Last week sipping a beer at the bar of a small restaurant on Calangute Beach, a man recognized me from the last time I worked here in Dona Paula.
This is how our conversation went :
Guy:Didn’t I meet you a long time ago? Didn’t you used to work here? What are you writing in that notebook? (all in the same breath)
Me:Yes. Oh! Just trying to write something humourous.
Guy: You should write about Kathmandu! A lot of humour there! You ever been to Kathmandu? That King Gyanendra is really funny.
Me: No.
Guy: Well! I keep visiting there. Let me be honest. I’m a drug dealer.
That REALLY IS what he said. There were two cops 3 tables away, and he said "I’m a drug dealer" in the same open, friendly voice you might use to say "I’m an insurance agent." I half expected him to give me a price list along with his visiting card.
Of course this does not happen to everybody. Most visitors spend their entire vacations here without once being exposed to criminal activity. But most of us who live here are definitely aware of crime, if only because of the endless electronic yapping of dogs, the Official Night Noise of Goa.
Some of us can't sleep without it; when it's too quiet, we have to throw rocks through our neighbor's windows. Sometimes it seems as if crime is the only thing we all have in common.
We’ve lived next door to a family for six months now without ever seeing them, until finally the woman dropped by to tell us their house had been broken into. We had a real nice chat.
I bet a lot of Goan socializing occurs this way. ("Hi! We're the Sequeiras! We've lived next door for 10 years! Somebody just stole all our major appliances!" "Nice to meet you! We're the Kamaths! Amit here was recently run over by a getaway drug dealer!")
That was the only time we ever talked to that particular neighbor, because of course the family moved, as people are constantly doing down here, to the point where pretty soon you're going to see homes built with permanent flip- signs out front, so you'll be able to simply flip a board around to change your sign from "OCCUPIED" to "FOR SALE."
We haven't met our new neighbors yet, and we probably never will. They'll never have a burglary, because they have three angry Rajapalayams the size of SUV’s. Everybody has dogs in our neighborhood, except us. My neighbours wife, after their burglary, recently put a typically friendly Goan-style welcome sign on their gate that said: "WARNING DANGEROUS DOG! (Khabardaar! Khatarnaak Kuttha ) (Their new dog, who was really not dangerous, just stupid, sometimes sniffed the sign curiously, as if thinking, "Khatarnaak?")
Our previous Chennai neighborhood had a house occupied by drug dealers. At least that's what we all thought, based on the fact that it was an expensive house occupied by a constantly changing group of highly secretive people with no apparent means of support other than doing their own laundry. After a while we thought of it as just another neighborhood landmark -- the Raman’s house, the Kumar’s house, the Drug Dealer's house, etc. Our daughter would ask us if she could ride her bike, and we, being responsible parents, would say, "OK, but don't go beyond the Drug Dealer's House!"
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