroughly exhausted.

Snippet 2

There was never a lull in the eating throughout the trip. After an excessive dinner the previous night the energetic eight sat down at the breakfast table of the home-stay. Breakfast consisted of eggs and sausages, homemade jams and bread and fruits too. While digging into her fourth slice of toast my cousin and her little friend hemmed and hawed a bit about the leftover sorpotel (pickled pork in gravy) that we had doggy bagged home from dinner. They didn’t have to ask too many times as the others agreed with alacrity and the pork was warmed and served up quickly. It vanished without a trace amidst much laughter about last night’s fierce avowals about ‘just sticking to fruit for breakfast’. 

Snippet 3

One of the eight we had named: Her Royal Highness (HRH), for her inability to disagree and her lofty manners. An example of her high-ness appeared when we were taking a tour of an old Portuguese bungalow that had been restored and opened to tourists for a walk through. The furniture had been kept intact....dark wood and ornate carvings everywhere...sepia tinted photographs of the folks who peopled the house hung on the walls. The owner who was giving us the tour lived in the house with his family which included two kids. Me being me, I chimed in about what a lovely childhood the kids must be having living in a house full of history and heritage preserved as though from the pages of a book. Poor HRH could not disagree more. She was not of a morbid temperament like me and wanted to differ in opinion but all she could manage that ‘such a childhood would be very different, would it not?’ This provoked a bout of uproarious laughter from all her friends. Polite and agreeable....our HRH!

Snippet 4

Walking barefoot on the wet sand getting our feet wet in the waves, we were approached by a fellow called Dil (believe it or not) who wanted to take us on a boat ride in the backwaters of the Palolem river. We agreed and after a few photographs on the beach we climbed onto the catamaran like boat. Talk shifted to crocodiles and alligators in the Sunderbans till someone very brightly requested me to sing a certain film song that was shot in a gondola in Venice. Strange sight it must have been....eight women in a boat singing lustily while a grinning boatman rowed us down the green waters.