What’s Culture in Goa November 28, 2008

A highly subjective “Best Of” list of culture in Goa over the past month:

Aloysius accepts free pharmaceuticals from the Indian Government

Another hot day in November – Friday was the second hottest day of the year as the temperature touched 37 degrees Celsius. Thank heavens – I thought I was being a wuss and imagining the discomfort was all in my head…

“Tall You” – according to its ad in the Nahvind Times, this product “makes you proud to have good height. Apply TALL YOU once a day to sole for 3 to 6 months. A natural based cosmetic from USA [as if that's a good thing – UR]. No side effects. No rigorous exercises.” What a relief – I’d been doing “tall” exercises all month, hoping to better impress a potential mate with my tallness in the Matrimonials page. On tallness, Aloysius explained that it’s considered an attractive attribute because women who are short may have been malnourished growing up. Tallness is equated with health. No crazier than blondeness being equated with sexiness, I say.

Defeat Elephant Leg – November 15 was National Lymphatic Filariasis Awareness Day, and to celebrate, government-sponsored volunteers visited house-to-house to give us free, unprescribed tablets of Diethycarbamazine citrate (DEC)! Also known as “Elephant Leg Disease,” LF is a mosquito-borne, thread-like worm that invades the lymphatic system and swells your leg like – well – an elephant’s! Naturally I popped the pills; and it’s only after they started burning in my belly that I thought – hmm – maybe that wasn’t such a good idea…

Dirt Hides Food and Life November 23, 2008

And labour is cheaper than plastic

The backyard, with septic tank access and "crater"

 [A longer story, but I hope you read it. - UBR] 

The last time I felt like this, I watched a Thai family butcher a pig. The heat and guts and work of it moved me. I learned to stare that day, and by allowing me to watch them slit the stiff beast from throat to anus, empty its body cavity and season the meat, Mart’s family taught me something about food and life.

This time it wasn’t a pig. And I wasn’t brave enough to stare.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was dark, and the back yard was blue with a fluorescent bulb. For additional light, Aloysius plugged in a rusty desk lamp into a two-wire extension cord, then passed the cord to me though the cement grille that Beerappa and his crew had installed into the back verandah over the past two weeks.

The workers were still around even though the sun had descended behind the cool of the trees. The air remained warm and the back yard smelled of burning leaves, drying cement and human excrement. Beerappa and his crew had laid new pipe for the house’s two toilets and he’d created access points in the ground in case they ever got blocked on the way to the septic tank.

The contract was complete and paid for when Aloysius made a twilight offer to Beerappa, who passed it on to the four men.

A Do-It-Yourself Bike Blessing November 21, 2008

(A sneak preview of the next Momentum column)

Ulrike

“In the name of the Father…” Aloysius raises his right hand to his forehead, and beckons to me to do the same, “…and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” He completes the sign of the cross and holds up a small  plastic bottle of holy water, “Amen.”

“Dear Lord, please bless Ulrike and her cycle. Protect them and keep them safe as they travel the roads of Goa, and Lord – keep Goa safe from them” He aims the bottle and me and my newly-purchased, made-in-India Atlas one-speed and…squirts!

Uncle Aloysius, myself and my freshly-blessed bicycle are on the front verandah of a modest two-bedroom home in Porvorim, a small town in the state of Goa, India. It’s the house that Angelo (“Anju”) D’Souza built and that his son – Aloysius –  has kindly invited me to call home for the next five months.

It Runs in the Family November 20, 2008

I realize I’m here because I didn’t get along with my father

Great grandfather Vincente created distance by seeking the gold rush in Canada - he never returned.

I was preparing the next installment of my column “The Adventures of Mitey Miss” for Momentum magazine and tried to explain to the magazine’s North American readership why I felt compelled to live and write in Goa to live for six months.

“…I find myself and my bicycle finally in India, receiving a D.Y.I. blessing from an uncle who bears a good resemblance to my deceased father,” I wrote, “But unlike my father, his is kind, open-minded, encouraging and light-hearted.”

At some time and for some reason, my father and my relationship went sour very early on. I spent most of my life believing that it was my fault because I was a bad person. I also spent a lot of time believing that he was a bad person. A father and a daughter not getting along because – what? – they’re bad people? Thats simplistic and doesn’t make sense.

But how do you investigate the absence of something? You look at the shapes formed by that void – in my case the relationship with my siblings, my mother, my other relatives, any my other relationships. When I did, I saw distance, always distance. 

A Brand New Cycle November 17, 2008

At 2,950 Rupees, it’s a “steel”

Mr. Raiker accepted my cash payment of Rs 2950 (about $65 CAD) for a new made-in-India Atlas bike – or “cycle” as they’re called here, since a “bike” is a motoscooter.

