Of Goa there are other memories. The young French heroin addict asking if she could shoot up in our bedroom at the house on Calangute beach. Vanessa and I were in bed. The French girl sat at the end of our mattress. I picture her now as she licked the needle as if it were her lover - I with a terror of needles. I was five years old when a course of injections killed my father. I overheard our nanny speak of it.
There was Slugs Jerry's tame guru who cured two Canadian girls of gonorrhea with prayer, meditation, herbal potions and the antibiotics secreted at the bottom of his Aruvedic medicine chest.
And trying to meet Blind George one perfect morning, he walking through the palm trees back from Baga beach, I walking in the other direction. George, with only 10% peripheral vision, faced 45 degrees from the direction of his walk and someone had fed me a powerful cookie for breakfast. Calculating a point of intersection was beyond me.
And of course the arrest of Caroline for nakedness on the beach and the gold smuggler paying her fine – but that story I wrote for The Lady magazine last month. It all happened forty years ago. Enough...
Except to thank Fiona and Paul for their company and for their kindness and generosity. Stray dogs are their normal house guests. A fat old snoring Brit on a bike was an extra.
Showing posts with label Goa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goa. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Monday, March 08, 2010
POCKET FULL OF TOOTHPICKS AND OLIVE STONES
GOA: FEBRUARY 13
I don't do parties in the UK. Eight people in a room is a maximum. More and I become claustrophobic. Cocktail parties are my particular hate. Stand with a drink in one hand, nibbles in the other and nod intelligently to someone whom you can't hear above the general babble. And what do you do with the trash? Leave with a pocket full of toothpicks and olive stones? Outdoors is different, room to breathe and usually somewhere to sit. This party is hosted by a Bombayite and his English companion. I sit on a stone parapet of comfortable height and talk with a Goan civil engineer.
Does he know of a Goan architect with a Danish wife?
De Souza - yes , of course. He is dead, she back in Denmark with their daughter. However the son, Amin, lives here in Panjim.
I recall Amin as a small boy.
“We'll telephone him.”
“At ten o'clock?”
Absolutely – and he does. “Amin, I have someone here who wants to talk to you,” and hands me his mobile.
“Amin, you won't remember me. Simon Gandolfi.”
“Simon Gandolfi! Of course I remember. You used to drive us to the beach in one of your open Volkswagen...”
I don't do parties in the UK. Eight people in a room is a maximum. More and I become claustrophobic. Cocktail parties are my particular hate. Stand with a drink in one hand, nibbles in the other and nod intelligently to someone whom you can't hear above the general babble. And what do you do with the trash? Leave with a pocket full of toothpicks and olive stones? Outdoors is different, room to breathe and usually somewhere to sit. This party is hosted by a Bombayite and his English companion. I sit on a stone parapet of comfortable height and talk with a Goan civil engineer.
Does he know of a Goan architect with a Danish wife?
De Souza - yes , of course. He is dead, she back in Denmark with their daughter. However the son, Amin, lives here in Panjim.
I recall Amin as a small boy.
“We'll telephone him.”
“At ten o'clock?”
Absolutely – and he does. “Amin, I have someone here who wants to talk to you,” and hands me his mobile.
“Amin, you won't remember me. Simon Gandolfi.”
“Simon Gandolfi! Of course I remember. You used to drive us to the beach in one of your open Volkswagen...”
FLASH LEATHER AND A TOY BOY
GOA: FEBRUARY 13
Simon and Lisa have difficulties in getting published. Simon does the writing and organises their photo-library (one hundred thousand or more pics) while Lisa does the more mundane: route planning, visas, finance, etc. Simon is one more forty-year old biker – OK, so he's tall with long hair and moderately glamorous. Who cares? Lisa is the story. She is the elder by ten years, tough good-looking without being butch and astride a great big throbing BMW. Open the throttle and she leaves Simon trailing. That's the story, Flash leather and a Toy Boy. Most every woman's dream.
Simon and Lisa have difficulties in getting published. Simon does the writing and organises their photo-library (one hundred thousand or more pics) while Lisa does the more mundane: route planning, visas, finance, etc. Simon is one more forty-year old biker – OK, so he's tall with long hair and moderately glamorous. Who cares? Lisa is the story. She is the elder by ten years, tough good-looking without being butch and astride a great big throbing BMW. Open the throttle and she leaves Simon trailing. That's the story, Flash leather and a Toy Boy. Most every woman's dream.
