We all know the feverish anticipation and build-up that comes in the run-up to Christmas. There is so much to be done and every year, it seems, less time in which to do it. Being away from home and all family and friends for the first time at Christmas left me in a curious state of floating limbo. There were no presents or food to buy, no Christmas rush at work. There were no parties to attend, no cards to send, no plans or planning of any kind. I felt lost. All I could do was wait for Christmas to arrive without having done anything to prepare for or even deserve its festivities.
Although Goa is a predominantly Catholic state, due to its former Portuguese influence, Indians haven't, thankfully, embraced the long, dragging, slow-burn run-up we have to endure in the west. Cards and decorations do not appear in September, nor do adverts for all the gifts you could ever want or food you would ever need. Instead Christmas arrives in a short, sharp shock of flurried activity mere hours before the day itself. On Christmas Eve morning I left for the beach and returned in the afternoon to find the owners of my guesthouse, calmly winding tinsel round the plants outside the doors of the rooms and hanging discreet shiny baubles above the doors. That was as much and as little effort as they went to and oddly it was enough.
I mentioned this to John, the English owner of The Laughing Buddha, where I was due to have my Christmas meal. 'Oh that's nothing, ' he said airily. 'We always put ours up on Christmas morning. The Europeans don't like it much, as they celebrate on Christmas Eve, but that's the way it is here.' Although I liked that I wasn't drowned in Christmas by the time it arrived, it did leave me wondering whether the main event would live up to - or down to - its meagre, low-level preparations.
It started with Midnight Mass. There was some gentle and subtle coercion from Mum. She thought it would be nice for me to go to Midnight Mass here in India actually at midnight, as the time difference would mean that I would be attending at the same time as my family back home. It would be a connection of shared devotion across half a globe that I had actually been thinking of myself.
I'd heard, again from John who'd been there himself in the past, that Indian Catholics dress up to elaborate levels for Midnight Mass. 'You'll love it, ' he said. 'The women look like Shirley Bassey on acid with sparkles and sequins everywhere, full make-up and high heels. And the men wear shiny suits that make them look like Sicilian mafia.' With nothing suitable in my backpacker 'wardrobe', I'd been out earlier and bought a full-length, smartish dress and some cheap jewellery to wear for the occasion. It was far from Shirley Bassey, but then so was I, so that would be fine.
John had a word of warning too, though. 'It does go on, you know,' he said, with a grin. 'It lasts 3-and-a-half hours!' My resolve faltered, but I thought, 'At least I can sleep in later on Christmas morning if I want to,' and was even more determined to go.
But I nearly didn't make Mass at all. I'd decided to go out for a couple of drinks with some friends after our normal dinner together and we stumbled by chance into a bar that was playing a fabulous DJ set of Bollywood music at full volume. Fortified with a superbly inept mojito, much too heavy on the rum but just the way I liked it, I took to the dancefloor with my friends and a group of moustachioed Indian buddies probably in their forties. Together, with much laughter, we threw some equally inept 'Indian-style' shapes on the dancefloor until the sweat dripped from us. We had so much fun that I didn't want the party to end, but at the last possible moment I dragged myself away to get changed and go to Mass.
The brisk 10-minute walk in the surprisingly chill night air to the icing white church sobered me up. Outside in the open area in front of the church, large groups of women and men hung around eyeing each other up. It was just as John had said. The young girls were the most amazing. Tall and slim, they shuffled inelegantly on feet unaccustomed to the dazzlingly sequinned kitten-heeled mules that seemed to be all the rage. Their dresses were all a demure knee-length and made of shiny, shiny satin in ice-cream pastels or deep crimson, sapphire, jade or aubergine. They were surprisingly tight-fitted for body-conscious India, hugging the girls' curves and making them look like budding 1950s film stars. Shoulder straps, waists, bustlines and hems all burned with a fire of sequins and beads that sparkled as they moved shyly and awkwardly in their splendour.
