RESOLUTIONS 2024.

Time to list out resolutions, I mumbled to myself as I sat before my keyboard-monitor. Sri Husband overheard that—he has sharp ears only for things he shouldn’t be hearing, selectively. Otherwise, he ignores or pretends to be deaf to my voice. He promptly snorted: ‘I hear that every yearend and have not seen you once keeping a single resolution.’ That is not true, he is talking rubbish, as he commonly does, in a dominating, bullying tone, which forces me to fall silent. Hidden in Bhagwat Gita’s chapters is a small verse that implies timidity is a sin. Some other religious text says meekness and giving in is a virtue. Religion confuses me. Whatever, I am what I am and I will make resolutions for the NY, whether or not I keep them. I don’t see why a husband (of forty-five years, poor me) should even be keeping track of what his wife does. Bai Goanna would take my side on this, methinks, if she were around. Where was I? The resolutions: First, I will not cross Chogm Road because I want to die naturally. I don’t want to be hit or run over by a vehicle nor nudged to fall steeply on the leeward side of the slope. Of course, not dying might be a fate worse than death. Lying (pun unintended) with a broken spine, skull, scapula or femur is a horrible alternative. Worst of all, I am certain the driver will get away with a bad dream, not even a penalty. A colleague on a two-wheeler was rammed into by a big, fancy, expensive car. He was accused of getting unconscious instead of inconsiderately making people phone for an ambulance whilst he lay there allowing his head to swell and ear to bleed. That was in Dona Paula, and Chogm Road is getting to be like that locality. ‘No,’ said Bai Goanna making an appearance: ‘Dona Paula has big buildings and is densely populated. Porvorim-Saligao is still not so bad.’ The word ‘still’ implying that we’re getting there; already, Hindi is the local language here and have colonies that resemble a nascent Dubai. Coming back to my resolution of not crossing Chogm road. In the case of an accident, one has to be taken, by kind roadside labourers or the cops, rarely by any gaadiwala, to Mapuca or Bambolim, because even though we now have the Assembly and the Court here, we still don’t have a big government hospital. Gossips say there was one to be built near the Police Station and Sanjay School, but (Sri Husband insists), let gossips gossip, one must not believe them even if their chinwagging is true. For those who don’t know, Chogm stands for CHoG-M Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet, held in 1983. The road existed as a mere path until then. Most part of the official conference was held in Delhi. However, a Retreat for all the attending world leaders was scheduled in Goa, which back then was a destination on the hippie trail and not a full-fledged tourist destination that it is today. Benefits of the event set the ball rolling for the tourism boom in Goa. Thirty-nine world leaders from across the globe attended it. The road, which has grown, been dug, resurfaced, dug again, then hot-tarred, is named after that event. Presently, it is once more in digging phase, to match with Porvorim’s smart sister-city, Panaji. Like happens now, at that time also, Goans had reacted. The Sangharsh Natya Manch (SNM), consisting of student activists from various colleges in Goa staged around 75 performances in towns, villages, market squares and street corners, as part of the campaign against the CHOG-M Retreat, depicting the expenses of some Rs.430 million which they thought was an unjustified, ill affordable luxury for the country and the state. A decked-up, cheerful Goa still follows that routine: crib, complain, comply. Bai Goanna said, ‘Write about the accidents and traffic jams, no.’ To which Sri Husband responded, ‘When there’s no speed and vehicles are crawling, there are fewer accidents. I hate to admit it, but Sri Husband is often correct. The fancy-shancy school on this road, has made deep, cruel cuts in the hillside for its expansion, and cut off the giant tropical trees that stood sentinel in our village. Outside its gate, big cars create traffic snarls at least twice a day. Even if parking space is provided within its compound, each car that enters and exits will take twenty seconds or so to turn and that is enough to make the rest of us crawl. Bai Goanna said: ‘We need a bridge or flyover here.’ Sri Husband and I chorused: ‘Shut up, no more construction.’ We both agreed on something; rare moment. Another reason besides the digging and the school for our traffic to slow down are the eateries. Chogm Road, some say it is now the pride of North Goa, is a glorified khao-gully, (an off-shoot of the NH, considered the khao-main-road). There are small street-food stalls and fancy restaurants selling Goan food, nouveau-Goan food like paneer sorpotel, cuisines from Arabia and Japan, Indianized American pizzas, Rajasthani thalis and more. Interestingly, it has also become an upmarket fashion street. Sri Husband: ‘There’s no place for public buses, autorickshaws or taxis to ply.’ As if, I wondered, they do on other roads in Goa. I mean, who wants public transport? Only losers like him and Bai Goanna. Like the majority, I’m happy with the taxi-mafia and the exorbitant fares, keeps us safely indoors. Of course, that’s because I don’t go out much, and expect that anyone unhappy with the situation must do the same. (Now even walking outside is restricted, refer to resolution at the beginning of this piece, para-3 line-1&2). My neighbours have built rooms (without permission from Panchayat or TCP, naturally/obviously) and let them out to home-deliverers. Two-wheelers with insulated boxes fixed at the back, driven by young men (women’s libbers have entered the military, conquered the medical world, ruled countries, broken sports records, but not yet the world of the online-ordering operational teams) zip across our curvy village lanes at all times of day and night, carrying parcels of groceries and ready to eat goodies. No silencers on their engines, but, mercifully, they don’t use the horns either. Better still, people around me are ordering mattresses, tailors’ chalk packets, underwear, shoes, fans, toys, medicines, fresh meat and whatnot from their homes, to be delivered to their homes. No need to go out and add to the traffic. How to have personal contact, asks Bai Goanna. Pat comes Sri Husband’s logic: ‘No more misunderstandings, no more personal fights. No one meets, no one is unhappy.’ As you have seen, dear Reader, my NY resolution has not gone beyond road-crossing. Wishing you, your families, friends, colleagues, everyone around you and Happy 2024. *** ***

Ponnje.

