Castles in the Air and Apartments on Earth

I have a strong feeling that the construction company that is building my future tiny abode in Goa, in its (in)finite wisdom, has decided that perhaps some of the world's greatest goals, perhaps, achieving world peace would be better served if I and my other fellow future neighbors remain ignorant of the expected date of the completion of the project. I, a mere spec on cosmic canvas, stuck in my own microcosm, however, believe that they are wrong. In fact, if anything good can really be achieved in the world it can be only achieved if I continue to suffer the agony of waiting and by inflicting such pain on myself I somehow indirectly contribute to reduction in global warming. We could be both wrong but since I am the writer of this Blog, its crystal clear that I am right and they are wrong.

No doubt people would try to convince me otherwise and suggest that I should carry on with my daily life and try to pretend that uncertainties in life do not matter, ‘it will happen when its meant to happen’, etc. etc., but where is the fun in that! So I don't make even an iota of an effort to try and keep the tsunamis in my tea-cup-world under control. To put it simply (now that I have satisfied my ego by indulging in meaningless banter!), it’s very difficult to keep up the pretense of sang-froid and my thoughts often do turn towards Goa and the endless wait becomes unbearable!

The upcoming October holidays are not helping…I do end up agonizing about how nice it would have been had I received possession of the apartment by now; I would have been in Goa! Sitting at the balcony, enjoying the morning cuppa while the cool sea breeze caressed my face, but alas! since that cannot be, what’s the second best alternative? Of course, to daydream!

But the above manner of daydreaming is not ‘constructive’ daydreaming! Constructive daydreaming is an altogether different creature and, as it happens, I am one of the budding experts in the field. So if you want some tips on this very promising field, keep visiting this Blog. Coming back to 'creative daydreaming', let me illustrate with the help of an example - in the present scenario ‘constructing’ castles in the air or the interior décor for the future apartment, once again, in the air, is the best way of constructive daydreaming. Look at the bright side you have infinite time at your disposal to plan the décor for an apartment since the possession date is yet outside the scope of time-space continuum!

The best place to begin constructive daydreaming, as the experts in the field are bound to tell you, is the Internet. I fired up the engines of search on the net and the God of all daydreamers immediately obliged. A plethora of websites came up on the screen immediately but unfortunately most of them were foreign in origin. This of course, meant that a zillion ideas bloomed but given that the men and material required to put most of these ideas into practice are conspicuous by their absence in India, even for the prolific daydreamers it poses an insurmountable challenge to ‘construct’ with these ideas. Furthermore, even if one is able to ‘construct’ the constructions are unusable given the that the climate for which most western ideas for interior decoration are planned is unsuited for our purpose in India. I understood my mistake immediately; I had been searching for castles and manor houses in the air while I should have been looking for durgs and purams. So I began my search anew, I began to look for India centric websites and especially Goa centric ones. The first few plunges were pretty frustrating – zilch, nada, nothing. So I pried (prayed?) a little harder and the God of Internet did oblige. I found some websites of furniture and furnishing stores in Goa but not enough to satisfy my appetite. What was missing was the experience of real consumers. I was seeking records of rich personal experiences, experiences which did not read like advertisements. What I wanted were ‘diaries of the quest’, successful and failed but I was drawing complete blanks. I tried various search parameters to explore the Goan world of home furniture and furnishings. Even went searching for more materialistic real world stuff like - where and for how much? But in the expanses and the depth of the Internet-Sea, quest for such experiences within India, more so town-specific, to put it mildly, underwhelmed me. What I got were mostly website of individual furniture stores or inanimate listings on glorified trade directories. But perseverance seldom goes completely unrewarded. Finally I found at least one website that gave me what I was looking for. Jyoti Bhargava, a human resource management professional had recently bought a second home in Goa and had shared her experiences relating to her hunt for furniture and other quests related to her apartment in Goa on her Blog - Jyoti's Musings.

I found Jyoti’s writing style to be sincere, frank and confidence inspiring. In other words, I was more inclined to accept her take on various furniture options available in Goa than what I had found in the descriptions on the various websites either advertising their ware or simply listings of shops. Jyoti’s, two very interesting and informative posts about furniture in Goa can be found here and here. The only other source that I found to be of some interest was at India Mike Goa section. You can find it here.

I am still looking for other similar sources of information. The question that begs more attention is - why is there a dearth of such user generated writings from India on the net? Does it tell us something about our attitude towards sharing? Do we have something against sharing information altruistically, experience from other subjects say, travel, surely does not corroborate any anti-sharing bias. Could it be that sharing of opinion is restricted by low Internet penetration and shortage of English language skills? In other words, is the lack of effort by people and the government of India to launch Indian language websites on the net responsible for low level of sharing of opinions? Or is it that the subject at hand draws little interest from Indian Internet denizens ? The jury is still out.

