By the second day I had become a permanent fixture in the verandah, having glued myself to the cane swing chair. Given the chance, I might have set up camp there.
My sister broke into the scene, bouncing as she always did, into the verandah. “Hey sis! You’d better get dressed. The bathroom’s free now. In half an hour we’re having breakfast and then we’re off to see Santhani Aunty.”
“Who???” I didn’t connect as fast as she spoke.
But she was off, and she’d made sure I’d heard the bit about the ‘free bathroom’. Oh well!
We rocked in the car as it bobbed along tiny road bumps. These could hardly be classified as ‘speed breakers’. To be honest, they were little raised bits of tar and gravel. But they were infuriatingly frequent and they occurred in instances of twenty or thirty at a time, each stretch about a meter or two wide. They were very effective in slowing down all vehicles, with the exception of cyclists who simply took to the untarred sides of the road.
“Mmm - bop - ba - doo - bi - da - ba - doo - bop - ba - doo - bi - da - ba - dooo…” my sister droned Hanson with each bump.
It was 10 a.m. and I was sweating already. I ran out of tissues and I had to turn to our picnic towel for relief!
I looked back. My mother was fast asleep, snoring, and my father stared out of the window, his camera slung around his neck. Mr. Rosario was squinting at the road and seemed lost in the serious intent of doing a good job.
I turned to the road again and asked, “Mr. Rosario, how long will it take us to get to Panjim?”
“25 minutes?” he replied. He sounded confident, as he always did.
We eventually made it in 45, not counting out stop on the Zoari bridge.
The road to Panjim is not straight. No road in Goa is straight. The land is rocky, uneven, stubborn, and in all the 4 days we spent there, I can honestly say that the only straight stretch of road I remember is the Causeway, about 3 kms long, that lies just before the Zoari bridge. I clocked the distance on our way back and I discovered that the only time one could breathe a sigh of relief in one’s seat is but for a short 7 minutes, on that particular stretch. Other times, you fought to sit still as the road curved and went up and down sharply and threatened to throw you out of the door.
We were doing 70 kms per hour and we were driving very dangerously, at that. The bus drivers here, like everywhere else in India, were maniacs! To add to the road race was competition from countless tourist vans, smaller and lighter, and jampacked with mummies and daddies and uncles and aunties and grannies and screaming kids. Their suitcases had been lashed to the tops of the vans and with each flashing vision through their barred windows, I could see tiffins being exchanged, shirts getting changed, and songs being yelled out with enthusiasm. And on the sides of some vans, the tiffin had been spewed out in the shape of a muddy yellow-green streak.
They zipped along the narrow palm-lined roads like spaceships, in their brilliant colors, proclaiming their names in bold lettering on metal boards pinned above their windshields. While bracing ourselves for an impending collision, my sister and I tried to read as many names as we could – “Roseanne…Mahalakshmi…Saraswati…Teresa…” And ‘Immaculate Mary’ too, that was painted in a glorious pagan celebration of red, black, and yellow. But truly, it was not so much a colorful irreverence as much as it was the flaming passion of the Goans for their respective religions. It was touching to see the love with which they’d decorated and painted their vans and trucks, each of which bore a Saint’s or a Goddess’ name…and in many cases, a sweetheart’s name, I'm sure. And near the hawker’s stalls which were clustered around the fringes of every tourist spot, these vans stood, with their drivers jealously guarding them.
To drive into Panjim, one must cross the Zoari river. It was a sight I hadn’t been prepared for. Travelling in Tamil Nadu during the summer, I had grown accustomed to seeing dried up streams half-heartedly chugging along river beds. The sight of this immense, brimming river was overwhelming. It stretched as far as the eye could see and if we hadn’t been crossing it over this massive bridge, I might’ve mistaken it to be the sea. It glimmered and shimmered and sparkled like diamonds on a carpet of grey in the distance. And with the great expanse of clear blue sky soaring above it, it was an awesome sight. It took me a while to realize that my mouth was hanging open. I caught Mr. Rosario looking on with happy pride as we spilled into the car to look over the cement railing.
As we continued driving to Panaji, he spoke with my father.
“Bridge finish this year, Saab.”
I felt my father nod beside me.
My mother, who had fallen asleep again, woke up with a start and sleepily asked him, “It fell down some years ago, Mr. Rosario?”
“Yes, Madam.”
My father rustled his arms over the camera and adjusted his specs, “We read about it in the papers. Very sad, it was. Quite a few people lost their lives in the tragedy.” He was quiet.
“Well, at least they completed it and have done a good job.” Mummy murmured, after the silence, before nodding off again, like Alice's dormouse. And with that, we entered the first busy street of outer Panaji (or Panjim, as it was once known).
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