CHAPTER 1

No Gain Without Pain

The Folly Of Family Names – Computers and Grandchildren
Excess Baggage – The Joys of Flight – Dabolim

‘Goa is for druggies’ they say. ‘Sure it is’ I retort.
And I’m right, it is. But the drug I am talking about isn’t the kind of stuff you’d scrape from a pop-nobody’s nostril or the little brown ‘blim’ your fourteen-year-old will try to convince you fell from his guinea pigs bottom, it’s far purer than that. The drug of choice for my wife and I is Goa itself.
We have been addicts for some time now, Hannah and I, our feeble, spineless bodies hopelessly failing to resist the lure of this tiny state half way down the west coast, the Arabian Sea side, of India.
‘Evelyn can resist everything but temptation’.
In a manila folder in one of those numerous under-bed briefcases, I still have the faded pages of my grammar school report which include this, what I thought at the time to be slanderous, inclusion.
‘We continue to be concerned by Evelyn’s disruptive behaviour’ and ‘I have not seen enough of Evelyn this term to make an assessment’ are two further examples of how I was so cruelly and erroneously judged by the stripey-blazered grammar Gestapo…. but I digress. It seems that they were right all along. It seems that even the Betty Ford twelve-step recovery programme couldn’t prevent our zombie-like shuffle beneath the ‘GOI’ sign at Gatwick. I wonder if there’s a white-walled room somewhere full of twitchy, sunken-eyed people with beaten up Gladstone bags or those Germoline-coloured Argos suitcases where I could sit alongside other likeminded wasters in a circle and declare ‘My name’s Evelyn and I’m an addict’?
Forgive my rudeness, I haven’t even introduced myself. The astute amongst you will have deduced that my name is Evelyn (pronounced eeverlin). Thanks dad, it’s been a real boon over the course of the last fifty-two years to have been named so, how shall I put it, individually. It has given me no end of satisfaction to have amused my army colleagues and school friends so….how we laughed!
Families eh? The really funny thing is that my father’s middle name is Evelyn.
This ‘family name’ was passed to my brother David Evelyn, my sister Jane Evelyn (the female gender pronounced ever-lin) and to me Evelyn Jeremy Charles. I even had the magnanimity and generosity to pass it like a genetic defect to my son Leigh Evelyn James. It was only following my grandfather’s sad demise that a rummage through his bureau and the sparse, inked-paper remnants of his life threw up copious correspondence of an amorous nature bearing this same name.
Yes, we’d all been named after my grandfather’s mistress. I bet he’s looking down and laughing his arse off.
I am married to the lovely but twisted Hannah and have been for the last twenty-five years. Sounds like it’ll be an expensive present this year. I’m not sure what denotes this anniversary; ivory, Teflon, asbestos?.......I’ll tell her it’s Tupperware. Who decides these things anyway and who gave them the damn right?
The only kids who haven’t left the family home in Cornwall are Jasmine, Cato, Munchie, Chai, Zheera and Ceefa, the six spoilt, four-legged, feline surrogates who deign to allow us to pay the mortgage on their bungalow and lavish favours upon them. Actually I lied….five four-legged felines and Munchie who is a tripod, having lost by way of knockout to a blue Ford Transit van some years ago and as a result is ( as Peter Cook so descriptively put it ) ‘deficient in the leg department’ to the tune of twenty-five percent.
What is it with cats? I never used to like cats when I was younger. My parents always had dogs. It was always collie saliva that dribbled down my neck when crushed into the loadspace of a Morris Traveller on long holiday journeys to Dorset.
It grieves me to admit to it but I used to walk past cats sitting on front garden walls sunning themselves and try to elbow them into the rose bushes. Hannah introduced me to their delights and now I couldn’t imagine life without them. Come to think of it, it would be impossible to have a life without them seeing that every tick-laden, bus-ticket-eared, boot-faced, incontinent specimen in the county moves in to our house 'sans invitation'. It must be my punishment!
So you can see that I’m an ordinary bloke with an ordinary life and probably not the type of person whose travelogue will make the Evel Kneivel leap from Microsoft word on budget A4 to published page with a shiny cover and embossed foil title nestling between Phileus Fogg and Bill Bryson. But if nothing else, I am determined to reward the perseverance of my English teacher and write a book and if only one person enjoys it, it won’t have been time wasted.
Hopefully it will fare better than my last effort….I wrote six whole chapters once of a novel that was surely destined to sit on a shelf labelled ‘International Bestsellers’ and be inextricably linked to Whitbread. And I don’t mean being used as a beer mat. I had a great story. I had a great title. I had a great enthusiasm. Unfortunately what I didn’t have was the foresight to save those eloquent and riveting words to data disc before generously allowing the three grand-daughters to Bebo, MSN and Facebook all over the computer on which I was writing.
What is it about these sites? One minute you have a perfect, superfast, working example of Mr.Dell’s genius on your desk and within 30 seconds, a nine year old and Mr. bloody Bebo have reduced it to little more than skip fodder. The technological marvel now takes an hour to boot up and grace you with a start screen. The start screen whose wallpaper has somehow miraculously been transformed from a glorious, high-definition photographic study of ‘The Hodge 301 star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula’ into a jpeg of the latest, talentless, pus-encrusted, twelve year old pop marvel to be plucked from obscurity and deprivation by Simon Cowell and hopefully destined for a speedy and painful, drug-induced, vomit-soaked martyrdom.
The machine is now so full of data miners, viruses and badware that even the finest crap-cleaning programmes throw up their little binary arms in despair. Still, at the speed I type, or think for that matter, it should still be more than fast enough.
You’ll have to forgive my meanderings. I shall try my best to resist the urge to ramble obliquely or rant maniacally as only a middle-aged man can, but it’s not easy.
Goa, that’s right, I was going to tell you of our latest trip to Goa. Just sitting here with the fading suntan and the sound of English rain pelting horizontally against the window pane makes me want to click on the ‘save’ icon and ‘Google’’Holidays’ but I’ll resist it for now.
This year we chose to visit in early January. The climate and availability of cheap charter flights largely dictates to us poverty-gifted, non-professional travellers the timing of our trip and January is just great. It knocks a small hole at least in the eleven month limbo that is an English winter.
Goa’s tropical winter lasts from about mid October until March/April and that about coincides with the availability of packaged cattle flights from the UK. Warm seas, warm evenings, hot days with cloudless cerulean skies and the plethora of bars, shops, markets, restaurants and palm-shaded beach shacks make this the best time for western visitors.
Goa has its monsoon between June and August and the coastal areas are lashed with fierce storms and torrential rains for days on end and squally winds whip up the seas and send palm leaves and litter skittling down red-rivered roads. Brown rats and snakes are washed from their holes and head for the drier areas or peoples houses as they are called. The frogs and toads croak incessantly. Temperature and humidity is high and can be oppressive from about mid-April until late September. Even the locals tend to stay indoors, hold their collective breaths and play Tetris on their mobile phones until October.
We hmm’d and ha’d about whether or not to fly from Newquay to Gatwick but despite the paltry fifteen kilo baggage allowance, the risk of coastal fog resulting in a flight cancellation and the danger of missing the return connection, it was with unbridled enthusiasm that, at 1pm on a startlingly sunny Saturday, we boarded the little turbo-prop and sped skyward.
