Wednesday 31 December 2014

Well, it is their country you're in!

Beginning to feel restless, so went first thing to the travel agent's and bought a one way ticket to Hampi a week from now.

Then went for a walk with friends into Palolem. Lou wanted to buy books and we all wanted a change of scenery.

On the way back they spotted a couple they knew, getting into a self-drive.

Oh, hallo! Off somewhere?

Not really. Just thought we'd go for a drive. Such a lot of Indians on the beach...

[No. I didn't keep my mouth shut, and yes, I did point out the obvious.

Time to be moving on, I think.]






Friday 26 December 2014

Z for 'is 'at!

(Remember the Cockney alphabet? A for 'orses, B for mutton?)

All set to go this Boxing Day morning, bag packed with the day's essentials. iPad, beach towel, sketch book, mineral water.

Picked up keys, hankie, wallet and mobile and stuffed them in trouser pockets...

Hat.

Not in my room. Shit. Where is it?

Definitely had it when I came off yesterday's early a.m boat trip (to see dolphins and land on Butterfly Beach.)






Two possibilities. MICKEY'S NAUGHTY CORNER, where I'd spent most of yesterday after the boat trip, or claimed by the next high tide after I'd fallen asleep on the beach at about 11 last night (don't ask.)

Mickey's didn't have it. Damn damn DAMN! God's way of saying don't go ordering a double coconut fenni, (home distilled and of high but unknown proof) on the rocks, if you're not used to it...

I was grievin for the titfer when I remembered Breakfast at Namaste's. (Enter Holly Golightly.)

I could have hugged the waiter who went out back and came back holding this year's best Christmas present. He recognised the Free Tibet badge. He was, he said, from Dharamshala; and understood.

Here's yesterday in pictures. But don't be deceived, it wasn't all beer and skittles. Slapping a brave face on the moments of chagrin too. Breathe in, breathe out, and get on with it...











Wednesday 24 December 2014

Tuesday 23 December 2014

Fish can't scream

The markets are an endless source of wonder. And everything in such improbable abundance. I've witnessed the repetitive slaughter of chickens, grabbed squawking from their cage and swung by their feet to receive a knife at the throat. But most of all it's the fish, at every stage, from boat to table that I'm drawn to.
I don't and won't eat chicken. But by the time I reach the fish market the death agonies are over (crabs and shellfish apart,) though they remain visible in their anguished expressions on the slabs. But by the time they are on the plate, all this has been removed by filleting or decapitation.

In 1937, a year into the Spanish Civil War, Picasso painted Mort de Trois Pêches. In this picture colourful little fishes with almost human faces await their fate. A heavy black cast iron skillet, symbolising Fascism,  hovers over them. Fried Fish, indeed.

I have taken the paints to the beach, and the camera to the markets and dinner table with all this in mind...








Sunday 21 December 2014

Pride and Prejudice

One morning in Kolkata I was taken aback when someone shouted at me "go back to your own country", but mostly, as a white westerner they spot me coming a mile off with hopes of extracting some sterling-dollar-euro rupees. Approached by beggars and hard-luck storytellers, hailed by traders, constantly greeted and offered ... Well...anything that might be on offer, but always with an inflated western price tag.

Everyone, but everyone, has a finger in the Great Rupee Pie.

Sometimes I wish they would just leave me alone. Allow me to walk, and pause, and look, at my own pace. A flâneur. But that's not how it works.

Get on the bus, though, and it's a different matter. There are seats allocated to "ladies, the handicapped, and senior citizens", and nobody speaks to anyone. For once people don't want to know which country I'm from, how old I am, what I do for a living, how many children I have, how long I'm staying.

On the crowded bus from Chaudi to Karwar no one moved over to make space for me to sit down, and on the return I watched at every stop as people scrambled aboard and chose where to sit, subtly avoiding the seat next to mine. The place remained unoccupied for the 90 minute ride.

But I guess I'm guilty of similar when I get on the Number 1 from Matson into Gloucester.

So yesterday I took myself to the beach to hang out with the strays in the sun.




Friday 19 December 2014

Pink dolphins

At sunset this evening (about half past mid-day GMT,) a pod of dolphins came ashore with the fishing boats and did what dolphins do. I'd never seen dolphins before, and never understood what the fuss was about.

But now I have, and now I do...









Thursday 18 December 2014

Five Go To The Jungle

There were four of them; a German, a Finn, a Norwegian, and a woman from the north-east. Their scheme was Blytonesque. We're going to the jungle. For a trek. We'll take food and water. Would you like to come too?

