Go, Goa ………..Gone!

With age comes wisdom, they say. I don’t think I am really qualified to comment on this, but I know that age definitely brings nostalgia. Of late, with travel reduced to a bare minimum, I have found myself getting increasingly maudlin about the journeys of life, especially the ones undertaken in the past when I could safely ensconce myself on a comfortable lap or wedge myself into the narrowest of crannies by the window of a vehicle, all set for a road trip. Whether or not India has made vast strides in the tourism department in recent times, travel in the past was fun in a way difficult to describe. Although the destinations were few, stretching to the homes of various relatives, the journey itself created precious memories which had a flavor all their own.

I grew up in an India which if known for tourism was a mere backpacker’s destination, with the Taj Mahal being the first name which sprang to the mind of at least the well-heeled Western traveler. Needless to say, the roads were narrow, winding and lonely and many of them existed only in the minds of the map-maker, having disintegrated into a pot-holed morass many a weary kilometer from their destination. The vehicles used for said journey were of course in a class of their own, and of such unprecedented vintage that the original designers themselves had forgotten whether they had had a finger in the dubious pie of their manufacture. The denizens you met on the road were weird and wonderful and surprising, ranging from bullock carts to pedestrians, dancers to caravans of donkeys and everything in between ambling at their own paces and to their own sweet time. Rules of the road were non- existent. No wonder, my cousins visiting from the USA, that land of rarified road safety rules called our trysts with the roads in India an ‘adventure’ instead of just a pedestrian ‘drive’! The number of breakdowns the cars suffered enroute, and the way we packed ourselves into them like so many sardines in a tin make me wonder as to how we managed to reach our destination at all, without leaving any vital part of ourselves or our baggage behind!

The earliest memorable childhood journeys then include several road trips to Goa, Sawantwadi, Vengurla and the like in our vintage Ford 1947 model, accompanied by sundry family friends with wailing little kids, relatives of all shapes and sizes with personalities and voices to match and what stands out the most in my memory, a strange Shikari Shambhu kind of character carrying a large gun. I think I had found the answer before the popular question of today ‘Kahan se aate hain ye log?’ was dreamt of!
While half the population of India now seems to descend on Goa like a swarm of locusts with the advent of Christmas and New Year, we descended (literally, since it was only a descent of a mountain away) whenever we felt like it or when familial occasion demanded. Our trips to Goa were strictly in the pursuit of spiritual succor (the state popular for golden beaches, golden tans and golden drinks houses the many golden temples of our family deities, so termed because they have golden cupolas. Not to be confused with THE golden temple of Amritsar) and thus my association with this tiny haven remains quite puritan. Much later, I attended an award ceremony for the better half in Goa, replete with wine and song. Old memories die hard and the first thing which sprang to my mind when I heard the choice of the venue, was “how on earth are they going to party in a temple?”

Added to this was the fact that half my family IS from Goa, all possessed of a remarkably religious bent of mind and thus even though I cudgel my brain, all that comes to mind is days spent in the dark, humongous sancta sanctora of temples, clad in silk clothes trying to quieten a tummy wailing in hunger while it awaited the completion of various rituals, living in the rather scary rooms of the agrashala (temple choultries) with their moody taps, moodier mattresses, teeming with bugs of all kinds or the Goan style houses of various aunts and uncles.

The latter packed their own punch by way of large hall-like rooms, odd shaped staircases, heavy doors and windows and strange bathrooms located quite a distance away from the house, the path to be traversed to get to them teeming with reptiles of all sizes and shapes. However, nothing could beat the feeling of bonhomie with which our entourages were enthusiastically greeted, whatever the time of the day or night and delicious meals of fresh fish and rice were served up in a jiffy, making me wonder at the skills which these domestic goddesses possessed given the fact that their kitchens were manned the old fashioned way with wood fired stoves, mortars and pestles made of stone and other quaint equipment which might make modern pretenders swoon with ecstasy but must have been a nightmare to use in real life. The banter and insults traded by the large extended family was our way of bonding, of staying in touch in the only way we knew, bereft as we were of artificial intelligence like Whatsapp, Facebook, Snapchat and the like. Life like the roads on which we travelled was riddled with potholes, unvarnished and rough around the edges, but it was real.

One of my cousins married into a Goan family of great repute and the journey for her wedding was a free-for -all carnival of sorts with vehicles of all shapes and sizes in a strange kind of convoy, racing each other on the single lane tar track road which aiming at greater things, called itself National Highway 4A. The residents of the forests of Anmod and Londha must have been driven from their green beds due to us strange creatures who kicked up enough dust to give them the allergies of a lifetime.
The wedding in itself was pretty memorable, taking place as it did in the grand hall of the temple of our family deity, with family priests and other heavy weights in due attendance. All I remember is the post wedding dance performance, totally unsolicited and impromptu which a couple of cousins and I (all ranging in age from 3 years to 6 years) performed in front of the palanquin of the family deity when He was brought out of the temple in procession as was the custom every Monday. It was a performance which must have remained etched in and permanently scarred the collective memory of the temple for the rest of the time to come. The head priest must have lost a decade of his life and is probably still shaking his venerable head over the fact that the parents of the day had allowed young innocents to get high on the local brew which has given Goa its reputation (good or bad entirely depending on whether your glass is half empty of full) before dancing wildly before the Lord of Dance himself. If you are looking for someone to blame for the trend of wild dancing shenanigans which we see under the name of Sangeet now-a days, look no further! Mea Culpa!

Another trip which stands out is the annual ‘Maghi Poornima’ trip (somewhere in the months of January or February) to the temple. The annual temple fair and the ‘Rathotsav’ (carriage ceremony) took place in the wee hours during this time and the scenes of the long road lit only by the flickering glow of the headlights of the car on the mad midnight four hour dash to Goa still sends a delicious shiver down my spine. There is of course the time when we housed ourselves in the verandah of the local school with impunity, since everywhere else was chock-a-block with devotees and also the time when everyone fell over themselves (literally) to prostrate in front of the advancing palanquin of the Lord. There were visits to the beaches, but more in the fashion of something which had to be done as a formality, rather than the purpose of the visit which is what happens these days. The memories are too many to recount and though the visits may have dwindled over the year, the memories linger still, made all the more precious with the passage of time.

The recent visit however brought home the sweeping changes which have crept in since the days of my childhood. Dotted with resorts, beach shacks, adventure sports, plantation trails and everything else to lure the well- heeled traveler, Goa is now a universal destination. But old habits die hard and despite the better half’s busy schedule, we still managed to find our way to the familiar comfort of the temples for an hour if not for the entire day. Pricey resorts, exotic food and the cool formality of professionalism may have replaced the sylvan land of my childhood, but, despite its new avatar, Goa remains in my memory a golden land, a beacon of piety, spirituality and hospitality, a land of magic in that magical time called childhood!