In reality I had overlooked the paltry fifteen kilo baggage allowance and had forgotten the pleasure of donating twelve kilos of kettle, travel iron, clothing, shells, beach rocks, duty-free Indian whisky, presents for cat sitters, shirt-off-my-back etc to a wide-mouthed bin in Gatwick’s South Terminal on a previous return trip after having been presented with an excess-baggage bill which, I’m sure, exceeded the total debt of a small African nation. We’ll just have to be prudent and less exuberant when scouring the night bazaars, markets and beach stalls.
I wonder what happens to all those travel irons and kettles. I bet that, somewhere in Gatwick, there is a tramp wearing a bin liner, a shoebox on one foot and a pair of trousers with razor-sharp creases, sloshing as he trundles from bin to bin with all the tea he’s been making with garnered travel kettles. Or, more likely, a team of cleaning staff with e-Bay feedback scores climbing past the million mark and doubling their salaries with every delve.
We touch down in Gatwick with sufficient time to check in the luggage, neck a ‘Frankie and Bennies’ lamb shank, slap on a 5 million milligram nicotine patch and play on the free robot train which plies between the north and south terminals.
Riding this short railway always takes me back to my early childhood in Merton Park, London when the absolute epitome of fun for the group of eight and nine year olds I chummed around with was ‘Underground Hide And Seek’. This differed from regular hide and seek in that the bounds of the game weren’t the usual boring house and garden or even house only, but rather the whole thirty-six mile length of the London Transport Northern Line from Morden in the south to High Barnet in the north. For the price of a platform ticket (1 old penny to my recollection) you could spend all day in this subterranean wonderland. Needless to say, certain rules needed to be applied to a game of this magnitude :-
1) Hiders must stay on the ‘up line’ platforms only and not stray all over the fifty odd stations served by the line.
2) Hiders must not take any of the spur lines off of the main route.
3) Hiders must not secrete themselves in broom cupboards and must wear a distinctive top. (Believe me, some of my 1960’s home-knitted tops were distinctive).
4) Seekers must seek.
This unlikely rule was brought in when a temporarily unpopular boy was designated ‘hider’ and after disappearing into the electric labyrinth with gusto, the designated seekers pissed off to the park for the day. The poor sod spent five and a half hours behind a Poppets Chocolate Raisin machine on Clapham North Station before returning to Morden Terminus in floods of tears.
Looking back on it, I’m surprised our parents let us all loose, daylong and unsupervised and equally surprised that none of us ended up being prized from the 630 volt third rail by the transport police. I wonder if the kids today are given such freedoms.
Back to Gatwick and embarking on the marathon which is the trek to the furthest boarding gate that BAA can allocate. Have you noticed as your breathing starts to sound like that of an asthmatic scaling the south face of K2 and your legs scream at your lungs for more oxygen, just how many unutilized boarding gates you pass? Have you ever heard of anyone in the history of flight who has been the recipient of the announcement…
”ping, pong……will all passengers travelling to Istanbul on flight TA 384 please make their way to gate number……..1”?
No, never! Gate 2 would be good. Gate 3 would be fine. Anything up to gate 10 would be acceptable. Instead, us gate 64’ers round the corner of yet another Costa coffee boutique to face a corridor which has a vanishing point! Art students from all over the world come here to study perspective. You can’t even see your boarding gate; not because of an absence of signage or failing eyesight but because of the curvature of the earth.
I don’t know why we even bother with the plane, let’s just walk to sodding India. I’m surprised that some canny entrepreneur isn’t doing flights from the concourse to the boarding gates……with a bloody five kilo baggage allowance!
Tapping it’s fingers on the tarmac at gate 64 was the ‘seen-better-days’ and ‘seen-fewer-seats’ Airbus bucket which would shortly spirit us to the land of elephants and Enfields. My enthusiasm for the ten hour flight, I admit, had waned slightly since having been allocated seats in the dreaded four-in-the-middle section. Both Hannah and I love the window seat. To sit and gaze downward like the bomb aimer in a B-52, whilst the deserts, oceans, rivers and mountains scroll beneath you and that purply-pink of twilight fades to bejewelled blackness is breathtaking and wonderous and eternal.
I despise the people who, having won the window seat lottery, prize out their beige inflatable flock neck cushions, slam shut the window blinds and are clocking up 'z’s before the plane has reached Reigate. Those are the people who should have the squalid slum that is the four-in-the-middle section.
It’s like the motorists with soft-topped cars who drive around on the most blisteringly hot sun-drenched days with the hood up. Why do they buy them? Why not purchase a black panel van and whitewash the windows? Other, less fortunate, souls with tin-tops and vitamin D deficiencies through lack of exposure to the sunlight should have the right to stop and politely point out to those occupants the folly of their ways. The ‘liberators’ should unceremoniously plant those sorry arses onto the softening asphalt and speed away with the wind in their hair and dappled warmth on their faces in their newly annexed cabriolets.
My sense of foreboding proved to be well founded when I saw the woman in seat E, row 31. Or should I say, seats D, E and F, row 31, for she was huge. Seeing her reminded me of the sequence in Lucas’s Star Wars when Luke Skywalker first cast his eyes on the Death Star. Her husband had half of seat F and I was to occupy half of seat D. Even with the armrest down, the cellulite excess-baggage oozed beneath it like the rubbery skin of Jabba the Hutt and adhered itself to my thigh and hip.
It was going to be a long ten hours and I already envied Hannah the aisle seat, despite the certainty of being clumped round the head with the flight bags of the thickos who refuse to accept that a 24 inch wide valise won’t pass along a 22 inch wide aisle sideways.
In order to stymie those of you who derive amusement from other peoples’ discomfort, I shall skip forward several hours and spare the description of the, now Amazonian, microclimate that was evolving between my right thigh and Mrs.Hutt’s left.
Just at the point when, despite the cramp in the hip and the crick in the neck, I manage to slip into a version of unconsciousness, a particularly astute stewardess seems to miss the fact that I have a blanket over my head and gleefully invites me to partake of a plastic cup half filled with tepid brown sludge. In a parallel universe where I am open and honest and truthful I hear myself reply “ I don’t want a ‘hot’ drink. I don’t want a cold drink. I don’t want an unopenable bag containing four peanuts. I don’t want an extruded plastic tray containing what looks like the contents of Tutankhamun’s loincloth. I don’t want a bottle of nauseating overpriced perfume, a plastic torch in the shape of a Monarch airliner or an exclusive designer watch which looks like the booby prize from a council estate bingo night. I don’t want to give you my loose change to transform the life of a one-legged, blind, Venezuelan crack addict. I don’t even want a twin pack of disposable gas lighters to replace the ones stolen from me at Gatwick security four hours previously. What I do want is for you to take your ‘Tut-Shop-In-The-Sky’ glossy brochure, resin-hard smile and orange painted face and jump out of the fucking window!
In reality I smile politely, decline the offer and pull the blanket back over my head.
I don’t know about you, but I invariably arrive at a point on a night flight when I start to realize that the fitful sleepless suffering is almost at an end and a new excitement and freshness kick in. It tends to coincide with the first whiff of plasticised scrambled egg from the galley and the first shaft of sunlight which the bastard in the window seat with the air-filled noose deigns to share with ‘steerage’ by sliding up the blind. My yawn and our reducing altitude causes the pressure pop in my ear as the plane banks tightly to port and a glance sideways is rewarded with the glimpse of a tiny fishing boat suspended on a rippled azure mirror. Twenty shafts of sunlight now track across the cabin ceiling as the other bastards slide up their blinds and the engines’ monotone drops as we slot to the glide path.
