#TalkingLocationWith… author Rae Stewart – Goa, the setting for his novel “The Vibe“.

[Frederick Noronha]

 Talking Location With author Rae Stewart – Goa
18th July 2018
	#TalkingLocationWith… author Rae Stewart – Goa, the setting for his novel “The Vibe“.
“Getting into the Goa vibe”
A very annoying thing used to happen to me. It felt like almost everywhere I went people would say “Oh, you really should have been here 20 years ago”.
Beach sellers, Vagator, Goa
It happened when I visited Morocco, Greece, Cambodia, Thailand, even the South of France. They’d all been there long before me, when life was simpler and cheaper, people were friendlier, and the place had an authenticity untainted by teeming tourists demanding soft beds, recognisable food, and toilets you weren’t scared of. When it was, in short, better. And what annoyed me most was that I suspected they were right, even while I was getting a massive kick out of all these new places I was going to.
Cliffs, North Anjuna
It was the same when I first visited Goa in 1993. Oh, if you’d only seen Calangute before the coach tours, Baga before the building boom. But the difference was that instead of getting irritated by the tales I heard about the old days, I became ever more fascinated.
Cows on Vagator Beach
Twenty years before then, Goa had been at peak hippiedom. The late 60s and early 70s had seen the beaches and villages of North Goa colonised by hordes of hairy invaders, who arguably changed Goa to a bigger degree than anywhere else on the hippie trail across Asia. Goa’s small size, laid-back attitude and glorious beaches gained it legendary status amongst the drop-outs, mystics, seekers and bongo-bashers crowding into the small villages north of the Mandovi river, staying in fishermen’s shacks and palm-frond huts, holding all night beach parties with acid rock and optional clothing.
Panjim Street
But by 1993 it was changing. After a couple of decades of decline, Goa was trying to reinvent itself. It wanted respectable package tourists with fat wallets rather than scrawny heroin addicts with barely a rupee to their names. But the charter planes were also bringing a new tribe from the West, a group of people creating a new dance music scene which was to define Goa for Westerners for the next generation. Old hippie hangouts like Anjuna still harboured relics from the old days, but their version of Goa was long gone before they realised it. And as I looked, I saw a clash of cultures building up. The package tourists who’d seen the beaches in brochures, but weren’t prepared for some of India’s extremes. The trance scene kids who had dreads and tatts, and liked their chemicals, but had little interest in abandoning material goods. The backpackers who seemed to despise both sets, and the old Goans who tried to absorb it all in their traditional, accepting way. And the old hippies – confused and resentful.
Palolem Beach before it got Bourned out….
Anjuna Sunset
The things I heard and witnessed started to give me ideas. Hushed up murders in remote beach communes, corrupt cops, violent drug dealers, serious criminals hiding out, a serial killer who passed through the area several times, Lord Lucan living up a tree (which wasn’t true – it was someone called Barry). I was lucky enough to be able to talk to quite a few original hippies (some now convincingly disguised as aging professionals) about the old days, and the way Goa had changed. The various stories which formed in my head eventually twisted together to become my novel The Vibe. It features all sorts of wildly different individuals whose paths cross and cultures clash when there’s a brutal murder at Anjuna beach. I set it over New Year as the world was tipping into 1999, because that seemed to me the period when tensions between the tribes were at their greatest, and the battle was on for modern Goa’s soul.
It’s a very different place now, but the state government is still trying to work out what sort of visitors it wants. One government Minister even called most tourists “scum of the earth” recently. He was referring to low-waged people from neighbouring states who are bussed in and camp (and do worse) beside roads for the duration of their holidays without adding to Goa’s economy, but he could equally have been referring to the North Goa scene whose popularity is still fuelled by easy access to cheap drugs – these days controlled by Russian and Nigerian gangs, which has led to turf war killings in some of the villages.
Anjuna Flea Market, relaxing on a bike © Yenka Honig
But having said all that, Goa will always have a special space deep in my heart, and it is well worth a visit. And don’t let people try to put you off by being a bit snooty about it, telling you that Goa isn’t real India. It’s something I’ve heard time and time again. But there is no such thing as one real India. The millionaires of Mumbai, the slums of Calcutta, the hi-tech high-rises in Bangalore, the temples of Hampi and villages of Orissa. They’re all different, but they’re all India.
Veranda Palmasol Beach Resort
As are the red-roofed Portuguese villas of Goa’s capital, Panjim, the dusty villages near Margao, the white churches poking through palm trees and the water buffaloes up to their necks in roadside ponds. All tremendously, gloriously Indian. Avoid some of the more developed resorts in North Goa, and you can have a soul-nourishing experience there.
Woman with a bundler on her head, Vagatu
One of the many great discoveries about Goa is the food. A proper authentic Goan pork vindaloo can be spectacular. Sour and rich, and a million miles away from the bogus curry house mouth-burners you get in the UK. It’s actually an old Portuguese dish, vin d’alhlo – originally a wine vinegar and garlic sauce – which has been Indianed up a bit. A similarly rich pork dish is sorpotel, and then there’s chicken xacuti, where the spices and ground coconut in the sauce are roasted. Beach shacks will serve us basic but delicious fresh prawn curry, or posher restaurants might offer fish stuffed with a spicy paste (recheado).
It’s getting more difficult to find good Goan restaurants now, especially in the built-up areas of the north. One of my favourites was Casa Portuguesa between Baga and Calangute, and the Hotel Venite restaurant in the capital, Panjim. I stayed in Anjuna for two months researching and writing the first draft of The Vibe, sitting on my verandah every day writing it out by hand. I would cross the red dust path in front of my rooms every morning and evening to Sonic Bar and Restaurant – tomato bhaji for breakfast, and fish curry rice (a Goan staple, and what the family who owned Sonic would have too) for dinner most nights.
Anne Beach from the North
The infamous all night (and sometimes full moon) parties still go on, but are much tamer than before. Similarly, the Wednesday flea market at Anjuna beach has long lost its point. It used to be a way of Westerner hippies raising some cash to keep them going. Now it’s like an outdoor supermarket of trinkets and fake brands, and has become a tourist exhibit in itself. But if you’re in the area it’s worth popping in for a brief bit of full-on Anjuna, especially if you wait for sunset at the beach bars.
People who want to avoid the drug gangs in the north now tend to visit the bigger beach resorts in the south of the state – around Colva, Benaulim and Majorda, for instance – and quite a scene has built up in Palolem (which was quiet and idyllic until it featured in a Jason Bourne film) but if you do go there I’d also urge you to leave the hotel compounds and the long beaches at some point and try to get inland, experience some of the laid back villages and lush beauty that Goa has to offer. Every time I go to Goa I make a point of finding time to wander around Fountainhas, the old Portuguese quarter of Panjim, to soak up the atmosphere and architecture.
And if you can, try to go about 20 years ago. You haven’t got a time machine? Well, I might be able to help you there. You see, there’s this book….(and you can buy a copy of The Vibe, set in the 1990s, through the TripFiction database!)
Do follow Rae on Twitter
Do come and join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)
Photos © Rae Stewart unless otherwise stated. For more books set in GOA just access the TripFiction database!
https://www.tripfiction.com/author-rae-stewart-goa-the-vibe/

ᐧ