LEFT BEHIND

Another balmy Monday has passed by without any fuss. We had an easy morning lazing about and reading; not doing much but very busy doing it. In the early afternoon I had to go to the optician in Mapusa to collect my new spectacles and seeing that we were already missioning, we decided to hook up with some long-time acquaintances of the Lady G. Brendan is a South African make-up artist who has been living and working in India for many years and his nuptial partner Marco is from Finland. After a bit of op-en-af we eventually met up with them at a French restaurant in Anjuna where they had a pop-up salon for the day. In attendance was a young English woman whose partner – an Indian – was having her hair done, as well as an older German lady. Multi-cultural se wat-wat…

The initial plan was to retire to the Mavis’s house in Chapora, but after their busy day we decided to head to Sri’s Restaurant – once again – for dinner and a taste of the Monday night pop gig, but en-route we had to stop off at the house of one of their friends who was having an existential crisis brought about by a love affair that had seemingly reached its sell-by date and what I believe is a common end-of-season malaise in these parts. The terminal regret of having over-indulged for an extended period and having wasted money (and time) that should have been spent more wisely or not at all. This I believe is what the Goan party scene is all about.

Anyway, back to Sri’s. The owner had previously mentioned the Monday night pop gig but being the jazz-snob that I am we had been avoiding it. I must admit that it was a pleasant surprise nevertheless. Normally at this type of gig, the musician tries too hard to sound like everyone they are covering and normally this means a strained too-loud disturbance that never ends soon enough. In this case (and I must admit that I didn’t get his name) a solo guitarist/vocalist was unassumingly doing his thing: not too loud, not strained at all, actually interpreting a diverse selection of songs from Pink Floyd to Bob Marley and Don MacLean.

And speaking of Bob Marley, I had a couple of those! A cocktail of Old Monk rum, cabo (a type of coconut liqueur), pineapple juice, mint ‘and no worries’: kak lekker to say the least… And what’s more there was a time in the course of the night that there were four equally delicious hash joints floating around a table of eight diners. How could there have been anything amiss with the night? After a 700 rupee, half-hour taxi ride through the quiet streets from Anjuna across the Chapora River to Morjim where the busyness and bustle of the evening was blissfully left behind.