Indian Takeaway Part 6

'Hey. Nearly done. Just taking the toad out of the oven.'

I am nervous. I was hoping that I could secretly remove the toad and if it had been a complete disaster I could have manufactured an 'accident', letting the dish tumble towards the hard floor, shattering into a million pieces. No one would ever have known about the flour error. But now Bharat is standing there, watching, waiting, hoping.

'I'm hungry, man. Let's do it.'

I steel myself. I haven't opened the oven for thirty-five minutes. It could now be full of mutant toad in the hole. The oven door is opened ...

Hallelujah! It must have been plain flour. I must look like a n.o.bel Prize winner as I lift the toad in the hole out of the oven and onto the counter.

'Amazing,' I say, completely to myself.

Bharat looks underwhelmed.

I serve the toad, which doesn't look too shabby, and pour over the onion sauce type gravy jus jus thing. Everything is correctly seasoned and I can honestly say that given the circ.u.mstances I couldn't have done any better. It tastes even more delicious since I wasn't altogether sure there would be anything edible to eat. I'm sure I see Tommy the owner lurking somewhere in the shadows; his aunt must have cancelled. Suffice to say Bharat tastes and nods. thing. Everything is correctly seasoned and I can honestly say that given the circ.u.mstances I couldn't have done any better. It tastes even more delicious since I wasn't altogether sure there would be anything edible to eat. I'm sure I see Tommy the owner lurking somewhere in the shadows; his aunt must have cancelled. Suffice to say Bharat tastes and nods.

'Well?' I ask hopefully.

'They do very good king prawns here, man,' he says as he pushes the full plate of toad in the hole and onion gravy jus jus to one side. He has had a solitary mouthful. 'Big king prawns in coconut and chilli. Hey, waiter!' Bharat proceeds to order the aforementioned king prawns, leaving my hard-fought toad in the hole uneaten and forgotten. to one side. He has had a solitary mouthful. 'Big king prawns in coconut and chilli. Hey, waiter!' Bharat proceeds to order the aforementioned king prawns, leaving my hard-fought toad in the hole uneaten and forgotten.

As the waiter takes our order and removes Bharat's barely eaten plate of British food, I think about the meal I had originally planned to cook, the call centre adventure. I am sure that would have had a happier ending. What have I learnt from feeding Bharat? Nothing, if I am to be honest. I really wish that I had the chance to feed the new young Indians instead of this, tired and well-travelled, but lovely, Indian. You win some, you lose some. And this feels like a loss.

Later that evening, back at Bharat's place, I stood on the terrace, watching the city below. I felt strangely confused. I should have felt much more at home in Bangalore; Bharat and I have been friends for many years, the city was hardly new to me. But much as I knew India was changing, the rapidity of the change was difficult to comprehend. And that change was an international, global change. The very nature of the country was being altered by outside influence. I had hoped that I would come to Bangalore and somehow understand how the two sides of my life met; Bangalore seemed the perfect place to learn about this. That is what the call centre would have given me. Instead I ended up relying on Bharat who is himself part of old India, the country's past rather than its future. Perhaps the twenty-something graduates who spend all their lives talking to the rest of the English-speaking world would have embraced my toad in the hole in a more international manner, without feeling the need to order king prawns in a coconut chilli sauce. If I thought I was going to find anything of myself with Bharat, then I was sadly deluded.

I was left with an overwhelming sense of sadness. I felt as if I had taken a backward step. Mani and the tranquillity of Mamallapuram, the myriad of searching questions and the sound of the sea were not only a different India, but in truth a different country. It was almost as if the entire journey was an attempt for me to fight my Britishness, hide my own self. Mani saw me as an outsider and would have happily accepted me as such. Perhaps the problem was mine. Why did I feel the need to apologise for being British when in India, and apologise for being Indian when in Britain?

Bangalore left me wondering whether the east and the west could truly combine in a symbiotically balanced state; that and mourning the fact that my toad in the hole was such an unappreciated failure.