Now, given that I am cribbing about the dearth of information on the subject at hand I must at least practice what I preach. Hence, I promise to do two things. First, as and when I find more such resources I am going to report them here. Secondly, following Jyoti’s example (and to be honest with a little prodding from her), you can rest assured, a record of my own experiences with regards to furnishing my apartment, would appear on this Blog as soon as they begin. Till then, I am afraid its going to be more castles in the air! I hope you have the patience to wait till these air castles get transformed into apartments on earth.

Space - The First Frontier

Being aware of the space we live in, to me, is part of being aware of our existence. But, it seems familiarity with physical space even if does not breed contempt it surely does make us oblivious to it. The plus side is that as a space ‘disappears’ our comfort level with it and within it increase. The downside is that it no longer remains exciting to think, talk and discuss about it!
Despite my repeated trips to Goa, I am still quite ‘aware’ of the space there. Whenever I arrive in Goa my senses get stimulated, its beauty, its weather, its vivid colours, the whiff of sea breeze and many other things immediately uplift my mood. Clearly Goa is still not too familiar and I am thankful for that. The downside is that my comfort levels are still quite low and I am still waiting for the time when I begin to feel ‘at home’ there. But if one can, one must find some virtue in every adverse situation. To me, amidst my discomfort, the unfamiliarity stimulates my desire to know more about the Goan space be it physical, social, cultural or historical. It is the last one that I wish to talk about today. Very soon, I hope that I may begin to talk about the physical space of my apartment and how it is shaping but today, being still away from it, I wish to talk about the physical space surrounding it.
It seems, I am increasingly getting interested in knowing more and more about the history of the places I visit (is it because I myself age!?). Goa of course has a special place in this quest. So what have been my tools till date? Having done the tourist circuit of Old Goa I am clearly looking for more. With some finger work on the Internet and some legwork in Goa and some other parts of India it is not too difficult to find some very interesting and at the same time non-superfluous histories of Goa. Although one is unlikely to find them in the ‘regular’ book shops which shower their love and affection mainly on travel and coffee-table books some treasure troves do exist in almost all cities in India (In Goa one can try the OtherIndiabookstore at Mapusa. Now history can have many shades, today I am going to concentrate on a very specific type – the history of a given space. What tickles my imagination is to stand at a particular spot and try to find out what happened at this very spot, 500 years ago!
For those who want to take up Goan history a little seriously, to begin with, I would recommend - An Historical Sketch of Goa by Denis Cottineau de Kloguen first published in Madras in 1831 and An Historical and Archaelogical Sketch of the City of Goa by Jose Nicolau da Fonseca first published in Bombay in 1878. It is interesting to note here that the two cities where these two books were published have now left behind their colonial names and adopted the Indian versions of their names while Goa, by and large, continues to use the Portuguese spellings of place-names – notable exception is of course Panaji for Panjim, even though the latter is still used quite often. The retention of Portuguese spellings gives rise to very interesting situations at times, especially, since out of state Indians are not at all familiar with the Portuguese idiom and spellings.But more on that some other time! The aforementioned books written in the imperialist tradition of the 19th century, have obvious flaws and have an archaic style of writing and equally archaic outlook, hence they are ‘handle with care’ kind of material, but to me therein lies their charm. If nothing else they illustrate a very ‘picture perfect’ life (perhaps quite a bit different from the real one!) of the rural aristocracy of colonial Goa. For those who do not like the old flavour, a more modern treatment can be found in Medieval Goa by Teotonio R. de Souza. First published in 1979 at New Delhi, this book would be my first choice if you were just beginning your quest. Another interesting one to pick up (and surely ‘handle with care material’) would be, An Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu by A. B de Bragança Pereira, originally written in Portuguese and published in 1940. It has been recently (2008) translated by Maria Aurora Couto in English and published by Penguin India. According to the translator, Bragança Pereira wrote this book, at least partly, to counter the Salazarist claims of Lusitanization (portuguization) of Goa, and its cultural inseparability from Portugal. The author sought to assert a separate Goan (and thus Indian) identity against the Portuguese regime. Makes and interesting read no doubt.