My Supreme DX has one speed, and comes with a rack, fenders, kickstand, lock and bell. It has a lugged steel frame, steel rims, and a steel linkage brake system. It does not come with a basket, pointed out the sales fellow when he was trying to dissuade me from looking at the lady’s version of the ubiquitous utility bike. Instead, he wanted me to take home an Atlas “Ladybird” which is pink, has cable brakes, is badly welded, and cost Rs 500 more.

I joined the crowds at the Mandovi jetty and when river ferry arrived, wheeled the cycle up with the other utility bikes which were loaded with large blue ice cream coolers.

“New cycle?” asked one of the ice cream sellers. I must have looked very proud with my shiny new bike. I nodded. I followed the bikes and cycles off the ferry at the north bank of the Mandovi River ten minutes later and pointed the one-speed up the five-kilometer hill that would take me back to Porvorim.

Less than a kilometre up, the chain gnashed and then whipped itself between the rear hub and the frame. I wheeled the cycle up to a group of men who leaned against a parked pavement roller. I could see wrenches underneath. I showed them the bike and the chain and they set to work getting the chain free. A fellow in a clean shirt and trousers crouched down, said something about the chain being loose, then loosened the horizontal dropout to pull the wheel back and create more tension on the chain.

“New bike, just now?” he asked. I nodded. I thanked all seven of them and carefully pedalled down the now-dark roadway.

A bike. I finally have a bike.

Bemvinda’s House November 16, 2008

Left behind in Nachinola

Uncharacteristically, Aloysius’s voice grew faint and his sentence ended with the shake of a head. We were lunching on fresh Goan prawns and lime soda at the family-run Andron Restaurant in Nachinola, a village on the Mapusa-Aldona Road.

We were discussing our pre-lunch visit to my grandmother’s (and Aloysius’s father’s) ancestral home just down the road. I watched him go silent and knew that our tour of the vacant estate had brought up some memories and troubling thoughts for him.

Marie and the hospital November 15, 2008

Sprite and brandy, pomp and vinegar

Marie lives next door to us here in Goa’s Defence Colony. She’s eighty-one years young and the widow of a Captain. She speaks (and looks) like the Queen of England. Marie has seven servants, five dogs, and one newly-fractured femur that requires risky surgery.

Before yesterday (when the ambulance and doctor came to take her to Vrundavan Hospital and Research Centre), Marie made it a habit of navigating the loose gravel between her house and ours with one hand on the handle of her walking stick and the other on the shoulder of her night-staff, Maria, for a nightly visit.

A Husband Made in Heaven November 14, 2008

A visit with the Sisters of Saint “Jam and Marmalade” in Siolim

“Roger” is a nun. Born Rosalia Pimenta, she is one of ten siblings and one of three nuns in the family. She lives in Mangalore but was staying at the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Siolim, Goa to visit her blood and spiritual sisters. She invited Aloysius (who married her sister Hazel) and myself to drop by the convent for a visit while she was there. 

Three Bicycles November 13, 2008

All is not as you think

It’s morning, and I enjoy the last of the previous evening’s cool on the front verandah of Aloysius’s house. A squirrel positions herself upside down on the trunk of an almond tree and gnaws a hardened fruit so heartily that fragments of shell drop onto the ground like stones. Little black-and-white Indian robins bustle in the shrubs that wear a new layer of red dust from the blocks of  laterite rock that has been delivered and cut in the front yard.

The sounds of nature dance with the sounds of village. One moment a jungle crow caws from a coconut tree, the next a palm broom sweeps a walk in brisk, wispy strokes. A neighbour’s worker begins another day of hacking away at the momentous stump of a banyen tree, and a bicycle vendor squeezes a bulb horn as he pedals to announce the arrival of whatever is inside the blue-tarped crate tied to his rear rack.

He stops in front of the house opposite ours and I watch their transaction carefully. Still too shy to stop the cyclist to ask what he’s selling myself (is it bread? fruit? fish?), I’ve taken to watching my Hindu neighbour.

Thoughts on freedom and magic November 11, 2008

Amazing what two glasses of wine can do

There’s a sense that I’m in India because I’m meant to be here. That sounds very New-Agey and don’t get me wrong – it’s not as if I arrived and had an innate mastery of the Konkani language – it’s more like this time in Goa is something that I’ve been building up to, and couldn’t have done earlier. Something has brought me here. Something magic.

Twenty years ago, I was in my twenties and living life as a good citizen. I’d gone straight from high school to university to career and was in a committed relationship with a man, his house and his Volvo in a nice southern Ontario town. All was good and normal, but something beckoned me to the farthest edge of the North American continent. Something disruptive. I told J., “I want to move to Vancouver…if you want to do that too, that’s great and if not, I’ll do it on my own.” Lucky for me he agreed. Unlucky for me we broke up less than a year after the move.