Goa, India

After I picked up my brother, Jody, at the Mumbai airport at 2:30 in the morning, we walked back to the car and woke Ashraf up to begin the trek back to Pune. By the time we arrived at around 6:30 am on Saturday morning, Ashraf was showing definite signs of fatigue, but he got us home safe and sound and that’s what we pay him the big Rupees to do.

After sleeping for a few hours, we walked out into the sunshine and had the distinct pleasure of meeting George Clooney! Before you get too excited, remember that Peggy is Angelina and I’m either David Straithairn or Tom Skerritt. I think you can deduce who played the role of George Clooney. We took Jody on a walking tour of Magarpatta City, giving him his first minor tastes of India at the Destination Center. We have become mostly inured to the staring whenever we venture outside, but Jody’s reactions to all the attention reminded us that we are still some kind of weird over here.

That evening Ashraf showed up in Neal’s black Mitsubishi and headed us down to MG Road where we wanted to shop for a wedding present, a wedding suit for Jody and some appropriate wedding shoes for me. Our regular white Mitsubishi was in the shop, presumably to deal with the starting woes that had given us a myriad of opportunities to practice our push starting talents over the past week. Imagine my surprise, and Ashraf’s chagrin, when the black car stopped dead in the middle of one of the busiest avenues in Pune and refused to kick back to life even after some energetic pushing (accompanied by a raft of horn tooting) from Jody and me.

We pushed the dead ride to the curb and Ashraf popped the hood. I looked at the battery and told him the same thing I had when the same illness had afflicted the white car – clean and tighten the battery cables. But remember that Ashraf thinks I don’t know anything so he ignored my advice and called his company. They said they would send someone, but it would be a while, so Ashraf suggested we take an auto-rickshaw to MG Road, which we gladly did because it gave Jody a chance to experience the exhilarating, inches-from-your-face way to travel in Indian cities.

We wanted to go to PN Gadgils Jewelry store for a gift, but our rickshaw driver claimed he couldn’t get us exactly there, letting us off on a very dangerous stretch of road with vague directions to go straight for a while then right for a while and we’d find the place. Even after asking twice, we still couldn’t find it, but we did happen upon Metro Shoes, a store that Sujata had mentioned as the place to get the right shoes to go with my wedding suit.

And what are the right shoes, you might ask? Well they are Aladdin style slippers with curly toes called Mojadis, and it turns out that they are so out of style these days that Metro only had one pair left and even though they were not exactly my size, I decided to buy them because I wanted to look ultra-Indian when I showed up at Shobha’s wedding.

Just after purchasing my shoes (to the amusement of everyone in the shop), Ashraf called to tell me he was on MG Road with the car. When I asked him how he had gotten it fixed, he said “battery cable” with nary a wince nor an ounce of irony in his voice.

It was probably more fun that the car broke down and we had to take an auto-rickshaw that couldn’t really get us where we wanted to go because MG Road was absolutely hopping that night and it was a blast to be walking around in the pandemonium.

After stops at Dorabjee’s for supplies and Landmark to get Jody a traditional Kurta and Curridar Pants (and to have him welcomed to India by a mall guard who informed him that photos in the mall were not allowed), we decided to walk a few blocks to Ram Krishna, our favorite local restaurant. I once again had a Cheese Paper Masala Dosa, which is so big everybody in the restaurant is embarrassed for the poor waiter who has to schlep it out.

On the short walk back to the car, we were overwhelmed by the sight and stench of raw sewage running down the gutter of one of the busiest commercial streets in Pune. Pune is a very advanced and modern city in many ways, but there are enough third-world accoutrements to remind you that you are still very much in India.

We were waiting for Ashraf at 10:30 am on Sunday when he arrived to take us to the airport. Maybe he thought we were upset that he was a few minutes late, because he decided to take a short cut – the wrong way on a one way street – that got him a traffic citation. A uniformed policeman nonchalantly waved him over and wrote him out a traffic ticket. Ashraf paid 100 Rupees and the whole transaction was over in about 3 minutes. There is something to be said for the efficiency with which corruption can operate.

Just as we piled out of the car at the airport, Ashraf asked us to please bring him back some Goa Dry Fruit, a request that would result in some humorous meanderings in Goa a few days hence.

Hours later, when the plane doors opened in Goa, we felt like we had jumped out of the frying pan into the boiling stew pot because it was as hot and humid as anything Adrian Cronauer could have ever bitched about.

Our driver, Babu, was there to meet us and immediately took the luggage cart from me and starting pushing it towards the street. Just as quickly, some local guy grabbed the cart away from Babu and took over guiding it toward the street. Babu was startled at first, but he immediately tried to regain control of the cart, failing miserably as the interloper simply muscled him out of the way. I realized this was an incredibly pushy local entrepreneur who operated in a vein similar to the window washers in New York City. They wash your car windows without being asked, then demand payment for services rendered. My fairness button was definitely pushed by this slimeball, but I knew it was not worth a scene or any physical interaction so I just signaled Babu to get the car and let the little shyster stand guard over our luggage, paying him his 20 Rs. and considering it yet another example of the dehumanizing extents to which some people will go to earn enough to eat.

