In Goa

Till November of last year I had never been to Goa. There would be rapturous reports of parties, weekend visits. beach sports, food, the lifestyle and yet I had never been to the state. When I used to admit this, everyone I knew would be incredulous.  That too when you live in Bombay! You must go! Its heaven! Its awesome! Etc. Etc.  I am not sure why I never did make the trip but it seemed hard to believe that it could be less than paradise in the face of so many glowing reports.

Well reader, it is less than paradise.  Despite the photographs this post is going to host.

This was a trip I was looking forward to because I was going to be spending several days with close friends of mine.  They are building a house in Goa and the plan was to motor around a bit and also look up their place and a few local architects.  All the planning had been done by them from a place to stay to things to see and do.  Eventually most of my pleasant memories of the trip are of time spent with friends.

The places we stayed in were homestays which in  way mitigated some of my negative feelings about Goa, had I stayed in a hotel I might have fled the very next day.  The one in North Goa was a bit of a fancy affair albeit in an idyllic setting.  The one in South Goa on the other hand was unpretentious, the family more casual and the children unaffected. It made for a few happy hours.

Starting the vacation in North Goa was perhaps not the best thing to do.  It is a place over run with tourists and suffers the malaise of famous beach towns.  That is it is just another party town, an away place to get drunk (or perhaps smoke something stronger), have a fling and more.  It isn't just the foreigners, there is a steady stream of cashed up Indians (yeah some Goans still refer to us as Indians) for whom this is the place to sport short shorts, kiss discreetly but openly and be "modern". It's the closest thing to being abroad without actually leaving the country. In this Goa is quite liberal, there are none of the other unspoken constraints of travelling elsewhere in India. But this also gives a sense of empty and even sad decadence to the place, it is all body and no soul.

To add to my unhappiness, the background score for all this was pop hits of the 80s and 90s. Everything I managed to avoid as a young adult now follows me everywhere!

The Goan countryside is pretty, there is little doubt about that. So are the houses, in this the Portuguese have left a far greater legacy than the British.  And architecture seems a fairly serious (and creative) preoccupation judging by the visits my friends made. And things improve as one heads south even though there are murmurs of beaches here and there being taken over by the Russians or the Israelis or the Indians and how things were far better before some unspecified time. 

Part of  my lacklustre response is because there is little that engages one intellectually (and yes I know no one goes to Goa to sip coffee and peruse bookshops - there are other places for that!).  What I really mean of course is a sense of place that arouses one's curiosity. Goa's most famous son is Mario Miranda. And while the permanent display of his early works in Reis Magos Fort are a wonderful and amusing insight into Goa in the early 50s (thank you friends), he is so ubiquitous that even an illustration like Street in Fontainhas that seemed charming becomes overused.  Other artists are little known, I only found some fading postcards of Angelo da Fonseca's work for example and in fact I only knew of the artist because of my vintage clothing blog.  Perhaps these are mere initial impressions that will stand corrected on further contact, on the other hand I had gone with friends who had avoided beach party tourism and taken pains to locate museums and artwork and bookshops.

Everyone goes to Old Goa. And the complex of churches at its heart is quite spectacular. Of these Bom Jesus which houses the body of Francis Xavier is by far the most popular. Were there not photography restrictions, I fear people would be making V signs and posing in front of the long departed saint. Outside though everyone poses against the edifice. In fact there are a large number of honeymooners here, rustic girls in skimpy clothing taking photographs with their husbands, no doubt to be secretly savoured once they return home.

As always the better parts lie in the fringes. There are the ruins of the church of St Augustine. There is something a little eerie and spectacular about it.  The quiet convent on the other side which was undergoing some restoration work when I was wandering around. The small and perfectly formed Italian church, St Cajetan (everyone seemed to be trying for a Goan toehold). This place in fact has the gate of the old Adil Shahi palace.  So strongly associated is Goa with several centuries of Portuguese rule that everything before is barely mentioned in the tourist pamphlets.

As my friends were busy that morning, I had taken the bus from South Goa to Old Goa.  The buses are cramped but its fairly easy to travel by the bus.  Again I am struck by the absence of middle class India, almost everyone in the bus appears blue collar, a few locals and most workmen from outside the state.  From Old Goa, I took the bus to Ponda which is not really on the tourist route. The only reason I knew about the Mangueshi and Shanta Durga temples was because I had friends from the state and they often visited the temples for the usual Hindu rites of passage.  Ponda as it happens is more or less like rural parts of Maharashtra or Karnataka and decidedly the less glamorous cousin of Goa by the Sea.  Partly this is because the temples are not as spectacular as their counterparts in many other Indian states though they are a little different with their blend of Hindu, Islamic and Portuguese influences. Later my friends met me at Ponda and we drove around a bit. It felt a bit like being in a 70s movie, say Chitchor, right down to little kirana shops and Marathi programs on radios and little B&W  TVs.

Ironically despite a recent ban on foreigners entering temples, it was the Indian visitors who were in Western clothing.

Not much after I returned to Mumbai, the happiness I had felt in the wake of being in Kumbakonam felt a little diminished. And for a long time after I felt a certain aloofness towards Goa. Maybe this was because after travelling elsewhere I felt even more strongly the contradictions and underlying ennui of Goa.  Maybe it is because Goa is a de-stressing holiday, the kind you may look forward to after being stuck week long in traffic in Mumbai. Not therefore a holiday for someone having a mid life gap year. But largely it maybe that places are like people, sometimes we just do not get along. Looking at the photographs for this post, I thought perhaps I had misjudged Goa a little. But when I think of Goa, I can only recall the feeling of listlessness, even a lack of joy, that I felt at so many moments. Everyone is there to relax and have fun, to chill in current parlance, we are assured over and over again that this is the state of mind we all long for and yet at almost every moment you feel that vital life, the life that truly nourishes us, is elsewhere.