When The Guests Come Marching In

(27 Jan ’13)

            I’ve set up home in India’s best-looking places: Srinagar (before the guns took over), Punjab (during the curfew days), Ooty (or near-about there), Jodhpur (where we lived just behind and below the grand palace, Umaid Bhavan), Bareilly (on the way to the lovely Kumaon) and now Goa.

            Before National Geographic, Discovery and other travel channels barged into our drawing rooms, if you wanted to experience a place, you had to go there. Before computers made (online) booking something you could do from your bedroom and arrangements were made after sending several letters (that’s like email, but on paper, in case you’re less than forty years old). It took weeks to confirm dates. Standing in queues and carrying trunks (wheeled suitcases and haversacks were a generation away) was the norm. Everyone owned a canvas hold-all in which they carried mattresses and sheets for the journey and everyone hired a coolie to carry it. Bottled water was unheard of and air travel only for the rich. Cattle-class folks like me had sturdy insides, fortified by drinking unfiltered, scarcely potable water at various small stations which may still not be visible on Google images.  Guests never stayed in hotels.

            Now, at least in Goa, some of my guests do stay in hotels. Once they discover that the sum cost of their lodging and boarding in a ‘decent’ place is cheaper than taking a taxi for the day, they get in touch with me.

If it hadn’t been for my guests I would never have seen the Kannka Devi temple at Narvem. Nor met the fully deaf and partially blind priest who handed out stale flowers along with the prasad.  Off the tourist track, the trees, the people, the ambience still retained a lot of charm. It also meant there were no toilets for us to use. That’s true about the well-frequented temples, too, where one has to walk quite a distance to empty one’s bladder. Frustrating experience. The churches, at least in Old Goa, have easy access to toilets.

If it hadn’t been for my guests, I would not have discovered French, Mediterranean, Kerala and other cuisines within a few minutes drive from my house, for (non-Goans find this hard to believe) we don’t eat out as a rule.

            Thanks to my guests, I have discovered that Goa is more happening than Mumbai, Kolkatta, Bengaluru, or Delhi.

            @@@@@@