It’s 2 p.m. on a muggy Bombay afternoon as I stand in front of the Gateway of India.
As anticipated, the suffocating crowds have dissipated, gone to partake in their daily siesta. The screech of birds, the smell of salt water and rotting fish waft across the harbour, beckoning me ever closer. Under makeshift tents of shiny black tarpaulin, beggars implore passersby for alms. A lone vendor leans against his broken-down wooden handcart shouting “ Chalo, chalo, “ enticing me with the promise of fresh lime juice. From a bucket of used water, he draws a glass. The man, wearing a toothy grin, chooses several limes from a mountain of them, fills the glass with tepid water from another container and takes a wooden juicer to squeeze the limes into the glass. Then, using a tiny spoon, he adds his own mixture of salt, black pepper and possibly fennel from an open rusted tin. A drizzle of red spittle oozes out of the side of his mouth from chewing paan,- a small, samosa shaped wrapper made of betel leaf, filled with spices, sweeteners and shaved areca nuts. How do I know this? In my teens , visiting my bed-ridden nanima daily, I was tasked to run to the market and fill her brass paan box with ingredients.
This is my spiritual home.
All through my teenage years, my airline-employee father, long since perished, enabled me the “luxury” of exploring cities like Bombay. I think of my boys, brought up in the prim and protected cocoon of Canada, where ne’er a blemish is to be found on an apple in a temperature controlled, ultra-hygienic superstore. Would they bat an eyelid at the gnarled, stooped lime juice vendor, his remaining teeth completely reddened by a lifetime of chewing paan? What would they think of sharing a glass taken out of a bucket of used water to drink a concoction not approved by a swarm of accredited health inspectors ?
In Africa, Dad worked alongside Goans who came from an Indian state south of Bombay. When their contracts ended, they went back home. Each summer, I would catch a swaying, rickety bus out of Bombay, overladen with luggage on its roof and crammed with passengers for a 19-hour journey which, with breakdowns, diversions and incessant stopovers, could last two days.
Our Goan friends lived in opulent mansions built of stone with verandas galore. Each home had its own well to supply cool, sweet-tasting water, with a panoply of servants to do their bidding. Predominantly Indo-Portuguese, they were Roman-Catholics who loved to celebrate at every opportunity, including mealtimes. And their food! Oh, their food. Decades later, my mouth still waters at the memory of Goan fish curry, Xacuti, a coconut curry with chicken , and bebinka , a dessert layer cake made from milk, egg yolks , sugar and ghee. I was asked to try Fenny, a spirit distilled out of cashew apple ,so strong that it made me reel.
I always arrived at Mapusa, Goa, in late summer during the monsoon season. All day, I sat beneath a covered verandah, listening to the sound of sheets of rain , so luxuriantly warm, beating above me. There was a library of books to read and Life magazines from the 1930s on. I found a book of short stories by Somerset Maugham, based on his travels in Asia at that time. Sitting on my covered verandah under the monsoon rain, I could well have been Maugham’s fellow traveller.
Thinking of my kids, with their instant access to the world via their roaming phones, I wonder how they would have fitted into an isolated world, with only books as their entertainment. Brought up within a sheltered Canadian society, I wonder what memories my boys will have of their teenage years. Who will replace the paan-chewing vendor serving lime juice of dubious origin, on a muggy Bombay afternoon?