Having read the aforementioned books (the last one only partially as yet), I am still hungry for more. For some reason, I still haven’t found what I am looking for. The ‘big picture’ of little places is still not there. I would welcome any suggestions that any of the readers might have.Interestingly, while on the one hand I seek the grand picture, on the other hand, I also am interested in going local. Given that I have a connection with Caranzalem. I would love to find out more about its history. On the Internet all that I have been able to find is that Caranzalem was known for its bull fights in the yesteryear. Some of websites do tell us that the people of neighbouring Taleigaõ had been favoured by Afonso de Albuquerque – the Portuguese commander who conquered Goa from the Bijapuri forces in 1510 (so exactly 500 years ago!) - because the villagers would sail at night and offer food to the Portuguese troops who were starving in Penha de França in northern part of Goa after 1510 when they were defeated at the hands of Adilshah (see for example goanhomes.com). Unfortunately various websites that give us the exact same text do not provide us their source of information. I would love to know what prompted the villagers to help the Albuquerque forces? Was it pure business? Were they trying to get back at Adilshahi administration for some grievance they had against him? Or I am reading it too simplistically and there was a grand picture here?
Another fact that I came to know about Taleigaõ was that in the late 18th or early 19th century a factory to manufacture cloth for exports was established there but it had to be closed down since it was not able to withstand competition from the Gujarati textiles that came in from Diu. I don’t think any trace of that factory still exists but if something is still there I would love to explore it when I go there next. Anyone who has any other leads on local history, please do enlighten me - I would be much obliged.

Raison d'être

Why bother with a subject like ‘living in Goa’? There exist countless blogs, travelogues and tourist reviews about Goa on the net. For example, two websites that I often frequent when I wish to make my travel plans - tripadvisor and Indiamike –have extremely active forums that contain almost all forms of knowledge that an average (and not so average) tourist would like to equip oneself with before planning a trip to Goa or any other place in India. One can find a wide variety of reviews and queries about the best beaches, hotels, resorts, transportation, restaurants etc. splattered all over the net for almost all tourist destinations all over the world. I feel, that generally on the relatively popular sites where the traffic is high and forum members are relatively numerous, the queries are asked with fervor and answered diligently. Selflessness and patience shown by the experienced forum members brings out a lot of positive vibes from me. Reviews, I feel are, generally, honestly done and induce more trust compared to their professional and polished counterparts founds in travel magazines.
In light of the above, ‘Living in Goa’ is clearly not intended to be an extended travelogue. The objective here is to do two things. First, to talk about the tasks that one must undertake in order to ‘live’ in one’s second home, especially in India. These are tasks that an average traveler does not have to undertake when he is a just a visitor. I am of course talking about blood curling tasks like water and electricity bill payments, getting an LPG connection etc but also about social networking and other forms of human interaction on an intermittent but repeated basis. Here I have a faint hope that by sharing my experiences I may be able to, perhaps, help others who intend to go down this path. As I already stated in my first post, I wish to share and learn from others how does one accomplish this task without going insane.
Now, trying to juggle two jobs, two girlfriends/boyfriends or many other two or more things at the same time are likely to be much more hazardous to ones health compared to trying to live in two cities simultaneously any where in the world, but in India, despite the computer revolution, the sine qua non for avoiding insanity is to have physical presence and ample time at hand for pretty much everything one needs to do for ‘living in a city’. Now this subject may or may not be good reading material but it definitely isn’t an exalted raison d'être. So I have another reason for this blog, which is to dwell upon the issue of what ‘living’ really means. ‘Living in Goa’ is thus also an exercise in trying to discover myself, how do I want to ‘live’. What does it really mean to live? Of course different people would have different definitions of this concept. I want to understand mine better. The issue of identity, consciousness, space, time, goals all would enter the equation and herein lies the challenge. But more on this in my next post.

Let the Fun Begin

The idea here is to share my experiences and learn from the experiences of others about what is it like to live in a city intermittently! To live in a city which is not your own, but at the same time, not an unfamiliar one either. I have been visiting Goa and the city of Panaji (also spelled as Panjim - the spellings being a remnant of the more than 450 years of Portuguese rule in Goa) of and on, and again and again, for the last ten years. I have lived there many a times for short periods, as little as three days and had longer stays of months at a stretch during the last ten years. But I have always been a visitor there. This is about to change I plan to stay there on a more 'permanent' basis. The 'permanence' is going to be an intermittent one. What has changed is that I have been able to get myself a small apartment in Goa. It is situated in an area called Caranzalem which, at least for now, I would describe as a suburb of Panaji.

I am excited about the whole idea but am also quite nervous about it. What will it be like to live in a city like a visiting resident? No more booking hotels, no more hunting for lodges, no more shunting luggage from one place to another to save a few paisas but at the same time how does one set up a house and run it when one is still a visitor! In a series of posts that I hope to write on this issue and some others that I would explain soon. I wish to explore the joys and sorrows of this adventure of mine. I suppose it would be quite similar to what many others have experienced all over the globe but then each experience is bound to be unique, and that is where the fun lies. So let it begin!