HERE’S THIS talk of everyone turning over a new leaf and celebrating a green Christmas this year and I’m all for it. In fact, how about a green, blue and white Christmas? Green (real life green, not false dead green) Christmas tree like the poinsettia with its exquisite colouring of green and red, blue is for sunshine blue skies in the day time (the winter time sky of Goa is blue and velvet black studded all over with silvery stars at night)…but where is the cloudy mist?

I THINK I will always associate Christmas in Goa with the akash neems down the Campal promenade in Panaji in full bloom… with their flurries of scented silvery white flowers cascading down and filling the air with an unforgettable tantalising scent in the hot afternoon. Akash neem scent comes wafting into our home courtesy two fabulous akash neems across the road at the NIO complex…and how much I love it! The scent of Christmas in Goa will forever be an akash neem scent for me.

IN ALL the 40th IFFI fortnight goings on I quite forgot other things interesting and boring. But they’ve been at the back of my mind. Like my friend Parvish Kamat dragged me all the way to Banana Republic (one of the Cavala beachside premises) at Baga to introduce me to a new line of ready-to-use masala in the market called “Jaldi 5″, brought out by the Kamat Group of Hotels or more specifically by young scion of this Kamat family, i.e. Vishal Kamat.

IT’S IFFI or International Film Festival of India season anew in Panaji and Goa and one is looking as much for food for mind and body as heart and soul! With five IFFIs tucked away in my bosom, I’m becoming a veteran IFFI goer and have seen it blossom and still struggling to settle down into a familiar pattern with fewer hiccups and hitches.

HEY, happiness is crooning an old Hindi number about “Do din ki zindagi…kaisi yeh zindagi…”! I was crooning it all day long on the birthday for I was feeling every bit of my 60 years now, a milestone. From here one may roll down steadily to oblivion or continue to hold one’s own…is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? I understand that only metaphorically in my bones in an eerie way. November’s my birthday month and my cup of life usually see-saws between complete drainage or complete overflow!

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.