Part 17. Back to Goa. Another brush with the law
The journey back to Goa was not without incident. Most states in India had prohibition, alcohol was not legal. I didn’t know this. It was one of those political facts (like the war between Greece and Turkey earlier) that I simply had no knowledge of. The bus stopped at each state border, passengers were checked, passports logged and everything moved on. Until we got about nine hours into our journey and they opened my rucksack to discover the whiskey.
The state border police took us off the bus, searched all our luggage and clothing and put us in a small room close to where the bus had stopped. We heard the bus leave. None of the border police spoke English and eventually the equivalent of the town mayor came in to look at us. We sat with him at a table and chairs outside in a small enclosure, we could see the comings and goings of the rural village, it looked very poor with ramshackle huts and gardens, not neatly kept as we had been accustomed too but sparse and untidy, broken medieval farm machinery, neglected plants and scrawny animals, bony children who clearly had little to their names, playing in the dusty roadside. A few adults with disabilities were apparent and otherwise it was pretty deserted. A fairly classic picture of poverty in rural India.
The local dignitary explained that we had broken the law and would have to face the magistrate for a decision on what would happen, the magistrate only visited once a week, fortunately he was due tomorrow so we would spend a night in the police cell and see him at 8 am the next day. He clearly found us somewhere between funny and frightening, another product, I suspect, of the Bollywood portrayal of hippies as godless fools and criminals. We chatted for about an hour, I think he enjoyed the personal experience of us. A tale he could tell his family over dinner that night. In fact word spread quite fast and large numbers of local people came to the enclosure to look at us, point and giggle. The border police would also bring small groups, I think it was a bit of a boast that they had caught a couple of hippie villains. We were fed and given water and spent an anxious night in the cell.
In the morning, after breakfast, the magistrate arrived and we stood in front of him. He asked our names and checked our passports. He had the sort of overblown pomposity of someone given authority without earning it. He asked the policeman to bring the whisky and explained the offence and possible consequences in broken English, a possible jail term, enforced community service, a large fine or a warning and confiscation.
He said we could do one of three things, we could drink the entire bottle between us and then pay a fine for being drunk and disorderly, we could give him the bottle to sell and give the money to the village or we could pour the contents into the gutter and pay a fine to cover the cost of his time. He seemed keen on the idea if us drinking it all and being entertainment. He made a lot of jokes in Hindi with the assembled police and clerks about this option. We let him keep it and were out in time to get the bus onward to Goa. We felt thoroughly humiliated, truth be told, and were glad to leave. I doubt the village ever saw any proceeds.
Getting back to Chapora was a great relief, although things were changing a bit. The further it got from monsoon which had only finished as we had initially arrived, the more visitors were coming. More places were offering accommodation and the range of travellers was changing a bit, more gap year/'round the worlders' and tourists than we’d been used to. A local Goan brother and sister were building a large cafe right on the beach in Vagator , with tables for about 30/40 people, a tree trunk and palm leaf construction, open all day until about 10pm and more people were building makeshift huts on the edge of the beach to sleep in. We realised we wouldn’t be staying as long this time.
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