Tattooland

I couldnt believe it. An hour ago I was struggling against time to send out a last minute doc to the boss, and now here we were in the airport, two insanely expensive samosas down, boarding a flight to Sossegado land!

Yaaaaay! Two whole days of sun, sand, corpulent Brit tourists, and sea!

"Humph", said the budget airhostess, as we got on the plane at Bangalore. I beamed back at her, hoping to make her day as good as mine. She threw her head back, howled at the overhead bins and gnashed her teeth at us in a most friendly fashion. Before she could reach out and snap our heads off politely, we dived into our seats and hid under our recycled budget-flight magazines.

From my foetal position in the impossibly crammed Spicejet seat, I saw the arid beauty of the Deccan slowly giving way to the lush green of the Sahyadris, and we soon touched down at the immensely charming Dabolim Airport. Minutes later, we were whizzing away to Calangute on the spectacular Goa highway, winding through villages, shipyards, pretty churches and amazing views of the sea.

Bags down, we set off instantly for the beach on a rented Activa. After wading across row upon row of slowly cooking white skin, we finally reached the sea. I'd almost forgotten how magical the Arabian sea can be in winter. Placid, emerald green and ethereal. Disturbed only by the incessant roar of waterscooters, wailing kids, paunchy uncles, and extremely silly looking parasailers. All very pretty though.

Out of the water and ravenous, we drifted into the nearest shack and ordered everything they had. I decided to be goody two shoes on the first leg of my trip, and ordered a glass of nice Goan port wine. The waiter plonked a whole bottle of the good stuff in front of us, and then set down huuuge platters of food with large helpings of chips and tartar sauce. 'Ow English luv, I thought, looking around at the astounding number of identically dour faced, sunburned Brit tourists sipping G&Ts and digging into chicken teeka masollas.

It was heartening though, to see that Goa had indianized quite significantly since our last trip. We saw more than a few twenty-something yuppie Indian couples dotting an otherwise lobster-pink peoplescape. Mostly punju, unfortunately. Their embarrassingly crass accents seemed to bounce right off the grim, silent walls that the Brit tourists had raised around themselves. Ah well, I thought. Silence was never an Indian virtue, and it would do the old coots some good to hear boisterous Indian chatter for a change.

"Tattoo brother?" Asked a local, and showed me into a beachside tattoo parlour. Two stern faced East European women were inside, getting mehndi tattoos. One of them was visibly upset, and was admonishing a Goan boy tattooing her foot with an extremely ugly daisy chain: "I had appointhmenth ath eleffen. Now I am lathe for ze anozer apointhmenth. Zis is verhy unproffessional". "Yeah, yeah, I'll do a good design", replied the Goan boy, with an unfazed Goan grin. What he meant of course was "Yeah fool, that'll teach you to make hourly appointments when you're ankle deep in Mehndi at a beach shack in Goa!"

"Come. I make. Good design. Ae Jigness bhai, book lao." said the main man. Okayyyy, a Gujju tattooist. Excellent! He pointed to various designs in his book and I shortlisted the following :
(a) My name in Gujarati
(b) My mother's name in Hebrew
(c) Celtic design containing a pot of Undhiyu and a pile of Thepla
(c) The words Anna-Saaru-Che entwined on a rose.
(d) "Lucky Laxmi" in purple and green disco dots.

I asked him how much he charged. "Sirji main aapse sirf 5000 maangoonga . Bahut kam daam hai." I resisted the impulse to to tattoo "Poda maanga madaya" (Go away mangofool) on his forehead and run. After much bargaining, he agreed to draw a much cheaper, temporary tattoo on my shoulder that looked like the imprint of a size 12 shoe.

Fake tattoo in place, all I now needed to do was scream "O yaar bill lao fatafat" to the waiter and I'd be the perfect yuppie Punju Goa tourist.

If you can't, mins..matlab.. beat 'em, Oye join 'em yaaru !!