*It always strikes me as the most complete of ironies that almost every brown-skinned Indian family has a boy or a girl called Pinki.

7.

WHEN THE GOAN GETS TOUGH THE TOUGH GET GOAN.

There's a hierarchy you need to understand about Punjabis. It's sort of a modern-day caste system that imposes status. The theory is this: the further you have emigrated from that small village of your birth in deepest darkest Punjab, the better you have become as a person. Those Punjabis who wandered off to Delhi look down on the agrarian Punjabis who stayed at home and tilled the land and milked the cows; the Delhi Punjabis are in turn looked down upon by the Bombay and Bangalore Punjabis, and so on.

The East African Punjabis believe themselves to be G.o.d's chosen people; those in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania look down not only on all Punjabis but on all peoples. This dynamic is all too immediate in my own family since my father is a Punjab Punjabi and my mother is from Nairobi. Some time before the Second World War my maternal grandfather was posted to Kenya by the British to work on the railways as a guard. He had four children: Malkit; Surinder, the lone son; my mother, Kuldip; and Ja.s.si, the youngest. It was after Malkit Ma.s.si was born that my grandfather was told of the impending move to Nairobi, where his remaining three children were to be born. Since my grandfather's brother had not been blessed with children it was decided that Malkit, then no more than four, should be left with her paternal uncle to be brought up as their child. My grandfather and grandmother left the Punjab and their first born for a new life in Kenya. Malkit stayed in India until she was eighteen when my grandfather went to bring her back. The family was complete again, all six of them, but only for a few years until my grandmother's untimely pa.s.sing. Malkit, a veritable stranger to her siblings, ended up as the matriarch, her teenage years cut short by the necessity of family. That is the story of my mother's childhood.

We talk about incredible journeys; this book is an immense journey. But it's only when I look back on the lives of my parents that I realise the true extent of 'journey'. I might travel for days in trains across thousands of Indian miles, but how can that compare to the personal journey of my mother? Born during the Second World War in a colonial outpost, she found herself at the age of twenty, married and in Delhi, only to move to London two years later and finally settle in windswept Glasgow. That is a journey. From the shacks of Nairobi to a palatial terraced house just off the Great Western Road. Raj, Sanj and I can barely contemplate the changes our parents have witnessed during their nomadic continent-crossing existence. And they are still reasonable, kind and loving people. I wonder if I would maintain such poise and equanimity.

My parents learnt about themselves, about their lives through the journeys they were compelled to make in an attempt to give their children a better life. I feel a little self-indulgent at this point in my journey when I reflect on how it is something I have chosen to undertake rather than been forced to make. What can I really learn by gallivanting around India? There is no economic imperative to what I am doing. I am not seeking a better life for my family. I am simply indulging the desire of a westerner, since that is what I am. I am a westerner, travelling India in search of myself.

Two overnight train journeys totalling about thirty-seven hours of travel over less than half a week have begun to take their toll on my poise and clarity of thought. I have caught a cold and like any man I find myself on the very precipice of death itself; at any moment I could tumble over leaving life behind me, coughing and spluttering with a blocked nose all the way into the ravine below. Bangalore to Goa looked like being another overnight escapade, another journey full of incident and accident, in a Volvo bus. I couldn't face it, I'm afraid. Another 2001: s.p.a.ce Odyssey 2001: s.p.a.ce Odyssey moment and another burly Sikh movie star with a shotgun and a forklift truck? No. I have stayed in Bangalore an extra night and opted for the early afternoon Jet Airways flight to Goa. As opposed to the nine-hour bus ride I would have a sixty-minute flight followed by a similar car journey. I should be at Carmona beach by early evening and eating a pork-based Portuguese-inspired curry by no later than eight o'clock. moment and another burly Sikh movie star with a shotgun and a forklift truck? No. I have stayed in Bangalore an extra night and opted for the early afternoon Jet Airways flight to Goa. As opposed to the nine-hour bus ride I would have a sixty-minute flight followed by a similar car journey. I should be at Carmona beach by early evening and eating a pork-based Portuguese-inspired curry by no later than eight o'clock.