Over the intercom comes the captain’s announcement.
”Ping…..fur, fur, fur, Dabolim, ner, fur fur ner der toilets, fur ner, seatbelts, thank you”.
I don’t know what these pilots have in their mouths when they make these in-flight announcements but I could only assume that he wasn’t advising us that the toilets at Dabolim were fitted with fur seatbelts.
I’m never too sure about seatbelts in airliners. I’m all too aware that if captain Fur Ner Ner has partaken of one too many strawberry daiquiris over Afghanistan and we lightly skim a hillside before sliding to a halt in a cloud of red dust and splintered palm trees, I shall be grateful that my nose has avoided an intimate relationship with the clip that holds the meal tray to the seat in front. If however we lightly skim a hillside before careering wheel-less and screaming into the airfield fuel depot and consequent pyrotechnic fireball, then I feel sure that my chances of avoiding crispy skin and being welded to my seat would be enhanced should I not be wearing my seatbelt. Hopefully I shan’t be given the opportunity of finding out.
I snap shut the buckle, I’ll unsnap it post hillside clip. We swoop in over the Arabian Sea and touch down alongside 1960s Russian Illushin and Tupolev propeller aircraft operated by the Indian military and Coast Guard before taxiing to the low terminal building.
Dabolim’s single runway sits atop an isthmus south of the Zuari River about a third of the way down Goa’s coast and was built by the government of the Estado da India Portuguesa ( the Indian Portuguese State ) in the 1950s. It is jointly operated by the Airports Authority of India and the Indian Navy. Since its construction, at least 4 rupees have been spent on modernisation and upgrade.
I really shouldn’t be so derogatory to the ‘Portal of the Magic Kingdom’ but it can be both one of the most fascinating and frustrating places on the planet.
We all sit impatiently whilst the air conditioning nozzles spout wisps of cool condensation from above. Finally, the most orange-skinned air steward that I have ever seen in my life minces from his jockey seat and swings open the aircraft door. As we step through it, the heat of the day fetches a broad grin to our wintery wan faces.
Hannah and I both love the sun to the point where it’s harmful. We try to make the 100m walk across the hot concrete apron last half an hour, but all too soon we’re into the time-warp that is the Dabolim Terminal. Overhead and on every cream gloss-painted pillar are electric fans which afford if not coolness, then at least a movement of the warm air. The floor is tiled geometrically in cream and terracotta. Any visible wood is as sapele as a cheap office desk and the place has a perfume that is a blend of linoleum, hardboard, polish and . . . . sweaty passengers, I guess.
Everywhere are hand-painted signs in both English and that beautiful Hindi script. How I wish that I could write with such handsome and graphic flourishes. How I wish that I could read it. Top of the to-do list, I think.
I love the way that Indians have this obsession with labelling and numbering every fixture and fitting in sight. We pass Wall Fan No.11, Electrical Cupboard No.8 and Stupid Pasty Tourist Who’s Lost Their Passport No.5 on our way to immigration control. For once, the khaki-clad and very spruce navy security staff almost speed us through to the baggage conveyor. They must have arrivals stacking up behind us.
‘Coming for a stig?’ Hannah asks, though it was more a statement than a question. ( Our pet names for cigarettes are numerous and uncomprehendable to the majority. The derivations of most are long since forgotten.)
We decide to go for the stig option as there is no movement as yet from the carousel. Over in one corner of the arrivals hall is the small glass-walled cubicle set aside for lepers, people with contagious diseases or open sores, those carrying unsealed radioactive material….and smokers. I pull out my Golden Virginia, slickly roll a couple of stogeroonies and we enter the fish tank.
I don’t know why I bothered to make the cigarettes at all because the nicotine hit when the door is opened by a young Goan sponsored by Marlboro’ Lights must be the equivalent of that generated by every untipped Navy Cut cigarette smoked during WW2 combined with the atmosphere from a World Popeye convention.
The last time I smelled tobacco that strong was when my pipe-smoking French teacher leant down to me at my school desk and whispered in a matter-of-fact way…
‘The next time I see you stick soggy chewed paper pellets to the ceiling with a plastic ruler catapault in my lesson, Calvert, I shall break your fucking legs. Do you understand me?’
I did understand but had to nod mutely as I had a mouthful of soggy chewed paper. She had a facility with languages did Miss Le Grys.
It should have been awful in that cubicle but after ten hours ‘sans stoges’ it was great.
It was the roller-coaster roar and the squeak, squeak, squeak of the baggage carousel which prompted our return to the small main concourse. Compared to the smooth, almost silent, stainless steel and glass affairs at most modern arrivals halls, the tiny carousel at Goa International stops and starts and stops again in an almost comic ritual that prompts you to imagine a small group of adolescent Indians running inside a giant hamster-wheel affair out of sight of the passengers and linked by a Heath-Robinson series of cogs and pulleys to the conveyor. They must be tired today for things are moving very slowly.
‘I’m going outside for another smoke’ announces Hannah. ‘I’ll find us a taxi.’
She turns and strides through the third security check carrying with her the plane ticket stubs, the requisite short immigration forms and the tobacco. Unfortunately she also strides out with both passports. I call out to her but she is already into the sunshine being accosted by tour reps, porters, garland vendors and taxi touts.
I turn back in time to see a huge mountain of suitcases slump from the belt where the ‘hamsters’, it seems, have found a burst of energy which catches out the trolley boys. They are frantically removing cases from the carousel. I’m still suppressing a grin when I notice a porter in what appears to be chocolate-coloured pyjamas milling about in the throng with our sailing bag on his trolley.
These lads get so carried away with ensuring their tip levels remain buoyant that they almost overlook the helpless passenger who is still standing open-mouthed waiting for his case to appear. He threw his eye. I caught it. I was less successful in finding a spouse-shaped catcher for mine. Hannah was nowhere to be seen and by now the porter and I had reached security where a machine-gun toting Indian Navy guard who had even less of a smile than I, did his best to not understand why I didn’t have a passport or any of the other pieces of official paper that I should have had.
I mentally labelled myself ‘Stupid Pasty Tourist Who’s Lost His Passport …… No.6’.
I thought about trying to sneak past the control via the foreign exchange cubicle in the entranceway but, like the Mona Lisa, every time I looked toward naval security, his eyes were upon me. I returned and tried again to explain to Goa’s doorman that I needed to leave the terminal in order to retrieve my passport but was re-rebuffed. It was then that I finally twigged and, reaching into my pocket, pulled out my spare passport cunningly disguised as a 500 rupee note, a leftover from a previous visit. I mused that if I stood here much longer, I would have little difficulty in convincing even a Scotland Yard face recognition expert that the picture of Mahatma Gandhi on the note was my passport picture.
The Great Mephisto would have been proud to have palmed the money as adeptly as my new khaki friend and so pyjamaman and I hit the sunshine to find Hannah sitting on the concrete kerb partaking of a smoke and conducting a leisurely conversation with a middle-aged female fellow traveller whom she’d adopted.
My wife is an amiable and generous soul but rather prone to starting conversations that I am obliged to terminate. . . . usually because of a shortage of life-expectancy.