DON'T LAUGH AT THE MINOW
GOA: FEBRUARY 13
www.horizonsunlimited. com is a web site community of biker travelers initiated by a Canadian couple, Susan and Grant Johnson. Check the Hubb for road conditions in Albania, visas for Turkmenistan, possibility of entering China, BMW mechanic in Buenos Aires. What ever, you'll find it here. And you make friends. I have been communicating via the web with an English couple, Lisa and Simon, since 2004. Now, finally, we meet on Arambol beach. They have been on the road for seven years and ride monsters. I ride a minow and we are very different travelers. Simon and Lisa are adventurous. Travel ecstasy for me is good tar, a dish of prawns, soft mattress and Emails from my kids. For Lisa and Simon, the tougher the road the happier. Truly dangerous and they are ecstatic. Check their site on how to survive a broken neck in the Amazon forest (www.2ridetheworld.com). However a few weeks of Indian drivers has put them in a hate-India mood.
IN SEARCH OF HIPPY HAVEN
GOA: FEBRUARY 13Paul and Fiona work a twelve-hour day. I hunt my past. Goa's Hippy community has been squeezed steadily northward. Calangute was the beginning, then Baga, Anjuna...Now ninety minutes up the coast to Arambol. Goa is ruined – so they say. Then why do I pass almost deserted white-sand beaches?
As to the hunt, imagine a fat ederly Blimp accosting any Oldie with long hair. “Excuse me, have you been here long?”
In a guttural German accent, “Ten years...”
The Blimp needs forty...And the courage to keep accosting elderly long-haired strangers. A full day (unsuccessful) and I divide them into gracious, puzzled, bewildered, dismissive and impolite.
As to the hunt, imagine a fat ederly Blimp accosting any Oldie with long hair. “Excuse me, have you been here long?”
In a guttural German accent, “Ten years...”
The Blimp needs forty...And the courage to keep accosting elderly long-haired strangers. A full day (unsuccessful) and I divide them into gracious, puzzled, bewildered, dismissive and impolite.
DEDICATED CASTRATERS
GOA: FEBRUARY 13
Paul and Fiona don't eat in. They haven't eaten in for fifteen years. They could write the definitive guide to the best restaurants in Delhi, Bangalore and Goa without further research - a fresh project should they lose interest in automobiles. They are also the experts on India's stray dog population. Paedophiles groom children. Fiona and Paul groom strays. Spot a male stray and the grooming begins with leftovers from dinner. A week and the stray becomes expectant. Progress to physical contact. Finally in to the back of the car and home to the knife and recuperation. Two such dedicated castraters per district would decimate India's huge stray-dog population. Next step, homo sapiens...
Paul and Fiona don't eat in. They haven't eaten in for fifteen years. They could write the definitive guide to the best restaurants in Delhi, Bangalore and Goa without further research - a fresh project should they lose interest in automobiles. They are also the experts on India's stray dog population. Paedophiles groom children. Fiona and Paul groom strays. Spot a male stray and the grooming begins with leftovers from dinner. A week and the stray becomes expectant. Progress to physical contact. Finally in to the back of the car and home to the knife and recuperation. Two such dedicated castraters per district would decimate India's huge stray-dog population. Next step, homo sapiens...
EX-STRAY DOGS
GOA: FEBRUARY 12
To begin again: Fiona/Paul may not be the true voice of Goa. They are the true voice of modern India. They research the Asian automobile market and provide detailed reports for major motor manufacturers. They founded their company fifteen years ago with offices in Delhi, moved to Bangalore and have now been in Goa for two years. A large Portuguese country house is both their home and their office where a staff of ten or more sit at computer terminals in what was the dinning room. The guest bedroom is as big as a UK council flat. The bathroom is marginally smaller. I sleep in a vast bed beneath a mosquito net. I keep the door to the corridor shut. Leave it open and the room is invaded by a pack of ex-stray dogs and puppies.
To begin again: Fiona/Paul may not be the true voice of Goa. They are the true voice of modern India. They research the Asian automobile market and provide detailed reports for major motor manufacturers. They founded their company fifteen years ago with offices in Delhi, moved to Bangalore and have now been in Goa for two years. A large Portuguese country house is both their home and their office where a staff of ten or more sit at computer terminals in what was the dinning room. The guest bedroom is as big as a UK council flat. The bathroom is marginally smaller. I sleep in a vast bed beneath a mosquito net. I keep the door to the corridor shut. Leave it open and the room is invaded by a pack of ex-stray dogs and puppies.
INSUFFICIENT COFFEE
GOA: FEBRUARY 12.