Ponnje’s sinking streets have stopped making news. There are pictures on Facebook and Instgram showing people rowing through the flooded lanes, possibly in clean, though muddy, rainwater, and not backflow of sewage. Sinking roads and drum-sized holes are so common, it’s no longer surprising. The more optimistic, positive thinking, politically correct lot say that’s a small price to pay for becoming smart. (As I was typing this, the ever-interfering Sri Husband reminded me that the opposite of smart is idiot; he asked whether I have heard of an idiotic city. Ignore him, Bai Goanna advised.) Ponnje, smart or otherwise, might be considered a town or an overgrown village. People think Goa is a city. I’ve heard an airline pilot announce that we were flying over and landing in Goa ‘city’. He either didn’t know or believe that Goa was a state. Most tourists and the powers that be in Delhi-Gurgaon-Elsewhere who want to buy property here think Goa comprises a kilometre wide space parallel to the Arabian Sea where everyone wears long underwear or micro-mini-skirts made of floral cotton and hats to match, drinks beer, parks where s/he feels like and enjoys a frequent traffic violation. If Goa is a city-state, a rural urbania, if you like, is Ponnje a suburb or what? Meanwhile, what does one call the large complexes comprising hundreds of ‘flats’ or ‘apartments’ and ‘villas’ in Dona Paula and Old Goa, Vasco, Assagaon and Porvorim? Are they towns within towns? Each ‘gated community’, as such complexes are called, has its own sub-culture, different from the language, food, music and social habits of the native minority of Ponnje/Vasco/Assagaon/Porvorim. That sub-culture I call corporatese. Management vocabulary, financial inputs, easy expenditure, Reiki, pranic-healing, expensive clothes, domestic-staff problems are parts of the evolution. The addresses are similar, following a pattern, somewhat like government quarters: house and floor and building number with name of group of buildings, usually with the builder’s label, following by nearest landmark, rarely road. House number 302, 6th floor =6/302 or simply 6302. Buildings have alphabets, so C-6302 guides you to the correct unit once inside the big, watchman-guarded gate. (About ‘security guard’ migrants I will write another column).Housing colonies have names like Rio de Marina (to sound exotic) or Gardenia de Velha or Villas Paradiso or simply Jhavier Plaza, Sea Park or the down-to-earth Coconut Orchard. One large and beautiful ‘Casa Familia’, which brought to mind a picture of many siblings, their children and grandchildren enjoying meals together and bickering, too, was inhabited by a single human being and her caretakers. Landmarks are no longer giant jackfruit trees, banyans or peepals. Not even Sai Krupa Bar or Desai Wines and Cashews. Now they are car showrooms, mobile-shops, shoe boutiques (!), pastry stores with fancy names, or restaurants. Sri Husband’s second interruption: ‘Who needs landmarks? We have the GPS and the cell-phone, don’t we?’ Who asked you, I wanted to say. Kept silent. Silence broken: ‘How do you spell the Capital of Goa?’ He peered over my shoulder, making sure I don’t ignore him. Ponnje, which a couple of months ago still had traces of prettiness, is also spelt as Panaji, Panjim, Pannji. Goan pronunciations depend on which language is being spoken. Mapuca, Mapusa, Mhapsa, Mhapshe. Canacona, Kaannkonn. Calangutay, Kal-angoot. And the toppers: Chorao is also Chodne and Thivim is Thiyeim. Then, there’s Parvari and Porvorim. I kind of like different pronunciations and the way we adopt words from other languages. (Aside: an Irish-Chinese boy, US citizen, married a friend’s daughter, Indian, and they’ve settled in the UK. Once, trying to explain something to me, he said, ‘matlab’… ah, I thought, we’ve exported a word that we’d probably imported from the Middle-East centuries ago.) Talking of the new Goanese (see, another new word to replace ‘Goan’) who have followed their hearts and the fashionable trend of spending lots of money to buy homes (called villas and apartments) and very big cars, who live in ‘lifted’, ‘stilted’ buildings with manicured spaces for children to play and seniors to walk in, have brought in many new words to enrich Konkani. I don’t know how much of Konkani they use. The upper-class ones mix with their kinds. Their children play not hututu (kabaddi, in case you didn’t understand), not kho-kho, not coconut-breaking, banana-tree cutting or slow-cycling races. It’s tennis, golf (we will get a golf club with wide, water-guzzling greens sooner rather than later, sure we will. Not just one, maybe fifteen) and skating for them. Migrants who do physical work at a certain rate per day know better Konkani than I do and will enrich it over time adopting words from Bihar, Nepal. On a Ponnje hoarding, I read an advertisement for horse-riding. I believed horses belonged to crisper climes like Rajasthan, the hilly areas of Tamil Nadu and (presently violence ridden) parts of some northeastern states of India or places that had maharajas. “Your beliefs mean nothing”, Sri Husband said. I have seen advertisements for ‘swimming-lessons’, I typed. ‘Swimming pools in many hotels and colonies,’ said Bai Goanna, ‘are filled with water from Sangolda wells.’ She’s jealous of those who have made a lot of money by selling well-water. They own tankers on which is written: ‘Water is free. We charge for the transport only.’ Funny, no? There are those who do scuba-diving, pub-hopping, looking for a fun life in Goa. They are monied migrants, not out to eke out a living. Then there are the still-saving, working-hard types who want to be near Nature, but with good connectivity, home-delivered meals and evening entertainment that is different from classical music soirees; some slog, I have seen, at running good eateries and selling handmade items at pop-up stalls. Goans with Goan DNA, the affording ones, are, to the surprise of the neo-Goans, focussed on academics, careers, even unconventional ones. On 30 June, Friday, at the crematorium in Ponnje, whilst bidding goodbye to one of Goa’s illustrious sons, Adv. Manohar S. Usgaocar, there was a crowd of niz Goemkars. The traffic could have been chaotic because the gods were weeping and the road very rough with all the re-digging, collapsing and bad filling-up. But it was smooth and horn-free. Industrialists and tailors, doctors and drivers, people in big cars and on foot had come to pay their respects to a learned man, courteous and ethical to a fault. They were there to respect a truly learned professional, a ‘good’ man. The gentle behaviour, the voices soft and low, the easy camaraderie that cut across income barriers, that’s what the real Ponnje, the real Goa, is about. Was. Nothing to do with casinos. “Or,” Sri Husband had to have the last word, “Statues.” Grudgingly, I admitted, he spoke the truth. And these events don’t make it to Facebook/Instagram.

