Here’s my Goa story:

Goa is the India beach hot spot- everyone agrees it’s the place to be on vacation- obviously I had to go.

I left Buzz with the son of my right hand and got out of town. I took the sea monkeys with me- I forgot to leave them with Buzz.

I had the guy from the guest house pick me up at the airport- he was also picking up another guest. When we both showed up we drove off to the village of Anjuna. Anjuna, it turns out, is where all the nouvue-hippies and Israelis hang out. When we got to the guest house it was dark. They showed us our rooms and I took stock of the situation 1. I had an attached bath, but no toilet paper. 2. I had large, well lit room, semi clean two beds, one outlet- no TV. 3. There was a market to one side of the house and a restaurant to the other side. 4. The beach was down the street. Everything seemed in order for a nice relaxing weekend of seclusion- I had my books, my knitting, my computer and some stationary.

The girl who came from the airport came into my room looking a little shocked and said, “Oh, your room is much nicer than mine!”

I said, “Huh, really?”

She said, “Yes!” and “Look at it!”

Well, it wasn’t quite as nice. Not so well lit- some cobwebs on the ceiling, but I didn’t want to volunteer to trade I was on vacation- my room was okay but I had no intention of down grading- mine was nicer after all but hers wasn’t so bad. She disagreed- she was sure she could not possibly sleep in such a room- anything could happen to her in that room.

She was nearing hysterics when she asked if we could share a room. I wasn’t sure- that hadn’t been the plan- but well I’m alone most of the time at home so why not share a room on vacation? So we became Goa buddies.

We were together the rest of the time. We went to eat- went to the market- went to the beach- then we went back to the guest house and started the cycle again. We got ripped off in the market, as should be expected in India. We laid around looking white at the beach- then we decided that Anjuna just wasn’t holding our attention.

We decided to go to Colva- it looked like a happening place on the map. So we packed up after the second night and taxi-ed down to South Goa. Colva is much larger than Anjuna- fewer hippies and Israelis. Beach-Food-Market.

The next day it was kind of cloudy so we decided to go to Old Goa- where the Portuguese used to hang out and force Indians to become Roman Catholics.
My new friend had met a friend on the flight to Goa. She contacted him and he took us to see the churches in Old Goa- and to an Island nearby. He was a local who had never bothered to look at the tourist places- apparently the task was taxing for him because he had to stop several times to take a few drags on his joint.

I was sitting in a car with two absolute strangers in India watching the driver smoke a joint, and listening to him reassure me that it was fine, he did it all the time and did I want some.


My Goa (Catholic) History:

The best church was Bom Jesus where the remains of St. Francis Xavier are present in a glass casket. (Ick.)

That guy- he was something else- he was about four feet tall, which goes to prove short people can do big things.

He was a cofounder of the Jesuits. In 1541 he left Spain to become a missionary in India. Then he was a missionary in Indonesia, Japan and China.

Now the weirdness.

He died on December 2, 1552. He was buried on a Chinese Island, then a few months later, dug up and moved to a church, then a year later moved to somebody’s house, then a few months later shipped to Goa, “having resisted extensive decay.”

Now- here’s what the tour guide told me, Xavier didn’t decay- first they buried him, but they decided that they were going to want to ship him off to India, so they dug him up he hadn’t decayed as expected so the dumped quick lime in his coffin. They expected after a few months that there would only be bones left making for easy shipping. But when they dug him out again he was still just laying there undecayed. So at that point it became a miracle the “living body” of a dead saint.

When they got him back to Goa they wrote to the Pope to ask for formal legislation concerning the sainthood. The Pope said he had to see it for himself and to send him to Rome. The converts in Goa said, “No! We don’t want to send him, India doesn’t get to keep anything!” (That’s what the guide said.) So they cut off his “blessing arm” which bore his signet ring and sent it off. The Pope agreed that it was Xavier’s arm and that it hadn’t decayed so he must be a saint.

The English get a bad rap in India- but from what I’ve read the Portuguese were a bunch of so-and-so’s too. Xavier requested an Inquisition in India in 1545. An Inquisition is bad news. It went on from 1560 to 1774- along the way thousands of Hindus were either converted to Christianity or tortured and killed. It wasn’t only Hindus, local Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians were all so persecuted.

When the Portuguese got to India they were surprised to find Christians who didn’t know about the Pope. These were Christians using ancient practices and texts dating back to the first century- They referred to the tradition of Thomas the Apostle working in India. Those oh-so-curious Catholics burned the texts from these churches and killed the church leaders. “What followed was the literary holocaust of the St. Thomas Christian history and faith. Even the common prayer book was not spared. Every known item of literature was burnt and any priest professing independence was imprisoned.”

“The Portuguese let out their Negro slaves into the streets and as soon as they found a Hindu, they smeared the person's mouth with beef, making them untouchable in the eyes of other Hindus. Then they forcefully converted them.”

“The large Muslim population of Goa, was massacred and decimated by the Jesuits.”

“There was a large population of Jews in the Konkan region. Celebrating the Jewish Sabbath was enough to get a person burned at the stake.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquisition

(I know wikipedia- but I've read the same stories in books and other web pages)