This
old friend seems different. The doors are still open because there are no
doors. The music is still fine because it’s vintage and real. Fridays still
make many of us get into auto-mode and head there. The country captain dish is
still the best because no one makes it and the combination of chicken in
coconut gravy with a few currants on the side makes time stand still.
Marius
has held that magic wand which makes so many call Cavala ‘home’ as a matter of
right. But over the years, the number of people who say that are increasingly
from Bombay, Bangalore, Delhi and the rest of the world. We here do not need to
say that. We know. But why is it that on each Friday, we find less and less
people we know or have met?
In
the last ten years, the walls, the bar stools, the magnificent large bar, all
had stories to tell. But they didn’t really need to because those who came to
Cavala did all the talking and had stories covering decades and generations.
Stories of love, passion, karma (oops, that’s another place). Well, love,
passion, alliances and out of the book “dalliances”, were a part of the raucous
but enjoyable enterprise.
Stories
of great music and dancing and revelry; stories of iconic dates such as the
December 23 Christmas party that Marius throws, and the annual feni picnic of
Cavala which regulars consider a family and friend affair. This was never a
bar, or pub or even a hotel. This was our place.
But
as most places and things in Goa do, Cavala too is taking a turn, and it is
only the walls which tell the stories. One of the first visible barriers from
freedom to restriction is the space at the entrance to the bar which has been
blocked. For close to 15 years, that passage was a free port for friends where
you could walk in, get a drink fixed or fix it yourself, shout out what you’ve
had or write it down and pay for it. End of the evening.
There
were times when after most went home, a group of us sat with a guitar and a
flute and the laughter and the singing continued with the bar open. We used to
shut it, write down what we drank and settle it next week. These “traditions”
are changing. Perhaps for good reason but for us creatures of habit and spoilt
to the core, it seems that yet another chip of the old block is gone. A piece
of the Goa we knew is gone. Some of the deepest, long lasting and really happy
friendships have happened here but we don’t meet in Cavala or hardly do. Yet it
is full and raucous. But it’s not us. We are creatures of comfort and sink into
what we feel is home and slink away from anything which feels not quite.
But
this virus of loneliness is debilitating. The same old places seem empty.
George’s Bar, Clube Vasco and Clube Nacional were the hub of Goa’s joie de
vivre or the joy of everything we did. If these places were human they would be
like Falstaff, the iconic literary Shakespearean character known for his joie
de vivre. Those acquainted with the play The Merry Wives of Windsor will get
the drift of what Falstaff embodied: A consummate consumer of the simple joys
of life. And consumed by the same too.
We
must preserve our Falstaffs. We must have places that do not change; where time
stands still. South Goa still does offer some solace and springs surprises. A
wine sampling session held at Nostalgia, under the tutelage of its Grande Dame
Margarida, this week, assured us that some pieces of Goa are still intact.
Around the restaurant in Raia, containing the soul of Chef Fernando, sat people
who have shared food drink and laughter with the late Fernando. And it was
Fernando’s beloved, Margarida’s niece, a young girl in her twenties, who
conducted a fine session on fine tasting with the finesse of a veteran. And as
it always happens, everyone is known. There was Jose Manuel Noronha and his
sister Carmita, dentist Dr Amilcar Souza, his wife Aileen and son Karl and
others of the fraternity of Falstaff,
all having a good time swirling red and white wine with cheese and crackers.
Nostalgia is one of the nurseries of Goa’s
unadulterated joys of cuisine, drink and togetherness. As we walked out at the
end of the evening – my most significant other and I – we had mixed feelings.
Hope that we still have these spots in the desert of loneliness as more of Goa
goes away. And despair that places like these may become mirages in the desert
very soon, the way Goa is going.
