MEET Damiana Palha, a woman who goes from house to house…cooking for a living. I first heard of Damiana when my friend Anabel Aguiar sent me some drumstick curry and it was so delicious that I had to enquire about its maker. Anabel said she had the invaluable Damiana Palha coming home once or twice a week to cook and with three school going children and a hubby to watch out for, Damiana was a real blessing, “She comes, cooks efficiently whatever I want and understands when I tell her we don’t eat too spicy food…chats with me about this and that if she has time, and rushes off to her next place of call to cook for somebody else. I don’t know what I’d do without Damiana!”

SOMETIMES I end up at a press conference because I’m forever looking for something to feed this column… this time with the goodness of dates amongst other things. Hey, they were waxing lyrical over the state-of-the-art everything if you travel by Qatar Airways at a press conference at the Taj Vivanta on October 26, 2009. The PC started off an hour late and Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al-Baker comes across as autocratic as dynamic.

IT’S REALLY the season of fov or fou as it’s called in Konkani. Goa’s wonderful reddish or off-white parched rice. I find this fov more desirable any Kellogg’s cornflakes. Over the Diwali or Deepavali (as I prefer to call it in the more lovely sounding south Indian tradition) weekend while out shopping in Panaji’s new market, there were piles of newly arrived fov selling at Rs.40 and Rs.50 kg. Fov is apparently a festive offering and I generally end up buying lots of it for it’s something one should stock up on for its many quick uses.

MY 59th DEEPAVALI or “festival of lights” on the good earth is around the corner and I’m besieged with memories of all the Deepavalis I’ve lived through in good times and bad times - right through my teens in Penang and then 20s, 30s and 40s in Mumbai which was Bombay and now for the last ten years in Goa where I find there’s hardly a Deepavali celebration (or at least it seems to be limited to the extravagant burning of mock Narkarasuras).

MARGAO, NAVELIM, Chinchinim, Cuncolim and finally Chaudi (or Chauri) which is Canacona’s main town. Canacona is Goa’s southernmost district and one of the coolest because it’s still by and large green courtesy the 105 sq km Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary forests. In the wake of the mega flooding over the Gandhi Jayanti weekend we were looking at clusters of ravaged and washed away homes at Bhutpal, Gaondongrem, Loliem, Poinguinim, Idda, across the splendid bridge over the Talpona river to Panifond…all areas drained by the Talpona, Galgibaga and Kushavati rivers.

IT LOOKS like my Lord of the Rains is reluctant to depart and quite determined to shower Mother Earth with a few more caressing rain hugs! The result is such cool, balmy weather to live or die for (whatever you prefer). I feel like running away to a wild flower attired hill top or a green, woodsy, fragrant forest or a long uncluttered beach …some place which human beings haven’t encroached upon to exploit, humiliate and torture Mother Earth yet! I don’t mind the rain for I’m permanently in love with rain and if it rains all year around it’s fine with me…

IT’S BEEN a week of discovering Ayurveda with a capital A! This ancient traditional system of medicine which is coming back to centre stage is worth studying for it is every bit a science as Allopathy and every bit as educative though it works on different parameters…

MY SEPTEMBERS are a soap saga! All week long I’ve been scratching myself crazy! I don’t think I’ve ever been so scratchy before in my life… it’s a deadly scratch, I scratch and scratch arms, legs, belly, boobs and draw blood with my nails. What have I done or rather what have I eaten? I’ve asked myself a thousand times. Serves me right! I’ve made this idiotic rule that from Monday to Friday I’ll be a good girl and eat no junk food and fryums, but during the weekend if I feel like biting into a Lays onion and cream potato wafer or a bread and butter sandwich or a fried pappadam or a chocolate biscuit…I will, I will. Who can stop me! Not the hubby. He is far more disciplined than me.

SIGH. SEPTEMBER is my heartbreak month. I always feels as if all the common heartbreaks of my life come alive anew in September which is so beautiful with its sparkling sunshine-filled rain and fabulous sunrises and sunsets to watch out for.

CALL IT a kitty party with a difference! A group of women from perhaps the most enlightened village of them all down south Goa, Benaulim, and one heard them eloquently, as if they’ve all had enough and enough is enough. They’re all gearing up to take on the battle and the war of their discontentment!