Of course, you're right on that Venantius. Event hough we romanticise the "good old days", the 1960s were tough times for many (almost all?) of us in India.
I don't quite agree with Eric that this was because of India's 'socialistic' approach. Rather, this was a country just emerging out of colonialism, with little or no industrial base (my dad had just finished a contract with helping Kaiser Engineer's build a steel plant in Jamshedpur and was taking on the offer to take up a job with the next at Cubatao, Sao Paulo state (later on to become one of the 10 most polluted places on the planet!) Besides, there was a lack of skills. Doctors who took their education in India and migrated Westwards were reminded, I recall, that their education had cost the taxpayer Rs100,000 -- a huge sum in those days. Famines were know (around 1967, if not mistaken). The US/Indian solution was the Green Revolution (anything to avoid Red!). In fits and starts, the US-India relationship was on the rocks, and post-colonial defiance at times wasn't making things easier. We could occasionally afford butter. Fresh milk was cheap, but there were queues (in Goa till the early 1980s), and one was lucky if you got a 250 ml plastic bag. I remember we occasionally ate Dalda (a kind of ghee) with sugar on our bread, as it was cheaper. Eggs were easier to come by, probably because these were locally produced. Our family brought back a fridge with us from Brazil, but till 1970 we didn't have an electricity connection at home! Those were those trying times. Nonetheless, I look back wistfully. The tough parts tend to get edited out of our memories. FN On 28 September 2016 at 06:58, Venantius J Pinto <venantius.pi...@gmail.com> wrote: > A consideration: > Most Christian homes did not have butter on the table. Perhaps such was the > case in certain enclaves. I know many people who did not, and nether did > we. And there were many other things we and they did not partake in. It was > not financially possible. We did not have a fridge, nor a record player and > so on and so forth. People come from different strata of society, and > accordingly lived lives. Always hoping. This is something I have attempted > to spell out many times. Also there is nothing homogeneous about Goans and > lived aesthetics, as also ethics. > -- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ Frederick Noronha http://about.me/noronhafrederick http://goa1556.in _/ P +91-832-2409490 M 9822122436 Twitter @fn Fcbk:fredericknoronha _/ Hear Goa,1556 shared audio content at https://archive.org/details/goa1556 _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/