Episode 1 -Southern Spice
No matter what you say Goans are very polite.
Politeness is something ingrained in the Goan psyche, something you learn not to automatically expect in other parts of India especially in Chennai.
You learn, for example, that when you go to the movies in Chennai, you'll inevitably be sitting near people who are making important cell-phone calls, or who, to judge from their noise level, are imitating the mating calls of wild gorillas.
You learn never to go to the beach to watch the sunrise, because you will inevitably end up watching fishermen at their morning open-air ablutions mooning you all along the shoreline.
You learn that, when you're in a store, in Ranganathan Street, and you attempt to make a purchase, the salesperson will often react in an irritated manner, as though this is a highly irregular breach of store procedure. "How am I supposed to get anything done," the salesperson is clearly thinking, "if I have to keep waiting on people?"
You learn that wherever you live and wherever you go, especially if you are close to a temple during one of the numerous festivals, you'll be able to enjoy the musical tastes of some thoughtful person nearby with self-inflicted ear damage and an A.R.Rehman Model sound system cranked up to shatter the sound barrier.
You learn that if you're waiting in line for something, you'll begin to question your own existence because of the number of people who barge in front of you; or, if they're stuck behind you, as in the Nilgiris Supermarket, they'll push their shopping carts into your rear-end, helpfully nudging you along, over and over, nudge nudge nudge NUDGE NUDGE until your brain fills with rage and you want to whirl around and crush their skulls with your frozen Broiler Chicken but you don't dare, for the same reason that you don't dare flip the finger at morons in traffic any more, because you never know when somebody down there might be carrying an AK-47 on loan from the LTTE.
Also because your knowledge of Tamil sucks so badly you can’t tell whether the other person is apologizing or abusing you, since both are done at the same high decibel levels.
Yes, there is definitely some hostility down there in Chennai. Sometimes you can actually feel it hovering and festering in the air. Maybe the local TV channel should include a Hostility Level in their weather forecast ("Tomorrow will be continued hot, with 100 percent humidity, 200 percent pollution and a 90 percent chance of somebody getting fatally shot over what will turn out to be losing a season bus pass").
Of course a certain amount of tension is inevitable in a place where you have 75 per cent reservation,( proving that 3 out of 4 people are either illiterate, uneducated or backward) combined with a whole influx of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka -- with new ones washing ashore every hour -- all attempting to co-exist in a relatively small, confined area in Parry’s Corner, that is also extremely popular with mosquitoes.
Each of these communities has its own cherished customs and beliefs, with the MOST cherished belief being that everybody ELSE's culture is wrong.
Scientists with state of the art research facilities have been unable to find a single issue on which all of Chennai’s communities agree, including the issue of whether auto-drivers should be trained for the Indy 500 or lined up and shot.
(to be continued…….in episode 2)
Episode 2 - Western Decadence
These are just a few of the things that run through my mind when people ask me how I like Goa vis-à-vis the “Land of Divine Tamil Culture” - Chennai. And I always say: "I like it a LOT." And this is the absolute truth. I'm not saying it to be polite. I really like Goa. Sometimes I love Goa. But it's not easy to explain why. Oh, sure, there are the obvious reasons, the official tourism-industry reasons.
I like the water.
I like the weather (Dehliwallas can have their change of seasons; for me, the change of seasons always wound up involving a runny nose, chilblains and a freezing toilet seat).
I like the sky; we get more great sunsets in a month here than I saw in 20 years in Chennai…… Duh!
I like being 45 minutes from the Airport.
I like the Goan skyline at night, even though I imagine that as a taxpayer I'm now helping to pay for illuminating the Secretariat Boob Tower.
I like hardly ever having to wear a tie to restaurants or even necessarily funerals.
I like watching the Mandovi cruise boats go out, loaded with happy Mumbai people, and I like it when they come back and the passengers have to be unloaded via cranes because they're flopping about with motion sickness, and their arms and legs have turned into small useless appendages.
I like Anjuna and Baga and Miramar at two in the morning, which is what time it always is in Miramar, even on Monday afternoon.
I like the Film Festival and the Carnival Transvestite Parade and of course the King Momo Strut, a wondrously demented event that each year proves the important and reassuring scientific law that there is no direct correlation between age and maturity.
I even like the Red & Black Dance after a certain amount of feni.
I like corn on the cob.
I like being represented by the baddest-ass watersports team in the nation. (Do we have one?)
I like being at a Cricket game when the crowd is going nuts because we're down by only 4 wickets going into the ninth over and if the team plays really hard there's an outside chance that we can lose by just 25 runs by the end of the game.
I like Calangute beach on a Saturday night when the bars are busy and the bands are playing and the Beautiful People are strolling past beautiful yet somehow comical architecture and the world-famous Arabian Sea is right there.
I like all these things, and many more. But they're not what makes me sometimes love Goa.
What makes me sometimes love Goa is this:
It's weird.
