Our visit to Goa
Day 1st feb
We started from home at about
8:30 AM. It was a bright and sunny day with a pleasant temperature and Yogita and I decided not to debate or argue or squabble or fight or ….. And young man
tamaghna was the witness. He checked his food bin and was ready to start his
crunching and mom put the first restriction – to eat after hathkhamba. Well, most of the trip was full of fun – we
talked of many issues and relied on google GPS to guide us to Panjim. As with most reliable electronic services, we were soon off the track by nearly 4-5 km when we realized that we mainly occupied the road. I felt since it
was Friday the traffic was slim, but tamaghna suggested that it was too
thin. It was then that we realized that we were off the track. Soon we had GPS
over-ride working (yogita ofcourse) and Google was dumped. We stopped at a
couple of places- Sorcul was a nice small joint of the way. Sorkul meant an earthen
small pot. There was a lot of Warli work done on the wall. Food was average.
We also had a glance at the Nandanvan residential complex being made.
The next stop was at café” Coffee Day. Toko had his favourite doughnut and Yo had her extra-large cappuccino. I
took Photographs.
Then we phoned the hotel to get
directions til Margaon to the hotel. After reaching Margaon, I think the search
for the final destination proved equally labourers. We were very close and yet
not there. It reminded me of “the game of hot and cold – search the treasure”
we played in childhood. At last at about 4:30PM we reached the hotel.
The hotel reception service could
be better. The rest of the day was good. Later in the evening, we went on the beach.
The beach was not very exciting, we had better beaches at Ratnagiri. But I was
amazed by the number of Russians and the amount of alcohol. Mom broke her belt
– we bought one. We then went around the market place and later back to the
hotel. We ate something called shwarma- shredded chicken meat with salad in
roti or bread wrap, 40/- – good concept. Feet aching we crashed to bed – day 1.
Day 2
We are still in Colva, at the Golden Palm Hotel by the beach. The day began early because I had to go to the
conference. The family appeared to be refreshed and we were off to breakfast in
the lounge area. The food was average, Took did enjoy the variety and the buffet
presentation. He made his own burger with gingerbread and lettuce. I was
getting delayed so I excused myself and proceeded to the venue site – Canacona
[KanKon]. The drive was initially occupied with finding the right direction.
Later I realized, I was driving among the most unruly motorists in my
experience. The roads are terrible at places with severely narrowed
constrictions and ideal drivers insensitively parking their vehicles to further
compromise the road. It took me one hour of driving to reach my destination. It
was a fabulous place and did not take me much time to reach the venue hall. It
was 5 min past 10 AM and I hastily reached the lecture hall. To my surprise,
the hall was completely deserted and no
activity had started. I waited for an hour at the well-decorated hall before
there were any body came in. Then it took another 30 minutes to get started. I was amazed at
the lack of time concern. And then came the lectures which were designed to talk
about themselves. All of them talked about what they had done and those who
didn’t did not make much sense of what they talked about. I think most of it is
there in the text book. I was indeed very happy to meet Dr B K Misra and see Dr
Atul Goel. I wanted to hear them speak –and I heard them speak. They spoke the
same old biased talk and nobody else talked. I feel somebody should tell them
to be innovative in their talk. Gopal was absent and I phoned him to find he
was busy. I meet many of my colleagues – Dr MA Khan [he was glad to let me know
that he was attached to 3 big hospitals], Dr Yogesh [he appeared to be lost in his constipated effort to express his
happiness at meeting after 13 years], Dr Anil Patil – Satara [he was busy
gloating on the food and surprised we had finished early], Dr Chadrashekar [ he is settled in Pune – very pleasant
personality. We met after 15 years] and dr Chaurasia [he is in Bhopal, talked
some sense, showed me a lot of operated patients' imagings and let me know that
he was operating more than 60 cases with good financial success. He wishes to
start his hospital soon]. I met them, tried to understand them and soon found myself
to be a distorted variant from the rest, rather restricted by opportunity in this
direction and completely of the mainstream. I sat through the rest of the
lecture of the 2nd session and drove back for an hour back to my
family. I was feeling depressed and the worst was that I didn’t know what I was feeling bad about. Later I settled down relaxed, and went for Toko’s favorite
dominoes pizza. We sat at the poolside for a while and retired for the day.
I heard Prof E. Laws speak. Well, I wonder whether it was worth travelling so far for this purpose, but it was certainly a good experience to hear Prof Choux and Prof Hermeinski from Finland. These are men who have led big centres of neurosurgical eminence worldwide. They all bottomed out on the delivery of quality service, not numbers.
