Have you ever gone back to your old school, and your favorite classroom, wiped the dust off a framed photograph that still hangs there after all these years, met the canteen uncle, who you still owe five rupees, and come back wondering why you had to leave?
Last fortnight, I went back to my own drawing room, hungaround in my old bar, met the same old folks doing the same old things. Timeflew-actually time didn’t matter- and conversations ranged from the bizarre tothe nonsensical till it didn’t make sense. But it made sense to the soul. Thehappiness of madness and the sense of not being judged or asked questions, asyou down in the merriment of times past, is what Cavala is all about.
2004 to 2012: For eight years, if one little space comes intoyour writings about your ramblings again and again, for the same reasons, thenit is a connect that is one catalyst for being and living here. Here are somenotes from the past.
Circa June 2004: Wetearth and pouring rain are constants on monsoon nights at Cavala, the sound ofthe rain, often drowning, Alex Braganza’s “Ahard days night”. Alex and his music company band of boys kept Cavala andall of us singing for a large part of the first decade of the 2000’s. Theydon’t play anymore, but Alex and the rest keep going back there.
Circa July 2012: The other night, as the band Tidal Wave made music that had the floorscorched, Alex and his wife hugged the bar and listened in. It was not aboutthe music, it was just about being there. Cavala has been a part of our growingup years- and we all keep growing from our thirties to our eighties. Where wasI? Where would I be? Finding solace behind the bar- many still think I workthere and mix drinks- which is absolutely fine- and doesn’t interfere with myday (actually 24 hour) job.
Circa 2006: On thefloor, on the table or near the bar, you met and befriended an eclectic bunchof strangers- advertising executives, singers from Brazil, an ‘out of work andmoney’ ex-heiress from some bit of France, a wandering wayfarer who wasspending his life’s savings on travel and the usual Bombay, Bangalore typesletting their hair down.
Circla July 2012: Replace the singer from Brazil with arecession hit banker from Yorkshire, whose pound runs much longer here than athome and whose drink in Goa doesn’t upset the grocery budget of the week. Or, theadvertising executive from Bangalore who now lives here, and 2006 becomes 2012.
Everyone touches base. It’s not about letting your hair downand having a blast though those are merry collaterals. This is about hangingout and doing nothing. This isn’t a quintessential North Goa head banging partyplace which southerners from the other side of the Zuari scoff at saying “Oh,so you went North?”. This isnotwithstanding that some of Cavala’s greatest lovers have been from Margao andVasco. One boisterous Navy bunch used to set the dance floor on fire every timethey landed. As always, the men lost steam but the women continued. Some solo,some with other buddies, inspiring Alex and his band even more, as both musicand dance reached a crescendo.
Cavala is about yesterdays once more. It is also abouttomorrows yet again because here tomorrow always comes. Even for souls andspirits of Cavala who have brought merriment to themselves and Cavala and gone.The ever smiling Norman who went away so suddenly and whose presence has beenimmortalised on the wall behind the bar. To them, we raise a toast, and knowthat our tomorrows are their tomorrows, as much as our yesterdays were.
PS. For those who don’tyet know, the Cavala school of merriment is at the end of Baga
