To Run Across the Sea (15 page)

This was shortly before 1961 when, after four hundred years as a Portuguese colony, Goa became an Indian state. Now, 30 years later, there had been some small tightening up of security, but it was largely, along with traffic-lights and supermarkets, a matter of keeping up with the times. Holiday-makers from the outside world occasionally got into minor brawls among themselves, but the beer was too weak to promote real fury, and Goa remained on the whole an oasis of calm. The sun shone with undiminished vigour for six months in succession; the cost of living was low, so naturally the foreigners crowded in. This year, the hotels were full so I took an austere villa in a development that had gone up almost overnight; the builders were sweeping up the wood-shaving when the agent handed over the keys. So there were keys in Goa, at last. It soon transpired that they were something of an afterthought. Doors fitted with mortice locks were still not easy to find. In the style of an old-fashioned godown, they were fitted with massive sliding bolts, secured with a heavy padlock. For the first few days, tenants like myself wrestled with them, but sooner or later we succumbed to the confiding environment and ceased to bother about our possessions.

Baga beach was only fifty yards away over a rise of sand-dunes. Baga is one of twenty-four local names for the Goa beach as a whole which unwinds by the sea like a strip of immaculate desert, stretching for 100 kilometres from north to south of the small state—a distance a determined walker, allowing for river-crossings, might hope to cover in three days. This is something of a survival, and a reminder of what beaches in other continents may have been like before the age of pollution and the shores’ imprisonment in concrete. There are no unpleasantnesses on this strand: no plastic jetsam, no tar-balls, no oil-encrusted gulls’ corpses—not even seaweed. Unsullied sand stretches for mile after mile under a backdrop of feathery tamarinds, bamboos and wind-wracked pines. Where they can be conveniently launched, the fishermen have lined up their boats. These have the gaunt profiles of Viking ships. They are black, their bows painted in primeval designs of blue, yellow and white. Sometimes—since the fishermen are all Christians—they have white crosses added in relief. Friar Domingo Navarete, the Dominican who stopped here in 1670 on his great journey from China back to Lisbon, wrote of them (and they have in no way changed), ‘Those are very odd boats, they have no nails or pins, but the boards are sewn together with ropes made of coco, (and though) the water enter’d by a thousand holes … the Moors assured us they were safe … ’

In the morning the beach would be left to the seagulls scuttling after land-crabs, only rarely disturbed by the racing passage of a boy on a bicycle fitted with a sail. Later, sari-wearing ladies of the Baga Beach Club would arrive for their exercises, superbly athletic, but always graceful as they chased their frisbees in all directions. Occasionally, a party of hippies might turn up and while away the time moulding statuary in the sand. At about 5 p.m. the Beach Club ladies, escorted by an instructress, were back for a quarter-hour’s practice in meditation, after which splendidly erect and all in step, they would walk back up the beach in single file—colourful isosceles triangles in motion, within minutes of 6 p.m. a European lady always appeared, to face the going-down of the sun in the correct yoga posture.

The life of the beach remained divided from that of the hinterland—worlds apart—each with little knowledge of the other. Some native Goans claimed that they had never visited the beach and many that they avoided it at the time when the winter visitors were in possession. Nudism was much practised—although it always seemed to me that it was done discreetly—in certain areas where temporary foreign colonies had formed. Victorian values are defended in the Goan hinterland and some months back a party of scandalised country-folk expressed their disapproval of the moral laxity of foreigners by smearing cow-dung over a bus in which a party of German tourists was travelling. Subsequently,
Goa Today
published an article under the heading ‘Naked Apes’, in which it bewailed the impotence of the police to do anything to remedy the situation, for, despite all the prohibitive notices that had been erected, it turned out that in India it is only an offence to remove one’s clothing in public in the furtherance of a lewd or indecent act.

The paper complained not only of the foreigners but of a category of domestic tourists who treat the beaches at Anjuna and Vagator as if they were part of an open-air peep show, and even go there to take snapshots of unseemly foreign goings-on. Goans do not wholly approve of the animal high spirits displayed by some of their Northern Indian visitors. They show particular dismay at the conduct of weekenders from Bombay or Delhi who often wear comic noses or dress up as Mexican bandits brandishing water-pistols disguised as six-shooters. When reprimanded by the police over such antics the standard reply is, ‘Please excuse, we are only letting down hair.’

