By Tara Narayan

IT’S no point saying Goa weather was not like the current weather when I first start visiting Goa from Bombay in the 70s – for one thing while shuttling around in the old rickety buses Kadamaba or not, Goa was much greener, a gorgeous green paradise with heavily sand duned covering from Baga river and on to Calangute, Candolim, Sinquerim right up to Aguada beach and the old Taj Aguada Resort. Now it is more jazzed up of course.
I remember one could get lost in the sand dunes and not see the coastline far away….today honky tonky beach homes and fancy resorts are literally falling into the sea waters and so many thousands of trees have been cut down that both Goa’s coastal wells as well as hilly areas are drying up with depleted natural water systems which the monsoon rains would fill up annually. Water resources in wells, rivers and underground are a real blessing and to be cherished and protected from exploitation….
Alas, 23 years down in Goa I have seen the face of a green, water-rich, cool Goa changing and today is it hotter, rainier, but weirdly so….I’m not sure if people from the East still come to Goa for rainy-day holidays! Have you read Alexander Frater’s “Chasing the Monsoon: A Modern Pilgrimage” (1990) in India? You must read it to really get a feel of monsoon rain in Goa. Much of the green paradise pleasures have gone to be replaced by not primary infrastructure in place first, but lop-sided industrial, urban development which is so steeped in corruption that it’s taken a toll on the Goa we sought and still seek to retain. Vertical coastal cities always make for a horror story in the long run (we have many examples in Chennai and Bengaluru). It is still not too late to save Goa from going the Mumbai way!
Too much development of the urban kind has taken a toll on the Goa of old which still lingers here and there. Everyone is falling over each other to own a holiday condominium or villa in Goa but most jet-set wealthy will not live here beyond a few winter months. They know that the primary good life infrastructure is still not in place for the many who’re natives or the migrating labor settlers for whom Goa may be Al Dorodo or some such thing.
Goa is chok-a-blok with high end resorts though and being a beach tropical paradise, it’s become a people really come to eat for there are so many eateries up and down the coastal belt of Goa – eat Goan Konkan-style or national or international-style, eating out is big time pass-time in Goa despite the Covid lockdowns.
EATING can be such a treat. So many come to Goa to start an eatery specializing from Kashmiri to Assamese to niche continental cuisines (or least pretending , much of it can be just con stuff like some newly arrived restaurateur may try to pass off the old Goan poder’s flat bread rounds as “pita bread.” And soups may be from packets and you will never know…nowadays, at one place, I found they’re making fritters or pakoda from Maggie noodles. Recycled Maggie noodles are on many menus and priced three times over of course; just add in paneer cubes or some chopped veggies or mushrooms and voila – you have a high-end or upper crust makeover Maggie noodles from a packet. Ditto for soups recycled out of packet soup powders.

Honestly, we don’t know how to eat anymore and that is why we suffer so much in mind and body, heart and soul. We just make do, make do, make do – unless in proper homes there’s a family cook or well-paid maharaj to prepare large integrated family meals just so for health, wealth and wisdom, something like that.
My sister in a Chicago suburb says out in the US of A most of the time they’re cooking at home with semi-prepared foods purchased from Walmart and similar shopping malls….quick fix meals are easy if you have the pasta and the sauce from a packet and a label you trust. Very often she makes an Indian sabzi or dal and stocks in the fridge for quick re-cycling when required. The refrigerator and cold storage units a lifesavers and only during on weekends she may be cooking from scratch, she has a masala dibba but spices collect fungal residues in their centrally heated hot house homes if you don’t use them up quickly!
Many new homes which working young adults use are rentals without proper kitchens. Mostly it’s buying home food or eating out at the MacDonalds or Kentucky or pizza joints and occasionally at a proper restaurant when the bill may add up Rs5,000 plus, plus per person for the meal. Friends go Dutch unless someone is celebrating a birthday or anniversary…many fat Indian marriages take place in resorts in Mexico for example, where everything is laid on but the airfare to and fro is paid for by guests. Says the sister, “This is how it is, you have to spend on something and it it’s friends we’re all doing it for one another’s big fat Indian wedding!” I replied, attending a big fat marriage out in the USA can be prohibitively expensive and she shrugged. By Indian standards, yes.
THE cost of living is far, far more inflationary than in India where more than 50% of the family ekes out a living on maybe two dollars a day. And I was thinking of how much inflation is spiralling away with even food being taxed by an insensitive, insensible government which on the one hand cannot provide jobs for its young adult generation and on the hand is collecting funds through extortion, blackmail, and criminal bullying – people do not want fake mai-baap government’s charity, they want jobs which they work honourably so that it will bring them enough material comforts to live in peace instead of being anxious, stressed out, forever struggling to make ends meet till doomsday. India needs an aam aadmi (as in working and middle-class people) government and not a khaas aadmi government living in the pockets of 20 or 25 families colossally wealthy families in trade-off deals and the sale of public infrastructure for a few songs in industrial and business deals.

Well, think of all this and make the right choices for a brighter future when you’re voting next, my dears! And yes, review your eating and drinking habits today…start eating closer to Mother Earth’s womb and bosom as I always say, try, try and try. It’s advice I constantly give myself too.
WITH thoughts of decent eateries on my mind I discovered that the long, long street of Caranzalem down which I’ve lived for several years, shifting from rental to rental…has more than a dozen places to catch a bite and more are opening up while some have closed down! Last week I stepped into Camilo’s (opp the Gera building) and seeing they have a tandoor and “Tandoor Aloo” on the menu I asked if they were done Continental or Moghlai or Lucknowi style…the confused proprietor said, “We marinate the aloo in ginger-garlic paste and cook them in the tandoor, finishing off in the tava with some plain oil light masala tempering …”
One has to order them in advance for a few patrons ask for tandoori aloo! I must be a rare exception. This is a beery, boozy semi-fresco eatery and I noticed boiled groundnuts and sliced cucumber were put on each table…the owner here said come and pick up my tandoori aloo at 7.30pm and I did. The reddish cut and whole, slightly charred in tandoor potatoes were flavorful but some were slightly uncooked in the centre…I told the owner I was dreaming of just baked potatoes in jackets to be split open and drooled with olive oil aioli or sour yoghurt with green herbs like oregano or mint or rosemary chopped in.
He laughed and waved me away, nobody will eat that in his hard-core Camilo’s Multi Cuisine Restaurant, where a cross-section of people turn up to drink and eat! Most like it spiced up, hot and yes, grilled and tandoori meats rule their kitchen. Their menu is all about rawa fries and this chilly and that chilly as in mushroom chilly, paneer chilly, aloo chilly and so on, try their veg crispy next time. It’s an extensive menu of various biryani rice affairs and some Chinese and lunch-time special thali meal deals which are popular; lots of chicken dishes naturally. They also have special family packs which sound interesting, check out if you wish. It’s the kind of off-street place you want to go with a friend.
Generally, these days I’m looking for old-fashioned favourites with jacket potatoes, minestrone soup and baked veggie au gratin affairs, nobody even has decent cheese balls to offer with coleslaws; and where may I find real pies instead of puff pastry killers? Tell me!