Fiona and Paul - is it sexist to put the woman's name ahead of the man's? Or the man's ahead of the woman's? Please excuse the digression. I have had only one cup of coffee this morning and my thoughts remain somewhat disorganised. The plains of Tamil Nadu in March are hot. Fortunately I am cooled by a strong sea breeze. I am writing on the roof terrace of the Sunrise Guest House in Mamallapuram. A grass park and a few trees separate the guest house from the sea. The sea is a pale greeny blue beneath a sky that is paler than pale. Surf breaks on the rock shore. Two small, narrow, high-bowed fishing boats rock at anchor. Four sister boats have chugged south down the coast. A junior teenage help is preparing fresh coffee. Ten minutes and my brain will be unscrambled.
Fiona and Paul - is it sexist to put the woman's name ahead of the man's? Or the man's ahead of the woman's? Please excuse the digression. I have had only one cup of coffee this morning and my thoughts remain somewhat disorganised. The plains of Tamil Nadu in March are hot. Fortunately I am cooled by a strong sea breeze. I am writing on the roof terrace of the Sunrise Guest House in Mamallapuram. A grass park and a few trees separate the guest house from the sea. The sea is a pale greeny blue beneath a sky that is paler than pale. Surf breaks on the rock shore. Two small, narrow, high-bowed fishing boats rock at anchor. Four sister boats have chugged south down the coast. A junior teenage help is preparing fresh coffee. Ten minutes and my brain will be unscrambled.
Friday, March 05, 2010
FREN JOSHUA
GOA: FEBRUARY 9
Everybody at the Fren Joshua concert is a small crowd of maybe one hundred. The true sound of Goa is German. He sits in splendour on a raised dais on the stage and plays the sitar and a flute. To his right, a grey-haired Japanese with a frozen face plays base guitar next to a tabla player who might be Indian. A second German plays keyboard and fiddles with a lap-top. Fren Joshua is both serious and spiritual. He dedicates his songs to a series of Sufi saints and mystics. My untrained ear finds one song much like the next. Perhaps the Sufi mystics were equally similar. The concert is enlivened on occasion by all four musicians emitting a series of very loud harsh barks.
The Japanese base player runs out of battery.
I clap once at the wrong moment.
The prawn risotto is dry and without taste.
So where is the luck?
In meeting a young Dutch couple, Paul and Fiona, at the restaurant.
Everybody at the Fren Joshua concert is a small crowd of maybe one hundred. The true sound of Goa is German. He sits in splendour on a raised dais on the stage and plays the sitar and a flute. To his right, a grey-haired Japanese with a frozen face plays base guitar next to a tabla player who might be Indian. A second German plays keyboard and fiddles with a lap-top. Fren Joshua is both serious and spiritual. He dedicates his songs to a series of Sufi saints and mystics. My untrained ear finds one song much like the next. Perhaps the Sufi mystics were equally similar. The concert is enlivened on occasion by all four musicians emitting a series of very loud harsh barks.
The Japanese base player runs out of battery.
I clap once at the wrong moment.
The prawn risotto is dry and without taste.
So where is the luck?
In meeting a young Dutch couple, Paul and Fiona, at the restaurant.
SEARCHING FOR THE PAST
GOA: FEBRUARY 9
Calangute is the northern end of a thirty kilometer hodgepodge of high-rise apartment blocks, bed-bug dosshouses, luxury resorts, bars and restaurants that range in quality from brilliant to instant dysentery. My memories are of a small village. We were fifty foreigners at most. Fishermen mending nets were the only Indians. I trust to luck in searching for my past. The luck is an Italian with a shack restaurant amongst the trees a kilometer back from Vagator beach. He has long hair, an old bike and spent years up in Poona or Pune at the Shri Rajneesh ashram - wow! a real life sennayasin. How old? Mid-sixties and an old stager. He belongs...While I fall at the first hurdle. I've never heard of Fren Joshuah, never listened to his music, the true sound of Goa (so the Italian asures me).
Fren Joshua is in concert tonight on the beach north towards Arambol. Everybody's going. Return to the restaurant afterwards for prawn risotto.
Calangute is the northern end of a thirty kilometer hodgepodge of high-rise apartment blocks, bed-bug dosshouses, luxury resorts, bars and restaurants that range in quality from brilliant to instant dysentery. My memories are of a small village. We were fifty foreigners at most. Fishermen mending nets were the only Indians. I trust to luck in searching for my past. The luck is an Italian with a shack restaurant amongst the trees a kilometer back from Vagator beach. He has long hair, an old bike and spent years up in Poona or Pune at the Shri Rajneesh ashram - wow! a real life sennayasin. How old? Mid-sixties and an old stager. He belongs...While I fall at the first hurdle. I've never heard of Fren Joshuah, never listened to his music, the true sound of Goa (so the Italian asures me).