Bangalore airport's departure lounge was once a surprisingly small affair. That is no longer the case, and the cosmopolitan nature of the pa.s.sing travellers reflects the changing nature of the city. There is a genuine buzzy excitement here. On the way to the airport, Bharat, who kindly offered to drive me, told me that, like Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, Bangalore is in the throes of reverting to its original Kanada name of Bangaluru. Irony of ironies, as the city becomes more international, more global, more part of the economic colonialisation of India, it is simultaneously unknotting itself from its direct colonial past, filling the void with a newfound sense of optimism. The next time I land in this city, it will be into Bangaluru International Airport.

I've always thought that an airport is a snapshot of a city in terms of its aspirations and dreams; it is often the first and last impression a visitor has of a city and a country. And nowhere is this more p.r.o.nounced than in India where airports are being thrown up and renovated with alarming speed and regularity. The airport at Bangalore was merely a domestic terminal a decade and a half ago. Now it has morphed into an ever-increasing gateway of international business opportunity.

I wander about the departure gate, my stomach getting the better of me, as usual. I'm peckish, unnecessarily so considering how much I have consumed in the last few days. This is yet more astonis.h.i.+ng considering the fact that I have a cold and should really not have the slightest pang of hunger. Clearly I have hidden depths of greed that can overcome even the worst of medical conditions.

I wander over to the food kiosk and survey my options. The gleamingly clean gla.s.s-topped counters call out to me. There are snacks from every gamut of the Indian inter-meal offering: the pakora, the samosa, the spiced sandwich, the bhaji, the puff, the idli, the dosa. I survey every option, secretly wanting them all but knowing that even my belly would fail to accommodate that. But my eyes are especially taken by a snack known as an aloo boondi. Does snacking get any better than this? Imagine spiced, mashed potato enhanced with freshly chopped chillies and coriander; these b.a.l.l.s of delight are then enveloped in a gram-flour batter and deep fried. A homage to the carbohydrate. These delights invariably find themselves served with a punchy, tangy tamarind chutney or even a mint sauce. Delicious. As I gaze longingly at the boondi through the gla.s.s I realise that I must have them; I simply must. I feel a cosmic sense of oneness with them, a deep sensation of deja vu. Perhaps I was predestined to nibble on this snack? Perhaps it was written in some other place that this potato morsel and I would come together as one at this place, at this time. I feel as if I was simply meant to be here. I am overcome with an inexplicable familiarity with this sight. I have been here before, witnessed this before. But where?

Then I remember: the image of the rat in the airport food kiosk thrust before me by the bearded pastor on the train to Madras. It was this airport, this very kiosk, maybe even these very boondi.

Unbelievable.

Unsurprisingly the edge from my hunger has been removed quick-smart.

No sooner has our plane taken off than the pilot is preparing us for landing. The briefest of flights. The bluest of skies. The whitest of clouds. Perhaps Goa will be the destination of superlatives? Certainly the airport isn't; it is surprisingly small and compact for a city that sees so much pa.s.senger traffic. Taxis and touts wait outside in the baking heat, sensing fresh, cotton-clad blood. But this is late July, low season, and there are only a handful of westerners ripe for fleecing, and they too seem slightly more savvy than most. The look of collective disappointment is one well worth watching. There's nothing quite like a tout scorned.

I opt for the non air-conditioned cab which will save me the princely sum of 300 rupees. For 650 rupees I can open the window and stick my head out. I will have the wind in my beard and the sun on my face. Or the sun in my beard and the wind on my face. Either way, my face and beard and the wind and the sun will be involved.

