Elephants and Enfields, Evelyn Calvert [little readers .TXT] 📗

as two later bridges across the Mandovi and Zuari have suffered spectacular collapses.
Pattos huge roundabouts are best recognised by sprouting illuminated steel columns punctured like celluloid celebrating the annual International Film Festival of India. Bollywood film buffs keep the end of November/early December clear in their diaries for the spectacle in Panjim.
Off to our left as Raj sweeps off the Patto roundabout is the Kadamba bus terminal bulging with busses which couldn’t boast a flat panel between them but we carry on along NH17 and the ramp to the Mandovi Bridge.
There are two parallel bridges spanning the Mandovi and despite having crossed them on numerous occasions, I am still not clear as to whether they are one-way or two-way because each time I cross, there is a different traffic flow in operation and almost invariably, a scooterist who has struck the foot-high red and white kerbstones alongside the bridge railings and is now three pounds heavier than at the start of his journey due to the gravel embedded in his gushing elbow and knee. I think its best to assume that they are both two-way.
Way down below and to the left are the pontoons for the huge Paradise cruise boats which ply the river in season laden with visitors both foreign and Indian.
Further over and on the opposite side of the river to Panjim is the village of Betim. There is a little ferry here which plies between the capitals old steamer jetty and this large fishing and boatbuilding community. From the bridge you look down on a higgledy-piggledy patchwork of fishing boats jumbled around the pontoons and spreading across the river like cells multiplying under a microscope. If you travel through the village, the smell of fish is overpowering and the variety of seafish at its daily market is staggering.
I’ve got the open tobacco tin balanced on my knee now and we’re speeding across the bridge when Raj performs his next spectacular manoeuvre.
Our Maruti lurches into the oncoming traffic causing scooters and motorbikes to perform a startling display that the Red Arrows would be proud of. I’m torn between stopping Hannah from falling out of the open window and saving the ‘baccy’. It’s a close call but as I’m crap at ironing and we have a couple of spare pouches of tobacco in the case, I opt for the former. A glance forward reveals Raj frantically trying to don a white long-sleeved shirt whilst piloting the taxi with his knees.
‘Police!’ he cries.
I find myself thinking ‘Shit, what did I do with that pot?’ and suppressing the fight or flight reflex before reality kicks in and I realise that I’ve got nothing illegal on me and have done nothing wrong.
I have to smile as my mind harks back to a time when Hannah and I owned an American style diner in St.Austell. It was a popular eatery with an eclectic mix of clientele ranging from little old grannies, students and ‘normal’ people to hippies, pot-heads and the local ex-Hells-Angel, hairy-arsed biker group, the Scorpios.
The diner had about thirty covers indoors and a further fifteen in a little walled garden out back. The kitchen was in open view of the restaurant.
On the occasion in question it was getting towards lunchtime and the place was jumping. A group of Scorpios were by the door dressed in full leathers, denim and flick-knives and about ten students sat next to the front window and were behaving very reservedly. H was cooking like crazy. I served meals to the table of students (together with a diagram explaining which orifice to put the food in) and a sweet old lady in the corner and went to collect crockery from the garden. On my way back in, I heard the clarion call ‘Police!’.
Now you’ve probably seen the scene in ‘Jaws’ when the whole town are swimming and playing in the shallows on Amity beach when someone cries ‘Shark!’.
Adults are running for the sand whilst throwing kids over their shoulders like bait and barging pensioners out of their path. Well I had to swim against a stream of customers fighting for the back garden door.
You’d have been excused for thinking that a suicide bomber had just walked in and forgotten to put his coat on over the top of his explosives belt.
I glanced at the window and saw the policemen getting out of their ‘jam-sandwich’. H had turned her back on a full restaurant and on turning again was faced with a totally empty room save for the nonplussed granny. I don’t know which of them had the most priceless expression. It was at this point that I remembered that I had a half ounce of ‘a non-catering herb’ in the office and was on my way back into the garden with it and the intention of stashing it in the rockery when H turned from the window and announced that the policemen had finished their business at the cashpoint opposite, given her a cheery wave and were on their way to the pasty shop.
I was digging illegal substances and knuckledusters out of the borders and plant pots for weeks!
Unlike me, it seemed that Raj did have cause to panic because up ahead, at the other end of the bridge, was a chicane manned by what seemed to be a small battalion of uniformed gendarmerie, some armed. We slowed to a crawl. We watched one of the policemen hold up his arm and braced for a ‘tug’ but he whistled frantically and gesticulated to the driver of the taxi ahead to pull in to the side of the road. We were waved through unhindered. Never mind Raj, I could have pressed flowers between my clenched buttock cheeks.
