Despite everything, Goa is hard to beat for a quick getaway
Illustration/Uday Mohite
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Despite everything, Goa is hard to beat for a quick getaway. So, at a college reunion in Goa, of friends from St Xavier's College, Mumbai, we simply went with the flow. All-women holidays are different and special; let's call my women friends Candy, Mandy and Sandy. Candy, whose children are in their 20s, summed up motherhood over a generation: "Earlier we used to run after the kids with lunch dabbas, now we chase them with coffee and car keys."
Apart from lolling, catching up, and food comas, we enjoyed being flâneurs, or rather flâneuses, as the Portuguese influence on Goa gives it such a distinctive character. We strolled around Panjim's atmospheric Latin Quarter, Fontainhas, pronounced "Fonteynsh" in Portuguese, we were told. The houses had traditional architecture, painted in jaunty, mango yellow, cobalt blue and red oxide red, with mother-of-pearl shell windows. Owners' names, like Solar Andrade, and street names like Rua Conde de Redondo, were hand-painted in azulejos, Portuguese blue tiles, set in the walls. The splendid Fundação Oriente showed the work of Goan painter António Trindade. And, at the back, is the gravestone of a dog, Pluto, in Konkani and Portuguese: Ti hea ghorant 10 vorsam jiyeli ani gharachi rakhon keli/Viveu nesta casa e defendeu-a durant 10 anos, 1998-2008 (she lived in this house and protected us for 10 years).
An extremely agreeable air of languor sets in, and a sign at the Afonso Guest House insists: Please ring the bell only once and wait. Mandy, a piano teacher, tells us that at the Villa Peregrino da Costa nearby, where the Trinity College London holds its music exams, if there's a power cut and you have to open the windows, they worry about adverse remarks from the examiners. On Altinho hill, the magnificent Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts, has galleries, a cafe and a wonderful open air amphitheatre under a raintree for film screenings. This raintree is a UN of Squirreldom, and I can hear squirrels chitter in at least five dialects of squirrelese.
Another day, we drive to the Mario Miranda gallery in the evocatively named Salvador do Mundo village in Bardez. I am deeply embarrassed to discover that the man who helped me get prints and scarves is the famous architect Gerard da Cunha, but he remains unpretentious, and invites us to cake at the cafe of his lovely, ship-shaped Houses of Goa architecture museum right across, growing spectacularly from a traffic island outside his Laurie Baker-inspired home.
Meanwhile, Sandy arranges for us to go sailing with Aquasail in Bambolim. Guided by a polite Kenyan sailor, Evans, I am quite pleased to steer the sail boat, with a double-sail, amid silvery flying fish, and especially delighted to be able to smoothly turn the boat, carrying five passengers. Suddenly, you pay a lot more attention to the wind. Luckily, these guys have thought of everything: life jackets, someone following you in a safety boat, who can also take photos on request, and even a strap for your glasses.
Later, I visit David and Charmayne de Souza at their intoxicating bungalow, Amtan Savli (Tamarind Shade) in Moira. David says the greatest pleasures of moving there from Mumbai are clean air and silence. Their house is surrounded by trees and riotously flowering plants; beyond their swimming pool is a banana plantation and the Moira river. As you swim in the pool amid birdsong, with six enormous trees overhanging the pool, and later shower in the open air, under the tamarind tree, in a spacious, high bamboo enclosure, you are reminded that the great joys of life are really quite small.
Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com.
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