Sight-seeing for tourists in Goa is never complete without a visit to a village tavern. Now, this name ‘Tavern’, for the local drinking hole is bulldozed with a new name ‘Bar’. If one avoids the churches of Old Goa, the temples of Mangeshi-Mardol and the mosques in Goa, one would miss a little historical evidence of Golden Goa. But to go without a visit to the village tavern was to miss the socially refined Goans, whose tastes are modest and pleasures, small.
In Goa, at every turn of the road there is a tavern or bar. If a survey is done, I think every fifth house will be a liquor shop. These pubs are made for modest comfort or, most likely, they are considered as their second home. The taverns in Goa form the pith and marrow of the average native.
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Therefore, when visiting a pub, the domestic and foreign tourists should know that they are making an entry into a house, where warm friendship can develop by meeting its inmates. Although competition is fierce in the liquor business, still it is profitable because Goans celebrate the birth of a child with a bottle and pass their days on this good earth with a bottle.
In the local tavern, one sits in the company of assorted bottles with liquor in it at different levels. The service there is either by a tavern aunty or tavern uncle, who is very kind-hearted and is so familiar with their usual customers that they even remember their daily quota by heart. Ice is served to those who prefer it, but it is dropped in the customer’s glass by the aunty/uncle with their fingers.
Experienced boozers visit corner taverns three times a day. Once when the sun peeps from mountain tops –it is taken at this time for building up energy for the days’ hard work. Then, when the sun comes overhead –it is taken as an appetizing tonic because with it, boozers’ appetizing system starts to work. Again it is taken when the sun is bolted out from the sky, –for drowning the days’ frustrations. In between these three periods, thirsty souls take it to quench their roaring thirst. Sometimes even without the provocations of thirst, it is taken just for modest pleasure.
Goans do not care if their drinking performance is watched by others. Drinkers sit on wooden benches poised and calm in meditative mood and concentrate on the grog, totally unaware of their surroundings. Even their request to waiter-aunty for more drinks is done with a barely perceptible nod. When their whole body is filled with numerous glasses of coconut feni, they rise like the ‘Rising Sun’ without breaking into a song; without breaking furniture or bashing abuses and walk home swaying like a coconut tree and even seeing three dimension figures in their mind.
Tourist seeing the calm show of gulping into the stomach, numerous glasses of coconut feni and then rising with a face full of satisfaction, tourist get up with admiring glances and congratulate the native sons for the great show to drink like a fish. Goans tell them, not with pride, but with honesty, that they have reached this stage of drinking, after painstaking effort.
Tourist of all shades, shape and colour cannot say they have truly seen Goa, if they have not met these Goan feni-bibbers in the friendly village tavern.