Day 3 - 3/02/2013
I decided to quit the 2nd
half of the conference. Somewhere within I did feel bad about missing the
lectures, but then it was time I chose to do what I felt was correct. We woke up
lazy, at about 7: 45AM, and had tea followed by a wash and breakfast. Toko then
took to the pool and enjoyed for about 2 hours. It was then time to check out from
the hotel. By the way, I should mention of ‘yeva’. She was one among the
visitors to the hotel, a small Russian girl who even went to peep into our room
to check what Toko was doing. When we left the hotel, the Russian family went
to the beach. We decided to go to the place called ‘Ancestral Goa’. And My GPS
over-ride was already having headache. The weather was warm and humid. As usual, we lost our way several times. When we reached ‘Ancestral Goa ‘we were
hoping to see something exceptional. The work was innovative enough, but
somewhere it was poorly maintained and dusty. The number of tourists visiting
the place should be motivation enough to push for better standards. The ‘Big
Foot’ area was in particular, poorly managed, dusty and improperly done for an
artist. The Hall of Fame was a good concept which could be emulated somewhere
else. We had ‘Limboo sharbat ‘ at the food stall and then proceeded to
‘Shantadurga ‘ temple. That must have been about a 30 km drive and we lost our
way at least 2 times. The temple was on a
large elevated complex. It had beautiful icons of Ma Durga. There was a stone
idol of Narayan. I liked the art form but the attitude of the priest to hold
on to the last thing that he had to subjugate worshippers was dismal. They all
conduct the temple like a rigorous teacher managing a classroom with absolute and obsolete dictates. If priests are so often frustrated I
seldom want to communicate with them and better avoid. Going to a temple
is a discomfort rather than a pleasure for me. Luckily, I don’t need the temple
to meet god. We ate at the canteen on the temple campus. I could feel the
feeling of satiety that Yogita and Toko had after having the rice and dal at
the canteen. They ate with great pleasure the food of choice – bhat,dal,
channa masala and gulab-jamun. Over the
years I had developed a lack of interest in these or any specific food and
could adjust to any food. I never enjoyed and particular food so much as I saw
them enjoy the very simple meal. We left for Panjim after buying two hats for
Yogita and Toko.
Reaching Vivanta was a similar
experience. We lost our way at least 2 times and were given wrong directions
once. Then when we reached the hotel I drove the car to the basement and was
later helped back to the porch. The
experience in vivanta on the first day was fabulous. We liked it right from the
first reception. The reception was warm and kind. The room was beautiful. The
services were so different from our past experience. I was happy to enjoy the
moments with my family. I remembered Yokohama and Thailand, but I remember
being alone. Here we enjoyed everything together. ‘Caramel’ was the name of the
croissant store. We ate walnut cake and chocolate. And in the evening went for
a stroll to the Miramar Beach. We were impressed with the cleanliness of the
sand. Returning home at about 9:00PM , we realized it was time for dinner. We
ate at the ‘Tamari’ – Thai food. We all liked it. We returned to the room and requested a DVD movie – spy Kids. And along
came complimentary Pepsi and popcorn. We enjoyed it and soon slipped into deep
slumber.
Day 4 – 4/02/2013
The day started with cuddling
Toko beneath the warm blanket. When he refused to wake up, I started the day
myself. It was cold and wet. It had rained at night. With a hot cup of tea, I
relaxed by the window side. Soon Yogita and Toko joined me. We went for our
breakfast at the ‘latitude ‘ lounge. The meal was good and there was enough to
choose from. Well fed, we proceeded to meet FX – Oh! , I meant St Francis
Xavier. It was a good experience at the Basilica of Bom Jesus. We took the help
of Mr Satish, the local Guide to take us around. He was good to explain us about
the details of the religious sentiments [or that’s what I felt]. The maintenance of the basilica was pitiful
with poor artisans employed to do the job. Mr. Satish suggested the cause to be
the unavailability of proper technique and material. But I do not think so. We
have some of the best surface coating agents in the world at the most
economical rate. It only reflected the attitude of the workman who forms part
of the local population. We saw the Museum maintained by the Archeological Society
of India [ASI]. Toko participated in an
activity very spontaneously by drawing and colouring the symbol of Sacred Heart
School. By the time we came out of the Museum, my feet were aching and Yogita
was thirsty. We went to the local canteen and found the waiter least bothered
to take a request. After waiting for a while, we left the canteen still hungry.
We saw the ruins of St Augustine Chapel, which were under renovation by ASI. On
our way back we stopped at ‘Mum’s kitchen’ and had good food of the goan style.
This was followed by a visit to ‘Fabindia’ where I was made to wait for a long
time on the porch and Toko frequenting between mom and pop. Of course, we knew
what Mom was doing. Back at the hotel after some rest, I and Toko proceeded to
the swimming pool and Yogita went to the Spa for facial therapy. We enjoyed
dinner together followed by a movie [Ice Age 4] and popcorn.
