First Goa Trip...SBI (1981-82)

First Goa Trip...SBI (1981-82)

I quite vividly remember my first Goa trip. My colleagues, peer group from State Bank of India decided to go to Goa. We thought it would be a good idea to travel by rail and bus.

We had reached Goa and were put up at Calangute Beach, at Hotel Avazado, our bank's official guest house. We were allotted a room and one of us anxiously asked the care-taker of the hotel if a girl from our branch, who had married few days ago and was to go to Goa, was still there. We were promptly told that she had left a day ago and had stayed in the room next to one which was allotted to us.

That was it! We had a lot of fun discussing what might have happened in the next room, how they would have mate for the first time, how he might have begged and how she might have refused, what were the sounds heard by the four walls of the room. The whole experience was a hilarious and fun.

I also remember that we had traveled up to Miraj, near Kolhapur, from V.T. and from there we took a meter-gauge train. I remember meter-gauge train as a somewhat lean replica of a broad-gauge train which was different than a narrow-gauge train that we take to Matheran.

At Londha, we entered in to Karnataka and thereafter at some place in to Goa and finally got down at Madgaon in the late afternoon. We had a lunch at Madgaon in a small hotel where the food tasted somewhat like a malwani/gomantak style. But there was a handful of serving of some kind of a small deep-fried fish served as a chuttney. This was not seen by us in Mumbai then. Quite a satisfactory experience!

We took up a bus to Panjim. Bus operators would not leave the buses unless they are fully packed with no space for an ant to enter! But the fares were very reasonable...that's what we always wanted then.

I don't remember much about Panaji on that evening when we came from Madgaon. What I remember now is a jetty at Panaji where Mumbai-Goa ships would dock, buildings that were distinctly different from what we used to see in Mumbai and a vegetarian dinner that we took at one of Kamat's restaurant. Kamat restaurants are almost same everywhere (even today). And therafter we proceeded to Calangute.

One day we travelled to South Goa to see churches and on the next day to north Goa. I do not remember much, from this trip, what we saw there except that Goan churches were fantastic and temples were more serene (as there was less of crowd we used to see in Mumbai/Shirdi and other places even then...that’s 25 years ago).

We drank lot of beer on the Goa trip as the same was available for a dirt. I really didn't like the Goan or Konkani food....I must correct myself, the one with heavy Portuguese stamp...and not the Goan curries, which we savored a lot.... that we ordered, probably a pomfret..a boiled and garnished with finely chopped vegetables and some sauces. We in fact felt like omitting...it was smelling horrible, thought it was not properly cooked. So we ate a lot of cheese (eating food like cheese and butter wasn't a health problem then for many of us, I believe).

Two of our vegetarian friends, however, would go hysterical as we were merrying drinking beer and feasting on other non-veg dishes. So they would order any weird snacks...and as it happened on many occasion that the seemingly veg food would smell like a non-veg dish in Goa. One had ordered a Cadbury chocolate when we were drinking and when asked why he was ordering it, he replied that since he was contributing equal money and was not drinking beer or eating non-veg he felt like helping himself. We said," God, save your child!". Yes, we also recognised his right to enjoy every penny that he shared in the contribution.

I also remember that we were discussing miniaturization of many products. a friend citing his neighbor who was in AT & T in the USA, said that old rotary, circular dial phone had given a way to new push-button type phone and the bulky 'Black-Box' was on the way out giving a way to slicker push-button phones. He further claimed that there was a saturation of the technology and no further reduction in size or miniaturization in case of phone was possible. After his entire neighbor was there in the dreamland called the US of America and how can we not believe him. We also affirmed his stories. And we now what has happened and from our experience we now don't like to say in any concrete manner where we may head as far as the technology is concerned.

One of my maternal uncles was a habitual drinker. I had purchased 4 bottles of liquor for him. I remember how much my older mama was upset when he came to knew that I had brought liquor for his younger sibling. Finally I had to surrender those bottles and what happened to them I have never realized. My younger uncle did not, however, forgot to thanks me saying that he was happy that somebody cared for him.