Indian Takeaway (21 page)

Ten examples of Christian influence on daily Goan Life on
the journey to Carmona

Orlando Mascarenhas is my car mechanic. He lives out in Heston, west London and what he doesn’t know about the internal combustion engine is not worth knowing. I can remember hearing his name as long ago as I can remember being able to hear, full stop. Orlando isn’t a common name for Indians. It was a rather glamorous name in a family full of Malkits, Satinders and Rajs. (Why does every Indian family have at least four boys called Raj? It is of course an irony that the Raj that most people know and remember is a load of
white people in pith helmets and jodhpurs; for me it’s any family gathering invariably involving a samosa.)

Orlando was spoken about like some latter-day Merlin who would conjure a car into working order through some dark art of automotive repair. I rediscovered him in the spring of 2007 when my wife’s car needed what appeared worryingly to be thousands of pounds’ worth of work. The curse of the speed bump on the German suspension system. I brought the Passat to Orlando and three hundred quid later it was right as rain. I then took my car for a service and we got talking.

It transpired that Orlando was Goan. I never knew this about him. But I should have guessed from his name, which is Goan Christian, to be exact. As I worked out how many hundreds of pounds he had saved me on my wife’s car, Orlando told me that I was lucky to catch him – he was on his way to Goa. Orlando travels to Goa three or four times a year. From mid-November until mid-January he goes to enjoy the cooler winter sun, the more temperate climate; his family join him as soon as school breaks. He returns in May or June with the kids for half-term and again in the autumn break. And come summertime he’s back on a plane and Goa-bound. He may take an extra trip when the fancy possesses him.

As I stood in Orlando’s modest house in Heston everything about him and his life started to fall into place. He wasn’t living in the small two-up, two-down; he was existing there. Goa was where Orlando came to life. Even just talking about it his body became energised, his hands started describing the sea and the sand and his eyes twinkled. If this was how animated he became about the place in the oil-soaked drizzle of west London, I wanted to experience him in situ, in the midst of his sun-kissed paradise. He seemed the perfect person to visit on my journey.

‘When are you going?’ I asked.

‘Tuesday.’

‘Don’t fancy going again in a couple of months, do you?’ I was half joking.

‘Hold on …’ He wandered off and shouted his son’s name upstairs. ‘Carlos! Carlos! When are your holidays?’

I remember thinking at the time how strange that there were Indian people with names like Orlando and now Carlos. Orlando returned, smiling. But then Orlando was always smiling.

‘We will be there. Kids’ half term.’

‘Can I come and cook for you?’

Orlando looked a little confused. ‘You can cook for me here in London … ’

I explained my quest, my journey, my attempt at selfdiscovery. ‘I really want to come to Goa.’

‘Then please be my guest.’

Orlando is East African, like my mother. His father had worked with my maternal uncle and my maternal grandfather on the railways that the British seemed to construct wherever they colonised. Orlando came to the UK in 1975 with a view to studying science, but life so very often impacts on aspiration and he found himself working at British Airways by day and spannering the odd car by night. Such was his reputation for automotive alchemy that the night job started paying more than the day job. His plan was clear: he would work all the hours the cosmos sent and he would rebuild his father’s house in Goa. This he did all the way through the 1980s, fl ying to and fro to supervise works. Then in 1993 he decided to buy his own place in Goa. Back then no one knew or was particularly interested in Goa apart from the soap-dodging, lank-haired hippies.

Orlando greets me warmly in front of his house. This is his home in Goa, a two-storey villa in a gated community abutting the beach at Carmona. It could not be more different from his life in Heston. Perhaps it’s the contrast with the slate, rain-laden skies of west London, the chill in the air, the general sense of greyness of the capital of England that suddenly makes Carmona seem not just the other side of the world but an altogether different galaxy. Orlando’s villa is beautiful. Bougainvillea stretches upwards and around the powder-pink exterior. Inside it is cool and airy with four good-sized bedrooms and two terraces. I stand on the back terrace looking out to the Arabian Sea and I wonder why Orlando ever leaves. I ask him. The answer is obvious.

‘Gotta work, man. Gotta make the money … ’

The house is part of a wider resort. There are maybe another seventy or so villas and there’s a pool and a badminton court; but this is Indian Goa, not Costa del Goa. These holiday homes are owned almost exclusively by Goans or Indians who spend a few weeks or months of the year here. A handful of retired Indians live here year round, for whom the sun and the pace of life are simply perfect. Low season it may be, but for me the heat is almost intolerable.

Goa is a unique part of India for many reasons. In the last ten years or so it has developed from hippy hang out into India’s most visited tourist location. Paradise is becoming more easily attainable with numerous five-star hotels and leisure complexes being developed on the coastline. Orlando tells me that in the old days fresh fish was much easier and cheaper to get hold of; now all the best stuff is sold on to the restaurants. He remembers when he was a child his family would give freshly caught fish to western travellers and ask them to cook it; then they would all sit together and enjoy the meal. But that was then.

‘Do you feel Indian?’ I ask, almost at the end of my first cold beer in days.

Orlando reaches for another before answering. ‘I’m Goan, man. I never call myself Indian. I’m Goan.’ His reply is a little fiercer than I think he intended it to be. He sips his beer before looking at me again with his kind eyes. ‘We’re different, us Goans. Different, man.’

That there is a marked dichotomy between the Goan sense of identity and the Indian isn’t altogether surprising. Until December 1961 Goa was still Portuguese. It was only after armed conflict that the Indian army forcibly reclaimed the state. Goa had been a colony for almost 500 years, one of the world’s oldest recognised colonies. The Portuguese influence is still evident: Orlando Mascarenhas is evidence enough, surely! Orlando remembers his parents speaking Portuguese and he himself remembers understanding the language.