The road to Carmona is good. We pa.s.s through lush, verdant forests and bisect tiny villages, some no more than a handful of shacks. Every now and again an expansive colonial-style bungalow appears, its gaily painted exterior of pink, purple, orange or blue failing to hide the otherwise faded grandeur. Since it is both low season and election time a lot of the shops are shuttered, some of the tinier hamlets completely bereft of activity. As the journey unfolds, deeper into Goa, my single initial impression is how strong Christianity is in this part of India. On the sun visors of cars, on the bonnets of cars, on shop h.o.a.rdings, Christianity is everywhere. We pa.s.s St Jude's garage where three moustachioed men grapple with a motorbike. Roadside crosses mark the route and every now and again appears a caged shrine and a handful of believers paying their respects. This couldn't be less like any India I have known.

And it couldn't be less like the India I just left. Bangalore is a city that keeps thriving and blossoming and growing with a youthful exuberance, a jewel in the crown of the modern subcontinent. Nothing could be more of a contrast than Goa. It is a beach paradise, a quirky and unique place within India. For many years it was the country's best kept secret. Now that the secret is out I wonder for how much longer Goa can maintain that mystical, enigmatic state of being.

I should explain that there are two Goas: the tourist Goa and the real Goa. I have been to the tourist Goa before, to the north, and frankly it felt more like the Costa Del Goa rather than the magical, mysterious paradise of India. That Goa I found upsettingly un-Indian. It might have been Magaluf, Dubai or anywhere but India. I have never been to South Goa, the place Indians go on holiday. Perhaps that Goa, Indian Goa, holds the last vestiges of mystical enigma. When I was drawing up my itinerary Dad was in two minds about whether Goa would be meaningful. He felt that Goa was the Indian equivalent to a Scottish shortbread tin; it's not that he doesn't like shortbread, he just doesn't feel that a man in a kilt on a tartan backdrop is particularly typical of the experience of Scotland. Similarly he wasn't altogether sure what I would garner from Goa. He felt the collision of tourism and the ever-rampant free market had tainted every Goan nook and cranny. And why not? India should not be any different to any other nation when it comes to cra.s.s, flesh-displaying drunkards who use the strength of their exchange rate to re-colonialise poorer countries.

This was one reason I was keen to come to South Goa: I thought that in trying to understand my own duality, in attempting to come to terms with my own sense of 'home', as someone quintessentially British, I should come to the place where so many of my fellow Brits come as they search for answers. I'm not sure whether I will find any answers here but I am certainly hoping to leave with another set of questions.

There is a second reason: I am very keen to try pork vindaloo. I am even hungrier for it now, having been thwarted in Cochin. Growing up it was impossible to find pork cooked in an Indian style. This was in part because most Indian restaurants in the UK were run by Muslims, a religion for which the pig is regarded as too unclean to eat. We Sikhs think nothing of tucking into all things porcine and luckily my parents have always been fond of that which is widely regarded as the 'king of meats'. Pork was cooked and enjoyed at home. But that was Punjabi-style pork, delicious but not the best way to prepare pig meat. When I reached my late teens and started to explore and read about food myself, I learnt from a lady on TV called Madhur Jaffrey that there was a Goan way of preparing pork. Pork vindaloo crashed into my consciousness and ever since I've had the avowed intent of searching out this dish and devouring it. The last time I was in Goa for a couple of days and the pork was hard to find. The word vindaloo itself has been hijacked by the Indian restaurant scene. I wish to reclaim it again for the Goans. A modest task, I think you'll agree.

Ten examples of Christian influence on daily Goan Life on the journey to Carmona the journey to Carmona Jesus Video Ca.s.sette LibrarySanta Maria Holiday CottagesAmchi Jesus BusHoly Trinity Cold StorageInfant Jesus General StoreImmaculate Conception Snack Shop and Cyber CafeJesus of the Cross Plywood StoresSisters of the Cross GuesthouseFather Sebastian Audio Visual and Lamination Services Orlando Mascarenhas is my car mechanic. He lives out in Heston, west London and what he doesn't know about the internal combustion engine is not worth knowing. I can remember hearing his name as long ago as I can remember being able to hear, full stop. Orlando isn't a common name for Indians. It was a rather glamorous name in a family full of Malkits, Satinders and Rajs. (Why does every Indian family have at least four boys called Raj? It is of course an irony that the Raj that most people know and remember is a load of white people in pith helmets and jodhpurs; for me it's any family gathering invariably involving a samosa.) Orlando was spoken about like some latter-day Merlin who would conjure a car into working order through some dark art of automotive repair. I rediscovered him in the spring of 2007 when my wife's car needed what appeared worryingly to be thousands of pounds' worth of work. The curse of the speed b.u.mp on the German suspension system. I brought the Pa.s.sat to Orlando and three hundred quid later it was right as rain. I then took my car for a service and we got talking.

