Being in Goa

ESCAPING TO GOA for three months from toxic air and bitter cold was perhaps the wisest decision we took five years ago. It meant buying a house and a car of our own. But in terms of returns in clean air and relative calm and an unhurried life, the money was probably well-spent. No longer do I cough and huff. The entire family manages to get together a few days before Christmas and enlivens the life for about three weeks, the elder daughter with her two lovely children leaving behind the polluted cauldron that is the nation’s capital, while the younger one flies in from London with her little girl and husband. And while they are here it virtually means a daily visit to one or the other beach resort and later in the evening to various restaurants in and around Assagao, which is fast emerging as the Greater Kailash of Goa.

Builders from Delhi and Mumbai induce owners of old houses to sell out with mouth-watering offers of cash up-front, besides new living quarters for turning their ancient and mostly crumbling structures into villas and large flats. Given that under Portuguese law all members of the extended family were co-owners, fraudulent transactions in collusion with a resident member of the family without the assent of other owners living abroad or outside Goa had come to light some time ago. Worried, former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman had rushed her father to personally ensure that the title of the ancestral house was unblemished. A related scam, now being investigated by a government-appointed committee, involved the surreptitious replacement of land records from the archives with fudged ones. This should not cause any surprise given how land prices have skyrocketed in recent years.

North Goa is now the go-to place in the state, with Assagao boasting excellent eating places. Some of these act so snooty, the wait for a table can extend up to two to three months. Among these storied restaurants is one run by a former correspondent of a Delhi newspaper who probably has found his real calling as a restaurateur.

Being in Goa at this time of the year also means you come across a lot of people from Delhi who have their second or third home here. Most lawyers and successful businessmen have well-appointed properties, at least one in the hills and another in Goa to get away in the summer and winter holidays. Eating out at least one meal a day is virtually a compulsion for those on short breaks—otherwise, how do you think these swanky restaurants would survive?

On the year-end dinner at a restaurant owned by a Goanese man and his French wife, one came across Congress politician Mani Shankar Aiyar en famille, former Akali Dal MP Naresh Gujral and his architect cousin, the famous Mohit Gujral, both with their lovely spouses, and the recently turned billionaire, Dr Naresh Trehan of Medanta and his media-owner wife Madhu Trehan, ushering in the new year in convivial company with champagne and succulent fried prawns. Of course, after feasting on lobsters and guzzling gallons of beer—by the way, some of the local beers are fantastic—comes the highlight of the evening: fireworks on the edge of the Arabian Sea. You can watch the sky rendered orange and red with those rockets emitting a thousand colours before dissipating into the sky. Cinders released by the rockets this time lit the dry grass abutting our fine-dine eatery.

On the five new-year eves celebrated in Goa, I have barely noticed a Goanese family partaking in the festivities. It may be that Goa has a small number of middle-and upper-income families. Or they are not into the Western ways of the city folks. Of course, there are quite a few Goanese rupee billionaires. Significantly, this season both foreign and domestic tourists were missing, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and a cost of living crisis in Europe accounting for the absence of the 250 to 300 chartered flights before Covid. For domestic tourists, walk-in visas and cheap airfares to Sri Lanka seemed a better bargain.

About The Author

Virendra Kapoor

Virendra Kapoor is a political commentator based in Delhi