The great mingling festival is on. When the
world comes here to mingle, when folks from Alaska to Almaty converge and Goa
turns into a haze of people, some of which you begin to call friends, some for
life and some for the season. BWP over the last decade though, has been a
raconteur of conversations in Goa’s most beautiful and remote bylanes.
Conversations have happened on bar stools, at dining tables, on the sands and
in tintos. Each December, BWP goes back
in time to recount conversations and meetings with folks met during the course
of life in Goa who went away and many others who have become dear friends and
even family. This is random memory jog of conversations, each a different
nugget. Sample them like a scoop of gelato you try before placing the order.
Tony the prison attendant turned vagabond
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There was Tony, who made a fortune in the
software market, till he discovered the need to really live. He was also a
prison attendant in North England. All that over, Tony gave up the mundane and
got real. He bought and designed a caravan which he calls his motor home. And
that’s where he lives and travels in. It has a twin-bed bedroom, a fully
equipped kitchen and bar, hot showers and air conditioning with everything
running on liquid gas.Tony discovered Anjuna three years ago, didn’t like it
and now spends about four months a year in Baga and other places.
Prawn curry loving gypsy guitarist
Harri Stojka loved prawn curry and rice.
When the world’s best known Viennese Gypsy guitarist used to live, play, eat
and sleep at Armando Gonsalves’ quaint heritage home in Campal, he sometimes
strolled to the kitchen to figure what was cooking, especially Armando’s late
mom’s prawn curry. We have news that this is what he eats as a staple back home
in Vienna.
Buying bread at 6 at Utorda
Scene from an Utorda morning: The little
fellow was in the middle of solving two problems that confronted him at 6 in
the morning. The first was to keep his droopy eyes from getting shut like a
magnet trap. The other was to balance the hot pao which he had just bought,
from falling from his hands as he walked from the local hole in the wall bakery
at Utorda to his home next door. He also had to battle his running nose with
many sniffles and by constantly rubbing his red nose against his shirt. Life is
tough for this lad of six.
This used to be one of
my regular sights on my morning strolls in one of the myriad labyrinth
of village paths that snake through Arrosim and Utorda. Some weaving in and out
of the village, others hugging the train line that moves from Cansaulim to
Margao and then the ones that lead to the connecting road or junctions which
have the tea and newspaper shops and the fish vendors, the gossip and news hub
of the village.
Drunk Urrak seller of Loutolim
This fellow had an important position in
the urrak procuring hierarchy of Loutolim. He poured the elixir from barrels
containing the drink, in the makeshift village breweries. Pouring the finished
urrak into smaller vessels for their onward journey into people’s homes and
hearts was a religious spirited exercise.
Alas, the angel who conducted this yeomen’s
service was himself too “consumed” by urrak to do little more than lie next to
the fresh water spring, on a bed of leaves and twigs and sing songs. We
therefore often had to move out of this beautiful forest in Devotte, one of the
various sub-villages of Loutolim to another patch in the forest looking for the
next “brewery”.
The Baltazar boys of Arrosim
Baltazar and his brother Tony run
Baltons, opposite the Park Hyatt hotel
in Arrosim. Baltons is actually the first bar –location wise – in Salcette, at
the border of Arrosim which falls in the Murmagao Taluka and Utorda, where
Salcette begins on the Cavellosim-Majorda road. In fact Salcette begins right
at the doorstep of Baltons. The pub is made of bamboo and wood, with very high
bar stools and perhaps the best collection of music anywhere in these parts.
The playlist belts out retro from the nineties,
good jazz, some heart-warming pop, pretty much
easy listening.
The guitar on the wall and two old vintage
motorcycles kept near the bar is a throwback to a scene from a classic western.
As the sun sets, regulars, guests from Hyatt and other assorted folks saunter
in. The tales and the laughter then begin.
These, friends, were absolutely random
picks. Of an outsider in an insider’s embrace.