It transpired that Orlando was Goan. I never knew this about him. But I should have guessed from his name, which is Goan Christian, to be exact. As I worked out how many hundreds of pounds he had saved me on my wife's car, Orlando told me that I was lucky to catch him he was on his way to Goa. Orlando travels to Goa three or four times a year. From mid-November until mid-January he goes to enjoy the cooler winter sun, the more temperate climate; his family join him as soon as school breaks. He returns in May or June with the kids for half-term and again in the autumn break. And come summertime he's back on a plane and Goa-bound. He may take an extra trip when the fancy possesses him.

As I stood in Orlando's modest house in Heston everything about him and his life started to fall into place. He wasn't living in the small two-up, two-down; he was existing there. Goa was where Orlando came to life. Even just talking about it his body became energised, his hands started describing the sea and the sand and his eyes twinkled. If this was how animated he became about the place in the oil-soaked drizzle of west London, I wanted to experience him in situ, in the midst of his sun-kissed paradise. He seemed the perfect person to visit on my journey.

'When are you going?' I asked.

'Tuesday.'

'Don't fancy going again in a couple of months, do you?' I was half joking.

'Hold on ...' He wandered off and shouted his son's name upstairs. 'Carlos! Carlos! When are your holidays?'

I remember thinking at the time how strange that there were Indian people with names like Orlando and now Carlos. Orlando returned, smiling. But then Orlando was always smiling.

'We will be there. Kids' half term.'

'Can I come and cook for you?'

Orlando looked a little confused. 'You can cook for me here in London ... '

I explained my quest, my journey, my attempt at selfdiscovery. 'I really want to come to Goa.'

'Then please be my guest.'

Orlando is East African, like my mother. His father had worked with my maternal uncle and my maternal grandfather on the railways that the British seemed to construct wherever they colonised. Orlando came to the UK in 1975 with a view to studying science, but life so very often impacts on aspiration and he found himself working at British Airways by day and spannering the odd car by night. Such was his reputation for automotive alchemy that the night job started paying more than the day job. His plan was clear: he would work all the hours the cosmos sent and he would rebuild his father's house in Goa. This he did all the way through the 1980s, fl ying to and fro to supervise works. Then in 1993 he decided to buy his own place in Goa. Back then no one knew or was particularly interested in Goa apart from the soap-dodging, lank-haired hippies.

Orlando greets me warmly in front of his house. This is his home in Goa, a two-storey villa in a gated community ab.u.t.ting the beach at Carmona. It could not be more different from his life in Heston. Perhaps it's the contrast with the slate, rain-laden skies of west London, the chill in the air, the general sense of greyness of the capital of England that suddenly makes Carmona seem not just the other side of the world but an altogether different galaxy. Orlando's villa is beautiful. Bougainvillea stretches upwards and around the powder-pink exterior. Inside it is cool and airy with four good-sized bedrooms and two terraces. I stand on the back terrace looking out to the Arabian Sea and I wonder why Orlando ever leaves. I ask him. The answer is obvious.

'Gotta work, man. Gotta make the money ... '

The house is part of a wider resort. There are maybe another seventy or so villas and there's a pool and a badminton court; but this is Indian Goa, not Costa del Goa. These holiday homes are owned almost exclusively by Goans or Indians who spend a few weeks or months of the year here. A handful of retired Indians live here year round, for whom the sun and the pace of life are simply perfect. Low season it may be, but for me the heat is almost intolerable.