On our 1.5 hour drive to the Varca Palm Beach Resort, Babu told us he had driven up from Bangalore the day before, a trip of 670 Km that had taken him 16 hours. I should be used to the extremely slow progress that can be made on Indian highways, but an average of less than 45 kph (28 mph) was hard to comprehend.

The second thing we learned about Goa (the first being it is seriously hot and humid) was that it is covered by jungle. The green palm, bamboo, fir and banyan trees were supplemented by heavy brush and thick hammocks everywhere we looked. Yes, there were homes, villages and small farms hacked out of this jungle in many places, but it was not that hard to imagine that there might still be elephants, tigers and wild birds around any corner.

Many of the farms that had been hewed out of the swampy thicket were dotted with rice fields, small sections of marshland separated by tiny, irregular dikes. In one field we spotted a local farmer working a team of oxen in the water, performing the equivalent of plowing to prepare the pond’s bottom to accept a planting of rice.

The Varca Palm Beach Resort was not a luxury hotel, but it seemed decent enough. The room was OK and there was a nice pool, but the real jewel was the private beach some 150 meters behind the hotel. The sand was soft, warm and smooth and the water was a perfect bath-water temperature. Best of all, the sand squeaked under every footstep, making a beautiful form of music when a group of beach goers walked by together.

We couldn’t find a set of beach lounge chairs together that were not “reserved” by towels, but as we studied the situation we realized there were three that had been unattended for some time, as evidenced by the many dead pine needles covering the towels. We co-opted those chairs and spent a pleasant afternoon drinking beer, snoozing and playing in the water.

Unfortunately, we had stolen the chairs from Boris and Natasha, a Russian couple who were the owners of the pine needle covered towels. We apologized for high jacking their chairs, tried to explain we thought they were empty, then moved to another set that had just opened up.

Peggy, being the indomitable socialite that she is, was soon chatting with the Russian woman. We were apprised that not all Russian couples were named Boris and Natasha, and this man and woman were in fact named Valery. Her English was pretty good, but we went around the block a number of times before we were finally convinced that each had the first name Valery. A married couple with the same first names – cool!

It turned out that Valery (fem) is a retired grade school English teacher and Valery (masc) is a still active (at the age of 70) disaster planning consultant. Valery’s English was pretty good, but Valery couldn’t communicate with us to save his life. Even so, we had fun talking and after the oohing and aahing had finished following the sun’s dive directly into the ocean, they invited us to have dinner with them.

And so we changed into dinner clothing and squeaked our way together about 400 yards up the tideline to a restaurant directly on the sand at a broad spot on the beach. The waiters brought us menus and then displayed the fresh catch at our disposal that night – live prawns, live crab, live lobster and a variety of dead, but still very fresh, fish. Surprisingly, the waiters spoke more than a smattering of Russian and Valery and Valery were able to communicate with them quite effectively.

I ordered Red Snapper for Peggy and me, Jody ordered Prawns and Valery and Valery settled on a flat fish that didn’t look that appealing to me but seemed to set the Russians’ taste buds atwitter.

We had a pleasant evening talking mostly about Russia. Valery had to translate much of this for Valery, although he did seem to understand some of the things we said. Valery’s English was not bad, although certainly stilted and remedial, but she was able to communicate certain details about the struggle facing not only upper middle class Russians like themselves, but indeed almost all Russians as that country thrashes about to adapt to a hybrid system of socialism and capitalism. At one point she insisted that we had to come and visit them in Moscow, which we said would be really fun, but when we riposted that they should come visit us in the USA as well, she sniffed and said she would never want to visit the US. We didn’t pursue this line of questioning, but it seemed a little rude to me. When someone invites you to visit, even when you know they’re just blowing smoke up your skirt, it only seems polite to say “That would be nice” or something similar.

No matter. Détente was still on until the check arrived. Peggy grabbed it and handed it to me and I braced myself for the horrible struggle that I knew would come from Valery as he tried to wrestle the check away from me. He was 70 years old, but a bear of a man and I figured if it got into one of those grab and hold style fights that friends in the USA have when battling for the check, I might very well lose.

But bracing was not necessary. Not only did he make no effort whatsoever, they both seemed completely at ease with me paying for the whole meal, not uttering a single word of acknowledgment or thanks either there or on the squeaky walk back to the hotel.

They bade us good night, said they wanted to spend the entire day with us the next day and tootled up to bed.

I could care less about the $75 the meal cost, but it seemed very odd to me that they had expressed no appreciation whatsoever for our efforts. Peggy is always more generous than me in these situations and she convinced herself that it is a Russian tradition to invite someone to dinner, expect them to pay, then reward them the next night by paying for an even more sumptuous meal.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622932629702/