The Great vacation - Goa

I and Vikram reached Dakshin Kannada (D.K or South Canara) early in the morning. DK was beautiful, as always in the dawn. The gentle first rays of the sun chasing away the layers of mists over the lush paddy fields, the first light illuminating rivers and canals by the highway.
Reached home to have a sumptous breakfast of boiled banana and ghee with the staple idli and thick coconut chutney. There are really some things money can't buy. :)
Mom was thrilled to see her do anmol ratans back home together and embarking on a hazardous journey together. After breakfast, I headed towards the town and booked my tickets to Goa - decided to leave the same day. Mom was not very happy, of course.
The TV channels were rife with the Jessica Lal murder case. NDTV is pursuing it now "24x7" like. Vikram lapped it up as fast as he can.
The stay, otherwise was quite uneventful. The evening was a pain as we soon realised that opting for the bus over the train journey was a big mistake. The bus was a certain Mahabaleshwara stable and horrible would be too mild a word to describe it. I guess the body of the bus would have been built somewhere during the reign of Tipu Sultan. For some reason, the area around our seat smelt as if the the Sultan's men were given the liberty to let their bladders go there and no one's bothered to clean it since.

Go...aaah!
After an harrowing journey to Panjim, one that left my olfactory senses permanently scarred, we ventured to see what is the best way we can reach Pune from Goa. However, over breakfast, we agreed to such logistics are not of acute interest, especially when the Sun, Sand and Soma are beckoning with their arms wide open.
Vikram, being the bushy-tailed-dreamy-eyed dude he is, had some grand plans for Goa. His idea was not far removed from hiring a grand villa overlooking a beautiful beach with some scantily clad women serving us food and drink. After a few reality checks over idli and coffee (both sucked!) I convinced him to settle for a rented room near the beach on Calangute.

"Decent enough place"

This time we managed to find a decent enough place overlooking the sea. Incidentally it was Carnival time in Goa and there were hordes of tourists. And trust me, there was nothing remotely reminiscent of Baywatch anywhere along the beach stretch. Hot bodies are groomed and reserved for television; in the real world one would just find overweight, confused-looking tourists absorbing in the warm weather. We had a 2nd breakfast at the beach and decided to spend the day on the sun-beds that. For company, I had picked up Srinivas Ramanujam’s biography by Robert Kanigel which was fast becoming a good read. I tried to introduce Vikram to the short stories by Roald Dahl but it didn’t quite impress him and he ended flicking my book from me.

Vikram doing pushups :)

Vikram with his artwork

My attempts at art


Drinks and dips...


Lunch is served

...and in between drinks and dips, I spent some time talking to the lady managing the shack and the dude that served us. I wanted to know more about the Carnival but they could enlighten me only so much. It turns out that the Carnival thingie is a fairly new trend (20 years old) and is supported by the Goan Government to boost tourism. A no. of Goan towns participate; each with floats and shows that highlight the town’s specialty. Typically this fest lasts for 3-4 days and there is general gaiety everywhere. Good time to be in Goa (if you don’t mind the crowds)


The La Maria Shack @ Calangute

Kids playing in the sand

Fruit Seller

Being in Goa this time was not easy. Goa stands for all the good times we had when we were in college. Almost every place, especially in and around Calangute, has some memory associated with it. Association is just a painful thing to get over; wonder why do we “associate” it with intelligence.


Beautiful Goan sunset

A Red carpet to the sea

Couple watching the sunset

By dinnertime, both of us got mighty drunk and walked down to the Calangute market; Vikram was quite drunk and wanted to eat have some Goan Pork. Unfortunately, we had great difficulty finding a decent enough place for eating. So we settled for some sea-food platter and Vikram quite enjoyed it. After that, we went to check out the song-and-dance jamboree (keeping up with the Carnival spirit) at the Calangute football grounds. It all started fine, but then some local punk DJ came and spoilt it all by playing really cheap trance music. It totally put me off but Vikram seemed to swing to it naturally. On the way back, he tried to update me why I should shed away my inhibitions and give in to the music and dance. I was like, “Yeah, right bro.”

The carnival


Vikram (in black) dancing away

Heart to heart with little bro
After this we went back to drinking at our room and I had a heated discussion with Vikram on the concepts of civilisation. I was quite appalled when he said he thought we, as a race, are uncivilised. However, I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer when I asked him to define what “civilisation” is. Anyway, those were his thoughts and these are mine; and “never the twain shall meet”. J. It was very late when we decided to call it a day.

After a late breakfast, we packed our stuff and said goodbye to Mr. Fransisco D’souza and started off to Panajim to arrange for the Pune journey. The booking was done and we realised that we still had hours to kill before we start. So we headed towards the city and did some shopping – bought Coffee Liqueur, wines and some fenny. Seriously guys, shopping in Goa (or anywhere else) is such a bloody pain. Also we managed to get into Ritz, which is supposed to the best place for sea food in the city. Vikram asked for a sea-food “thali” while I feasted on rice and Shark Ambotik; we were not disappointed – do check out the place if you are around.
Finally, it was time to go and we took off to Pune in a Kadamba Volvo – it was decent enough journey except for the lousy “Maine pyaar kyun kiya” movie that was playing.
So that was the Goa trip and it ended with us reaching Pune (and finally Mumbai) for Meeta's (my bro-in-law's sis') engagement. The Pune-Mumbai episode should be covered later (hopefully) in a separate blog entry. Cheers till then...