>> Long before there was a run on Goa, before the Delhiwalas discovered it as their playground for the rich and famous, long before the advent of Spanish haciendas and mile long yachts and even the coming of the Russians, around the time when Shashi and Jenifer Kapoor rented a small hut at Baga beach in a fisherman’s village, a young graphic designer called Shireen Mody chucked up her job at a hotshot London agency and decided to live the good life in Goa. We had met her in the eighties just after her move. Even then it seemed the only way to live: “I swim, walk and paint all day. I can buy a kilo of oysters for Rs 10,” I recall her telling us. “I have a small cottage and a red jeep in which I zip around, and my outgoings are next to nothing!” We should have listened to our inner voice and done the needful: Chucked up the job, liquidated the assets and followed suit. But no we didn’t. Yesterday, we ran into Shireen in her red jeep.