Avoid Fishing from Motorbikes

Mervyn - Avoiding Fishing for Motorbikes

Like some of you, I have lived in Goa at a time when most homes in the villages had no indoor toilets. Like many of you, I have been in Goa during the era when all traffic stopped at dusk. 

For those of us on vacation from the city, waking up in a village in Goa is an enchantment by itself. The first thing you hear is the cock crowing - sometimes seven houses away. Then the parrots on the hill behind your property start to chatter and what follows is the rest of the birds tweeting that they too are happy for the new day.  

My first quest whenever I arrive in Goa is to secure a regular supply of toddy. This is not an easy task. A bottle of toddy in Goa is a fraction of the cost of a cup of city coffee, but toddy sellers are a peculiar guild. When approached, they usually respond that they already have their customers and that they do not have extra toddy to sell. When offered twice the price of what they are selling their toddy for, they counter with, "You are here for one month, my customers are here for the whole year." I was told that the basic way to get over this stumbling block is to leave the tapper with a deposit for ten bottles with instructions that if ever he had an extra bottle, to leave it on my veranda. After three bottles are delivered, you tell the tapper that the deposit money must be over and give him the same amount again. 

However, I have an extra challenge. All toddy tappers in Goa seem to have thighs that are thinner than my arms. Despite this, they still manage to climb coconut trees, but I have a pensive problem. I do not ever want to hear of a tapper falling from a tree and being bedridden for the rest of his life just because I wanted a drink in the morning. So, my due diligence on arrival is to wake up early and look for a tapper who climbs only the shorter trees.

Well, on one trip to Goa in the 1970s, I woke up early every morning and walked down the uneven, red, narrow pathway of weathered rocks that led from our home to the rice fields. My destination was that frontier area where the paddy fields ended and the coconut trees began. I knew I had to cover a wide area before I would find the tapper that I would be comfortable buying from.   

Even at an early hour, there always were one or two other people walking around and some asked me if I was going for "natures walk." Not knowing any better, I said yes and asked them if I was on a good path. Then my relatives informed me that "natures walk" meant two different things - depending on whether or not you had indoor plumbing. After that, I made sure to avoid anyone squatting by the edges of the rice fields and to make sure to look in another direction if I stumbled upon someone squatting not too far from the pathway.

At the perimeter of many of the rice fields in Goa, there usually is a pond which retains water in the dry season. Some farmers use this water to eke out a secondary income by growing spinach and chillies during the dry season. Water is removed from the shallow end of the pond while the deeper end usually has lotus plants in it. Well, the pond in our vaddo is known as the "Blessed Pond" because it never runs dry. The pond is by the roadside and strollers will always stop by this pond to admire the lotus flowers and the view of the fields beyond. There also is a raised mud pathway from the pond that goes into the center of the valley. This pathway is used by farmers and all those going on a photo safari. 

Running through the middle of the rice fields in our vaddo is a stream which starts as a narrow one meter wide flow from a spring. The stream remains shallow but becomes wider every half kilometer. This stream is a magnet for fisher birds and I enjoy watching the patience the egrets display while waiting for the fish to come closer to them. As I was walking towards the stream early one morning, I saw a couple squatting - a meter apart - in the water. Only their heads were above the water and they seemed to be groping the muck. Seeing a couple in the stream was new to me so I changed direction, moving away at a tangent. The woman then called out, beckoning me to approach. To make a long story short, the couple were in the stream searching for tiger prawns in the muck.

They then showed me five prawns, each about the size of a hockey ball. Yes, I wanted those prawns but I did not know how to clean and cook them. "No problem," said the woman and assured me that she would send her child with the cooked prawns at lunch time. Those prawns were cooked to perfection and were easily the juiciest prawns I have ever eaten.

When I went to return the empty container that evening, the husband informed me that he had a motorcycle that he could rent in the evenings, after he returned from work. This was a beatitude as the Bullet had enough power for any young person. Furthermore, the sound of that low rev engine was a pleasure to hear and thirdly, their house was within walking distance from mine. 

One weekend, I decided to rent the bike again and visit the beach hotels. My relatives had repeatedly warned me not to use the road over the hills to return. No one used that road at night as sometimes goondahs would stretch a fishing line across the dark road, knock down the motorcyclist and then leave with the bike. 

The other or roundabout approach to the village boasted a relatively wide road, which ended a kilometer or so from the vadoo. That last kilometer was a motorists nightmare and seemed to be designed by a road engineer who had his arms twisted. The road took U-turns around trees for no apparent reason. Then it narrowed to give way for roadside shrines. After that, it zigzagged in-between houses where the windows would open onto the road itself. Finally, the road curved through the market place and was the narrowest at the most busy area. 

Such roads are dreams to 49.5% of motorcyclists whose DNA instructs them to increase their speed on the curves. A similar percentage of riders receive instructions to slow down to a crawl. On my return from the hotels around 10:00 pm - remember in the era when there was no other motorist on the road - I was within a hundred meters of the bike owner's house when I took a corner and saw five shades of grey sitting on the center of the road. Water buffalos in Goa are the exact same colour as the hot mix roads. Before my mind had the time to register what it was, the bike used the buffalo as a ramp and launched into a 360 degree spin. I did better, completing a one and a half somersault before landing, legs first, into the blessed pond.

The bike continued running another 50 meters before it went into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. It lay there on its side with its headlight pointing to the mangoes, engine racing and the back wheel spinning. 

In the days before Facebook, people really knew their neighbours. They even knew the sound of their neighbours motorbikes. One such neighbour heard the bike engine running, came out of the house, saw the bike and started calling for Zuze - the owner of the motorbike. Then another neighbour popped out and when they could not find Zuze, they reckoned that someone had attempted to steal Zuze's bike, so they went to his house to call him.

Trust me, if ever you want to enter a vaddo pond, blessed or not, do not enter legs first. I found out that the bottom of the pond had 45cm of muck. I was sort of succeeding in lifting one leg but physics, being what it is, demanded that the other leg simultaneously went deeper into the muck. I needed to extract myself fast and slip away quietly as I was afraid I would be held accountable for the death/injury to the water buffalo.

The buffalo had something different on its mind. Before the first neighbour came out to investigate, the buffalo stood up and walked slowly but deliberately in my direction. He seemed to be shaking his head in disbelief and in the semi-darkness, his bulk appeared to be twice as big as the regular buffaloes. I was stuck and could not move! I looked to see how big its horns were and they looked well over a meter long but, thankfully, they ended in a Fibonacci spiral. The buffalo walked to the edge of the pond, looked me straight in the eye, lifted his head, grunted and entered the pond. For the first time in a long while, I started to pray. I prayed that the buffalo had no need to demonstrate, in his environment, what it felt like to be run over. 

The buffalo then strode into the pond. That moment seemed like a deja vu, but then it struck me. The buffaloes actions reminded me of Scandinavian friends who like warming themselves on hot rocks, then they go jump into cold water.  

The neighbours returned with Zuze who immediately began shouting my name. Soon the whole vaddo - and some people from the next - were there with their pontis searching for me.

Most of you know that some parents are cursed in being unable to sleep when their kids go out for entertainment. In a short while, my parents appeared out of the darkness with my dad clutching a hockey stick. My dad knew his son only too well. While everyone was searching on the other side of the road, fifty meters away, he just knew I would be in the water. I asked him for the hockey stick and managed to get out of the pond - without the buffalo following.

Some readers may have caught it and for sure that one percent of unclassifiable motorbike riders have, but there is a salient motorbike stand here. In order to complete a one and a half somersault and land on your feet, you have to be in an interesting position at take off.