We were on a road less taken but a road never forgotten. Long before new highways and connectors disconnected us from the good old village roads, the old Goa Vehla- Agassaim village road was the highway, which, like a knife through butter, sliced its way ever so gently through the village of Goa Velha.
At the market, it narrowed down to a tiny winding strip though which we all squeezed past. But as we slowed down, at the bottleneck, there were quintessential Goan sights that a drive through a highway at 100 kms an hour can never ever give you. Folks on their way to the fish market, fisherwomen arriving at the crack of dawn to receive the fish brought in, the “world famous” sausage makers and sellers of Goa Velha getting ready for another day of yeomen’s service to Goa, by selling choris in its various forms, (they have made life and living so much merrier and should not share any blame for high cholesterol levels and weak hearts) and the sight of the solitary poder on a long straight road, shaded by a canopy of palm with a streak of sunlight piercing through the canopy and lighting up the bread basket on the poder’s cycle.
This was a Goan bazaar at its best. There was colour at each step. The red of the chillies and the sausages, the myriad hues of green of the vegetables, the pale brown of the poder’s bread, the bright blue horn of the poder – his mascot and his pride, the marigolds worn by the fisherwomen, the earthy brown of earthen tea cups, the sight and sizzle of the yellow batter on a big pan that fried the mirchi bhaji. It was a riot all right. Not a riot of colours, but colours of a riot called life in a Goan village.
Last Sunday, the route was taken enroute to another village off this track, which hasn’t quite been documented by yours truly: Batim. During regular journeys around six years ago from my home at Arossim to work in Panjim, the car, which had a mind of its own, forked right on the Curca road, past the Goa Velha Panchayat ghor and raced down one of the prettiest stretches of Goa, laden with a canopy of palm and at the spot where the canopy ended, the salt pans emerged on either side, till the road bent left and climbed up towards the army signals area and Merces beyond. Alas, at the little junction, a little ahead of the panchayat, before the canopy and the salt pans start, is a turn into the village of Batim, with its lake full of birds, in season, its Ganxim hill and its gorgeous church and then, of course, the piece de resistance or even arguably the leitmotif of the village – the apparition of Our Lady Of Fatima, seen by Iveta Gomes in 1994.
From the fork at the junction of the Panchayat, as you go along the village road, you go back a year every hundred kilometres. And it is right on the edge of the village that we reached our Sunday destination, Casa Menezes, which is everything Goa ought to be. And Goa that once was. It has the energy of Balduinho Menezes, who gave his young son David the go ahead to restore portions of their home and keep it alive for David’s generation and the next. The young David, who grew up cycling amidst these very salt pans and the paths to the church and watching the migratory birds, undertook the project and gave a new lease of life and a fillip to wonderful memories by restoring the rooms and yet making them comfortable for modern living. But the charm is in the package. This is also David and his mother Pamela’s home as it has always been and even after the passing away of Balduinho, David retains his spirit of enterprise, a young Goan boy who refuses to leave his roots at a time when the trend is in the reverse direction.
If you can pull yourself away from the charm of the home, its courtyard, the living room, the art gallery and, above all, the long verandah on top overlooking the fields, David takes you for long walks and other trips to soak in his village and its simple offerings. But what can get in the way, and this isn’t even a tiny complaint, is the food that comes out of the Menezes kitchen. The so called ‘simple’ luncheon was a feast. Garlic tongue, beef roast, malabar prawns (learnt on one of David’s journeys to Kerala), the squid and the kingfish fresh as fresh can be. This was served in his yet-to-be-open restaurant so that locals who don’t live as guests in the Menezes home and come and imbibe the Batim spirit of a laid back afternoon, looking at the swaying palms and the fields all around.
As we drove back, overcome with sleep and the beauty of Batim, Goa suddenly seemed all right. It seemed old, the way old should be, and above all, it yet again validated the very reason why yours truly moved here over a decade ago.
