I seem to be an old hand at making the SFO-GOI trip by now. This one seemed to just happen. I think a big part was played by the airport upgrades in Bombay (Mumbai). I wish they would upgrade the customs officials too: one of them tried to scalp me for the digital SLR I was carrying. I pulled out my “Oh, I’m a dumb foreigner and I didn’t know and instead of a fine for which I won’t get a receipt can you list the camera on my passport because I’ll be carrying it back with me?”
I was afraid it wouldn’t work, because they had stopped doing stuff like that. But then the guy must have realised I would be too much trouble to shake down for a bribe and let me go.
Maybe next time I’ll carry my film SLR and watch their heads explode. Which might be fun, and on the other hand they might try to ding me for the lens and I wouldn’t want that.
The jet lag seemed a lot worse on this trip. I couldn’t stay awake on Thursday or Friday after lunch. And it was raining too heavily so I didn’t get to go out or do anything outside. My nephews (one of whom is in pre-school; the other in 2nd grade) and sister were sick with colds and given how much I was sneezed around and upon, I think I’m currently incubating a super-virus. Feni seems to help a little.
Sunday, I went for mass in the village church. It’s been all snazzed up, with a new paint job, gold paint on the altars, faux marble wall panels depicting events from the bible and bird guards on the rafters. Goa’s a rich state (second-highest per-capita income in India: Rs 28,000 [around $600], compared to Rs 11,000 for India as a whole. Uttar Pradesh is the lowest at Rs 5,500 [around $120]) and it shows. But I missed the sparrows that used to chirp and flit around during services. It was also heartwarming to hear church-goers break out into spontaneous two and three-part harmonies on the hymns.
The homily was interesting. The priest started out with a general fable about a zen monk and his disciple. The one about how your possessions end up owning you. And then went on to something else that I forgot, because he finished with rant about a statistic: every week, their office is receiving two applications for marriage annulments and he went on about how the parish (second largest in Goa, about 10,000 people) has been doing so much to prepare couples for marriage, organizing a compulsory two day marriage preparation course and despite that, people were wanting annulments, so here he was entreating the parish to pray (yes, that’s right, pray) for the couples to be strong in the face of their troubles.
Grrr. Seem to me things will get a lot worse before they start to get better.
