We are just back from Goa, where I attended a three-day Fulbright conference and Jessica and Violet attended the Arabian Sea. Goa is India's smallest state, and also one of its youngest. The territory was controlled by Portugal for nearly four hundred years before the Indian army finally annexed it in 1961. There are not many Portuguese speakers left, but the population is still overwhelmingly Catholic. Our arrival happened to coincide with Carnival, the annual pre-Lent celebration. Here are some photos from the Carnival parade. To get the real experience, cue up some Latin-infused techno and place the speakers approximately six inches from your ears.
No celebration of carnality would be complete without a condom van.
I'm including this shot so you can see how easy it is to make a postcard.
My recollection is hazy, but this guy may have been the driver of the condom van.
There was a beautiful (and relatively trash-free) public park along the sea wall in Panaji, the town where we stayed. The park was named for the statue of Buddha at the center but included a number of secular amusements, for example this algae-choked paddleboat canal.
My muse in the paddleboat photo is the Bollywood hero Salman Khan, who is currently starring in a flick about a corrupt South Indian cop. I am also practicing his dance moves. Take a look:
The park was packed with Goan schoolchildren. Note the nun.
How many kids can you get on a slide? (Answer: fifteen.)
Finally the beach. This was taken at Morghim, a quiet spot in North Goa. The water was so warm we could have wallowed in it all day. Imagine North Carolina in August, minus the hurricanes and jellyfish.
Some of these beaches are breeding grounds for sea turtles. We did not see any reptiles, but we did see (children cover your ears) a number of European women in bikinis. Yes, the two-piece bathing suit is a rare sight in India, but leave it to a charter-plane full of sun-scalded Russians to introduce the thong to the land of "debangg"--and also, in some instances, to remind everyone present that humans are indeed mammals.
What a prude I have become! Just a few short months in India and I am ranting about beachside immodesty. I am afraid that if we stay too long we may return to the USA unrecognizable. I'll give you one example of how much we've changed. We were watching clips from the Oscars telecast the other day on our computer and saw that Natalie Portman was visibly pregnant, yammering on about "her love" (e.g., her baby daddy) and "the greatest role of her life" (being a mom). Jess and I were kind of shocked that an unmarried woman would go on TV in front of millions of impressionable young girls and say these things. We weren't quite sure how to articulate our objection, because we support premarital sex and, um, babies. Thankfully Mike Huckabee (of all people) did it for us:
“There aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie... Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving."
Go ahead and jerk your knee. Then admit the guy has a point.