CHAPTER 2
The Road To Baga

In praise of the Maruti - The avoidance of Coconuts - Army Camps - Pattobridge -

‘Did you get a taxi?’ I interrupted. ‘No, get one from the official rank’.
I reacquainted myself with my passport and returned to the entrance to the terminal where there is a taxi booking office. The government-fixed prices are displayed here. Baga, our destination …. 750 rupees.
Although the price of a coach transfer is included in most package deals, the advantages of taking a taxi are several. It‘s more comfortable to start with and gets you to your hotel without having to call at five others first. It also entirely obviates the need to wait for the tosser who can’t find his luggage / passport / piece of paper with the name of his hotel written on it / brain and who you can guarantee will be ticketed for your coach.
You know what it’s like. We’re all sat on the coach with our welcome garland of flowers round our necks, clutching complimentary plastic bottles of lukewarm water. The travel representative is clutching her clipboard and running around as if she’s just had a tarantula drop down the front of her blouse when a well meaning but simple member of the party decides that he’s sure he knows the whereabouts of the missing passenger. Off he toddles and almost immediately the wayward subject of his search strolls onto the coach and sits down to the combined ‘tut’s of the others. Now all we have to do is find the finder….oh, and the driver who has by now got fed up and gone for a cup of tea.
Having been given a chitty and a cast-iron guarantee that it was ok to smoke in the taxi, we gave ourselves and our baggage up to fate and the talents of our driver, Raj.
In a jiffy we were ensconced in as close as a Maruti taxi can get to the interior of St.Peter’s Basilica.
The Maruti Omni microvan is the most prolific of any ‘four-wheeler’ in Goa. Most people would recognise them as Suzuki or Bedford minivans as they are a product of a Japanese / Indian collaboration that started back in 1981. Taxi operators almost exclusively use Omnis. You know what they say about rats?......that wherever you go, anywhere on the planet, you are within 5 metres of one. Well it’s the same in Goa with Marutis.
I’m certain that when they leave the production line near New Delhi, they are fine examples of the automotive designer and builder’s art. Give one to a Goan though and within ten minutes he will have added considerably to its charm and individuality. I feel sure that each one sold comes with the following inclusions in the owner’s manual:-

1.) Replace the boring conventional plastic dashboard fitted by us fools at Maruti with a far more stylish faux fur one. The longer and more outrageous the colour of the fur, the more you will be the envy of your fellow drivers. Whilst you are at it, our upholsterers can be a little conservative, so get yourself some seat covers and a roof lining from the faux furrier too. But remember, you lose all that hard-earned kudos if it matches the dashboard in any way.

2.) Tint those ridiculously clear windows, I know we should have mirrored them as standard. You won’t be paying much attention to what’s going on outside anyway.

3.) Find yourself a local accessory store and order at least one, if not two, of every single line that he sells and bolt, glue or tape it on. Extra points are scored for anything that is chromed or illuminated.

4.) Next source a really hefty battery because the puny one we installed won’t be able to cope once you’ve fitted the spotlights, stereo, reverse warning alarm which plays the theme tune from ‘Titanic’ or ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ and full colour, animated nativity or Madonna with Child with l.e.d. eyes. This will look just perfect nestled amongst the leopard-print fur on the dash.

5.) I’m afraid we skimped a little on graphics and logos too so you might want to invest in a large rear window sticker which proclaims ‘Mary, our Saviour’,’God is Great’,’St.Francis Xavier, my friend’ or ‘Michael Schumacher’s Taxi’. Whatever it does say, make certain that it is large enough to completely obscure your vision through the back window. Stupid place to put a window really. Hardly necessary when you’ve got Celine Dion singing her heart out every time you select reverse.

6.) Finally, hand it over to your friendly local signwriter and have him paint ‘Horn OK Please’ all over the tailgate.