Cat Pets by Sheela Jaywant

We called our first cat ‘Babbu Singh’. Sri Husband, a dog-person, didn’t allow it into the house, but did not mind it being fed and sheltered outside the house or under the staircase. The fellow (Babbu, not the Husband) moved his baby limbs, trying to walk, trembling and swaying, in what we labelled The Cat Dance. I don’t remember why we called him Babbu, but later we changed his name to Daan-Singh (Danc-ing, in case you didn’t get it). Over my shoulder, he (Sri Husband, this time, not Babbu) said, ‘You’re writing on cats?’ Bai Goanna echoed: ‘Cats?’ To shut them up, I showed them how much information Google had on them (cats, not Sri Husband or Bai Goanna). It worked. While they read about felines, I typed on. Babbu died young, we don’t know of what. He had been ill for a day, and at the end he opened his mouth very wide, let out a loud terrible sound and just fell down dead. Cannot get that out of my mind. The next one was named ‘Mouse’. Mews=Mows=Mouz=Mouse, see? Sri Husband, who never liked cats was, in the beginning, and all the time, annoyed at the sound and feel of her. She mewed uncouthly at him for no reason at all, brushed herself against his legs to his annoyance and, despite closing windows, sneaked inside the front door when someone opened it, and found her way to him. If he was sleeping, she would unobtrusively curl up against his leg or abdomen, giving him a start when he moved or awoke. He did all he could to chase her away: roll the newspaper and whack her, throw a shoe, yell. Unafraid, she climbed upon the tallest cupboard, daintily walked on the open shelf on which stood precious glass curios, jumped on the kitchen platform and (blasphemy), with her paw or snout, moved the lids from vessels to investigate whether the contents were to her liking, to eat, generally drove him to growl and say unpleasant things about the feline family in general. Undeterred, she put her claws out and scratched him, tore his clothes; never mine. We have no recollection of how she entered our home, our lives. I think it began on a rainy morning. There was half-metre of rain overnight, with stormy winds. Civet cats, snakes, birds, all find shelter in the large jungle trees and shrubs in the confusion we call our ‘compound’. Even the village stray dogs rarely venture inside our wall. Domestic animals prefer open, more sophisticated habitats. This cat, ‘Mouse’, we suspect, was discarded, thrown into our compound by a villager who did not want to keep it, nor destroy it. That was kind of him: we know people who drown kittens or abandon them in markets or by the sea, where they generally die of starvation, or bullying by other strays, or illness. Although Sri Husband’s attitude was ‘get-rid-of-this-cat’, the white and yellow baby was fed with due care. In the beginning, we bought fresh fish for her, served it cleaned and sliced. We discovered she was selective: mackerels-yes, sardines-no. Once, we gave her packaged food, dry pellets of a certain brand. She loved the taste and, thenceforth, refused to even sniff any marine life, fresh or frozen, raw or cooked. No cuddling ‘Mouse’ was the rule. Absolutely no picking up, no baby-talk, no show of affection in any form, not by me, not by Bai Goanna. Thing is, ‘Mouse’ did not follow Husband’s words, neither understood them, nor obeyed in letter or spirit. Almost a year later, Mouse had an affair, got pregnant through multiple partners; her swollen belly indicated another generation was due. I had strict instructions that under no circumstance was ‘Mouse’ to be brought inside now, no kitten would be allowed, never, not in this house, by no one at all, not a chance.... I nodded, and Bai Goanna assured Sri Husband that we had understood clearly: no kittens, no cat, not now, not ever. On another cyclonic night, much worse than the one that had brought ‘Mouse’ to us. the seasonal creepers that climb high up on the majestic trees that stand sentinel around us billowed like oversized curtains. The wind howled menacingly. The teak trees banged against the cement roof, making a booming sound inside the house. There was no electricity, of course. A metal roof rattled over someone’s house. A window slammed. Boughs snapped and fell, twigs were flung across roads. A car horn blared rudely. In that chaos, we heard a feeble, distinct but barely audible ‘mew.’ ‘The cat’s littered,’ said Sri Husband. Bai Goanna and I kept our promise, said not a word about Mouse or what might be happening to her. He flashed the torch in the upstairs balcony. On a tall table, inside a cardboard box, she had littered two-four-six babies. She was still licking them, but looked very tired. Through the drumming drops of pelting rain, he took a long look at the pathetic souls and opened his heart and one bathroom for them. Blobs of flesh, suckling from time to time, first flailing, then creeping, then crawling, gained strength by the day. Then, one day, one died. Another followed the next day and a third a day later. The remaining three were very carefully monitored. Not a peep out of Sri Husband when they boldly clambered up the leg-sleeve of his jeans. Their wobbling, frail limbs got strong and they wrestled with each other, scratched the upholstery, climbed onto the dining-table, ventured inside suitcases and were rescued each time they mewed in terror. Bai Goanna and I pretended not to notice, definitely did not comment on this. Finally, they went to their adoptive homes. Sri Husband, began to like cats, somewhat, referred to ‘Mouse’ as ‘Tiger’s Aunt’ (Vaagha chi maushi), the vernacular description of the