Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

          “Feeling hot-hot-hot”, heh shabda aikoon, a certain anglicised percentage of my generation will start tapping their feet. Joint-aches, ill-distributed adipose and blood-pressures permitting. The popular version of this catchy song was recorded by David Johansen (Buster Poindexter). It was written by Alphonsus Celestine Edmund Cassell “Arrow”. In the mid-1980s, sane professionals danced maniacally at late bitter-winter parties when it was played. The ‘hot’ in it had nothing to do with pre-monsoon temperatures.

          Through the Shigmo week  Goa was 5 degrees above normal at 37 deg Celcius and  we had no ‘light’ in and around my village for a day or two. Ai Saiba, I said to myself, ‘hoon. Hoomein bharla haanv.” This summer sweat gives rise to prickly heat, makes talcum-powder manufacturers rich.     

          Most urban shops in Mapusa, Panaji, Porvorim are air-conditioned, good to do summer afternoon time-pass. Unlike in the old days, they are not shut from 1300-1600 hrs. One custom continues: they don’t worry you to buy anything if you don’t worry them to hein daakhay, tein daakhay. 

          Since we have no knowledge of summers in Punjab, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, UP, places from where our ghaatis come, we believe that our summers are jagaatley besht, as our local milk-vendor told me.

To advertise how much our corner of the planet suffers, he wears only a floral-print, cotton long-chaddi. A naadi holds it just below his paunch in the centre of which is the belly-button black-hole into which a hairy galaxy and globe of flesh get drawn.  Male tourists from neighbouring states believe that’s the way to dress in Goa, giving us niz Goemkars an opportunity to force them to buy t-shirts. “Borem dis naa,” the purists say, bare-ly looking at themselves in the mirror.

          Glassfuls of the bright red, bhirinda sollam drink keeps us ‘cool’. This ‘cool’, naught to do with temperature/style, is an Indian concept hard to translate. Curd is ‘heaty’ but buttermilk is ‘cool’. Brinjals are ‘heaty’ but bananas are ‘cool’. Go figure.

          In my village I don’t see women making papad or saandge. The latter can’t be made easily, one woman told me, because kuwaale, the ash-gourd with which it’s made, is expensive. (The same ash-gourd is used for making the famous sweet from Agra, petha.) Like the green mussels, shinnyanye, which were once sold for a few rupees a sack, it’s now getting rare. Shinnyanye are now a hundred bucks for a handful: although listed under rawa-fry on shack menus, they are often out of stock. Activists, environmentalists, please note. We Goemkars may not get senti about tigers getting extinct, but shinnyanye and kalwan matter.

          North Indians use a square, tin and grass contraption attached to their windows, a water-cooler, if they can afford a fan but not an air-conditioner. Middle-classy. They (both water-coolers and the middle-class) are inefficient in Goan humidity. In Rajasthan and Haryana, road-digging was/is done from 0400-1000 hrs and then from 1800 to short of midnight. In the afternoons, (when the temperatures cross well above 40!! And people die of the heat) workers lie down, like we do, so flies can entertain themselves. I wonder why god made flies. Everything has a purpose. Maybe flies were meant to keep human population in check by spreading disease. They have competition from viruses and vectors like mosquitoes…  perhaps their role is to breed maggots to help Margao with its garbage problem. God works in mysterious ways.

          The good part about the sweltering months: fruits. Water-, honey-dew, musk-, Chinese and other melons. Majhya Awaili phrend from Poinguinuim makes excellent jackfruit chips from a certain kind of jackfruit, ripened, cut and sliced to perfection and fried expertly.   

          Since there isn’t ‘labour’ available for roasting and shelling the cajoo-bhiknaa, the cashew-fruits in our waddo are fertilizing the soil. Intoxicating smell, gives me a ‘high’.

         The pineapples, aambaade and the bhirindya solam keep petty burglars busy.

 My mog is the mango. From Gudi Padwa to Ak-shay-tri-tiya (split to help you pronounce it) nothing else matters. Traditionally, mangoes are eaten only after Akshaytritiya, but I start to eat them as soon as the prices fall. Presently, twelve small malcuraad are at eight hundred and medium-sized haphoos at five in the Panaji market. I’ll wait.

We Goans are a warm people. In summer, literally.

On a Goan television program, I saw a weighty woman presenting/watching something that a cook was sweating over. Obviously not a kitchen person, she hissed “ssss….”, ineffectively fanning her face with her fingers, occasionally breaking the monotony with “hooosh… hooosh”. And wiping her face and neck with a tiny, limp hanky.

So-o typically a Goan thing to do when ‘feeling hot-hot-hot’ (temperature-wise, this time.)