On Monday morning Pamela, Deborah and I decided to follow multiple tips from friends and go shopping at Renuka Collection, a wholesale textile business in the countryside outside of Chaudi. We squeezed into a tuk and got there for about 9am. It cost £2. Renuka is set in a rambling one storey dwelling in a lovely old garden setting in the jungly surroundings north of Chaudi.
It is a veritable Aladdin’s cave of stuff. They supply all the shops in the area with textile articles: shirts, dresses of all sorts, shorts, bales of material, quilts, sheets, cushion covers, bags of all types, dresses of many styles, trousers of many styles, sarongs, wraps…. you name it. They even have an in house tailor to whip you something up. It’s run by a family who speak perfect English and couldn’t be more helpful – without being at all pushy – in finding whatever you want from the bewildering array of patterns, colours and sizes. Which is just as well because there is a huge variety….
I bought a lovely bright orange, fine cotton halter neck maxi beach dress for £3.50 and a lovely ink blue fine cotton sarong edged in gold to make a kurta from which was £1.50. In fact I should have bought 2 I later discovered. We all came away with a small fraction of what we could have bought….. will definitely take Daisy when she comes out.
Bob, Stuart, Eddie and Dave played golf again. Bob improved again but still last. He is really enjoying it We had a great sunset dinner at Casa Fiesta. Marion and Johnny joined us. Vipin took great care of us and we had fast service and very generous drinks poured. Much fun.
Yesterday we had a good beach day. The sea was very calm and of course the weather is hot so we spent a lot of time in the water. I wore my new orange dress!!!! Kim left last night to go home to the States. It has been very nice to meet her.
Last night was quiz night at Eve’s, hosted and devised by Joseph with help from Mark. About 34 people came and we had teams of 4 with 5 rounds of 10 questions. Great fun was had by all. Hilarious at times. This was an experiment and very brave of Joseph to take it on and I hope we do it again. Food was nice – I had palak paneer which was delicious. Our team came 3rd and Sheena and Dave’s team won. The prize money was donated to charity - a Battered Women’s Shelter in Margao.
This morning Sheena and I went back to the Renuka collection – I wanted the extra sarong and she wanted to have a look. Of course she bought two sarongs!!!!
After that we tuk’d to a restaurant in Chaudi called Coastal Palate which had been recommended by Clive as a great place for an Indian breakfast. There we met Bob, Dave, Joseph, Janet, Gloria, John and Sue for breakfast. It’s a new place, very clean and shiny. We ate on the roof and had it all to ourselves. I ordered a masala omelette with a big Indian soft bread roll. Wowzer yum Bob had a masala dosa which is a massive super thin crisp pancake rolled around a filling of onion, potato and cauliflower in a spicy seasoning and it comes with 2 dipping sauces. Others had different dosas – onion was popular. All washed down with huge mugs of masala chai, milk chai and black tea. The whole bill for 9 people including tip was £10. Just amazing and so delicious. After that we dispersed. Bob and I had errands to run and then decided to have a quiet afternoon around Eve’s.
This afternoon I took my 2 new sarongs down to the sewing machine chap on the beach road, together with one of Gloria’s kurtas as a pattern. He’s been there for as long as we’ve been coming to Patnem. He sits outside his house on the little terrace, working away on his rather ancient Singer sewing machine every day. He’s busy making wedding clothes at the moment – must be a village wedding coming along – but it will be ready in the week. I will ask him how much and he will give a shy but cunning smile and say “Please pay whatever you think it’s worth”…. this is of course a dilemna because I am going to overestimate based on UK costs. He knows this!!!!! I have asked around and am informed I should pay no more than 400 rupees ie about £3.75. I will give him this but it wouldn’t matter if I gave him 1000, his response is always the same. He will look down at the money in his hand, give a slow, disappointed smile and a hangdog look at me and say thank you. I will feel guilty but then will fight that feeling. Anyway, he says hello to me every morning quite cheerily so I think he enjoys our little game.
Having dealt with that I walked into the back lane opposite the chai shop to visit Amelia, the laundress. She is an amazing woman – has been doing laundry for as long as I’ve been coming to Patnem. Her husband, Shiresh, is a tuk driver, a lovely man. They built their house on the profits from her laundry business. She used to do the laundry for 4 or 5 of the beach resorts but now she just does private laundry. It’s always well done, folded and smooth, any staining removed (she uses Tide, I asked) and it’s a cheap. A mega bag today was 150 inr. A bargain.
Bob and I walked down to the beach to watch the sunset over a g&t and it was well worth it. Not a touch-down sunset but the sun made a spectacular display as it sank into the clouds on the horizon. Later we had a great dinner at Tantra with Stuart, Fi, Pamela,Eddie, David and Deborah. Lots of laughter and chat.
