Matthew Stibbe's Homepage Writer Holiday in Goa Holiday in Goa

To the Beach:
My partner, Aileen, and I went to Goa in December 2000. I wrote this story a couple of days after I got back.

Aileen and I arrived at the main airport in Goa with the dawn last Sunday. We taxied past the ominous Russian-built patrol aircraft and bombers of the Indian Navy that use Dabolim Airport as their base and came to a stop on the apron outside the terminal building. Walking down the steps I had my first blast of India: the musty heat-driven smell, the bright sunshine and the intensity of the colours like someone turned up the brightness on my eyesight.

Fort Aguada from the sea

The flight had been long but comfortable with only a couple of drunken brummies to disturb our excitement. They didn’t actually do anything but they seemed menacing and unpredictable. As I was to find during my stay, they were the complete opposite of the Goan character. It struck me at the time that English people abroad are so boorish because they do not ever experience the feeling of being foreign. I think it is this, and not some imperial hangover that is responsible. These two had been to Goa eight times but hadn’t seemed to take any of Goa away with them when they left.

The forty-minute ride to the hotel was a journey of contrasts. I was over-sensitive because of the long journey and I reeled at the jumble of images and contrasts. There were vast posters for cars all along the road to the hotel, shacks offering email and internet access and then people living in mud huts (which I had always thought was an invention of medieval historians). Just like the contrast between the expensive, high-tech weaponry at the airport and the strips of tin foil on wire than served as runway lighting; it seemed to me that Goa had one foot in the eighteenth century and the other in the twenty-first. I wondered what had happened in between and then I remembered the imperial period. The English Raj in most of India and the Portuguese in Goa (I remembered this thought when Aileen’s father, Don, told me that the Portuguese had been kicked out in 1963 and that they had all scurried away on a boat overnight.) As an Englishman, I have to be somewhat humble and careful in thinking about the imperial experience. It may be that this period was a boon or a curse – I am too uninformed and too poor a historian to judge – but intuitively it seems like an ellipsis to me. The legacy was not one of development but of stasis, not of self-development but of bureaucracy. The worst of India – the inefficiency, the corruption, the jobsworthism (very evident at the airport!) – seems to have its roots in a civil service bureaucratic mentality.

The hotel was a whole different experience. It is built on the site of a Portuguese fort – Fort Aguada – and it is surrounded on three sides by massive red stone walls and on the fourth by a hill with a lighthouse on the top. A circular bastion juts out into the sea. Within the walls there is the main hotel, with the usual pool and bars and then, running up the hill on terraces, a dozen or so villas and a couple of dozen two- or three-bedroom cottages. When we arrived they were in the middle of preparations for a Hello-style Bollywood wedding. The grounds were filled with curiosities – a Hindu temple with goddesses, a giant chessboard with man-sized players, fairy lights in every bush, tree and shrub, a giant sculpture of Vasco Da Gama, stages, lights, and camera cranes. It looked and felt like the set of the Prisoner had been transported to India. A Goan Portmeirion. In contrast to all this, just inside the hotel was a shrine to Mary. I knew Goa was largely Catholic – the Iberian influence again – but it was a constant surprise to me to see just how Catholic it was. It runs through everything like the red dust.

Within an hour of arriving I found out about another key characteristic of Goan life. Gossip. It is, at heart, a village society and people pass the time with cooking and gossiping. I made this discovery when we were driven up to our villa in a jeep by a chap who turns out to have come from the village next to that of Aileen’s family. Johnny not only knew Aileen but also remembered her name. Within twenty-four hours the news that we had arrived and that we were staying in the Taj got back to the village, through the grapevine and back to Aileen’s family (who were expecting us, of course), with the hilarious consequences that I had to be introduced as an important film producer – after all, only film producers and stars can stay at the Taj! I also had to be introduced as Aileen’s husband everywhere – the confluence of gossip and Catholicism.

The villas of the Taj Fort Aguada Hermitage (to give its full title) were built for a Commonwealth in the eighties. This gave me the uncomfortable feeling that we were in Mrs. Thatcher’s place but we didn’t see any ghosts. They range up the side of the hill and ours was on the top row. Like the others, ours had a small private garden with deck chairs and a table to eat at; a large veranda, again with tables and chairs; a sitting room, dining room and bedroom. The red stone of the area – and the red dust and red bricks it producers – remind me of my childhood in Devon. The view out was breath taking – I could see the whole spread of beaches out to Calagute six miles away and the metal blue sea. Closer there was what can only be described as a paradise garden of flowers and palm trees. It was like being in a hothouse at Kew. Kingfishers and humming birds with their iridescent colours flew from plant to plant and two different species of butterfly, one yellow the other red, waltzed slowly around the garden. I also saw a small gecko that looked like the one on the cover of my old game, SimIsle and a tree frog that looked like the original ‘wow’ sample graphic that used to get shipped with Adobe Photoshop years ago. The air was filled with the scent of lavender and jasmine. Although it was hot around midday the onshore breeze and height made it very comfortable to sit outside all day.