And the make-up! It was rare to see an Indian lady, let alone a young girl, wearing make-up outside the big cities but tonight the contents of the beauty counter were on full display. Their glowing youthful honey skin was dulled with heavy foundation and their dark eyes were coloured in with bright frosted shadow and framed with mascara-loaded lashes. Their usually bare lips were stained with thick, heavy red lipstick and when they smiled it was cautiously, nervously, so as not to smudge their beauty.
The older ladies were not to be outdone either. Many wore sarees studded and edged with great sunbursts of sequins, which caught the light of the moon, candles and twinkling fairylights to dazzle and shimmer whenever they moved. The fabrics were heavy silks and satins, rich with pattern and heavy with jewellery. They too wore make-up, though usually a smear of red lipstick was enough.
The men did indeed have the sharp suits John had talked about. Clumps of self-conscious men and young boys milled about, trying not to adjust their neatly knotted ties, their jackets buttoned up with a crisp formality. The fabric gleamed, glossy black as a crow's wing and, had they not been looking at the girls, they would have been able to see their own reflections in their slick-polished shoes. Their hair was unusually tidy too, with that vulnerable fragility of a fresh haircut that reveals a slice of paler skin around the edge, before a week's growth softens the hard lines and the sun darkens the skin back to normal.
I got there at 11.45pm, 15 minutes before the service was due to start, so I would be able to get a seat. When I walked in though, it was just about standing room only. A kind lady practically sat in her neighbour's lap to make room for me on an already crushed pew. As I sat under the softly whirring fans, the soft clink of a thousand bangles sounded the note of nervous excitement.
Then finally the priest came out. After a long speech in Hindi or the local language, I don't know which, he switched to English for a brief welcome to the foreigners there. And we were away. It was not easy to follow. Being right at the back with no view of the altar and no missal to help me guess what might be going on, I was soon lost. Years of non-attendance had obviously taken their toll. So I just listened and tried to concentrate as best I could. I managed to pick out the two Bible readings and the Gospel, though I understood nothing of them, and I was shamefully grateful when it was time for the sermon after the Gospel and we were able to sit down.
This was my undoing. In the sultry air that the briskly moving fans did little to cool, I found the effects of the day's sun, the strong mojito and the late night catching up on me. My head began to nod and waves of sleepiness washed comfortingly over me. I shook my head and sat up straight in an attempt to force my body into wakeful, watchful alertness, but it was not working. Gradually my head would drop and I'd jerk awake as it fell.
Suddenly, I began to understand what the priest was saying! Was it a Christmas miracle that I now understood foreign tongues? No, he'd just switched to English again to deliver a shortened version of the sermon for the benefit of foreigners. But it had the effect of waking my stupified brain and I rallied valiently against the fatigue. Back in Hindi again, as the bidding prayers wore on and the subsequent elements unfolded, sleep climbed stealthily into my body again. My hands gripped the back of the pew and, as I stood, I could feel myself swaying unsteadily back and forth on my feet unless I shifted them constantly. Sitting was even worse. More comfortable, meant more tired and my head lurched from side to side as it fell in sleep. Eventually when it threatened to crack open on the back of the pew in front, I could take no more.
Stumbling outside, I looked at my watch. I'd managed two hours. I felt pretty ashamed, but what could I do? Short of crashing to the floor in a dead sleep and provoking an embarrassing panic, I just couldn't stay any longer. Walking back to my room, wisps of mist hanging low in the 2am air reminded me of home and the cool soon revived me. Should I turn back and try again? I knew I should but I was more than halfway home and anyway I was certain to become drowsy again inside the fuggy church. As I slid into my cool bed, my exhausted body told me I'd done the right thing, but my mind was not convinced...
Christmas Day itself dawned with the same warm sun and cloudless sky as the day before but there was a slight sleepiness in the air. Walking to the beach at 10am for our planned beach breakfast, there were fewer people about than usual for this time of day. We'd planned a casual breakfast of fresh fruit, cakes from one of the many bakeries that catered for the homesick pastry-lover and fizzy 'champagne'. Spreading our sarongs out on the already warm sand we stripped off to bikinis and toasted the day.
