| Goan domestic life is principally conducted in these shaded internal and external areas. The front porch, with its tiled and gabled roof and built-in stone seats of smooth coloured cement, is the balcao""a perfect vantage point to observe the daily goings-on of village life. All day long a stream of vendors and workmen and visitors pass through. |
| Twice a day the bread man honks his bicycle bell and from his tin trunk offers delicious flat naan-like bread called pui at two rupees a piece. Others bring in succulent fresh vegetables and fish. Representatives of the local church committee drop in for their fund-raising campaign. And masons and plumbers labour long and hard to introduce the wonders of modern plumbing into a 120-year-old house with rock-solid walls four feet thick. |
| Modern toilets are a comparatively recent innovation in old Goan houses. Even substantial 18th century baronial mansions, with essential conveniences such as private wells or elaborate chapels, with altarpieces of gilt baroque soaring heavenwards, rarely made concessions to improved standards of sewage. Toilets were known as "pigs' privies" and located some distance at the back of a house""hut-like structures raised on machans, below which pigs were reared as scavengers. Mario Miranda, the well-known illustrator and cartoonist, who moved back into one such family mansion in the pretty village of Loutolim in north Goa three decades ago, is still struggling to create enough en suite bathrooms. Given the traditional layout of Goan houses""a series of interlinked verandahs, courtyards and oddly-placed rooms""restoration can be a complicated, expensive and hazardous business. |
| Wonderful chroniclers of Goa such as Manohar Malgaonkar and Maria Aurora Couto have dwelt in detail on the unusual power exerted by Goan village councils in preserving landholdings and restraining sale of family-held properties. Yet their control is rapidly waning against the rising ride of property speculators, charter-flight tourists and commercialised strips that are eating into the verdant countryside. Often named as the model Indian state for its high economic and social indicators, Goa is now also becoming India's answer to Bali or Ibiza: both as holiday destination number one and home away from home. More than a million tourists crowd into tacky beach hotels, shacks, apartments, shops and restaurants during the winter months; traffic on the Baga-Calangute strip over Christmas and New Year is as clogged as Mumbai at rush hour. Civic crusaders from Mumbai such as Gerson da Cunha, who have old family connections in Goa, predict that if unchecked commercial activity continues at its current pace, Goa will be "finished" in a few years. Others feel more optimistic: given Goa's strong infrastructure and growth potential, it has the ability to withstand and absorb the assault. |
| One reason for the growing influx of property buyers and the new floating population is cheap air transport. Five years ago the Delhi-Goa air journey, usually routed through Mumbai, was nearly five hours long and the return fare cost Rs 19,000; today non-stop flying time has come down by half and fares are as low as one-third. Holiday weekends in Goa are an inexpensive reality from most metros. The cuisine is varied and cheap, drink is plentiful, the crowd is cosmopolitan and the beaches are extensive. Goa is the international hot spot. |
| But for me the real Goa lies in its secret homes in villages curtained by old trees. There is no greater pleasure than sitting on the balcao listening to the plangent tones of Amalia Rodriguez singing fados as they waft on the evening breeze |
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