Representation pic

Your mood automatically lightens as you enter Goa. You drive past lazy rivers and rice fields still wearing a post-harvest stubble. Men consider ponds choked with lotuses during morning ablutions. I wonder what ablutioning women get to consider. Francis, my regular driver, drives me to Panjim — his baby Bency, nine months old, has just learnt to call him da-da, and his wife is mildly miffed that she hasn’t learnt ma-ma first. We pass villas painted in jaunty red, blue and yellow. People in other cities hesitate to be this happy. But there are casinos on boats on the Mandovi river, which local Goans are discouraged from entering: there must be limits to happiness.