Summers are incomplete without urak, a nectar that can only be had under the Goan sky as the coastal breeze dries off your sweat
I spotted many red and yellow cashew apples dangling from trees, even tried to pick off the many that had fallen by the wayside. Pic for Representation
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Of course, the warm, intoxicating scent of cashews blossoming pervasively proved sufficiently distracting. I spotted many red and yellow cashew apples dangling from trees, even tried to pick off the many that had fallen by the wayside. Then the silent smell of bread baking in the stone oven of a local bakery outside of which children play frisbee on the road. Soon after, as I continued walking, I heard the shuddering of leaves. I stopped in my tracks, looked to my left, and found a jackfruit-green snake slithering through a crack in the stone fencing of a vast, vacant property. I saw its tongue stick out, red and feral, as it motioned forward before disappearing out of sight.
The first two days since my arrival last week were chequered. I found myself unable to settle into a rhythm. The Old Pereira House is an amazing site, still bearing traces of its past inhabitants, its compound home to many delicate birds and insects. But perhaps I was overwhelmed by how many of us were negotiating the same site. I hadn't fathomed how crucial my solitude is to my practice. It is only when I am truly alone that I can transcribe my thoughts. The heat has been unusually unrelenting for March, bathing the body in a sweat-gland glow and fuelling the need for two showers a day. But last evening, I had the privilege of a new thought entering my blood stream, something about how a 'delay' is essentially a belatedness of time. It's not a revelation, but a statement about how time in Goa is measured in sacred, secular, and agrarian ways. For instance, yesterday someone told me that she heard that apparently 45 days after the silk cotton tree bursts (which it did in Corneum two days ago), there will be rain. This year the heat of March is almost like that of May. The sky was overcast all morning and held the promise of rain, but hours later, the sun resurfaced looking mightier than ever, and were it not for the intermittent breeze, I would easily have just melted into a puddle of sweat.
I remember my trip to the vineyard in the Yarra valley, near Melbourne, in August, where I learned about the logic of cold weather wines. It had previously not occurred to me how significantly seasonal changes tempered grapes, altering the flavour and depth of the wine they produced. I wonder if there's a similar conditioning that dictates the taste of jackfruits and mangoes. I am eager to know what this year's harvest will taste like on the tongue. If the weather is anything to go by, I expect a plenitude of warmth and richness.
The commingling scents of jackfruit and cashew compensate for the humidity. They waft on the edge of a breeze and satisfy unfelt hungers. But the greatest blessing that seems to justify the heat is urak. I always seem to find my way back to Goa in time for this nectar. Amid the bustle of the day, the struggle with language, the multiple showers, there is the distinct pleasure of casual evening conglomerations over a bottle of urak, sometimes in the form of intriguing cocktails (I was made one yesterday with hibiscus), but mostly with just lime and soda. It replenishes our conversations about art and literature and love and longing and carries us through the early hours of morning. It punctuates our anecdotes with moments of lucid laughter, causes us to spill over slightly onto the streets with bohemian audacity and takes us to our shared beds so we can enact our dreaming. The Goan summer would have been incomplete without this intoxication, this syncretic drink that is the consequence of colonisation but that has become so irremediably local it can only be drunk under the Goan sky, with the coastal breeze drying off your sweat as each sip creates a new stirring of roots.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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