By Tara Narayan

DON’T KNOW about you but I’m quite sick and tired of festivals, feast days, carnivals, holidays, entertainment… galore! So it’s the season of Holi or urban hooliganism as it tends to be out on the streets because only the north Indian migrant workers and service folk who come to “Goa’s Dubai” celebrate it in nostalgic memory of their impoverished lands left behind in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Nepal or wherever, to work for a living amongst folk who don’t have to work for a living - at least not like them! Our urban celebrations no longer turn me on because they’re so fake and out of connect!

BY TARA NARAYAN

SIGH. COME TO think of it, the best of everything goes to big-time markets like Mumbai! To think that this time last week I was moon mooning nostalgically down one of my favourite wet or al fresco veggie and fruit markets i.e. the road side market outside the Vile Parle (East) suburban railway station. Taking pleasure in buying bunches of tender spring garlic (wonderful in a green chutney), big round golden green aonla (or Indian gooseberry, Rs.40 kg), tender amba-haldi — the twin spring time gingers, one creamy in colour and with a faint green mango enshrined in it, and the other golden aromatic turmeric root…

BY TARA NARAYAN

FOOD FOR thought! I’ve come back from Mumbai which was Bombay feeling like a mall rat or a mall moll (as the hubby puts it)! All one needs to feel at home in Mumbai is lots and lots of money to spend for the city itself is like a mega mall and leaves one with a desire to shop and shop till one drops dead. The ultimate material metro has arrived and I’m not sure how much I love or hate it! Certainly I don’t love it for life suddenly seems to be revolving around youth and their money power to buy, buy and buy, it makes me feel so old for I can’t compete in all the shopping around!

BY TARA NARAYAN

THE HUBBY’S back in Goa but I’m hanging around in Mumbai which was Bombay for old time’s sake. Can’t take the Bombay girl out of me! It’s Mahashivratri season and Valentine’s Day week and love is in the air, at least love in all its multifaceted pretence! If you’re asking me, Valentine’s Day is yet another one of our infernal days to buy, buy, buy till you drop dead just to tell someone “ILU”! I don’t know why one must prove love in material gifts when the immaterial gifts of life are so much more precious?

BY TARA NARAYAN

COMING BACK to Mumbai-which-was-Bombay is always an education. Also an exercise in how not to go the Mumbai way! Amongst other things, I’ve been hanging around at hospitals and Mumbai has the best of the them of course - seeing how much ill health there is in this over-grown vertical megapolis i.e. city within cities. There’s a mega conference going on currently on vertical cities with the leading experts of the world in attendance but I don’t think I’ll be able to attend any of the sessions.

BY TARA NARAYAN
SOME FOOD for thought! There’s a cold bite in the air at dawn and dusk which is making me somber and sensitive…all’s not well with me and the Goa I love!
That means I’m down with my first cold and cough of the season and depressing thoughts are wandering through my mind. Why is it that although we know what we put in our mouth by way of drink and food impacts the quality of health, it is so difficult to make dramatic and sweeping changes in the way we feel, think, and act, including the seemingly simple matter of drinking and eating? In a feverish mood I asked the hubby, “What destroys more - love or hate?”

BY TARA NARAYAN

IT CAN be a surreal experience eating out beneath the stars in the velvety cocoon of a balmy night - at the Park Hyatt’s beachside restaurant, the Palms! Why surreal? Because all the coconut trees beneath which we were ensconced were bald or naked of coconuts and it made me feel uneasy. I don’t thing I like the idea of dining beneath coconut trees without coconuts snuggled on them high up! Hey, I understand the imperatives of protecting guests fine dining on sumptuous grilled sea food beneath the swaying canopy of coconut trees by the beachside,

BY TARA NARAYAN

HEY, LIFE has its moments. Friends were coming home for an evening and said they’re bringing over their daughter and one-year-old granddaughter who’re based in the U S of A and were visiting… by the way, their granddaughter only eats organic food! What a lucky granddaughter, I thought… please bring her over, but won’t she eat my home-spun kichadi-kadi or kichadi-fresh curd which I was planning to make, by way of some comfort vegetarian food? No, no, explained the doting grandmother, her American daughter has brought along a suitcase full of the American “Nature’s Promise” food for infants and for dinner that evening Naira was going to have “Organic Pasta Primavera”

BY TARA NARAYAN

DON’T ASK me how one Sunday afternoon I found myself discovering the flavors of Japanese sushi at the Oriental-S.E.Asian. Nowadays, of course, these growing number of restaurants are called pan-Asian restaurants and Tamari at the new Taj Vivanta in the heart of Panaji is one of them. Actually, I’d been sneaking in to savour the Italian gelato at their Caramel patisserie and steadily falling for the cool, friendly ambience of this newest five-star in town.

HAVE A sweet, go on…nah! And then pop, after all the initial nonsense about not loving or even liking sweets I’m invariably tempted to pick up a slender golden slice of doce de grao from the platter of Christmas time Goan sweets to nibble on…appreciating its velvety soft sweetness with a gentle hint of coconut about it. This doce de grao was not hard and sickeningly sweet. Where did you get it from? If this sounds like familiar Christmas turning into New Year scenario in Goa you’re right.