Et voila, you’re ready to hit the streets safe in the knowledge that you are about as bonkers as the thousands of other taxi drivers that ply this state and still quite reserved compared to the Philippine jeepney cabbie.
Of course, I write this with a deep sense of affection for the Goan taxi driver and his trusty mount. In all our trips to India, we have never found one that has not been abnormally friendly, helpful, polite and fair. These cabs are dirt-cheap and so numerous that you need never worry about being stranded without transport. You could be on a tiny sandy track in the middle of nowhere at 3 in the morning and out from the back of a coconut palm would come the call
‘Taxi, sir, taxi, madam?’ accompanied by a cheery smile and glinting eye, the moon reflecting off his chromed Madonna bonnet mascot!
We rocket, as best a Maruti can rocket, from the confines of the airport onto national highway 17A, slide open the windows, spark up a fag and sink back into the fur seat covers for the ride to Baga some twenty-five miles distant.
I cannot tell you how difficult it is to roll a stig in the back of a Maruti, vibrating over the ‘rumblers’ ( multiple ‘sleeping policemen’ sometimes ten or so abreast ) with a hot cyclone circulating within and the six inch long pelt headlining sticking to your eyeballs.
Hannah and I look at each other and grin from ear to ear. It’s the grin that says ‘We’re back at last’. The same grin that children adopt when they are excited at being given a present beyond their dreams. The grin that accompanies the squiddly feeling in your stomach, the anticipation of good things to come. We’re like a pair of kids really.
The midday breeze that blows across the river and rushes in through the open window is now as hot as a hairdryer and as welcome as a lottery win. Not at all oppressive, more like a warmed towel wrapped around you as you step from a bath. The familiar scenery and its accompanying scents and sounds are like long-lost friends.
The National Highways are the A roads of India. They are generally smooth and wide and very busy. The 17A is a short spur running alongside the Azuri River from Dabolim and Vasco Da Gama to National Highway 17.
Off to the left through the trees and only a few yards from the verge lie berthed ore barges in tiny boatyards. Any part of the 200 foot hulks which aren’t rusty have been painted rusty red…. excepting the wheelhouses and gunwhales which are rusty white. Golden falls of acetalene sparks curtain their laddered flanks and huge metallic clangs echo across the river and into the palms. They remind me of queen bees with their diminutive attendant scurrying workers….resourceful welders and riveters that can coax a 35 - 40 year lifespan from a vessel designed to last half that.
We hit NH17, which is the main north south artery for Goa and beyond and head north. It is a ribbon of hot tarmac that will hug the coastal plains 270 miles north to Mumbai and likewise south over 400 miles right into Cochin and the state of Kerala.
They are, at most times, packed with motorcycles, scooters, ox-carts, bicycles, taxis, auto-rickshaws, coaches and ‘goods-carriers’ - trucks to you and I. There is the constant cacophony of horns used to warn those ahead of an imminent overtaking manoeuvre, something to be done with flair and panache and not a little bravado by the local drivers. No, substitute the words ‘not a little bravado’ with ‘total disregard for the potential ensuing carnage’.
The first-time visitor to Goa, I can guarantee, will be unable to describe the kind of overtaking that he witnesses. Not through a poor grasp of his language but from an unadulterated blind terror and the certain belief that, within seconds, his fragile bag of bones and blood will be intimately familiar with the working of, and forever adhered to, the drivetrain of a nineteen-tonner.
A goods-carrier will be struggling to crest the brow of a steep hill when a bus blindly overtakes at a speed only fractionally greater than that of the truck. You are thinking that if a vehicle comes the other way there’s sure to be a catastrophic accident….. when a car pulls out and overtakes the two of them! They are now three abreast approaching the summit when a bus looms into view, itself being overtaken by a swarm of scooters. Eyes squint shut, collective breaths are held but somehow they all squeeze through ….usually. Crazy.
Such things are far from our thoughts as we glide past the many, apparently half-built apartment blocks, brightly coloured shops and roadside bars. We pass restaurants, hospitals and clinics, coconut palms and, everywhere, huge advertising hoardings inviting the reader to ‘Drink Kingfisher Beer’,’Buy Kingfisher Water’ and ‘Fly Kingfisher Airlines’.
Kingfisher is the brand name for the beer products of the United Breweries Group and the company, founded by a Scotsman incidentally in 1857, learnt all it knows about brewing from the South Indian British Breweries set up to slake the thirst of the British troops stationed here.
Having had first-hand experience of the volume of beer quaffed by squaddies, it doesn’t surprise me to learn that Kingfisher accounts for over 60% of beer sales in India today. I hardly ever drink beer but it has to be said that an ice-cold Kingfisher does slip down rather well in the heat of the day. Today, the boss of Kingfisher is Vijay Mallya, one of the wealthiest men in the world.
In recent years there has been a boom in house building in Goa, mostly to accommodate the demands of infatuated foreigners and many of the hoardings reflect this. Gaudy primary-coloured painted illustrations of the latest gated, gym-equipped developments look more like Lego advertisements than real estate. Come to think of it, why would anyone want a gymnasium on their development complex in a hot country other than to admire themselves in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors or to ogle the woman in front and be envious of the bead of sweat trickling provocatively down her spine towards her buttock cleavage?
You’re not going to be getting a nice stainless, mirrored lift in your apartment block so walking up and down the bloody stairs should provide adequate exercise for most sane occupants.
It’s like it is here in the UK. After an eight or ten hour slog, you overhear someone at work ask their colleague
‘Coming down the gym tonight after work?’,
‘Of course, I need a good work-out’ they reply.
They don’t need a good work-out, they need a damned good slap for being so lazy during the day. I’ve got more cavity than tooth because I’ve barely the energy to squeeze the toothpaste from its tube at the end of the day and they’re going to be rowing the equivalent of Poole to Cherbourg and back or jogging up Annapurna with Lycra fingerless gloves and an i-Pod dangling from their sweaty lug-holes.
I’ve heard it said that a white headphone cable is what connects an i-Pod to a u-Twat. What is the matter with these people? And, whilst we’re on the subject, why do they wear shorts over their Nike jogpants? It’s like putting your socks on over the top of your shoes. Tossers! There, now I’ve alienated half my readership….all eight of you.
The sixty mile-per-hour traverse of a series of rumblers which Raj had either overlooked or felt his Maruti suspension could cope with caused me to stub my cigarette out on my lip.
It’s worth the pain to see the amusement it gives Hannah. I always know how painful my misfortunes will be as they are directly proportional to how many tears roll from her face. Just now, she cried like she’d lost a close relative. Raj joined in the laughter too but wasn’t sure why.
The rumblers are a prelude to the thump, thump, thump of the tyres as we launch out onto the Zuari River Bridge. Fingers crossed here, lumps of this bridge are forever falling into the river and it undergoes constant repairs.
Alongside the road and overlooking the mighty estuary is a tiny shrine and cross built on an altar of white gloss wall tiles and covered with a roof of whitewashed corrugated iron. These shrines are everywhere in India and are as varied in size and shape as the country itself. Some are huge, colourful and intricate, built from local stone and adorned with turrets and fluted roofs. Others are little more than a tiny niche, a foot square, hacked from the red rock in a road cutting. All have in common an absence of neglect. Candles flicker and garlands of flowers encircle and incense pervades at almost any hour on any day regardless of how isolated the spot. They may be dedicated to the Virgin Mary or Jesus or any number of sainted souls, most not indicating to whom.
Despite my longstanding contempt for all forms of religion, I do admire the believers’ tenacity, fortitude and dedication.
I make a mental note to return to this spot and take in the views at length.