species. He was no longer annoyed at the sound and feel of her. She still mewed uncouthly, brushed herself against his legs, and no longer needed to sneak in. She was welcome. Every moment she was with him, she reminded him, mere mortal, that her ancestors were worshipped by the Pharaohs of Egypt. When he slept, she curled up against his leg or abdomen, giving him a start when he moved. He adjusted. She kneaded his flesh with her claws, nails extended, scratching him at times. He playfully pushed her away. She caused tears in his clothes, never mine. It’s noteworthy, how animals win humans over. She vanished one day. No neighbour had seen her, no corpse was found; we suspected she had been eaten by a snake. This was nearly certain when our third and present cat-child, ‘Choo’, alerted Sri Husband one morning to a python less than a metre from his leg. Our part of Goa is still uncemented, with a healthy forest surrounding our modest abodes. Creatures creep, fly, crawl, eat and procreate as Nature intended them to. Choo communicates well. When she returns after her daily nocturnal outings, she tells us about her adventures. Do you know, cats meow only with/to human beings? When Sri Husband was unwell, she did not leave his side. She put a comforting paw on his hand/foot, as if to say ‘I’m there, you will be fine.’ Watching a football match on tv recently, Bai Goanna and I caught Sri Husband pointing out a goal to Choo. We nodded to each other: magic is possible, miracles can happen, when an animal adopts you.

Removing Chappals and Other Traditions

Shri Husband doesn’t wear chappals. ‘Will you change that sentence? It sounds odd, somehow, like I walk around with naked feet,’ he growled as he read what I was typing, over my shoulder. He cannot not interfere with my column. ‘Old habits die hard,’ I mumbled. Bai Goanna piped up: ‘Don’t say ‘old habits’. Habits are formed over a period of time, how can one have a new habit? All habits are old.’ Together, they broke the thread of my thoughts; I typed that. ‘Train of thought,’ both chorused, ‘or series of thoughts. You say thread if you’re talking about emails.’ I wish they would leave me alone when I’m writing. Anyway, if you read the first sentence, that Sri Husband doesn’t wear chappals, let me tell you, he doesn’t wear sandals either. You might imagine that he goes around like MF Hussain. No, his footwear comprises shoes with laces. No Velcro, no clips or elastic to hold them in place, he wears the polishing kind. They are good for the fit. ‘You mean good for the physically fit?’—Shri Husband, goading me. Me, patiently: ‘No. By ‘fit’ I don’t mean physically fit as with a good pulse-rate, flat abdomen and no illness, I mean they are comfortable for the toes, heels and ankles.’ For Shri Husband, buying shoes means giving the salesperson a fit (of the seizure kind). He turns them around to check the soles’ grip, the stitching at the edges, the inside, the back of the heel height, the evenness of the exterior. He asks the salesman when/where the shoes were manufactured, when/how delivered to the store, how long kept out of packing, in the open, on the shelves. I suspect in the billing software, they have a column that alerts the counter staff who in turn alerts the sales team that Shri Husband is a customer to be handled with enormous patience. Most of the time, he is attended to by a senior (means potbellied, greying and normally sitting on a stood, telling others what to do) person, who is armed with answers to the random questions tossed by Shri Husband: ‘Do people buy real leather anymore? Is this real leather? Real? Really? How to tell, it looks and feels like faux leather. Phone your manager and ask him whether it’s real leather or something else. Or (the ultimate threat), I’ll check online.’ Shri Husband wears shoes the old-fashioned way, with socks. Cotton, rarely manufactured therefore hard to find, hand-washed, shade-dried, no-allergy garments. ‘Can socks be called garments? Try using the word ‘hosiery’.’—Bai Goanna’s attempt to distract me. ‘Socks can be called under-garments,’ Shri Husband clarified. The issue is, whenever we visit relatives, temples, hospitals and air-conditioned shops, these days, we are told to remove our chappals. There are no rules for shoes, but it is implied that those also have to be taken off and added to the higgledy-piggledy pile near the entrance. Shri Husband grumbles as he has two layers to shed. Why not just use rubber flip-flops, I wonder; I don’t voice my thoughts, you know that. ‘There are racks and shelves,’ Bai Goanna has told him many times, ‘to keep them on.’ Shri Husband has retorted, ‘They are for show. No one touches their own footwear to put them up on a shelf.’ He is correct, as always. People shuffle their feet out of their footwear and leave the latter wherever they lie. Hence, in many places, the shelves are empty and there’s a pile of chappals, etc. next to the stand, mixed like chivda ingredients. In places where tokens are given and footwear is stashed in pigeon-holes, the chappal-owners do their best to not touch them. The pairs are slid or thrown on the floor by the token-handler, adjusted into place by the chappal-owners with their toes, worn by a wormlike, crawling motion of the feet. Shri Husband does a visual check of public places where footwear is prohibited, from the door. If the floor inside is clean, socks are removed, if dirty, he waits outside. His logic: ‘Shoes are kept outside to keep the inside clean; if the inside is dirty, what’s the point in keeping the shoes outside?’ Bai Goanna’s logic: ‘If you’ve gone somewhere, what’s the point waiting outside?’ Tradition based on common sense made the shoes-outside rule a universal one in the eastern world. Now, many westerners have adopted it for their homes (we, the superior, civilized humans of India transfer so much gyaan to them and yet get no credit). But in offices, hospitals, shops, they are allowed. Oddly, we buy shoes from air-conditioned shops, and vegetables from gutter-lined pavements. Another tradition of almost touching something with one’s fingers and then drawing those fingers to one’s heart or forehead, endures. If my foot touches someone else’s, I do that gesture as an apology. But if someone else’s foot touches me, I still do it. ‘Weird, no?’ Bai Goanna says. Employees touch the outside stairs when they walk into office buildings, then touch their chest with the same fingers, supposedly in gratitude for having a job. Of course, whether one is earning one’s salary has nothing to do with how many times stairs and chests are touched, six days a week, so many weeks per month/year, for a lifetime, especially if you work in a large corporate or the government. Mechanical rituals are a must; work ethics are optional. ‘Cynical you are,’ said Shri Husband. ‘As if everyone is a kaam chor.’ (Look whose being sarcastic about cynicism. Whatever did he eat for breakfast today?). Take burping, slurping, rubbing palm over exposed, rotund belly (only for men). In most places outside India, if done in public, these acts, done deliberately, individually or combined would be considered rude or worthy of psychiatric evaluation. But, our ancestors knew the scientific reasons behind them (including taking pride in a planet-shaped abdomen with a blackhole-navel). If we collected the gas from all the burps and other gaseous expulsions, a million, million male Indians could together harvest a fair amount of fuel to overcome the price rise. ‘Are you serious?’ Shri Husband asked, reading this paragraph. ‘Why would she not be?’ asked Bai Goanna, for once taking my side, sort of. Think Swatchh Bharat. Great concept. Government gave money to build toilets; many of us got funds through the panchayats. Small sheds were built. We use them… for storing coconuts, rusted cycles, wooden planks, cracked buckets, broken chairs; we still ‘water’ our plants when full bladders protest. Tradition is tradition. Our ancestors ‘watered’ plants thus, science has proved that plants get nitrogen/phosphorus/natrium/potassium/minerals/vitamins/hormones/TLC by this method. We should not blindly follow the West and ignore the gyaan that our forefathers followed for thousands of years. ‘Thousands?’ Bai Goanna asked. ‘We’re just in 2022.’ Shri Husband said: ‘She’s including the years Before Christ, way back till the cave years.’ I cannot make out when he’s serious, when not. And then he reminded me of one embarrassing incident. On a billboard was a photograph of a young couple with their two children, and beside the man was written in English: A clean Bharat is a healthy Bharat. I (innocently) asked, ‘That’s Bharat? I thought that was ….. (name of famous model).’ When the guffaw subsided, I realised it wasn’t the name of the man. It was written in the way a second standard textbook is written: ‘When Bablu is clean, Bablu is healthy.’ I mean, in English one writes ‘India’, no? Or at least that’s what I had learnt in school and followed until recently. Just saying. For me that is tradition, saying ‘India’ when speaking/reading/writing in English. Or Konkani, for that matter. Talking of tradition, next time I’ll write about the art of accurate nose-blowing and spitting. Namaste.

LOCKED UP

. Bai Goanna’s only business is to see what I’m doing and report it to Sri Husband. It doesn’t matter that TMC’s flowers are blooming on posters stuck on school boards and public signages, that AAP candidates’ banners are on every lamppost on Chogm Road, that the BJP and Congress are in the same frenzy-competition as Goa Forward and others in the fray, that sewage enriched seawater has made kalwaahn (oysters) less readily available and less tasty, nor that a third tsunami of Covid is imminent. One thing that interests Bai Goanna and Sri Husband is to spy on what I’m writing. The conversation on the above matters went something like this: Bai Goanna, naively: ‘What happens to the election posters afterwards? Are they torn and thrown in the dustbin or left as they are, to uglify the neighbourhood? Or do they use the other, blank side? Or will they be hot-mixed into tar and concrete to resurface Chogm Road after the next monsoon?’ Sri Husband, cynically: ‘Who knows? Who cares? Nothing will change whether or not you ask questions, especially questions with no answers. Or questions whose answers are obvious.’ Me, not voicing my thoughts: ‘Good that they’re arguing between themselves. Now I can concentrate on my writing, bhivpachi garaz na that I will be disturbed.’ The invasion of my privacy is their focus on any given day, so this intra-quarreling with no involvement from me is a pleasant change from the regular routine when they gang up and pick on me. Talking of my regular routine, I get some well-earned solitude when I drive to and from work. No colleagues, no family, just ‘me time’. Which is why I like traffic jams. First gear driving for an hour gives privacy, with plenty of scope to practice ancient Indian meditation techniques. Breathe in, out; stomach in, out; leg stretched, change gear, change foot from pedal to pedal, accelerator to brake; chew steering-wheel to rid the soul of negative vibes. Collectively, a hundred drivers of four- and two-wheelers turn necks from side to side, sharing compulsory relaxation/stretching exercises whilst Patience rules supreme. Some find it stressful, but what the heck, we’re all in Goa ‘for susegaad’*, correct? Whether on vacation or work? (* ‘for susegaad’ is a term I learnt from a visitor, a second-home Goemkar, not a tourist. Like ‘Goanese’ and ‘Cal-ung-youtay’, this is a newbie in my lexicon.) What should take ten minutes from Sangolda to Delfino’s via Chogm Road sometimes takes an hour plus even in the afternoon, at an unsteady 10-20 kmph. It’s good practice for slowness enthusiasts, because the speed limit on Atal Setu is 30 kmph. I have learnt to stick to 29 kmph, to the irritation of other drivers, even though no one is forcing me, and I know that the cameras that I cross are for show. I’m law-abiding—trained by Sri Husband, you know that-- and speed-limits are not to be broken. Even the two-wheeling honeymooners that race alongside on that same bridge, maybe drunk, maybe not, laugh into my windscreen as they pass. But, just as I don’t mind broken beer bottles on Baga beach or the hordes that make sure the Drishti guards are justifying what they earn, I no longer mind people not wearing masks and coughing into my face. Was born and raised in this country, have lived in Goa for decades, so am perfectly aware that rules cannot be enforced or followed except by a low-IQ minority like self and family. Why get stressed when one day everyone must die, no? Whether or not you wear a mask/helmet you will die, no? Whether you dash across the road in between speeding cars opposite the mall at Porvorim or you plunge into the Arabian Sea at low tide when the guards are telling you not to, you know you’re doing it because it’s kismet, not regulations, that will decide when you will exit the planet, right? Same-same about vaxines. Sorry, vackseens. No, wagsinations. Auto-correct is blocked, oof! Sri Husband puts his fingers on the keys: v-a-c-c-i-n-e-s. ‘There,’ he sniggers. ‘Write on.’ I do. Why rules are made is a matter for debate. Example: schools have been shut. The guard at our gate gets chided if he allows anyone inside without permission and screening and a louder yelling if that anyone isn’t following ‘protocol’. So, he makes sure he does his job. Says Sri Husband: ‘If nostrils and lips are covered, you’re happy; cloth mask, paper mask, mosquito-net mask, even socks will do if not a hanky or dupatta. You don’t allow covering the mouth with the palm, though, only because the Rule says, ‘wear mask’.’ I tell him with quiet confidence: ‘We follow rules. We also make sure hands are rinsed with a sanitizer.’ Quips Sri Husband again: ‘The manufacture of the dispenser, the stand for the dispensing bottle, the liquid inside the bottle are new and profitable businesses. You don’t do your own quality control, you buy the cheapest sanitizer available, in bulk. Every shop-owner and auto-rickshaw driver does the same thing.’ I agree with Bai Goanna when she says: ‘Whether the liquid, for some reason blue in colour, disinfects anything I don’t know.’ We recommend all those who enter school to carry along their own soaps/sanitizers/napkins in case ours aren’t up to the mark. We don’t have the stamina to respond to people who ask a million questions whose answers we don’t have: ‘When will school reopen’ ‘When will classes start?’ ‘How long will this virus last?’ ‘When will the government allow us to send our children to school?’ ‘Will the exams be online or offline?’ Different voices, different languages, similar words. ‘When will Lockdown finish?’ the words inadvertently escape my lips as I stretch halfway through my typing. I regret it the very next instant, because a raging debate follows on whether we’ve been locked up or down, inside the house or outside the office, or are we locked at all (considering we’re in touch with the world via the internet). Bai Goanna says, ‘Other than the first time, when we made so without milk, sugar, fish, fruit and cooked what we could pluck off the plants in our compound, we really weren’t locked, were we?’ Sri Husband agrees with her: ‘Even through the first few weeks of Lockdown 2020, people walked towards their villages far, far away. The lockdown or lockup was for the mildly privileged. The very privileged were in and out of Goa, the not so privileged were journeying by foot to remote areas and we, the sandwiched sections of society paid for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and allied pastimes.’ Some put YouTube to good use, learnt baking/chess. Some painted/wrote. Those who were WFH (working from home. If you’re not familiar with this, that means you’re doing something differently valuable, like cooking, raising a child, taking care of a parent or have a valuable life-skill like plumbing, carpentry, sewing) realized that life is about upgrading skills. What we learnt forty years ago may hold good for some. Only for some. Those who feel ‘quality of life’ is gauged by smelling flowers, watching and filming sunsets, rearranging the furniture according to vaastu/feng shui, and posting old photos on Facebook are the privileged ones. Just one percent of our population can do that. If you are reading this, you’re in that top one percent. Even as I typed on, Sri Husband mumbled: ‘Those with the real issues of lack of incomes, serious squabbles on the domestic front, illnesses not connected with these mutating viruses that couldn’t be dealt with as they should, whose children have lost two valuable years of learning, they are ones locked up in their karma, Covid or no Covid.’ Grudgingly, I admit: ‘True, that.’