Fren Joshua is in concert tonight on the beach north towards Arambol. Everybody's going. Return to the restaurant afterwards for prawn risotto.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
TEPPAM FESTIVAL
MADURAI: MARCH 3
India does weird things to a traveler. It fills you with loathing only to lift you with its magic. Madurai was magical on that last journey forty years ago. I was traveling with a young woman, Vanessa Jack. We drove into town the eve of Madurai's Teppam Festival when Shiva and his triple breasted consort are taken in procession from the temple to the Mariamman Teppakkulam tank. We met a young Brahman outside the temple. His father organised the festival. Thus we found ourselves on the float amongst the notables, two small white figures seated at the feet of the Gods, utterly unimportant, yet permitted to share in the sacred. I remember the glow of the full moon and the ropes connecting the float to thousands of faces glistening in candle-light on the bank, and I remember the music, the drumming of the old master and the young master playing in turn, not in competition but lifting each other to an ever higher plane and we were lifted, transported. All of us. Oh yes, magic...
And I learned my lesson in Goa. Treasure your memories, learn from them, but move on...
India does weird things to a traveler. It fills you with loathing only to lift you with its magic. Madurai was magical on that last journey forty years ago. I was traveling with a young woman, Vanessa Jack. We drove into town the eve of Madurai's Teppam Festival when Shiva and his triple breasted consort are taken in procession from the temple to the Mariamman Teppakkulam tank. We met a young Brahman outside the temple. His father organised the festival. Thus we found ourselves on the float amongst the notables, two small white figures seated at the feet of the Gods, utterly unimportant, yet permitted to share in the sacred. I remember the glow of the full moon and the ropes connecting the float to thousands of faces glistening in candle-light on the bank, and I remember the music, the drumming of the old master and the young master playing in turn, not in competition but lifting each other to an ever higher plane and we were lifted, transported. All of us. Oh yes, magic...
And I learned my lesson in Goa. Treasure your memories, learn from them, but move on...
Monday, March 01, 2010
VISUAL DISASTER
Arboli isn't a town. It isn't even a village - certainly not an Indian village. Indian villages have a main street lined with kiosks. Arboli is a scattering of unplanned low-rise concrete construction, a few holiday homes but mostly featureless hotels in the twenty room bracket - not many of them but sufficient to make Arboli a visual disaster. Lonely Planet advises that tourists can visit bauxite mines. Maybe I'm picky but bauxite mines don't register as major attractions. Come on, old man, be courageous, take the memory lane to Goa. Confront your past.
A BIKER'S DREAM
National Highway 17 is a biker's dream. I am repeating myself for the benefit of readers who have dropped in on this Site by chance. It is a climb-and-dip road with curves to lean into. Forest cloaks the hills. Neem trees shade the straight stretches. Coconut palms shade river banks. I stop awhile to watch a limited overs cricket match. Our village club has two county-standard grass fields, all-weather practice nets, bowling machine, pavilion with a bar. Twenty spectators on a Saturday afternoon and we are doing well. Here the field is dry rice paddy. No pads or gloves for batsmen, no helmets, and I am one of fifty spectators seated on the roadside. A further fifty or more are dotted round the boundaries. Fast bowlers at either end, drive the ball along the ground and a close-in paddy bank does the fielding. Batsman go for the airial route. My fellow spectators try communicating with me. The few words we share are cricket terminology: leg before, boundary, catch. Too glorious a morning to be depressed by the language barrier. We make do with smiles...
Saturday, February 27, 2010
FEARFUL OLD FOOL
Back home I cross the hills to Malvern most days and swim at the Malvern Spa. Today I head for Malvan where I intend spending the night. Malvan is on the coast. It is reputed to have a fine beach. It is a few kilometers north of the Goa state boundary. Tomorrow I will ride up into the mountains to sleep in the cool of a little visited hill resort, Albi, from where a side road circles down to Goa's capital. Forty years have passed since I rented a small house in Goa, on Calangute Beach. Goa is full of ancient memories. I delay my arrival for fear of what I will discover, not so much in Goa as in myself. I was callous then. Callous and a coward. I had broken out of jail, on the run from a life sentence. My jailers were a wife I loved and two small children whom I adored. Did I think of them? Yes, often, and with tears. So why run?
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