Spent four days in Margao agonizing over email, eating tasty meat-heavy Goan colonial cuisine.

First morning here after ejecting myself from lovely Gokarna (and losing the wonderful toiletry bag given me by Chip and Maria 14 months ago running for the bus I just missed – after a bit I flagged down a guy on a scooter going the other way who turned around and with me on back sped like hell after the bus, catching it just at the junction – that’s just how nice people are sometimes) I rolled into the most old school Portuguese taverna restaurant and met Sally and Dominick.

Sally, a fifty year old medical professor English public school graduate, inheritor of an old family Margao home, is from one of those fortune-less titled families immortalized in PC Woodehouse’s books. She greeted me when the salty mestiza behind the bar indicated I should sit at Sally’s table and Sally then regaled me with stories of uncles and intrigue, decadence and privileged youth – shopping with lear jets etc. She clearly wanted to impress and loved to talk, seemingly uninterested in my responses.

I did notice as she wove in stories of past encounters with passing travelers (like me) that she can take offence so I stepped lightly in my comments. She graciously invited me to stay with her and Dominick in their home, the renovated third of an enormous colonial mansion near Holy Spirit Church. Their private life was great entertainment as they indulged their way towards a ten day away D-day where Dominick left Goa school and returned with Sally to her job in Saudi Arabia with the Royal National Guard Medical Center. This was Pippi Longstocking meets Bertie Wooster in a Kipling setting.

Each day the food of the Portuguese Taverna “Salcete” and the stories of Sally provided a backdrop for the emotional roller coaster I rode with Koji at the wheel ten thousand kilometers away in Houston, Texas – Koji sent me an email pretending he was Rodney Yee, the famous Yoga popularizer, complete with false rodneyyee@hotmail.com address and all, beautifully crafted message ordering 100 outfits of my Chinese hemp “Serenity” Tai Chi suits for his Piedmont, California Studio. I went into action – “this will require a return to Yunnan province in China!” I cried, tried to create tog-on orders using my whole personal network and petitioning my family “all personal short-term plans on hold” as I struggled to decide what to do. What and opportunity – to outfit a famous yoga guru – my big break. To eliminate the last pains of doubt I wrote Koji and asked him to please say if he is taking the piss – yes, he replied, this has gone too far. Now Hampi is the clear next stop, I go to town to see what bus departure times are.