The drug problem and its spread from foreign visitors to the Indian population causes more concern. ‘Don’t dabble in drugs,’ warns the notice at the entrance to Colva Beach. ‘It is a social evil and crime punishable with 10-30 years R.I.’ This means what it says. ‘R.I.’ is rigorous imprisonment—frequently to be endured in the Reyes Magos hilltop fort, rumoured to allow visits only once a year at the Feast of the Three Kings. Those applying at other times are turned away with the recommendation to pray for divine intercession in the beautiful blue and white Portuguese church at the foot of the hill.

A mile or two back from the shore traditional Goa awaits. By comparison with India as a whole, it is underpopulated. It is possible, as nowhere else in the sub-continent, to find oneself quite alone among green fields and woods. It is agricultural country, full of calm, rustic scenes from the past. The friendliness and hospitality of the people is tinged with a certain gravity picked up, it is to be suspected, through their long association with the Portuguese—least ebullient of the Latin races.

Sightseeing is comfortably done by buses which wander everywhere along the country roads. There is no better sample run than to take a trip from Dabolim airport to one of the northern resorts. This should be broken for at least a couple of hours to explore the capital Panjim, which remains in part as Portuguese as Lisbon, serves authentic Portuguese food in its restaurants, and possesses cafés in which customers still sip port and listen to
fados
on Saturday nights.

Such journeys are best started in the cool of the morning to experience the sight of buffaloes in the paddies, dragging their ploughs through the mist, and churches and temples sparkling along the edge of ghostly lagoons when the sun breaks through. The shoulder of a mountain looms in the vapour. Peasants in straw hats are bent double to transplant rice. Cranes take off. This scene appears to be more the work of a classical painter of old China than an Indian landscape. Magnificent old Portuguese estate-houses dominate some of the villages, and the concentration of baroque churches is greater here than in Portugal itself. Catholics and Hindus live in comfortable association, with little evidence of the barriers of caste and religion which are still prevalent in other parts of the country. A few miles from Calangute on the north shore, a small roadside temple is dedicated to the Nāga (snake) deity. I was invited in by the English-speaking priest, who was sorry not to be able to show me a sacred snake, as the last one had died of old age, and they had not been able to replace it. ‘We have limited resources,’ he said. ‘There is a bigger place down the road where you may see a good example.’ The Nāga temple also kept rats, which he was happy to display. These, and the snake when they had one, were fed on rice and milk. They were very peaceable, he said. He was eager to dispel the possibility of doctrinal confusion. ‘It is not worshipping rats, we are. More it is an expression of solidarity with animal creation.’

Calangute is set in shaded gardens, planted with areca, pepper-trees and coconut-palms. Here people lead open-air existences, occupied with such unhurried cottage industries as the production of coconut fibre and its transformation into rope. A woman pokes at the embers under an enormous witches’ cauldron boiling the day’s rice; a man gives his white goat a morning scrub-down, then stands back to admire the result; children, gobbling like turkey-cocks, race round the playground of an infant school called Toddledom; bells summon to the services of the church. The environment is saturated with sober pleasure.

The centre of the village, being close to the beach, is dressed up for the benefit of the tourists, with astrologers working from auto-rickshaws; sincere-mannered purveyors of tribal bric-à-brac; a sidewalk pharmacist offering remedies for fits, gas, itching of the extremities, cholera, loss of memory, and sudden fright; and a resident holy man who lives by the display of his deformities.

Tucked away behind the souvenir shops, Calangute’s little market must be one of the liveliest anywhere. It is full of long-snouted, darting piglets, and small, delicate, docile and beautiful cows, who stuff themselves without ill-effect on discarded packaging material and empty cardboard boxes (buy one a handful of spinach and it will follow you about like an affectionate dog). The local people come here not only to shop, but for the day’s quota of excitement; for the ritual tussle between buyer and seller, the venting of minor indignations, the triumph of the small bargain, for the noise, the smells, the laughter, the hour’s freedom from household chores.

