I have recently turned 33 and managed to hurt my back. Badly. The beginning of old age. My last blog post was nearly 3 years back. But reading a few, I feel in essence I've remained the same whiny person inside with an outer layer of righteous anger at the injustices in the larger world (the latter also unchanged since, what, 20?).
I just changed the blog layout. It was orange. ORANGE. MY blog.
But I still cannot seem to be able to change my blogger profile which still says, 5 years too late, that I'm an ovo lacto vegetarian. Yeah right. In this day and age, when eating beef and a wrong surname could get you killed back in ye olde deare muddership [udder is apposite, amirait?]
Oh that's right. Despite the wrong colour of skin, I'm now an aspiring expat. More realistically, I am failing [and flailing] at #farang-ing in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A place that barely existed on my mental map five months ago.
I thought this blog post would be a think out aloud on why I loved to hate Goa where I spent the last two years. Fun fact: it was almost exactly 2 years. I reached Goa on 20th January night in 2016, one cat in tow. I left in the evening of 20th January 2018 with three cats and Baba with me, two cats having been brought over by the aforementioned parent from Kolkata to Goa (via Bombay) in between. I have six cats, dear reader. I am kinda married to them. But, very reluctantly, I live with only three of them (as all of them do not get along, plus intra and inter country travel with critters is difficult, not to say extremely expensive and hazardous business).
New paragraph because bleddy fun fact took the life of it. Oh...damn.
So Goa. Maybe #Goa? But also known as #sogoa #goadiaries #greengoa #goagram...
Yes I'm relatively new to Instagram. My hashtag game is strong...and lame because it still doesn't get me enough likes.
Well I like Goan food and drinks. Especially the drinks and the food at RitzPinto's and MustardTanvi. Oh god tourists don't spoil them places now (thank god not many readers come thisaway). Especially the drinks. So much so that I've stopped drinking now that there's no fen(i) in my life. Seriously, literally everything else gives me ombol and hangover. Okay, truthfully, Goan food and drinks are just love. Urrack and xinanio, tongue roast and solantluem, pao and beef roast, choriz and dodol, I could go on. Also, Mapusa market is love. My abiding regret that everytime I went there I got so weighed down by catfood and fish and beef and chinre and persimmon and kokum and avocado that had to stop by at Xavier for a plateful of greasy beef cutlets, puffs, chops and later would hardly have the energy to photograph the babies and babas, aunties and uncles, and the the wonderful wonderful wares, each with it's own hidden corner.
Okay now it seems like I really loved this place and I miss it. So let me count the unsavoury ways that this place did not endear itself to me. Tourists, locals, expats (white and wannabe white)--the people of Goa got on my wrong side and I on theirs 98% of the time. As for the two percent (some select colleagues, few locals, some quizarse), even the person I loved I hated, ahahahaha (brittle laughter as she wipes away tears offscreen). Take this lovely doggo and catto lady who was kind and generous and fierce and absolutely convinced her family was performing kala jadu on her and once berated me for laughing too loudly with my friend in my room on the first floor thereby disturbing her sleep at 10.30pm on the ground floor. At least she had a really good excuse: a really hard life taking care of animals that were constantly dumped on her. The Hindu grocery store aunty on the other hand is a diffrunt story. A young [single female] colleague was her tenant. Everytime I went to buy eggs I would hear a litany of complaints about how S [said colleague] came home late. I was therefore rather relieved when she out of the bloo asked one day "Tu Catholic ke ghar pe rehti hai?" and promptly stopped speaking to me or making eye contact upon my confirming her wurst fears.
I could go on but I won't. Because the people are only a small part of the reason. Truth is I missed being anonymous in huge crowds and cities, in all their grimy glory, are such marvelous melting pots of human interactions--bodies jostling, teeth crunching on savoury streetfood, exchanges with the autowallah or some random stranger. These might be fraught, violent, unsafe at times, but are often much much more. Take the conversation I once had with a random autowallah from UP who was dropping me to CR Park (I was going to buy feeshes for kittehs: I was still an ovo lacto vegetarian, you see). Upon finding out I was from Bengal, he kept asking me about Farraka because he had read about the dam in his school. "Allahabad mein aisa dam nahi hai na. Toh didi, kaisa hota hai? Wahan machhli pakad sakte hai kya dam mein?" I was short and curt mostly to hide my woeful lack of knowledge about Farakka and thereby getting lowered in his estimation.
There was no chance of this in Goa. Noone is curious about outsiders--they just weird yo. For all its inherited cosmopolitanism in law (succession, property etc), and cuisine, architecture and music, and despite its investment in remittances from Gulf or Europe, Goa is still deeply narrow-minded when it comes to migrants (unless they are white and/or rich, of course, and remain clustered in areas like Ass-gaon, driving rents sky high). To belabour the point about inherited intinerance in my blood (grandchild of refugees, etc), I have felt most at home in places that have been refuge to many that have washed up, often unwillingly, on foreign shores. From the Wednesday market at Den Haag populated by Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese ladies haggling over ridiculously cheap produce to the bylanes of Khirki and Lajpat Nagar where Somali refugees and Afghan medical tourists, Iraqi restaurant owners and Bengali rickshawpullers, Kashmiri students and single women migrants, lived in uneasy but cosmoplitan neighbourliness.