Goa is a unique part of India for many reasons. In the last ten years or so it has developed from hippy hang out into India's most visited tourist location. Paradise is becoming more easily attainable with numerous five-star hotels and leisure complexes being developed on the coastline. Orlando tells me that in the old days fresh fish was much easier and cheaper to get hold of; now all the best stuff is sold on to the restaurants. He remembers when he was a child his family would give freshly caught fish to western travellers and ask them to cook it; then they would all sit together and enjoy the meal. But that was then.

'Do you feel Indian?' I ask, almost at the end of my first cold beer in days.

Orlando reaches for another before answering. 'I'm Goan, man. I never call myself Indian. I'm Goan.' His reply is a little fiercer than I think he intended it to be. He sips his beer before looking at me again with his kind eyes. 'We're different, us Goans. Different, man.'

That there is a marked dichotomy between the Goan sense of ident.i.ty and the Indian isn't altogether surprising. Until December 1961 Goa was still Portuguese. It was only after armed conflict that the Indian army forcibly reclaimed the state. Goa had been a colony for almost 500 years, one of the world's oldest recognised colonies. The Portuguese influence is still evident: Orlando Mascarenhas is evidence enough, surely! Orlando remembers his parents speaking Portuguese and he himself remembers understanding the language.

Orlando is keen to take me out and about, proud to show me his Goa.

'We never cook at home, man. We get food in for lunch and then go out and eat in the evenings. My friends run a few good places.'

'I want to try pork. Is that OK?' I ask tentatively. There's still something very strange about asking for pork in India.

'Should be fine. We'll go to the Traveller's.' I like Orlando's confidence.

We drive out to a place called the Traveller's Tavern some fifteen minutes away. I notice that although the sun set some hours ago the heat has hung around. It's not warm; it's hot. When we arrive I feel rather alarmed at the state of the place. To say the Traveller's is a shack would be unfair on shacks. A four-foot-high brick wall traces the outline of the s.p.a.ce; every few feet a wooden post rises up, upon which rests a thatched roof. It's basic in the extreme. One only wonders about the kitchen which remains unseen and unheard in a separate hut at the back. They say one should judge the quality of an establishment's food by the quality of its toilets: if that were the case at the Traveller's I would have been leaving there sharpish. But this is India, albeit Goan India. My mind and my bowels are open to new experiences.

This place is run by an old friend of Orlando's, and there's another guy hovering around the bar; he seems to have one leg longer than the other and a moustache that wouldn't look out of place on the set of a low-budget spaghetti western. Orlando thinks it a good idea that we have a little pre-prandial stiffener. I would kill for a vodka tonic but that would appear not to be on offer. Instead the local spirit arrives at the table. A clear spirit, cashew fenny is made from the fruit of the cashew tree. Each fruit bears only a single pair of cashew nuts (hence the expense of the nut). The nut is attached to a fruit, and this fruit, in time old tradition, is fermented and turned into alcohol.

'Have some, man. It's the local speciality.' Orlando is not the sort of guy you want to disappoint. Neither are the owner of the bar and his friend. They stand watching as I grasp the gla.s.s in my hand.

I am compelled to have a taste. I decide to down it in one; I am from Glasgow after all.

It's harsh.

'Lovely,' I say, forcing a smile where a smile ought never to belong.

It's like lighter fuel. Or grappa. I just don't get grappa. And I'm not loving cashew fenny either. I'm hopeful that the lining on my throat will eventually grow back. I have never understood why people drink alcohol that doesn't taste nice.

I let Orlando order the food. The pork-free food. I can't believe I have come all this way and they've run out of pork. The owner explains.

'The pork we have to order in the morning. It's low season so we don't get so much. The pork we ordered was all sold by lunchtime.'

'Get some for tomorrow night, OK?' Orlando looks sternly at the owner, who demurs.

Orlando asks what I like to eat.

'Food,' I reply, cheekily. 'Anything and everything.'

