We haven’t been to Goa in a while – at least, my wife and I haven’t, though the children tend to treat it like a weekend retreat where they turn up without even bothering to pack an overnighter, simply acquiring a tee-and-sarong on the beach in which they then hang around for the duration of their stay – because apparently it’s no longer cool to stay in a hotel. In certain circles in Delhi, you count only if you’ve recently acquired a patch of land on which you’ve built your own “shack”, which is Goa-speak for a villa, complete with fitted Italian kitchens and furniture that’s been customised in Bali. New Delhi conversations centre on Goa property prices, architects, drainage (as in soil drainage, not drains), and whether you’ve got a river between your acre and the neighbour’s — the sea, apparently, isn’t in favour so much as the many streams and rivers that water the laterite fields of the village where you’ve likely got your designer pad.
Our friends have all issued invitations that we are to feel free to use their Goa homes any time we choose, whether or not they are in residence. But apparently you do not accept a Goan invitation of hospitality unless you can return it, which means you need your own place in Goa if you are to accept an offer to stay in their home in the first place. “What’s the point of all those resorts since you’ll probably only spend a few days every other year in Goa?” I ask. “That’s for tourists,” spits my wife – she says it like it’s a bad word – “we can’t go to Goa unless you buy us at least an apartment there.”
But here’s the catch. Apparently, only Mumbaikars invest in apartments, which they then proceed to keep poorly, or at least not as well as Dilliwallahs do. True-blue Delhi-ites apparently only opt for mansions, choosing to build massive palaces which they maintain impeccably with the help of a fleet of staff that is always on call. A select few who’ve opted to buy old houses have apparently spent a fortune on converting them – that is, those from Delhi have, the fewer Mumbai mansion-owners simply preferring to let things stand as they are.
Or so says a friend who should know, she’s been negotiating with a broker for a heritage home she can’t afford, but to which she wishes to shift bag, baggage and business enterprise from Delhi as soon as she’s signed on the dotted line. Will she make enough to keep herself in the style she’s accustomed to in the capital? “As long as there’s even a little money for wine and ganja,” she says, displaying a remarkable and unexpected sense of austerity, “I’ll be fine.”
With the apartment option no longer available to us – imagine the ignominy of being mistaken for a Mumbai resident – and without the funds to buy our own four-bedroom cottage, Goa seems fast-vanishing from our radar, which is a pity when everyone’s discussing party invitations that are no longer for Sunday brunch mornings in Delhi but for weekend beachside bonfires in Goa. “We’re the only people not to have a house of our own in Goa,” gripes my wife, which I concede seems at least partly true. It also feels lonely when everyone’s discussing getting together over latte, or malt, or a trip to the market — and you can count on the RSVP being somewhere in Goa instead of some place in Delhi.
