FIRST TIME I went looking for Earthworm I found it but thought it was closed because nobody was in sight! Second time I went looking for Roopa Bandekar and Nirmal Kulkarni’s eco-friendly things under-one-roof Earthworm tucked away down a winding lane in Green Valley at Alto-Porvorim (take the lane next to Maple Leaf Supermarket) it was the same story, but I got down from the car and decided to explore a bit, open the gate, admire the patch of brahmi growing in the garden, try to open a door leading somewhere… it was locked. So where is Earthworm? A non-descript sign was around but I was looking for some human life…

RAIN, RAIN and more rain and after rain sunshine is like fine champagne. The moment there’s a hint of light, caressing warm sunshine, the birds come out atop trees and sing their hearts out. I’ve been watching these maha-cute pair of black-n-white mother and baby magpie robins flitting and whistling amidst the grand burr-studded casuarinas trees outside my balcony and it’s a treat to listen to them. Happiness is birdsong outside my balcony in Goa! Morning rendezvous with the birds over, it’s a rush to write this up for the week! Soybeans I waxed lyrical over here before, but the humble soybean is worth writing about any number of times till the message goes home. The bean’s such a powerhouse of goodness.

DON’T KNOW about you, but the monsoon months are absolutely my favourite months of the year. According to my maid Jenny, it’s good if it rains in eight and ten day cycles… even if rain water trickles through badly fitted sliding glass windows and comes trickling down the staircase and indoors; hey, it’s like a bit of the wet outdoors coming in! I’ve long since accepted all this as part and parcel of life and the times in which we or at least I’m living in.

THIS IS something I cannot take with a pinch of salt because it brings our very own kalpavriksha or wish-fulfilling fruit of all time i.e. the wonderful coconut, back to the centre stage of our eating habits, along the entire coastal belt of India. I met a Mr. Anthony Dias at a recent interactive session on “Different Systems of Medicine & Our Health” organised at The International Centre in Dona Paula, last week, and he was waxing so lyrically about the miraculous properties of extra virgin coconut oil that I’m willing to back him most all the way here.

FOR SOME time now I’ve been intrigued by the sound of koiloreo, you really have to roll your tongue to get it right in Konkani. What is it? Goa’s quintessential pancake with the mostest! No, not made of refined flour, eggs and sugar Western-style, but made of local curmot red kernel rice, soaked overnight or four hours and ground to a fine batter with freshly grated coconut…

WEDNESDAY MORNING as I write this up it looks like the real monsoon has finally arrived and my “Lord of the Rains” means business in earnest. Almost every other morning I hear the nearby church bell tolling sadly for someone residing in the vicinity who’s gone with the wind. It’s one of the things I love about Christian Goa. The local church bell tolling to mark the passage of someone travelling to the other side of life, the mysterious side which we all think we know a lot about, but in actuality know nothing about!

THE 24-hour coffee shop called Latitude at the brand new Vivanta Taj on the St. Inez Nallah is worth checking! It amuses me to think that a small portion of the nallah has been cleaned up although the water in it looks like green poison. Wish the Taj folk would clean up the entire nallah (one of the drainage lifelines of Panaji town) from beginning to end! I mean, if they set their mind to it the nallah could become a dream nallah and one may perhaps go fishing in it… (sigh)…if wishes were horses and all that.

SUCH heartbreakingly beautiful weather in Goa! I can’t take my eyes off the outdoors, although I’m ensconced indoors! Have you noticed how a couple of pre-monsoon showers can suddenly clean up the outdoors - after a rain bath the trees look greener, like they’ve been granted freedom to breathe anew, their flowers take on a new bright exquisite colour (look at the rain washed gulmohrs!) and the sky looks like it’s never been so blue before, and the clear, strong sunshine is like intoxicating gold champagne, so divine one may absorb it only through half-closed screened eyes (don’t ask me what that means).

WANT TO know what I’ve just had for breakfast at the Sunheri restaurant of the Woodlands Hotel on Rajaram Mohan Roy Road in Bangalore out of curiosity? The softest of idli (really nowhere can idli taste as good as in the states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and perhaps Andhra Pradesh, original eateries here don’t believe in the rubbish called “steam idli”, taken out of the deep freeze and thawed and microwaved! One may hog on idli out here in the local eateries of Bangalore-which-has-become-Bengalaru everyday and forever after with pleasure! But to continue with my breakfast list, then I had a medhuvada with three kinds of chutney - red, white and green; there was sambar and a whole moong dal curry; stir-fried spiced pohe; cornflakes with cold milk; toast-butter-jam; I had a dollop of ghee-laced kesari rava. The hovering around waiter asked if I didn’t want a presrit dosa? Okay, please get me one! Lost in my thoughts I’d missed the live dosa corner of the spacious restaurant…

THERE’RE BIG hoardings up at Mumbai’s domestic airlines Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport welcoming visitors to the “City of Film Stars and WagonR”! As far as I know the big film stars are quitting Mumbai for a home away from nightmare roads and nightmare traffic to Goa where only the still fairly low of density of population makes life worth living. At least in Goa one may have trees and a large chunk of the blue summer sky to look at outside one’s balconies or windows and, as I always say, the first thing I do when I get back from wherever is to take a deep breath of Goa’s still clean air…