Our cottage at sunset

While we were eating dinner on the first night a group of seranaders appeared with mandolins and drums and went from table to table singing. When they came to our table they sang something and asked if we had any requests. Aileen hummed something and they picked it up and sang first in Konkani, the local dialect, and then in English:

Golden chain around her neck
Who’s loving daughter is she

Mother is a hat case, father is a suitcase
Who’s loving daughter is she

This made Aileen cry with nostalgia – her grandfather was an accomplished mandolin player. I thought it was delightful – I loved the hat case / suitcase gag which was a touch of innocent innuendo. The nostalgia and delight change to laughter when the little band started playing Oasis’s “Wonderwall” arranged for tabla drums and mandolins. I think the musicianship would have put the Gallaghers to shame but it did seem incongruous. After dinner we went for a walk along the beach, through the ochre-to-rust-to-pitch black sunset, back to the hotel and as we walked through reception to get the car up to our cottage, we walked past the bride-to-be and her retinue who had just arrived. She was a combination of shyness and unbelievable splendour and beauty in her golden silk sari and Royal Family sized jewellery.

The next day at breakfast there was more incongruity. The music in the restaurant – we soon learned to sit outside or have breakfast in the garden of our villa – was a bizarre, jolly, bangra version of the Beatles “Nowhere Man.” To the accompaniment of this music I tucked into a breakfast of tomatoes stuffed with baked beans. Really. Outside, ten men were wrestling with a single tablecloth while another two stood by and gave directions. Around them on the floor were dozens of earthenware jars and Hessian sacks filled with spices. They were going to make the masala for the wedding and were clearly better at spices than table laying. Aileen read me my stars from the Times of India: “today you will hardly manage to collect you thoughts. It will be very difficult to solve even the most simple questions. Don’t not be nervous in vain (sic).” I spent the rest of the day trying very hard to do exactly that! Aileen put down the Times and picked up one of the local papers:

“There’s a story here about a cow who fell into a swimming pool,” she said.

“Is there a picture?” I asked.

“No.”

Every day the nice people in housekeeping put out fresh flowers, plantains (Aileen called them “plankton”) which are short, stubby and intensely flavoured bananas, and clean bottled water. Every day an old woman and a couple of young men would work in our garden or in one of the neighbouring gardens. It seemed to be a full-time job keeping it tidy – coconuts and branches were always falling down, the lawn had to be swept and watered every day and mowed once a week just to break even in the garden. When I went to Tivim, where Aileen’s family lived, I saw what happens to buildings and gardens that aren’t maintained regularly: they turn into Mrs. Haversham’s house in Great Expectations but in a space of weeks and months not decades.

Some of Aileen’s family visited us on Tuesday for tea. Both grandmothers, her sister and her aunt came over in a taxi. Aileen’s paternal grandmother is Sybill and she lives in Goa with Auntie Mona. Both are spry but delicate women. Where Sybill is quiet and observant, Mona is more nimble and forthright. She is given to nudging Aileen in the ribs if something funny or untoward happens. Shirley, Aileen’s sister, spent the whole day (indeed the whole trip) recording us all on her video camera to the point where it became a bit of a joke. We had tea and snacks, including chilli cheese on toast, vegetable pakoras and bhajis. I ate most of them.
Shirley – Camcorder Girl

Aileen’s Family at Sunset Point. With oil tanker.

The second night we were there, we sat on our balcony and ate dinner while watching the most amazing fireworks display I have seen apart from the millennium fireworks in London. These had been laid on for the wedding and, viewed from our unique vantage point, proved spectacular. We had seen some of the guests of the wedding earlier. They looked absolutely gorgeous in their saries and shalwar-kameeses. Shirley had said that the Bollywood stars who were coming to the wedding were the Indian John Travolta and Madonna – Sharukh Khan, Rani Mukerjee and Ravina Tandon. I hadn’t heard of them but it wouldn’t surprise me given the opulence and style of their outfits. Some of the women really were the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Wednesday saw me at my most adventurous because I went to have an Ayurvedic massage. This involves stripping off completely – none of this demure towel nonsense – and lying on a table that looked exactly like a wooden mortuary slab. Lying on my back, an earthenware jar is suspended over my forehead. It is filled with aromatic, herb-laced oil and a wick hangs down from it and pours the oil onto my forehead, onto my third eye, in a steady stream. The oil is changed from time to time alternating between hot and cold and different aromas. While this is going on, two men vigorously massage my body with even more oil. After about thirty minutes of this I start to hallucinate gently. I see Tibetan mandalas on the inside of my eyelids, or perhaps a bit higher up where the oil is coming down. Finally they rub my body down with dried, powdered herbs and I open my eyes to see a multi-armed god above the door. I get up and go to the steam room in a bit of a daze and a little self-consciously. Aileen said my back was much straighter afterwards. I think there was something else going on but, looking back on it now, I can’t quite remember what. What do retain from the experience – even now a week later – is a strange sense of presence, of calm perhaps, in the middle of my forehead.