Twenty minutes later the table is heaving with dishes. It all looks amazing. There is fresh mackerel cooked with a rechard masala. The gutted fish are filled with the spicy red sauce and fried. King fish curry in a thin, soupy sauce; very oniony and sweet. Then we are sent a plate of spicy sausages chipolatasized pork sausages wrapped in beef intestines and then deep fried; they are rich and fatty. These sausages are the only pork in the restaurant since they are cured and can keep for days. Finally a plate of masala beef tongue which is much tastier than it sounds. It is cooked in a coconut, vinegar and chilli sauce and is best accompanied by the Portuguese bread.

A few hours later, having successfully avoided any further adventures with the cashew fenny, we drive home in the dark. The complex rich flavours of the spicy, vinegary masalas and the fatty sausages warm me from the inside, colliding occasionally and uncomfortably with the harsh paint-thinning taste of the cashew fenny. And while the Goan food warms my insides, my outside is being toasted by the temperature which seems somehow unaware of the fact that it is approaching midnight, refusing to get any cooler than the low thirties. The windows open, the wind in my beard, I look forward to the air-conditioned comfort of my friend's home. That is something about Orlando that I really admire. Systematically, piece by piece, he re-designed his little corner of paradise within India's little corner of paradise. While he lives modestly in Heston, he lives like royalty in Goa.

We arrive back and I yearn for bed. Orlando yearns for more cashew fenny. It would be impolite to refuse. Again. We decant drinks and turn on all the fans and AC units.

'It's going to be a hot night.' Orlando wipes a bead or two of sweat from his brow.

We down our drinks and I make for bed. I am cooking tomorrow and I need to have more than my usual number of wits about me. I lie in bed, enjoying the cooling breeze of the conditioned air, the hum of the machine like a lullaby.

I am moments away from the sweetest of sleeps when suddenly the world seems to grind to a silent halt. The AC falls quiet. The night lights fail; there is darkness everywhere. I hear noises in the hallway and the unmistakeable light of a torch, flitting under the door. Orlando is up and one of the kids, Carlos, is moaning. I stagger out of my room to find out what's going on. It transpires that the generator has failed. Being a mechanic, Orlando feels he can fix everything, but even his resolve is insufficient in the pitch dark of a Goan night. He apologises profusely.

'No problem,' I say nonchalantly. 'I like the heat.'

I am plainly quite stupid. The temperature feels even hotter at one in the morning than it has done all day long. The air is still and oppressive. Have you ever tried to sleep in a breeze-less thirty-six degrees? It's impossible. Even my sweat is sweating. I doze lightly rather than enter the full body embrace of sleep. By four in the morning I feel almost hallucinatory.

Orlando has arranged for a taxi to come and collect me in the morning and take me to shop for food. The driver's name is Rosewell; he knows his way around the markets. Orlando rarely visits the Margao market. He has no need to. He never cooks when he is here. They simply go out and eat.

'Are you sure you want to cook, man? We can bring food in or go out and eat.'

Orlando hasn't quite grasped the point of my journey.

'I am here to find myself. To try and discover who I am and how I fit in to all this.' I make a non-specific hand gesture out of the window.

'OK. But why cooking?' He looks genuinely quizzical. His kind eyes search for an answer.

'Because I believe in food. I think food is the way to people's hearts and souls. Understand someone's food and you understand them.' I feel enthused by my eloquence, robust in my rhetoric.

'OK, man.' Orlando is less than convinced.

Rosewell comes with his Amba.s.sador to take me shopping. It is a twenty-minute drive from Orlando's place to Margao. The Goa I'm seeing on this trip is very different to the Goa I have seen before. Since the moment I landed I have seen the real Goa, with real people, living real lives. I have seen but one westerner in the day or so I have spent here.

Goa is a conundrum, a contradiction. There are miles of the most beautiful beaches, homes to the hedonists, the winter sun-seekers. Yet drive inland, as I am now, and there are still vestiges of the commercial history of the princ.i.p.ality. Large munic.i.p.al buildings, shabby now with the pa.s.sing of time, which were once administrative offices of the Portuguese authorities; warehouses that look as if they belong in Lisbon or Porto rather than by the Arabian Sea. Goa was one of the most important trade hubs of the Portuguese empire. Churches and Christianity seem to be ubiquitous and this doesn't feel like any sort of India I have witnessed before.