This woman was an island not entirely of her own making in Goa. Scooters might cause woeful bodily harm to small frogs in your path but don't do much by way of interactions. Unless you have an accident and start bleeding from your nose, that is. Coconut palms swaying in the breeze and sunsets over pristine blue water are only the tourist photographers' delight. They all eventually look the same without people in them. The monsoons (and I am the very devil here to Goa lovers and their love of the verdant greenery bursting forth) were the hardest with the relentless downpour not letting up for hours, no sun for weeks, months. Goa was for me like Europe, only with better weather and much better food (but no museums). Why did I hate Europe? Dammit yaar, I hate everything, is that not crystal clear?
I just changed the blog layout. It was orange. ORANGE. MY blog.
But I still cannot seem to be able to change my blogger profile which still says, 5 years too late, that I'm an ovo lacto vegetarian. Yeah right. In this day and age, when eating beef and a wrong surname could get you killed back in ye olde deare muddership [udder is apposite, amirait?]
Oh that's right. Despite the wrong colour of skin, I'm now an aspiring expat. More realistically, I am failing [and flailing] at #farang-ing in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A place that barely existed on my mental map five months ago.
I thought this blog post would be a think out aloud on why I loved to hate Goa where I spent the last two years. Fun fact: it was almost exactly 2 years. I reached Goa on 20th January night in 2016, one cat in tow. I left in the evening of 20th January 2018 with three cats and Baba with me, two cats having been brought over by the aforementioned parent from Kolkata to Goa (via Bombay) in between. I have six cats, dear reader. I am kinda married to them. But, very reluctantly, I live with only three of them (as all of them do not get along, plus intra and inter country travel with critters is difficult, not to say extremely expensive and hazardous business).
New paragraph because bleddy fun fact took the life of it. Oh...damn.
So Goa. Maybe #Goa? But also known as #sogoa #goadiaries #greengoa #goagram...
Yes I'm relatively new to Instagram. My hashtag game is strong...and lame because it still doesn't get me enough likes.
Well I like Goan food and drinks. Especially the drinks and the food at Ritz
Okay now it seems like I really loved this place and I miss it. So let me count the unsavoury ways that this place did not endear itself to me. Tourists, locals, expats (white and wannabe white)--the people of Goa got on my wrong side and I on theirs 98% of the time. As for the two percent (some select colleagues, few locals, some quizarse), even the person I loved I hated, ahahahaha (brittle laughter as she wipes away tears offscreen). Take this lovely doggo and catto lady who was kind and generous and fierce and absolutely convinced her family was performing kala jadu on her and once berated me for laughing too loudly with my friend in my room on the first floor thereby disturbing her sleep at 10.30pm on the ground floor. At least she had a really good excuse: a really hard life taking care of animals that were constantly dumped on her. The Hindu grocery store aunty on the other hand is a diffrunt story. A young [single female] colleague was her tenant. Everytime I went to buy eggs I would hear a litany of complaints about how S [said colleague] came home late. I was therefore rather relieved when she out of the bloo asked one day "Tu Catholic ke ghar pe rehti hai?" and promptly stopped speaking to me or making eye contact upon my confirming her wurst fears.
I could go on but I won't. Because the people are only a small part of the reason. Truth is I missed being anonymous in huge crowds and cities, in all their grimy glory, are such marvelous melting pots of human interactions--bodies jostling, teeth crunching on savoury streetfood, exchanges with the autowallah or some random stranger. These might be fraught, violent, unsafe at times, but are often much much more. Take the conversation I once had with a random autowallah from UP who was dropping me to CR Park (I was going to buy feeshes for kittehs: I was still an ovo lacto vegetarian, you see). Upon finding out I was from Bengal, he kept asking me about Farraka because he had read about the dam in his school. "Allahabad mein aisa dam nahi hai na. Toh didi, kaisa hota hai? Wahan machhli pakad sakte hai kya dam mein?" I was short and curt mostly to hide my woeful lack of knowledge about Farakka and thereby getting lowered in his estimation.
There was no chance of this in Goa. Noone is curious about outsiders--they just weird yo. For all its inherited cosmopolitanism in law (succession, property etc), and cuisine, architecture and music, and despite its investment in remittances from Gulf or Europe, Goa is still deeply narrow-minded when it comes to migrants (unless they are white and/or rich, of course, and remain clustered in areas like Ass-gaon, driving rents sky high). To belabour the point about inherited intinerance in my blood (grandchild of refugees, etc), I have felt most at home in places that have been refuge to many that have washed up, often unwillingly, on foreign shores. From the Wednesday market at Den Haag populated by Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese ladies haggling over ridiculously cheap produce to the bylanes of Khirki and Lajpat Nagar where Somali refugees and Afghan medical tourists, Iraqi restaurant owners and Bengali rickshawpullers, Kashmiri students and single women migrants, lived in uneasy but cosmoplitan neighbourliness.
This woman was an island not entirely of her own making in Goa. Scooters might cause woeful bodily harm to small frogs in your path but don't do much by way of interactions. Unless you have an accident and start bleeding from your nose, that is. Coconut palms swaying in the breeze and sunsets over pristine blue water are only the tourist photographers' delight. They all eventually look the same without people in them. The monsoons (and I am the very devil here to Goa lovers and their love of the verdant greenery bursting forth) were the hardest with the relentless downpour not letting up for hours, no sun for weeks, months. Goa was for me like Europe, only with better weather and much better food (but no museums). Why did I hate Europe? Dammit yaar, I hate everything, is that not crystal clear?
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