It felt like Christmas but it didn't feel like Christmas too. Between us, we'd built-up the excitement for a day that, had we not known it was Christmas Day would have been the same as any other at the beach. A few days after Christmas I even met an English couple who come here every year and one year had completely missed Christmas Day, as they hadn't realised what day it was. Somehow our nostalgia for a Christmas like the ones we used to know had conjured up this bright collage of festivities, using the elements of our traditions that we could find here: drink, food, company and doing nothing much. So it was a christmas of some sort but not the Christmas of each and every one of us.
But we were happy, our band of motley travellers. The 'family' I had come to know well here were all there and all on good form. We ate our fruit and cakes, we drank our champagne (alarmingly quickly and had to go out for more supplies), and we sat too long in the baking sun and had to hide in the shade of a nearby boat, hunched like refugees in a narrow stripe of cool. When the champagne ran out and we couldn't be bothered to find more, we drank beer from the Laughing Buddha's bar and some people smoked weed. The time passed and we did a lot of talking and nothing much else. Just like Christmas back home. There weren't even any presents to give or receive, but it didn't matter. The day passed slowly but all too quickly. Here and there people disappeared to call family at 'home suitable' times and I did too.
Dressed for dinner in the dress I'd bought for Mass, I called Mum and Dad on Skype and the jerky video image of home showed me a sight that made me well up. There was most of my family, and, in an unexpected surprise, a herd of cousins, aunts and uncles, all leaning in to get into the frame. I wanted to ask them all about what was happening at home - it seemed desperately more important than whatever I was doing - but they wanted to know about me. What was the weather like? What had I eaten? What had I done?
I wanted to know what my nieces had got for Christmas, what their faces had looked like, what the tree looked like? In all their smiling faces I saw the excitement I wished I could be part of. I wasn't homesick exactly, but I wanted to know every detail and to be part of the familiar, the warm, the comfortable reassurance that was Christmas at home. Somehow my Christmas, exotic and exciting to them, was not as exciting to me as knowing again the details that would be happening back home - what always happened back home. It was a strange, yet beautiful moment.
But Christmas dinner was about to be served and reluctantly I had to leave them. The Laughing Buddha was a sea of candlelight, catching the breeze-rippled tinsel and making motes of red, blue and green dance across the floor.
Our party of 13, 14, 15, 16 - it seemed to grow by the minute - was all seated round a long table, our chairs sinking into the soft sand. We waited with excitement for the food we'd ordered. Unusual treats, such as my lobster, or traditional options, such as Kealy's roast chicken. Sadly the quirky service prevented the possibility of us all sharing our meal together, as people's plates were brought out one by one, as they were cooked. Barely finished her starter, Michele's main meal was rushed out before Zoe even had her first course. My feta cheese and spinach momos arrived somewhere in between and were dense with tangy, salty filling. The lime, chilli, coriander dip they came with, I could have eaten by the bowlful. But we shared nonetheless, stealing bits from each others plates as the fancy took us, just like a real family.
My lobster, when it arrived, was an awe-inspiring specimen. People gasped and scrabbled for their cameras to capture his glory before I demolished him. His long antennae curled back over his lobster-pink shell and he reared up defiantly from his bed of delicately seasoned rice, daring me to eat him. I did. He was delicious: soft and sweet, with a creamy sauce. His accompanying veg was, I think, supposed to be sweet and sour, but tasted more like it had been tossed in ketchup. Nevertheless I ate it too.
The nostalgic sherry trifle I'd opted for was a demonstration of the saccharine-sweet palate of Indians. Although the custard and the creamy topping were good, the cakey bit, though soggy with a heavy-handed dose of sherry, crunched with undissolved nuggets of sugar. Most people left it, but I could not admit defeat and ate every mouthful of its over-sweetness.
We lounged around after the meal, overfed, over-tired and over-emotional, as we watched a box of patchy fireworks Josh had manged to buy from somewhere. I was happy with my odd Christmas and I wouldn't have changed it and I'd do it all again but preferably if I had my family there to share it too.
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