The Budget Month

April, start of the new financial year. I have no idea why it cannot coincide with the regular New Year. “You,” accused Shri Husband, “have no idea about many things.” I chose to ignore His Sweetship until I was through with the typing. A quick googling told me the reasons (for the financial year starting on 1 April, not why Shri Husband was his normal, irritable self). One said: ‘The income relies upon the estimation of the yields that are harvested in the period of February and March. Thus, two months of span give government idea whether the revenue is going to increase/decrease.’ But, the mystery remains unsolved, like that of evolution of mankind, because there are other theories. One, the Income-Tax Act came into force from April 1, 1962. Second, it might have been to prevent year end accounting and balance sheet, etc., preparation coinciding with Holiday season of Christmas and New Year. Remember, before computers and emails (seems unbelievable that we lived through paper times), lots of work had to be done with ink and mental arithmetic. Papers had to be punched and filed (that hasn’t changed, hard copies are still greatly valued). Importantly, the files or copies had to be dispatched to a wonderland called Head Office, which often was in England. After that, the comments were written and the documents returned to have responses to comments noted on the files which were re-dispatched by sea to the land of the Rani. By the time the accounting for the year was over, it was April of the following year. Nothing’s changed, really, we’re still going bang into the 31 March deadline year after year, never smoothly sailing through it. Another reason: April coincided with the Hindu new year. This is a weak example, for many traditional businesses begin on Dassera or even the Laxmi Pujan done at Diwali. “But, then,” I read from the internet, “festivals like Navratri and Diwali fall in the month of October and November, followed by Christmas in December. These account for heavy sales for the retailers making accounting complex and time consuming.To avoid the collision of both so as each of the activity gets efficient time and attention, December might not have been preferred as the month of closure of the financial year.” I love Google, I said, as I got this information. The “grrrumph” sound from Shri Husband was best left un-deciphered; I’d rather not solve the mysteries of his mind. Importantly, India is not the only country that follows this trend. We have company: Canada, United Kingdom (UK), New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan. In Delhi, the FM and the PM and the entire stable of television channels have already gone beserk over the national budget announcements and their repercussions on industry, farmers, tourism and what not. No concessions for freelance humour columnists. No sympathy either. At micro level, in a tiny office in a little Goan school, the accountants bend over ledgers, cash-books, vouchers, receipts and across that wonderful invention called Excel. For some reason, Excel has a quarrel with Tally, the finance software. Both have disagreeing totals. Same person making the entries from the same documents, but something or the other doesn’t match. Frustration means chai is needed. We have a moody electric kettle that refuses to work when we want it to. We budget for a new one and repairing is working out more expensive and getting readymade tea in a plastic bag from a nearby gaddo doesn’t satisfy the chai-drinkers. What follows the Excel-Tally disagreement are: • explanations (‘Vendor send previous full year’s newspaper bill after 1 April’), • digging into memories (‘Remember, the sewage overflowed and we got labour to clean it?’) • discovering scribbles on scraps of paper stuck in diary pages (‘Arre, I forgot to write this in the register, we had got the fire-thing refilled, no?’), • and manual recalculations help to match the figures (‘Better to do like this by hand. Computer must be wrong’). Finally, everyone’s satisfied. The income depressed me. A few parents, even those who are regular salaried government employees, resisted paying fees quoting ‘Covid’. The slum-dwelling, migrant labourers have been better behaved. The teachers—am proud of them—were willing to work for nil if things got worse. “We can’t waste the children’s year,” they said. If there is a Chief Principal in the Sky, s/he must have heard that and made sure we had just enough each month to pay the salaries. To the rupee. “Then,” said Shri Husband, as always looking over my shoulder to read what I was typing, “What was the case for ‘depression’?” Best to keep quiet, otherwise he gets into lecture-baazi mode. I didn’t even feel like telling him that many budget schools have done so poorly that they have either shut down or are on the verge of doing so. We’ve scraped by, thanks to the efforts of the teachers and responsible, decent parents. The expenditure, other than the meagre salaries of a budget school, was on electricity and water bills. Even the telephone didn’t get used. Stationery was hardly used as the summative examinations, unit tests, formative assessments, continuous evaluation (for those not in this profession, these terms are not synonyms) were held online. The lower-kindergarten students had spent an entire year in school without having seen a classroom or their teacher in real life. How to predict for the coming year, I mused, with the virus mutating from avtar to avtar? No one listens to my mumbling. Everyone gets on with the job at hand. We budget for masks and sanitizers. Liquid hand-wash. Floor-cleaning fluids. Disposable gloves in the first-aid kit. I recall a chain-owned beauty-parlour recently opened in Porvorim charged us Rs 100 for a tissue apron worn by the hair-cutting person, a flimsy mask worn by the one getting the hair cut, and blue plastic covers for the footwear (in case the virus energetically jumps from shoe to lip defying all expert predictions). I wonder what their budget looks like. These days I wonder what any budget looks like. Numbers-challenged me is fascinated by such things, like I’m fascinated by man going into space. Same level of difficulty. Second ‘grumpphh’ from Shri Husband, this time decipherable, but not for printing in a public space. The budget exercise is over. Estimates, guesses, calculations will play out in real time as the months unfold. Ruksana, Suhasini and Francis have breathed a collective sigh of relief that all was well. Mistakes were caught, errors rectified. Looking backward, I think, in a country where so much is siphoned off, so many under-the-table transactions happening, it’s a joy to know that there are many, many, many people living honest, transparent lives, where every annual budget is accurate and unchallengeable. Viva to the common man, the woman on the street, the little-folk of India.