The concrete Zuari road bridge, completed in 1983, crosses high above the murky waters and its five spans cover a third of a mile. The Zuari widens to over two and a half miles at its mouth on the Arabian Sea. Running alongside and upstream of us is the rail bridge with its web of ironwork on the central two spans, bearing the Konkan railway which links Madgaon near Margao in South Goa to Mumbai way up north. It is the longest bridge on the railway.
Through the haze can be seen a procession of ore barges stretching up and downriver, Laden and low to the waterline on their way to the sea and apparently larger as they return more buoyant to the interior for another load.
Another set of rumblers and Raj spots them coming this time. They mark the other end of the bridge and, as we trampoline on the back seat, the coconut palms and tiny shops and roadside stalls close in again and we are in the district (or taluka) of Tiswadi.
The literal meaning of Tiswadi is ‘thirty settlements’ and refers to the settlements of an ancient Himalayan community, the Saraswats, who moved here when, about 1000BC, the Saraswati river started drying up. The Saraswats were renowned for their worldly knowledge in such subjects as astronomy, medicine, philosophy and metaphysics and had a flair for passing on this knowledge. Shame we didn’t have a few at my Suffolk grammar school in the sixties!
There are more fields now too, each partitioned with low mud walls into plots of between fifty and two-hundred metres square.
The fertility of the farmed land in Goa is largely poor. It’s proximity to the Arabian Sea makes the immediate coastal land too saline and, further inland, the annual monsoon rains wash much of the nutrient from the soil. Most arable land is given over to rice but, at this time of year, the winter (or rabi ) crops also include maize, horse and black gram, beans, pulses and other vegetables, many fruits and, of course, coconuts.
The palms are everywhere and damned dangerous too. I recall, on a previous visit, Hannah and I standing in a grove near the Siolim ( pronounced Showlim) River further north from here. We were with a Goan friend, Assim, who was there to assess a brake problem on our scooter.
We were admiring the fabulous view out over the river where those fishermen too poor to afford a boat were waist-deep in the shimmering water hand casting small nets for estuary fish when an almighty whoosh and a loud, metallic but melodious clang signalled the arrival of a coconut. The (unripe) sphere had unilaterally decided to pack its little coconut belongings in a knotted, spotty handkerchief and leap the eighty foot from a nearby palm to ricochet off our friends motorbike petrol tank.
About one third full, I’d say, by the tone. Unleaded, I think. Almost as loud but less melodious was the dull thud as, on the rebound, it struck Assim squarely between his startled eyes. We hadn’t immediately realised what it was. The speed and accuracy of the projectile made me think that we were trespassing in Kapil Dev’s garden.
Assim leant back against the trunk of the offending palm clutching his head. Having scoured Siolim for a fresh underwear shop, we made sympathetic noises as a spherical lump grew from Assim’s brow like John Hurt’s chestburster did in ‘Alien’. We vowed there and then not to stand around too long beneath coconut palms in future. Better to stand out in the sun and contract scalp cancer. At the very least you’ll look nice and tanned against the studded cream silk lining of your beechwood coffin and not have to pay the extra to have one with a bulge in the lid to accommodate your cranial protuberance.
Every so often the highway drops low onto causeways over estuary land with full paddies to both left and right where everything seems so much greener and lush. The many roadside trees along these sections of road afford shade and commensurate coolness and we ask Raj to pull over at a tiny shed-sized shop to buy a cold drink.
The shop is painted electric blue and beautifully hand signwritten in yellow and white with the text ’SMART PCO. TATA Indicom. STD, ISD, LOCAL’ and the image of a huge white telephone handset. Virtually anything that doesn’t move (and much of that which does come to think of it ) is exploited as advertising space in Goa. I don’t know if the proprietors get paid by Tata Indicom to have their property painted electric blue or whether they are grateful for the resultant increase in prominence.
I like to imagine that they just lock up one night their dull, block-built store and arrive the following morning to find that a crack squad of paintbrush-wielding commandos with image-intensifiers and a bucket of masonry paint from Patel’s Covert Sign Squad has ‘done the business’. Either way, it is commercialism in its finest and prettiest form and if I thought that BT would do as artistic a job on my bungalow, I’d invite them round tomorrow.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether it is a wall, a restaurant, a little hut, a bar or a shop. If it has anything remotely resembling a vertical surface, then Vodaphone will get Mr.Patel to paint it Post Office red, Maggi Stock Cubes (remember them?) will insist on canary yellow, Finoglow Lightbulbs, a lovely shade of orange ochre and - you guessed it – Kingfisher Beer, bright red also. It wouldn’t surprise me if many a Goan has come home to find his cat painted orange and black and sponsoring Birla Shakti Cement.
God, I hope Mr.Patel isn’t reading this, I like my cats the colour they are!
I resist the almost hypnotic urge to make a Tata Indicom ISD phone call and ask for a couple of Pepsis. I part with eighteen rupees and am rewarded with a huge infectious grin from the shop owner the size of which is inversely proportional to the number of teeth in his head. Probably the finest and most accurate advert for Pepsi ever. Raj declines the offer of a drink. Probably for the best….don’t want to distract him from the task of dodging goods carriers and cows and shaving a couple more months from our three score years and ten.
Onwards and upwards, literally. As the road widens, the verdant paddies fall behind to give way to red dusty verges. Pretty much every house, shop, wall and tree are coated with this red dust up to about a foot from the ground where the monsoon rains splash and ricochet.
NH17 lazily climbs and winds through the scrubby hillside to Bambolim and it’s landmark holy cross to our right.
The village itself is a gem. A classic Goan village with dogs and kids playing in the road and farmers working the fields with oxen and a lovely, rarely-visited, shell-strewn beach, but it is the ‘Miraculous Cross’ which attracts the attention, so called because of its reputed powers of healing. No-one really knows when and by whom it was erected, but most concede that it was an engineer from Ponda who was building the mud road from Goa’s capital, Panjim, through the once-thick forest which covered this plateau. Banditry was reportedly rife through these hills and may have prompted any doubting travellers into hedging their bets with a swift ‘Hail Mary’ whilst tackling the dense bamboo.
Today it has become a huge shrine with a white modernist concrete façade and an attraction which draws believers from neighbouring states and further afield. Raj’s devotion, like that of many travellers, is of the mobile variety – a hefty hoot on the horn in passing.
On both sides of the road are dusty tracks leading to wire-encased complexes set back amongst the bushes. Their signs are sometimes in Konkani and almost always in English.
’IPHB Mental Hospital’, the huge Goa Medical College and Hospital, ‘Goa Dental College’,’Doctors Quarters’ and, increasingly, Indian Army facilities…’EME Station Workshops’,’Army Transport Training Facility’,’Supply and Stores Section’, each with the guard hut at the gatehouse, a plethora of red and white stripy paint and immaculately uniformed sentry.
It is incredible to me just how drab and depressing an Army camp can be made to be even under cloudless Indian skies. It must take a special kind of architectural skill to take the thoughts of a manic-depressive and sadistic military client with a repressed imagination and turn them into bricks and mortar, whether in India, Germany or Catterick, Yorkshire. I’ll bet that last location sent a shiver up the spine of many an erstwhile squaddie.
I still have etched into my psyche, my initial encounter with an army camp. It was back in 1973. My family were living in a quaint village in Suffolk, and I had just been awarded a distinction in ‘persona non gratia’ by Stowmarket Grammar School as had all the members of the infamous ‘Sixth-form Mafia’ – all three of us.
Gary Miller, Robert Rowell and me, what a team! I must admit that I hadn’t considered our behaviour disruptive. How could we be being disruptive to this bastion of priviledged education when, for a good proportion of our time, we were twenty miles away, in Thetford Forest on a motorbike? I suppose, in retrospect, although three-on-a-motorbike is considered positively uncrowded and everyday here in Goa, the sight of three grammar school pupils in yellow-striped maroon blazers perched atop a Honda 125, smoking St.Moritz menthol (recently stolen from a local shop) and hurtling through the sleepy sunlit rows of pines, was likely to attract the curiosity of the Norfolk Constabulary.
