Dear JC
Thank you for your posting which, as always, I enjoy. Given below are my
comments.
JC1: So, I have decided to pay my bribe to whoever will get my work done. I
will pay whatever i takes for me to open a
'Vada-pao' shop in Benalim. If necessary, I might also supply some G-chai to
encourage 'patraos' to come back to my
shack .... over and over again. Ah .... What a liberating feeling !
RF1: Understood, it is easier to pay a bribe and have peace of mind to know
your work may get done. Then put your feet
up, sip a cup of G-chai and enjoy this story.
On my visit to Goa, the first day, I had to stock up on essential supplies, you
know the usual, bottled water, odomos, etc.
A well known supermarket was a stones throw away which was handy as I had a
large denomination rupee note. When I
got to the checkout, I was given change and three sweets wrapped up in red
shiny paper. You can imagine my delight, my
welcome to Goa and already I was being given promotional sweets.
Delight turned to deflation when I discovered these three sweets represented
three rupees of my change!
At the end of my holiday, my sweet collection had grown so much that I
purchased a fancy bottle, put these sweets inside,
tied a red ribbon around the bottle neck and presented to my work colleagues in
London as a "Gift from Goa".
There was one though that I ate all by myself. When my change got to five
rupees, I was given a chocolate bar (made in
India). One day when I needed a chocolate rush I decided to treat myself. This
chocolate bar said fruit and nut and it was
only when I got to my last bite did I crunch on half a nut and one raison!
Had such incidents happened in supermarkets in the United Kingdom, they would
all be closed overnight and we would
all starve.
JC2: BTW: From now until election day 2012, I will join many Goans in
Dreamland. After election day, I will return to the
reality: Party might change BUT the same JOKERS will control the show .... ALL
in the interest Goa's political stability (of
course).
RF2: We all have a "dream". No one thought that the United States of America
would have a president who was not
white.
The last line of my posting read: "Let's hope in years to come we will even
have a place to sit on our pristine clean
beaches, free of litter, peacefully looking out at the Arabian sea at the close
of each day watching a golden sunset"
An article by Rochelle Pinto in Hindustan Times on 8 Jan 2012 "Goa's got no
place to party!" and recent photographic
uploads by JoeGoaUK show just what a challenge this will be.
It is up to our local community to decide how they will actually vote. Either
to have their susegad way of life snatched away
from them or not?
Best wishes.
Rose Fernandes
Thornton Heath, Surrey, United Kingdom
9 January 2012
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