That evening after my relaxing and surreal massage, we decided to go for a bit of an expedition. Since Aileen was completely in charge of everything she got a cab to take us to Calingute which is at the other end of the bay from the hotel. We walked down the main street and did some shopping – I think she was impressed at how unfazed I was with this full blast of India. Scooters and cows and no pavement! She then decided that we should have a romantic walk back to the hotel along the beach. Initially, this was highly romantic. The sand was crunchy like tightly-packed new snow. The sea was massive and comforting the way I remember it from Torquay. The sun was slowly setting. Dusk light suits Aileen very well, but in this particular light I think she looked more beautiful than she ever has. It is the light of home. Well, that’s the romantic part. What we did not know was that we were much further away from the hotel than we thought. In the end we walked six and a half miles, most of it in almost total dark with only the stars (and the International Space Station) to light our way. Several hours later we staggered into the hotel and collapsed on a couple of deckchairs while a waiter brought us reviving, sweet, cool beer.

Aileen on the beach

Thursday saw us both parasailing followed by dinner at the Banyan Tree. This has to be the best Thai restaurant I have ever eaten in. For one thing they grow all their own spices and herbs in gardens around the restaurant and for another they have a Thai head chef to make the dishes. I promised myself when writing this that I wouldn’t mention prices because “it’s so cheap in India” is a bit of a cliché but I have to say that Aileen and I had a fabulous meal with drinks there for the price of chips and beans at the Chelsea Bun. 

Matthew Parasailng 

Matthew blissed out

Thursday was the big day – we were going to Tivim to visit Aileen’s family at home. Arun picked us up in his micro-minivan taxi at 9am – way too early in my opinion. We went on a wandering tour of the region.

We visited two churches: vast and whitewashed and then we went to Mapusa market. Again, I amazed Aileen by not being fussed by it. We bought some lovely presents for people back home and it was a fascinating experience.

Then we arrived at the family house. Here I came across two aspects of Goan life that seem as deeply ingrained as Catholicism. The first is an obsession with food. Every meal is talked about and planned with meticulous care. I think it comes out of a desire to be hospitable but perhaps also a desire to be seen to be hospitable. There is a contrast between the absolute guilelessness of almost all Goans and this deep concern with appearances. The other theme is singing. While we were eating we could hear singing coming from the church up the road. After dinner we sat down to listen to an impromptu concert by Aileen – although her Ave Maria was comically interrupted by Shirley looking for some lost piece of camera equipment. On the way back in the car, and without any self-consciousness, the whole family sang like the Von Trapps. On a more important note, I discovered where the missing mass of the universe is. It exists in a Goan speciality pudding called Bebinca. This is made out of egg yolk, flour and ultradense superstrings.

Pam, Aileen, Shirley, Don and Arun

In the best Goan tradition, here is what I ate among the bougainvillea and mango trees. I had vegetable curry (which I think was called Caldine) made with mint, coriander seeds and dhania from the garden. The rice was the local variety – thick and meaty with a red vein like the security strip in a bank note – cooked in an earthenware pot over an open fire. We also had large chunks of cucumber, a ‘no-name’ salad and a salad with cous cous in it. All this was rounded off with a trifle and jellaby, which is deep fried sugar in batter. It was another cholesterol apocalypse but very tasty. 

Aileen and Matthew at the family home

Eating lunch with the family

 
A stick insect. Even this close, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a stick.

The Village

Aileen looking beautiful.

Now I’m back in England, I can start to sort out my sensations and feelings. I had a wonderful holiday. Since it is my first proper holiday, I feel that I have got off to a very good start. A week isn’t a long time to get a feeling for a place but my short time in Goa has left me with a love of the people and of the beauty of the place. Like the rust red soil and which seems to run in tiny streaks through the rice; the warmth and beauty of the place seems to run in the people there. I feel like I know and love Aileen and her family all the better because of it.