Painting Panaji Purple.

19 April 2009.

            It’s the time of the year when we visit Goa to pay bills, pay taxes, and with each passing visit, I find the state getting more colourful than in times gone by. That Goans love colour, that we’ve always worn striking designs on our saris and ‘tops’ is well known, specially via Bollywood. Of course, the sari blouse and the skirt/pant is almost always black, but the directors missed that.

This time, we were looking for a ground floor flat to take on rent for my mother who finds it difficult to climb to our second floor flat now. (In spite of living in Goa for years and knowing many people, we had to go to an agent. I am told, in years gone by, people just ‘spread the word’ and got what they wanted. But the times they have a-changed.). First experience: I was shown a 2BHK-1toilet flat behind a row of shops. There was only a ground floor to the building, with a provision for raising more storeys: quite obviously, for there were metal rods sticking upwards from the pillars and a staircase outside the door leading to nowhere. Interesting place to put potted plants, I thought. The flat was surrounded by the trees in the compound: sounds good? Except that they were but a couple of feet from the windows and the outer wall touched them. And the neighbouring buildings were very close, too. Which meant that no sunlight or breeze would enter. The architect was either the dear but unqualified landlord who lived in the cottage adjoining, or a college dropout. At Rs 8000 bucks a month, that was really the fungus on a dustbin (antonym of icing on the cake), for the walls within were painted purple and green. Think that’s unusual? You haven’t stepped out to see what’s happening then: orange kitchens, turquoise bathrooms, striking colours are the code of the day. But the latest colour is purple.

             Go to Caranzalem (I believe the fad began there) or St. Inez, or even in the heart of Panaji, there are so many new monstrosities painted in garish purple. They are supposed to stand out, perhaps, like protestors and activists at a gay parade. But the latter have an agenda; here, what point are the builders making? If they are making a point, why not choose shocking pink or parrot green or sunflower yellow or jet black? Panaji can then have dotted buildings, exteriors with checks (I’ve seen some with such patterns), or stripes. There could be buildings with optical illusions painted on them. I need to copyright my ideas. The government always had tutti-fruity exteriors and honestly, they’ve started looking quite classy compared to what I’ve recently seen hereabouts.

Some would think that to be an experiment in individualism, style, forward thought, creative expression, etc. Goa always leads in such things, eh? I saw a ‘bungalow’ (we still use this word for a house, no matter how cramped or tiny, a hangover from ‘the Raj’, which never existed in Portuguese Goa) with fake palms at the entrance, a la Dubai style. I saw that at one restaurant or shop (forget which), too. Great, let’s start manufacturing plastic plants (so common in many drawing rooms anyway) now that we’re decimating the real ones.

Along with a sense of colour (what was wrong with the simple white so suited for our tropical clime?) and other things, we’ve lost some of our food habits. On a popular tv program, I was amused to see tomatoes and garlic being ‘traditionally’ used in fish curries. To my grandmother, tomatoes were a novelty and garlic a strict no-no, tho’ fish-curry was staple food. Give you an example of how hard it is to get local ethnic once-upon-a-time fare: My coz from the UK wanted (oh these NRIs, always going back to their childhoods) of all things, vatamba solan to make fish curry. The local grocer hadn’t heard of it. Markettant melltale, he said. The old market said, go to the spice shops. The spice shops said visit the new market. There I was told no one bought these any longer, stick to birindya solan. Finally, someone suggested, try the phool stalls. The flower stalls? Oh yes, that was just where one woman had two, just two packets of what I wanted.

I discover new aspects of Panaji every time.

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