This Portuguese and Christian influence brings a rather unique culinary proposition. Given that a quarter of India is Muslim, not only is it hard to find pork in an Indian restaurant in the UK, it is very difficult to find pork anywhere in India, too. This is compounded by the fact that Hindus are not particularly fond of pig meat either. The state of Goa is the honourable exception. With its overwhelmingly Christian population and fierce sense of independence, pork is the staple dish wherever you venture. A local delicacy is stuffed piglet which roasts for five hours while the men fish in the backwaters for snapper and crab. By the time they return the piglet is cooked.

So there appears to be only one thing for me to cook in Goa. I love pork. And my favoured cut of pork has to be belly. The crispy crackling hiding the tender fatty flesh, deep with flavour. I shall cook roast pork belly, mash and peas, all to be served with home-made apple sauce. What could be more British?

MMC New Market does exactly what it says on the tin: it's a market that's quite new. After a challenging ten minutes or so finding parking in what seems a veritable vehicle free-forall, Rosewell turns the engine off, taps the steering wheel and smiles that enigmatic Indian smile (the Goans may not think of themselves as Indians, but when it comes to enigmatic smiling, boundaries seem to disappear). It is earlier in the morning than I hoped after a night of little sleep, much sweating and borderline hallucinogenic dreaming. But early morning is the only time to procure pig in Goa. They are freshly slaughtered as the sun settles into the sky and then disappear into the homes and kitchens of Goan locals. This place is as real as Goa gets, no white faces. You might think that I blended into my surroundings perfectly, but no. The locals could be staring at me for one of two reasons: 1. I am the most devilishly handsome man they have ever laid eyes on. The women all find me highly desirable and the men all wish to be my best friend.2. I look like an outsider and do not fit into contemporary Margao life.

I think both you and I, reader, know which is more likely. My lilac turban and clas.h.i.+ng pink kurta top might seem to be quintessentially of the subcontinent, but I now realise it is clearly more sub-fas.h.i.+on. I am dressed the way white people dress when they wish to make a statement about how they are embracing India. Indians don't really dress in the way I do. That much has become painfully apparent. I stick out like two sore thumbs.

The market itself is unremarkable, brisk and businesslike. There are four roads, forming a square and it is within this area that the market functions. Each road has an entrance. I walk in through gate four; this is where the pork is to be found. It is rather ramshackle, a place that has grown organically through use rather than a business that was planned and structured. As many stalls are empty as are being used. There is a smattering of vegetables, some clothing and a few cheap plastic toys, no doubt imported from China. This is not a tourist market. I turn a corner away from the street and suddenly my world has changed: all I can see is pig and pig entrail. But before you see it, you smell it. I'll let you work out for yourself the smell of freshly slaughtered pig. Unlike a character from a Coppola movie, I'm not so fond of the smell of new pig in the morning, and I've never in all my life seen so much freshly killed animal. It's still warm to the touch. It seems that every part of the pig is available for purchase, including the oink. Offal is tied in bundles and hung over the portioned legs. The belly remains uncut and looks too like the animal for me to feel wholly comfortable about purchasing it. But purchase I must.

On closer examination the belly is very fatty, too fatty. More than half the joy of pork belly is in the exact science that melds fat and meat so that after cooking it becomes crispy and earthy all in one mouthful. I fear this belly may be too crispy and not earthy enough, but it would appear to be too late. I have no option. I take three pieces of pork belly, which causes no small degree of consternation to the vendor who only seems set up to sell one kilo or two, nothing in between. Since he only has the 1kg and 2kg weight to balance his scale, he forces me to buy a fourth piece, the equivalent of an entire piglet belly costing me a king's ransom of 2.20. The pig is wrapped in what I hope is yesterday's newspaper. I fear the ink from the page may transfer its story onto the pork.