It’s beginning to get a tad balmy in the afternoons with the
sea breeze bringing respite post sunset. The last of the “season” is being
played out in its myriad forms. Sunsets and coffee at Rare Republic, music and
burgers at the Burger Factory at Anjuna, sliders at their Morjim outlet and
affogato (shot of espresso over a ice cold blob of ice cream) at the gelato
place at the Anjuna junction, give you Goa’s other vibe, consumed by
generations of Goa lovers from across the world, many of whom have made this
Goa their home.
Across Arpora, Anjuna, Siolim, Assagao, Vagator and Morjim,
a belt that has faced many of the negatives modern Goa is hit or associated
with, there is a fine set of people and establishments that have preserved
Goa’s cool. It’s a belt of people who have bought into the skyline and its
spaces and curated some of these places to carve restaurants, cafés, boutique
stores with a joie de vivre that is easy and natural.
There, of course, is the banter that some of these areas are
extensions of Greater Kailash, Defence Colony or Saket, all hip Delhi colonies,
bringing in their wake a stamp of pace with huge doses of enterprise. But it’s
a banter of easy acceptance. Drive through, or lounge in, Assagao (and its fast
growing cousin, Moira, on the other side of Mapusa) and you see beautifully
restored homes, built on the foundations of quaintness and grandeur and
embellished with taste and décor. The array of stores and restaurants are built
and run by locals and the new locals (they are no longer outsiders in the
manner of outsiders). There’s art on every kerb, from boutiques to stores and
restaurants, which re-establish and enforce the truly global print on Goa’s
canvas.
Artjuna, a café cum boutique in an old Portuguese house,
beautifully run by Moshe and Ansatasia, is a place to hang, look at and buy
hand made jewellery, lamps, baskets and eat Mediterranean food; Indian Story,
a wonderful store, among other things, showcases the skills of Indian weavers
from Kashmir to Bengal, with a grass-root engagement unparalleled, while 6
Assagao is a collaborative of the Gunpowder Restaurant and the People Tree
lifestyle store, where spicy south Indian culinary art is woven with the fabric
and craft sold at the store.
Over the past couple of years, the discerning foodie of the
north is leaving behind the hordes of the oh so passé beaches of Calangute and
Candolim, to dine at places like Ciao Bella, again conceived by a peripatetic
culinary couple, Simona and Mario. Simona lived and worked in restaurants in
Italy, and like many others, she and Mario found home in Goa and built one too
– their Ciao Bella, undeniably one of the finest Italian restaurants in the
country.
But the Goan pieces are well and truly fitted into the
landscape. On the road to Siolim, through the fields, Anand Bar and Vinayak are
signposts of a Goa that embraces and cradles all of this. Anand Bar is
completely fish centric and they really make bones about it and quite deserve
to. The place is slightly worn out but does everything right with its fish
fries and curries. But the odd mutton Kolhapuri balances the taste buds nicely.
A few by-lanes away in the Vinayak, lovingly known as
Delhi’s Goan restaurant, with the number of travelling and settled delhi
wallahs in residence, along with their regular expats. Rajesh and Ujwala, who
lived in the Gulf for ages, decided to return home and then set up this
restaurant in their village Assagao to cook and serve home cooked Goan food.
That venture has grown exponentially. Set among the fields with the front and
rear areas lined with tables, Vinayak does the routine Goan meal to perfection.
And then the specials stand out, like the chunky butter squid. And while it
draws foodie folks from everywhere else, the expat and the outstation community
just loves it. It makes the dining experience complete.
These areas are a mini melting pot of the world and its
cultures. People converge to only enhance the graciousness and charm of their
surroundings with their magic. And when we speak of the Goa vibe, isn’t it
fuelled by the people who come and create that vibe? Many languages are spoken,
myriad dialects with people from different professions doing what they do best
in this gem of a cluster Assagao, Anjuna, Arpora, with Siolim, Moira and Morjim
as its periphery.
The credit for the creation of this space, international yet
Goan, local yet global, enterprising but not crassly commercial, goes to the
delightful ‘guests’ who never left and did not allow the collapse of their
plurality into a single convenient stereotype – ‘outsiders’. They’ve bucked
stereotypes and created a ‘type’ that is attracting even more to this unique
party.