The Souza Loba restaurant is within easy reach down a sand-clogged track leading to the beach, and many shoppers burdened with their bundles make for it for a cold beer or a pre-siesta snack. Despite its local renown, it is a self-effacing place, concerned single-mindedly with the preparation of good food, and oblivious to visual appeal—almost even to comfort. Tables and chairs rock, piratical cats scramble in through the windows (a guard with a cane makes no more than a pretence at striking out at them), and a dark, lacy butterfly may come planing down to suck at some stickiness on the table-cloth. It is hard to find a seat, waiters rush about shouting ‘soon it is coming’—a routine and usually empty promise. The food, nevertheless, when it at long last arrives, is a symphonic fusion of Portuguese and Indian culinary art—just as reported.

What was astonishing on the occasion of my visit was that, after a profoundly exotic meal, the waiter should reappear to place before me a large helping of Swiss roll, leaking jam into a puddle of congealing custard. This, along with the rusted aspidistras of the surroundings, was clearly part and parcel of a cultural intrusion from the old India of the British Raj. The Goans at the next table had been served a similar mess and were tucking in with obvious relish. The waiter explained: ‘Swiss roll better for bodily organs after intake of spiced food.’

‘And you don’t have anything else?’

His smile was kindly, but firm. ‘In Goa we are all eating Swiss roll.’

He seemed to be keeping me under surveillance for a while until a customer called him away. An exceptionally handsome sacred cow had stationed itself under the window in readiness for the occasional windfall, but I waited until the waiter was well out of sight before taking action.

I
EASILY SURVIVED THREE
extended trips to Haiti during the reign of Papa Doc, but when Baby Jean-Claude picked up his crown my feeling was that the end was at hand. Blessed are the poor, says the Book, but it could hardly have been commending this kind of poverty. The newspapers spoke without surprise or shame of a normal situation in which two families were reduced to sharing the ownership of a single sheep. In the fishing villages along the north coast all the boats had long since fallen apart, and the fishermen now cast their nets with poor success from long rafts tied together with home-made sisal rope. There was nothing to be done about it, and no hope for the future.

For all this, the mysterious charm of Haiti, deriving from the innate nobility and debonair style of the oppressed majority of the population, remained intact. Despite the ravages of neglect it was still a beautiful place, with an indulgent tropical grace, now only half-concealed by ruin.

Three incidents occurred in rapid succession, which, taken together, led me to suspect that I was on the island for the last time. The first arose as a result of the Haitian urge to cover blank spaces, such as the adobe walls of the cabins in which many live, with decorations of a spirited and fanciful kind. The best examples of this urge for self-expression were to be found in villages accessible only on mule-back or on foot. Once in a while a fine example turned up in a town, and I came on one in Carrefour, a seedy outer suburb of Port-au-Prince.

A man, probably fresh from the country, was painting the white-washed wall of his garden. This he had transformed into a scene, as if viewed from above, of a lively river pouring through flower-ornamented banks, with a variety of fish frolicking in its wavelets. My arrival coincided with that of two policemen in a squad car. One held the man while the other went into the garage across the road, returned with a canful of sump oil and with this obliterated the artist’s work. My mistake was to photograph the occurrence. The policeman with the can came over, gestured to me to give him the camera, took out the film and threw it into a hedge. ‘Take this as a warning,’ he said.

The second discouraging incident took place next day, within a mile of the same spot. It was a rowdy street-scene after dark. A man rushed out of a bar clutching his neck with both hands, blood trickling through his fingers. He kicked at the door of the car and I got out. ‘Someone just cut my throat,’ he said. He took a hand away to show a slash over the windpipe which drooped open like a pendulous lip. In the case of fatal severance of the jugular vein, blood fountains. In this instance it dripped. ‘Get into the car,’ I told him. ‘I’ll run you over to the hospital.’

At the hospital there was little sign of life. The nightly power-cut had affected this part of the town. Torchlights could be seen bobbing about in the rooms like grave-robbers at work in a cemetery, and a weak current provided by a hospital generator pulsated in a single bulb suspended over the reception counter. For a time nothing happened, then I rang the handbell and an old man in pyjamas shuffled into view. I asked him who was in charge, and he said, ‘I am, but we’re not taking in any emergencies. Come back tomorrow.’