Orlando is keen to take me out and about, proud to show me his Goa.

‘We never cook at home, man. We get food in for lunch and then go out and eat in the evenings. My friends run a few good places.’

‘I want to try pork. Is that OK?’ I ask tentatively. There’s still something very strange about asking for pork in India.

‘Should be fine. We’ll go to the Traveller’s.’ I like Orlando’s confidence.

We drive out to a place called the Traveller’s Tavern some fifteen minutes away. I notice that although the sun set some hours ago the heat has hung around. It’s not warm; it’s hot. When we arrive I feel rather alarmed at the state of the place. To say the Traveller’s is a shack would be unfair on shacks. A four-foot-high brick wall traces the outline of the space; every few feet a wooden post rises up, upon which rests a thatched
roof. It’s basic in the extreme. One only wonders about the kitchen which remains unseen and unheard in a separate hut at the back. They say one should judge the quality of an establishment’s food by the quality of its toilets: if that were the case at the Traveller’s I would have been leaving there sharpish. But this is India, albeit Goan India. My mind and my bowels are open to new experiences.

This place is run by an old friend of Orlando’s, and there’s another guy hovering around the bar; he seems to have one leg longer than the other and a moustache that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of a low-budget spaghetti western. Orlando thinks it a good idea that we have a little pre-prandial stiffener. I would kill for a vodka tonic but that would appear not to be on offer. Instead the local spirit arrives at the table. A clear spirit, cashew fenny is made from the fruit of the cashew tree. Each fruit bears only a single pair of cashew nuts (hence the expense of the nut). The nut is attached to a fruit, and this fruit, in time old tradition, is fermented and turned into alcohol.

‘Have some, man. It’s the local speciality.’ Orlando is not the sort of guy you want to disappoint. Neither are the owner of the bar and his friend. They stand watching as I grasp the glass in my hand.

I am compelled to have a taste. I decide to down it in one; I am from Glasgow after all.

It’s harsh.

‘Lovely,’ I say, forcing a smile where a smile ought never to belong.

It’s like lighter fuel. Or grappa. I just don’t get grappa. And I’m not loving cashew fenny either. I’m hopeful that the lining on my throat will eventually grow back. I have never understood why people drink alcohol that doesn’t taste nice.

I let Orlando order the food. The pork-free food. I can’t believe I have come all this way and they’ve run out of pork. The owner explains.

‘The pork we have to order in the morning. It’s low season so we don’t get so much. The pork we ordered was all sold by lunchtime.’

‘Get some for tomorrow night, OK?’ Orlando looks sternly at the owner, who demurs.

Orlando asks what I like to eat.

‘Food,’ I reply, cheekily. ‘Anything and everything.’

Twenty minutes later the table is heaving with dishes. It all looks amazing. There is fresh mackerel cooked with a rechard masala. The gutted fish are filled with the spicy red sauce and fried. King fish curry in a thin, soupy sauce; very oniony and sweet. Then we are sent a plate of spicy sausages – chipolatasized pork sausages wrapped in beef intestines and then deep fried; they are rich and fatty. These sausages are the only pork in the restaurant since they are cured and can keep for days. Finally a plate of masala beef tongue which is much tastier than it sounds. It is cooked in a coconut, vinegar and chilli sauce and is best accompanied by the Portuguese bread.

A few hours later, having successfully avoided any further adventures with the cashew fenny, we drive home in the dark. The complex rich flavours of the spicy, vinegary masalas and the fatty sausages warm me from the inside, colliding occasionally and uncomfortably with the harsh paint-thinning taste of the cashew fenny. And while the Goan food warms my insides, my outside is being toasted by the temperature which seems somehow unaware of the fact that it is approaching midnight, refusing to get any cooler than the low thirties. The windows open, the wind in my beard, I look forward to the air-conditioned comfort of my friend’s home. That is something
about Orlando that I really admire. Systematically, piece by piece, he re-designed his little corner of paradise within India’s little corner of paradise. While he lives modestly in Heston, he lives like royalty in Goa.

We arrive back and I yearn for bed. Orlando yearns for more cashew fenny. It would be impolite to refuse. Again. We decant drinks and turn on all the fans and AC units.

‘It’s going to be a hot night.’ Orlando wipes a bead or two of sweat from his brow.

We down our drinks and I make for bed. I am cooking tomorrow and I need to have more than my usual number of wits about me. I lie in bed, enjoying the cooling breeze of the conditioned air, the hum of the machine like a lullaby.

I am moments away from the sweetest of sleeps when suddenly the world seems to grind to a silent halt. The AC falls quiet. The night lights fail; there is darkness everywhere. I hear noises in the hallway and the unmistakeable light of a torch, flitting under the door. Orlando is up and one of the kids, Carlos, is moaning. I stagger out of my room to find out what’s going on. It transpires that the generator has failed. Being a mechanic, Orlando feels he can fix everything, but even his resolve is insufficient in the pitch dark of a Goan night. He apologises profusely.

‘No problem,’ I say nonchalantly. ‘I like the heat.’

I am plainly quite stupid. The temperature feels even hotter at one in the morning than it has done all day long. The air is still and oppressive. Have you ever tried to sleep in a breeze-less thirty-six degrees? It’s impossible. Even my sweat is sweating. I doze lightly rather than enter the full body embrace of sleep. By four in the morning I feel almost hallucinatory.

Orlando has arranged for a taxi to come and collect me in the morning and take me to shop for food. The driver’s name
is Rosewell; he knows his way around the markets. Orlando rarely visits the Margao market. He has no need to. He never cooks when he is here. They simply go out and eat.