Covid Events 2021

We’re unlocking ourselves; senior classes and colleges have tentatively opened, Board-examinations have been slotted for May 2021, more than a month later than the usual times, but we’re still teaching on WhatsApp. Mid-year, who knows, the National Education Policy might jolt Goa into improving the lot of future generations: and make government teachers, well, actually teach rather than punch in every morning to justify getting salaries. Actually, I must add, contrary to expectations, the teaching community did very well through the online classroom phase. Some, who hadn’t known how to handle a cellular phone learnt within seven days to record and air lessons on YouTube and take tutorials over Zoom or GoogleMeet/Team. (BTW, I used the word ‘cellular’ phone because according to Shri Husband, who claims—perhaps rightfully--that his English is better than mine, a ‘mobile’ phone should be able to move on its own or be driven, not carried.) Now that the Calangute hordes have gone back to re-infect folks in Karnataka, Maharashtra and wherever else they drove here from, the traffic has thinned on CHoGM Road. (Note: CHoGM is the correct spelling. Chogum is not.) Familiar local thug fights, over long-festering family-feuds, unpaid rents and scarce parking-spaces, have re-started as the drunken tourists have gone. We’re venturing (“Please write ‘masked, sanitized and distanced’,” dictates Shri Husband, peering over my shoulder) out of our territory, our village home, after three-fourths of the year. One (rare) thing we both agree upon: we don’t take punga with any virus. It took god knows how many centuries to eradicate ‘Devi’, the dreaded and highly infectious small-pox which left people with no eyesight and with ugly pock-marks on their faces even when they survived. Praying/fasting didn’t help, inoculations did. Remember polio? That awful virus which made people get sudden high fever and flaccidity and left them lame and helpless for a lifetime? How many drops for how many children over how many years have now conquered it… do the math to see how difficult it was/is to tame a rogue virus. Again, prayers/fasting didn’t work, the vaccine did. If the above two paragraphs were frightening to read, that was the intention. Covid-19 is no common cold. It’s not a Goan/Indian/Asian thing either. Get used to the idea that it’s a ba-ad infection and the only way to beat it is by taking precautions. “Masks, hand hygiene, distancing,” repeats Shri Husband in his irritating (he’s always correct, that’s what makes it irritating) way. So, with every precaution carefully taken, we chose to attend whatever we safely could of IFFI, and the Kesarbai Kerkar Sangeet Sammelan. IFFI first: I missed three days because although the documents were loaded (‘up-loaded’ – that was Shri Husband’s voice in my ear—‘although in your case, loaded might be correct, too.’), no acknowledgement came through my email. A visit to the (really helpful, cheerful and efficiently staffed) counter at the ESG worked. I got my card in a jiffy. After that, we booked our tickets online and dutifully saw what we were entitled to. It wasn’t the same. No queues, no arguments, no wrappers/tissues or tempers flying around. Some things were unchanged: blimp-shaped women wearing translucent dresses with easily viewed, brightly-coloured, gaily-printed underwear competing with similar-looking/dressed men. Filmy-creative-artsy devil-may-care attitudes are fun and common at such events. Staid old me notices and stores in the memory such things. As well as the soggy popcorn at Inox and cold chai in teeny steel conical tumblers at KA. And announcers with semi-Indian accents (love ‘em). College-student ushering highly enthusiastic cine-philes and time-passing retirees, fingering the micro-keyboards on their gadgets at sonic speed as they multi-tasked, messaging friends, checking our e-tickets/temperatures, chit-chatting as they did so. Guards who didn’t look like they were themselves secure, what to say about keeping us that way inside/outside the auditoria. Inside the theatres, it was a pleasant surprise that there was no national anthem to stand to. Aside: we weren’t the only ones who were carrying tiffin from home, going by the dabbas on the table outside the entrances. Missed the out-of-Goa regular IFFI buffs. The Kesarbai Kerkar Sangeet Samaroha: a big, big treat. If I had the money, I’d visit Salzburg or the Sydney Opera or Broadway. If I had the political clout in this country, I would charge that kind of money for attending these utterly delightful concerts. I read that it’s amongst the ten best classical music festivals in the world. With good reason. The curation, the quality of singers, the backdrop (every year it’s memorable) is of very high standard. Shri Husband says so, too, and we all know how hard it is to get a kind word out of him. In spite of the cheer in my life, cannot end this column on a happy note this time. Reason is the Farmers’ rally in Delhi. Biting cold, injustice, the might of the State on protestors, the goons who may have infiltrated the crowd, the forced-to-forget problems of the ex-Servicemen of this country who are asking for their dues--refer ‘One Rank One Pension’ or OROP-- for the last couple of years. Governments may mean well, may want India to be catapulted into the league of the Developed Nations, but if earlier we were terribly slow, now we’re pushing things through without dialogue/discussion; that means many points get missed, often vital ones. Listening to vox populi is democracy. I read today that in the Andamans, bridges will be built. The pros to the population and the cons to the environment need to be discussed over by experts. Without the inputs of environmentalists, modern town-planners/designers and the local population, there will be cause for alarm. In Mollem, the people let the government know they were serious about what they wanted. See what happened about getting the IIT to Goa? People may be unlettered, but we cannot assume they are unintelligent. Development is necessary, so is caution whilst driving towards it. I benefit from the flyovers and broad roads because I can reach Kala Academy, my Pandharpur for all that’s fine in my world, with ease. But there are no footpaths for me to walk on, to reach a grocery-store. No clean/comfortable/regularly-run, fairly-priced, ticket-providing buses that will take me from my home to wherever I want to go. No taxies that won’t fleece me unfairly. In the meanwhile, the broad roads will take many big cars which will keep burning expensive fuel as they search around for parking space. The fields on the sides that grew food, that made Goa pretty, are getting smaller and drier. The number of coconut trees is dwindling as also the number of climbers to get those coconuts down. The newer, more productive varieties of the nut have a different taste and texture. The beaches, once the pride and joy of Goans, have as many plastic bottles/packets as footprints. Or more. “Now look who’s giving the lecture,” Shri Husband said. Always has the last word, he does.