Needless to say, the faeces made contact with the electrical ventilation device and a stark decision had to be made. Find a job in rural Suffolk or join the Army.
I considered long and hard the merits of a career based on separating root vegetables from mud and decided that the earth-father satisfaction of farm work and the tranquillity of the rural idyll would not sufficiently compensate me for having to own a wardrobe comprising wellies spattered in pig shit, John Deere dungarees and a diesel-soaked neckerchief. Nor having to marry an eighteen stone, ruddy-cheeked, steer-wrestling relative.
I have always had a fascination for maps of all descriptions and when I read that the Royal Engineers had the task of mapping and cartography, my mind was made up and I signed on the dotted line with gusto.
Off to the selection centre in Sutton Coldfield, somewhere ‘up North’ for a leisurely weekend to finalise arrangements for reporting later in the year before returning home to spend the summer idling around the village and exploring the intricacies and hopefully intimacies of girls…it was all mapped out or so I thought.
Because there were no immediate vacancies in my chosen trade, I was persuaded to adopt my second choice and join the Royal Tank Regiment until I could be transferred at a later date to the Royal Engineers. I remembered as a child on holiday near Bovington, Dorset, being allowed to clamber into the dark bowels of a Chieftain tank and start it up. The crew were taking a break in a roadside lay-by and somehow my dad persuaded them to let me see inside. I was shown how to start the generator and then the main engine. It was only when watching back the grainy silent 8mm cine film that my dad had taken that I saw the huge billows of white smoke that proved my ‘achievement’.
How exciting would it be to hurtle through the sleepy sunlit rows of pines in one of those?
And so I was enlisted into the Second Royal Tank Regiment at Sutton Coldfield and looked forward to telling my parents all about it later that evening. It was with no little pride that I cheerily accepted my free rail pass but it took a second or two for me to realise that the pass was not made out to Stowmarket station, Suffolk.
I was stuffed onto the first train for Catterick Garrison, Yorkshire, with the news that the next time I would see home and kin was six weeks hence on completion of my basic training.
Now, I had been away from home before but this turn of events differed so much from my expectations of the summer of ’73 that, by the time we reached Grantham, I was already trying to stifle homesickness-induced tears and planning to go AWOL. I reached Darlington station to find an olive-drab three ton taxi waiting to chauffeur me and one other unfortunate soul to Cambrai Barracks.
It was a late, wet afternoon when we booked in at the guardroom and were told where to find our accommodation block. I have, to this day, never felt so forlorn and desolate as I did then.
John, for that was my colleagues name, and I walked across the precision-trimmed grass towards one of the dreary, grey, prison-like two storey blocks. I was just revising my view of 18 stone, ruddy-cheeked women and considering whether or not I would have studied harder at grammar school had I known what the alternative was going to be when the scream rang out for the first time.
‘Get off the fuckin’ grass!’
Of course I was used to hearing (and using) language of such hue but I simply did not believe that an adult would speak to me, a mere child, like that and we gazed across to see who was being so abused.
‘Yes, you, you CUNT, get off the fuckin’ grass…NOW!’
I looked at John. He didn’t strike me as a cunt. I was no expert but felt sure that I wasn’t a cunt either. The rapidly-reddening beret-topped face hanging from a first floor window obviously was an expert in such things because within seconds he was close enough to my face for me to have counted the veins in his bulging eyeballs as he loudly reaffirmed his opinion of our genital status. He either had an overactive thyroid or our army careers were off to a bad start. I suspected the latter.
I later learned to love military life but I still cannot pass an army camp without smiling to myself and basking in the freedom of civilianship.
We leave the military behind us and Goa’s largest village, Santa Cruz, and drop down to the long, straight causeway across the Rio Do Ourem ( river of gold ) estuary, a wide wetland of ponds, streams and rivulets used principally for fish farming and salt-panning. The trees and bushes on the dykes are spiked with the region’s most prolific wader, the little egret, a small white heron-like bird and an expert spear fisherman. These banknote-thin predators will stand motionless for minutes at a time just watching for the slightest movement and then dart their stiletto beaks beneath the ripples to fetch up a shivering silver meal.
At the end of the causeway is the region of Patto, the gateway to Goa’s fascinating capital since 1843, Panaji.
Most people, Goans included, still call the place Panjim or Pangim as it was known by the British and Portugese respectively. The city sits on the inside of a huge sweep of the Mandovi River and its densely packed mix of modern and colonial buildings sparkle through the suns haze. Towering red and white striped radio masts rise from the conurbation like feelers.
There is little accurate record of Panjim prior to the early 1800’s. The land was largely saltmarsh with hardly a house or landmark. The principle occupation of its few residents was the collection of waterways taxes or exise duty from the incoming or outgoing ships. It was offshore of these marshes that the ship of Alfonso de Albuquerque moored prior to the attack which led to the conquest of Goa from the ruler of Bijapur and subsequent Portugese colonization.
There is speculation as to the derivation of the name but in Konkani, ‘Panji’ means great grandmother.
The succession of large roundabouts at Patto are heaving with traffic as it is a hub for travellers to North and South Goa and east to the former capital, Old Goa. Patto also lays claim to an historic monument, Pattobridge or Ponte De Linhares, the remains of one of the longest and oldest bridges in the East.
Building started in 1632 during Portugese colonial rule and ended two years later with a forty span Romanesque bridge over three kilometres long. It runs along the south bank of the Mandovi across the marshes of the Rio Do Ourem from Panjim to the village of Ribandar. Hundreds of local trees were felled and the massive timbers driven into the silts as pilings to support tons of laterite stone blocks. The more modern Indian bridge builders should have taken lessons as two later bridges across the Mandovi and Zuari have suffered spectacular collapses.
Pattos huge roundabouts are best recognised by sprouting illuminated steel columns punctured like celluloid celebrating the annual International Film Festival of India. Bollywood film buffs keep the end of November/early December clear in their diaries for the spectacle in Panjim.
Off to our left as Raj sweeps off the Patto roundabout is the Kadamba bus terminal bulging with busses which couldn’t boast a flat panel between them but we carry on along NH17 and the ramp to the Mandovi Bridge.
There are two parallel bridges spanning the Mandovi and despite having crossed them on numerous occasions, I am still not clear as to whether they are one-way or two-way because each time I cross, there is a different traffic flow in operation and almost invariably, a scooterist who has struck the foot-high red and white kerbstones alongside the bridge railings and is now three pounds heavier than at the start of his journey due to the gravel embedded in his gushing elbow and knee. I think its best to assume that they are both two-way.
Way down below and to the left are the pontoons for the huge Paradise cruise boats which ply the river in season laden with visitors both foreign and Indian.
Further over and on the opposite side of the river to Panjim is the village of Betim. There is a little ferry here which plies between the capitals old steamer jetty and this large fishing and boatbuilding community. From the bridge you look down on a higgledy-piggledy patchwork of fishing boats jumbled around the pontoons and spreading across the river like cells multiplying under a microscope. If you travel through the village, the smell of fish is overpowering and the variety of seafish at its daily market is staggering.
I’ve got the open tobacco tin balanced on my knee now and we’re speeding across the bridge when Raj performs his next spectacular manoeuvre.