So add to that someone from the southish-west...

Next morning we met at nine at the taxi stand and got a car to take us into the more than hills but not quite mountains and leave us there at a Jungle "Retreat".

But it wasn't the cities of termites, the hardwood trees reaching up and up, or the touch-sensitive plants that collapsed at the slightest brush; it wasn't the buffaloes in the river, the shed porcupine quill, the butterflies heavy as full blown poppies, the smell of loam on the forest floor; it was The Spirit of Adventure, The Camaraderie and THE SPLOTHER that I shall remember most... And yes, I did explain.

Golly! What a lark!




Monday 15 December 2014

A holiday read

Despite all good intentions - and I'm half way into my first ever Trollope - the hundredweight of  Victorian classics I'm carting about on the iPad don't quite fit the languid atmosphere of Goa.

This place is every bit Gatsby.

The beach shops have supplies of grubby worn out paperbacks. Mostly pulp fiction, they have an unsavoury look about them; with dog-eared pages stained and stuck together with suntan oils, they are popular with the occupants of daybeds down on the sands.

But then, Serendipity! I found this. A brand new copy too!

So now to get my lounger...



Saturday 13 December 2014

Self-improvement...

Patnem has much to offer. Yoga on the beach at 7a.m, cookery classes from 9 to 1, boat trips, tarot readings, horoscopes,
and Ayurvedic massages, beauty treatments, and cures of ALL kinds...
.
...and there are some practitioners who will tackle absolutely anything...



Thursday 11 December 2014

Milton or Dante.

I've taken a small apartment in the pink house behind the temple. Clean, comfortable, and cheap. It comes with two gas rings, and a wet room, anti-mosquito mesh at the windows, a small verandah, and an infestation of ants. So in the scheme of things, quite luxurious. Two or three minutes through the palm trees to the beach. I have paid a month's rent up front.

I rationalise my guilt/stupidity:
Traveling is harder work than I ever imagined, and I need a break.
I'm about half way through, so it's time.
I need to hole up somewhere for Christmas.
I want to get shot of the asthma.

But however charming Patnem is visually, l'enfer c'est les autres...
And there is no shortage of autres.

So I think it'll be an interesting month... If Varanasi and Kolkata scrubbed off a few layers, Patnem will challenge sanity...














Monday 8 December 2014

The Birthday Treat

" Well all good things must come to an end..." (another motherism)
So after Kolkata, where to next? Various options, but decided I need a "proper holiday" so spent all my birthday money on a five hour flight to Goa.
Been staying in Panaji for three days sans wifi, and feeling as though I've been plucked out of "real" India into a comfortable sugarplum world of meringues and western insensitivities. Beer guts, Bermuda shorts and bare chests de rigueur.
Heading South this morning for a spot of beach shackin, for as long as my good humour will take. (I'll give it a week and then reassess.)




Thursday 4 December 2014

66. A Fish Fest

And so to celebrate. Well, not that easy on yer own, but Greetings had been blowing in by e-mail, Face Book and The QCC from every continent! Marvellous! So at lunchtime I went to The Blue Sky Café, the backpackers' hangout on Sudder Street, and asked them if they could do me some Fried Fish. Not a problem, they said.

As dusk was gathering, about 4 o'clock, it was off to The Blue Beyond, a swanky ninth floor bar with roof terrace, to enjoy the sunset and a mocktail. (Mine was a Virgin Mary. Like a Bloody, but without the vodka.)

And finally, back to Le Ciel Bleu, El Cielo Azul, The Blue Sky (Yep, they even have signs up in three languages) for dinner... Curried Fish!

A lovely day, and thank you all for being in on it. :-)






66. Early morning.

Well, if nothing else it was always going to be a long one, what with the 5 and a half hour time difference, and two e-mail greetings coming in the night before. One from Bo's'n, and one from Joe... Bless 'em both. And then I slept on it. It was going to be special, whatever.

So next morning I made an early start in real time and took a rickshaw to Mother Teresa's place.

Her room, her bed, her pencil case containing just one pencil, one pen, a small ruler, a rubber and a letter opener. Her last pair of sandals, broken, and her food bowl; just the one. And there was the torch they used the night she died. There was a power failure and they couldn't give her oxygen.

Finally the tomb.





W

66 memento mori

Late morning went mooching round one of the less visited places; Park Street South Cemetery. The final resting place of The Great but not so Good British men who came here to govern, trade, exploit and make fortunes, in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Extraordinary monuments to their wives, their sons and daughters, and to their own self-importance...