Potato-hunt in Goa and other woes

PERIPATETIC

What is it about me, Goa and an insatiable craving for jacket potato? When does a jacket potato turn from plain-n-simple comfort food to food epiphany? In the absence of suitable answers, I wandered the length of (some of) Goa's beaches looking for the waterfront shack that served up the perfect jacket potato.

Everybody has a gastronomic association with Goa. For some it's deep-fried squid, for others chicken xacutti. For me, there's nothing quite like the crispy-skinned, starchy-bodied, fromage-oozing jacket to soak up all of the previous night's sins and set you up for a lazy day ahead.

But I wasn't having much luck this time. Most often my order was unquestioningly being substituted with soggy fries or lumpy mash. As for the potatoes, missing jackets notwithstanding, there was a larger problem at hand.

Shacks that were old favourites had not surfaced this season, post their usual summer sabbatical. Three times over I arrived at what used to be one, and found swirling sand in its place. It seems that amid government corruption and general political distress, there have been severe delays in the renewal of licences this year.

While I was there, the much loved, and thronged, Ingo's Saturday night bazaar got the axe. "It isn't doing enough to create jobs for locals," reported the press.

A large part of Goa seems to be in the same boat, awaiting its fate while the government "" that is making no bones about its dissatisfaction with the state's scruffier traveller image "" dithers and stumbles over exactly how it wants to shape India's most popular tourist destination.

And while illegal shacks and tents crowding already overrun beaches cannot be condoned, it seems like the government is barking up the wrong, or at least the less erring, tree.

What is clearly the more worrisome issue is the extent to which the state's fate is being handed over to property speculators and developers. Rows and columns of insipid, sprawling residential and commercial development scars the landscape of Goa today, for which whole sections of hills seem to have been excavated and tracts of mangroves destroyed.

More than one tourist claimed they wouldn't be returning because they are disturbed by what they believe is the beginning of the destruction of the languid, green Goa they've grown to love over the years.

But one hopes all's not lost. Citizen groups are up in arms and the government has indicated that they are designing a master plan for the state, presumably to set boundaries for how much more Goa can take before it hits an environmental crisis.

To get over all these disturbing issues, and at the risk of sounding terribly trite, the fact that Tito's (Goa's most famous drinking hole) now serves only Budweiser and precious little else, I decided to spend the rest of my time making mental notes to never let myself be arm-twisted into drinking anything that's called Bullfrog ever again. That and lying back and people-watching. And in Goa, that's one priceless pleasure nobody can take away from you.

PS: Speaking of tasty tubers, did you know that in a town called Clark in South Dakota, on a day of the year christened Clark Potato Day, adults climb into a giant pit of mashed potato and wrestle? Worth a visit I'd say.