SIGH. EVERY time I come back from Mumbai-that-was-Bombay I feel like my life is boring and as dull as ditch water in Goa. When I’m in cold, dirty, dusty, polluted Mumbai, I pine with divine discontentment to return to Goa and when I’m in Goa I pine with divine discontentment to go back to Mumbai. Life is like that only. Back in golden Goa, I try not to see the garbage heaps along the highway and take a deep breath of Goa’s still clean air with gratitude…

By Tara Narayan
ONE MORE for life and times in Mumbai, but no more medical and waste management system of the human body talk! As far as I am concerned, the best way to keep your waste management system in pristine condition is to eat as close to Mother Earth as possible and clear your stomach […]

By Tara Narayan
AFOOD for thought column this week! Life has its moments and this is one of them on the 14th floor of the P G Hinduja National Hospital at Mahim in Mumbai-which-was-Bombay. The hubby has come to big time sick city looking for solutions for his dysfunctional waste management system as he likes to […]

NEW YEAR’S come and gone and we’re in 2012, but I still feel as if some of me is still back in 2010! Funny, how folk celebrate Christmas at home but go out to celebrate New Year…in Goa everybody wants to go out on the beaches to usher in the new year to the sound of the waves and the blue stars shivering in a cold night sky.

WHAT DO we in Goa know about Chhattisgarh? Most people think that Chhattisgarh is full of prowling Naxalites or Maoists, better to stay away from such a dangerous state! But this is far from the truth, said Chhattisgarh Tourism Board General Manager, Mr P Sen Bhowmick, while speaking to media people on December 30, 2011, in Goa.

IT’S time to leave 2011 behind and look forward to a better world and better health in 2011! I didn’t do a whole lot of things over Christmas because coastal Goa becomes a free-for-all mela and it’s no point going anyway, what with Goa’s narrow country roads, traffic jams galore and drunken bhaile who come to Goa to eat, drink and be merry. What do they know or care about the life and times of Jesus Christ!

IN THIS year of Goa’s Golden Jubilee (Liberation Day), comes a touching love story. One worthy of being recounted and filmed if any filmmaker in Goa is interested! The late freedom fighter Mukund Pundalik Kamat Dhakankar‘s widow, Maria Emelia Moreira Camortim, may be 74 years old today, but she remembers her husband clearly, “He was a good man, very intelligent.”

FINALLY, Christmas is in the air! Dawn and dusk have become misty, wintry, and I’m waiting for a rose to bloom out on my balcony, never mind that all my pots need refurbishing with new compost and some more tender loving care. Just watering them in the morning is not enough, I’ve been scolding myself. Plants can be very sensitive, go that extra stretch to love them and they will bloom for you…

WHO? THE High Command or the All-India Congress Committee President, Sonia Gandhi, she came, she saw, she waved…amongst other things wished Goans a Happy Christmas and New Year, and before one could get over her visit she was gone, in a golden coloured Innova with a special seat whereby she could stand up and wave to aam aadmi and khaas aadmi anxious to get a glimpse of her.

By Tara Narayan
THE PROBLEM in Goa is that everything gets politicised. Even the 42nd (and 8th in Goa) International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which concluded on December 3, 2011, after treating delegates to a bonanza of films good, bad, mostly good. Goa may or may not have a filmi culture, but it looks […]