Our Maruti lurches into the oncoming traffic causing scooters and motorbikes to perform a startling display that the Red Arrows would be proud of. I’m torn between stopping Hannah from falling out of the open window and saving the ‘baccy’. It’s a close call but as I’m crap at ironing and we have a couple of spare pouches of tobacco in the case, I opt for the former. A glance forward reveals Raj frantically trying to don a white long-sleeved shirt whilst piloting the taxi with his knees.
‘Police!’ he cries.
I find myself thinking ‘Shit, what did I do with that pot?’ and suppressing the fight or flight reflex before reality kicks in and I realise that I’ve got nothing illegal on me and have done nothing wrong.
I have to smile as my mind harks back to a time when Hannah and I owned an American style diner in St.Austell. It was a popular eatery with an eclectic mix of clientele ranging from little old grannies, students and ‘normal’ people to hippies, pot-heads and the local ex-Hells-Angel, hairy-arsed biker group, the Scorpios.
The diner had about thirty covers indoors and a further fifteen in a little walled garden out back. The kitchen was in open view of the restaurant.
On the occasion in question it was getting towards lunchtime and the place was jumping. A group of Scorpios were by the door dressed in full leathers, denim and flick-knives and about ten students sat next to the front window and were behaving very reservedly. H was cooking like crazy. I served meals to the table of students (together with a diagram explaining which orifice to put the food in) and a sweet old lady in the corner and went to collect crockery from the garden. On my way back in, I heard the clarion call ‘Police!’.
Now you’ve probably seen the scene in ‘Jaws’ when the whole town are swimming and playing in the shallows on Amity beach when someone cries ‘Shark!’.
Adults are running for the sand whilst throwing kids over their shoulders like bait and barging pensioners out of their path. Well I had to swim against a stream of customers fighting for the back garden door.
You’d have been excused for thinking that a suicide bomber had just walked in and forgotten to put his coat on over the top of his explosives belt.
I glanced at the window and saw the policemen getting out of their ‘jam-sandwich’. H had turned her back on a full restaurant and on turning again was faced with a totally empty room save for the nonplussed granny. I don’t know which of them had the most priceless expression. It was at this point that I remembered that I had a half ounce of ‘a non-catering herb’ in the office and was on my way back into the garden with it and the intention of stashing it in the rockery when H turned from the window and announced that the policemen had finished their business at the cashpoint opposite, given her a cheery wave and were on their way to the pasty shop.
I was digging illegal substances and knuckledusters out of the borders and plant pots for weeks!
Unlike me, it seemed that Raj did have cause to panic because up ahead, at the other end of the bridge, was a chicane manned by what seemed to be a small battalion of uniformed gendarmerie, some armed. We slowed to a crawl. We watched one of the policemen hold up his arm and braced for a ‘tug’ but he whistled frantically and gesticulated to the driver of the taxi ahead to pull in to the side of the road. We were waved through unhindered. Never mind Raj, I could have pressed flowers between my clenched buttock cheeks.
‘What was all that about?’ Hannah asked. Raj apologised profusely and explained that taxi drivers are obliged by law to wear a clean white shirt on national highways on pain of a hefty fine. Whether this law was enacted in order to ensure taxi drivers present a professional image to the public or whether it exists to further bolster the income of the corrupt police I don’t know. The way they drive, I’d have thought that wearing a white shirt was the least of their worries. Wearing leakproof underwear might be more appropriate. I needed confirmation that my eyes weren’t totally defective and Hannah assured me that Raj’s ‘white’ shirt was more rusty-beige than white and appeared to have been ironed with a building brick.
We ascend the slope leading away from the river and Tiswadi and enter the district of Bardez.
H17 is now dual carriageway with a lush green central reservation planted with pretty aloes and short palms. As we rise further through another red-walled cutting a glance back and to the right reveals a formal double driveway at the end of which sits what looks like a low five-star resort. This palace overlooking the river to Panjim is the newly-built Goan State Legislature building. Bearing in mind how most parliamentarians look after themselves these days, a five-star resort is probably an apt description.
Here sits governor, chief minister and forty area ministers who make up a very small part of the largest democracy in the world. I still find it hard to believe that the state legislature was only enacted in 1987 and even more remarkable that Goa was only freed from Portugese colonial rule in 1961.
The Russians stuck Yuri Gagarin in a superannuated firework and lit the blue touchpaper, I was spilling hot-dog ketchup down my shorts whilst watching 101 Dalmatians and Goa became self-governing.
The Portugese had finally signed a surrender after 451 years of repression, denial of freedom of speech, torture and imprisonment and attempted emasculation of Goan identity. No wonder celebrations are so wild on December 17 th each year, Liberation Day. More on that later.
A mile or so further and we leave NH17, veering left onto the Chogm Road. Just one more village now before hitting the spreading conurbation of Calangute, Candolim and Baga.
Saligao village itself sits off of the Chogm Road a little to the south and is a delightfully pretty place where the houses are closely nestled and the palms and fruit trees plentiful. It is understandable that the locality is so very green when you are given the translation of it’s name. ’Gao’….meaning village and ‘Sal’….the Portugese word for bicycle.
Ok, so I lied about the bicycle. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was a test for the speed readers amongst you. You know who you are, you CHEATS. Now read it properly or get out of my book and buy a ‘Mills and Boon’.
……and ‘Sal’, meaning wooded forest. Now you don’t know whether to believe me or not. I’ve lost your trust haven’t I? Why did I do that? Just when it was going so well, I go and spoil things by making a cheap joke at your expense.
Right, I promise never to do that again. Promise.
The roads leading into the village are narrow and lined with palms creeping out onto the gravel like pedestrians. The compact and neat houses almost touch and between them, a maze of tiny pathways intrigue and invite. The farmland surrounding was traditionally used for growing sugar cane but, increasingly, it is given over to paddies and cereals. At harvest time, the grain can be seen laid along the roadsides to dry. Tarmac radiators.
For those of a superstitious disposition, avoid coming here on the first day of November, for that is celebrated as All Souls Day. It is believed by many to be the occasion when the spirits of the village dead return to visit their old homes…….and probably whinge about how things ‘aren’t the way they used to be’ and how today’s generation have ‘let the place go’.
Quite why they’ve all got to come back on the same day I don’t know. You’d think they’d spread it out a bit. Maybe there’s only one bus.
The more popular cause for a visit to Bicycle village must be the parish church of Mae De Deus, a fabulous white wedding cake of a church in glorious gothic tradition which has sat north of the Chogm Road for 130 years. The buttresses are peaked with long white spires and the belltower above the entrance adorned with what looks like a blanched Eiffel Tower. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. You’ll have to visit twice though because at night it is floodlit and spectacular. Blueish white at the front and with an orange warmth down each side. Of perfect proportion, if I were a churchy type of person, this would be my favourite by a mile.
‘What time do you finish today Raj?’ Hannah enquires.
‘Binish when I drop you off and go home’ he replies as he unbuttons the ‘white’ shirt again. Binish isn’t a typo here, I’ve noticed that a number if Indians have trouble pronouncing F’s. There’s got to be a joke in there somewhere, I think, but not one that doesn’t involve lavish use of the Anglo-Saxon dictionary.
‘Easy life’ H quips.
‘Easy life, easy life, easy life, haha’ Raj sings although I struggle to recognise the tune and feel sure Robbie Williams needn’t worry. Taxi drivers working out of Dabolim only tend to take one fare in a day. Because of the number of cabs there, they stand little chance of getting to the front of the queue again.
We speed out from the shade and pass

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Publication Date: 04-09-2010

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