HERE COMES ANOTHER BEER IN THE MARKET…
WHAT is it about human beings that they will prefer to drink anything else but pure aqua or clean refreshing thirst quenching water? If I may get water from the Chashma Shahi spring in Srinagar every time I would drink nothing else! But forget all that luxury of drinking water from Srinagar, I don’t know if the water is being bottled and exported now in glass bottles or plastic bottles? This is to say the market for alcohol continues to boom in Goa and yet another press conference announced a new beer. This time around it is the American Brew Crafts so called “Blockbuster” beer with the owners waxing lyrical about its unique recipe.
Is the market for beer growing in Goa and India and around the world? Over the years I’ve seen mostly men guzzle their favourite beer which could be lager – considered a heavyweight beer but now there are several lighter and low in calories lagers. Hurrah, even beer drinkers are becoming health-conscious about calories!
Actually nowadays a lot of folk consider some liquor useful for better health! Beer has a healthier brief. In the case of beer the story is that hops make up just a small portion of the recipe for beer but that is what gives beer its keeping quality; plus, because it is fermented with yeast, some say, it has vitamin B complex nutrients.
So relax, drink a good low calorie lager occasionally to cool down on a hot day! A friend of mine says beer takes care of gallstones and other stones of the digestive tract and if there’re any true life accounts of this please let me know here, I’ll be happy to share testimonies.
MORE men love beer in India and some of my girlfriends love shandy which is beer mixed with lemonade to give it a tangier flavour. Some folk like their beer somewhat bitter in the understanding that bitters improve digestion! And of course don’t let anyone convince you beer is non-alcoholic, beer has anything up to 5% alcohol so guzzle or imbibe too many beers and you will get nicely or nastily gregarious…plus, remember alcohol is alcohol is alcohol, get addicted and you’re fattening your liver and giving your kidneys a hard time.
That notwithstanding, I must mention here that a study funded by Dutch Foundation for Alcohol Research (an alcohol research group) found that beer is actually better than other alcohol like wine which is certainly news. It seems drinking a good beer can lower a chemical called homocysteine which is the indicator factor for expressing the severity of heart disease. Somehow beer improves HDL and the two good nutrients in it are folate and B6.
This said, don’t get carried away and go on a beer binging trip, my dears! Beer may decrease the risk of heart disease and osteoporosis but excessive consumption is another story altogether … cancer, liver disease, cardiovascular disease. Beer is known to aggravate gout, trigger asthma attacks. The fact is all out biological constitutions are different and react differently to ingredients and until you go look into the nitty gritty of beer brewing you will never know what exactly is the culprit.
At the American Brew Crafts launch of their Blockbuster in Goa on May 25, 2022 I learned that the company is looking for land to start a modern brewery in Goa. According to the ABCL boss Satya Siva Ati (director) they have Blockbuster lager light and strong and these will be competing with many other beers in Goa. They believe in doing crafted innovative recipes and their beers are already doing well in Telangana and elsewhere in the country, they will undoubtedly offer competition to Kingfisher (and Carlsberg, Budweiser, Tuborg, Heinekan, Foster’s, Corona Extra, Haywards, etc, anymore you can think up).
What goes into beer making? Mostly fermented wheat but barley is better, some percentage of the fruit hops (usually imported) and flavouring agents. It’s these flavouring agents which make give beer their palatability and winning factors…nowadays, we also here of fruit beers in the countries of the West but these still have to come to India.
And finally, listen to this one. A 2019 study found that postmenopausal women from South Korea who drank beer two to three times per week had higher bone density than South Korean postmenopausal women who did not drink beer. This is to say go for beer but remember the flip side is too much results in negative health values. A 12-ounce beer may not do damage but say no to seconds as a good rule to follow. Eating a diet of fruit, vegetables, whole grain and lean protein helps build fighting fit health better.
One of these days I will go get myself a golden lager!
TO MOVE on to another subject all this talk of rebuilding long demolished temples in Goa is coming out of my ears. Is it really going to happen. Even Chief Minister Pramod Sawant wants to know what’s wrong in rebuilding temples which are destroyed by various rulers in ancient times! He says he would like to revive a preserved culture? As if culture is a static thing and doesn’t evolve over time into something finer or grosser!
TEMPLE SHENANIGANS
And there is my friend Shrikant Barve who wants the Church to feel some remorse at least about the demolition of 556 temples in 16th century in Goa with the Portuguese rulers acquiring land and property of the demolished temples, as also the land and property of servants working in those temples. In 60 years of liberation he says no one bothered about this aspect of colonial history and how the people lived beneath its yoke, they continued saying “Kokne Kiristav lived peacefully in Goa.”
Clearly, this is not true although many of us think so. There has always been Christian Goa and how much did it dominate Hindu Goa during the colonial years? Barve says it is the Church which should take the initiative to identify location of the 556 ancient temples and cooperate with the government of Goa in some form of repatriation of rights to the people of Goa. He appeals for some remorse, “Please understand that Goan Hindus have suffered a lot to keep their faith intact (and as for his Goan identity please note that his ancestors were Mahajan of Shri Mahalakshmi Temple, Panaji)….so they too had suffered in times past.
Barve says, “116 temples were destroyed in 1541-43 in Ilhas i.e. Tiswadi (land and property passed on to church) by Vicar of Goa Manuel Vaz. At his time SFX was in Goa. When Vicar was returning back to Portugal in 1545, SFX wrote a good lengthy letter to King John III praising Minguel Vaz and requesting king to send Vaz back to Goa. SFX wrote `he enjoyed watching destruction of Hindu temples and deities.’” To all this one can only say may goodwill prevail in today’s times when certainly we have more important priorities to engage with.
CM sir, is there anything which says in today’s times we have to behave like the bigoted Portuguese of the medieval ages or hedonistic Muslims before them – all who came to loot and kill but later settled and stayed on to become part and parcel of conquered lands? How does it help Hindus today to model themselves on those who came looking for empires and souls so many hundreds of years ago? It is so laughable to think that we can do tit for tat without paying a heavy price we are not even able to imagine! So much water has flown under the bridges of history and there has been so much good too which has become the warp and weft of the fabric of the nation today.
To wreak petty vengeance and seek revenge for what happened in the past in our surely more enlightened times would be akin to declaring civil war in a nation which has already seen tough times come and go and loss of very real achievements in the last 70 plus, plus years! Can we even imagine what kind of modern-day evils it will raise if we start fighting and polarizing our own people?
And will it solve any of the far more real problems staring us in the face in Goa and India today? Think about all this and don’t just think. I like my Goa as it has evolved, full stop, I say forget the past because it is so much more forgettable in favour of magnanimity – that is what will truly make us different and a great people to know which throughout history we have been despite the ups and downs!
ON that note it’s avjo, poiteverem, selamat datang, au revoir, arrivedecci and vachun yeta here for now. Before the rains really descend on us take in interest in the purumentchem fests taking place here, there and everywhere – go stock up on your bunches of onions, chillies, oils, beans, spices and balls of tamarind without which no curry may be delicious when the rain starts falling all around us to calm us down in mind and body, heart and soul!
–Mme Butterfly