‘What was all that about?’ Hannah asked. Raj apologised profusely and explained that taxi drivers are obliged by law to wear a clean white shirt on national highways on pain of a hefty fine. Whether this law was enacted in order to ensure taxi drivers present a professional image to the public or whether it exists to further bolster the income of the corrupt police I don’t know. The way they drive, I’d have thought that wearing a white shirt was the least of their worries. Wearing leakproof underwear might be more appropriate. I needed confirmation that my eyes weren’t totally defective and Hannah assured me that Raj’s ‘white’ shirt was more rusty-beige than white and appeared to have been ironed with a building brick.
We ascend the slope leading away from the river and Tiswadi and enter the district of Bardez.
H17 is now dual carriageway with a lush green central reservation planted with pretty aloes and short palms. As we rise further through another red-walled cutting a glance back and to the right reveals a formal double driveway at the end of which sits what looks like a low five-star resort. This palace overlooking the river to Panjim is the newly-built Goan State Legislature building. Bearing in mind how most parliamentarians look after themselves these days, a five-star resort is probably an apt description.
Here sits governor, chief minister and forty area ministers who make up a very small part of the largest democracy in the world. I still find it hard to believe that the state legislature was only enacted in 1987 and even more remarkable that Goa was only freed from Portugese colonial rule in 1961.
The Russians stuck Yuri Gagarin in a superannuated firework and lit the blue touchpaper, I was spilling hot-dog ketchup down my shorts whilst watching 101 Dalmatians and Goa became self-governing.
The Portugese had finally signed a surrender after 451 years of repression, denial of freedom of speech, torture and imprisonment and attempted emasculation of Goan identity. No wonder celebrations are so wild on December 17 th each year, Liberation Day. More on that later.
A mile or so further and we leave NH17, veering left onto the Chogm Road. Just one more village now before hitting the spreading conurbation of Calangute, Candolim and Baga.
Saligao village itself sits off of the Chogm Road a little to the south and is a delightfully pretty place where the houses are closely nestled and the palms and fruit trees plentiful. It is understandable that the locality is so very green when you are given the translation of it’s name. ’Gao’….meaning village and ‘Sal’….the Portugese word for bicycle.
Ok, so I lied about the bicycle. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was a test for the speed readers amongst you. You know who you are, you CHEATS. Now read it properly or get out of my book and buy a ‘Mills and Boon’.
……and ‘Sal’, meaning wooded forest. Now you don’t know whether to believe me or not. I’ve lost your trust haven’t I? Why did I do that? Just when it was going so well, I go and spoil things by making a cheap joke at your expense.
Right, I promise never to do that again. Promise.
The roads leading into the village are narrow and lined with palms creeping out onto the gravel like pedestrians. The compact and neat houses almost touch and between them, a maze of tiny pathways intrigue and invite. The farmland surrounding was traditionally used for growing sugar cane but, increasingly, it is given over to paddies and cereals. At harvest time, the grain can be seen laid along the roadsides to dry. Tarmac radiators.
For those of a superstitious disposition, avoid coming here on the first day of November, for that is celebrated as All Souls Day. It is believed by many to be the occasion when the spirits of the village dead return to visit their old homes…….and probably whinge about how things ‘aren’t the way they used to be’ and how today’s generation have ‘let the place go’.
Quite why they’ve all got to come back on the same day I don’t know. You’d think they’d spread it out a bit. Maybe there’s only one bus.
The more popular cause for a visit to Bicycle village must be the parish church of Mae De Deus, a fabulous white wedding cake of a church in glorious gothic tradition which has sat north of the Chogm Road for 130 years. The buttresses are peaked with long white spires and the belltower above the entrance adorned with what looks like a blanched Eiffel Tower. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. You’ll have to visit twice though because at night it is floodlit and spectacular. Blueish white at the front and with an orange warmth down each side. Of perfect proportion, if I were a churchy type of person, this would be my favourite by a mile.
‘What time do you finish today Raj?’ Hannah enquires.
‘Binish when I drop you off and go home’ he replies as he unbuttons the ‘white’ shirt again. Binish isn’t a typo here, I’ve noticed that a number if Indians have trouble pronouncing F’s. There’s got to be a joke in there somewhere, I think, but not one that doesn’t involve lavish use of the Anglo-Saxon dictionary.
‘Easy life’ H quips.
‘Easy life, easy life, easy life, haha’ Raj sings although I struggle to recognise the tune and feel sure Robbie Williams needn’t worry. Taxi drivers working out of Dabolim only tend to take one fare in a day. Because of the number of cabs there, they stand little chance of getting to the front of the queue again.
We speed out from the shade and pass

`