George Menezes

This is one of my very special Goan stories. In the winter of my years I can hardly remember how often and how many audiences I have told it to.

Not having an enemy may be a great burden to any one. A sworn enemy will not call on you in hospital when you are in diabetic coma. A friend will, always with a box of your favourite chocolates.

An enemy will not phone you asking you to judge a Fancy dress Contest. A friend will, right in middle of your Sunday siesta.

What is more, enemies don’t borrow your books or try to date your wife when you are away. Worse still they return your wife but never your precious books.

More than anything else, enemies never ask for jobs for their nephews, serve you wine that tastes like Waterbury’s Compound or badger you to find a match for their cross-eyed sister. These are strictly the prerogatives of friends.

Above all enemies don’t offer you the use of their cars. If you don’t get what I mean, let me come clean with my story.

We were going to Goa for a family celebration. The days at our disposal were very few so we decided not to drive down. We would fly down and rent a car for our use. Since we wanted reliable arrangements to be made at a reasonable cost we wrote to a close friend.

He met us at Dabolim Airport, his hair well oiled, his cream linen trousers pressed for the first time since the Portuguese days, and a muddy straw hat in his hand.

“It is nice of you, Santan, to have come all the way to the Airport” I said while the old girl was trying to extricate herself from his adhesive embrace.

“Not at all, not at all” he said. “Can I forget the favours you have done for me in my moments of great despair?’’
“Very sweet of you” said the old girl having regained her breath after the embrace. “Were you able to hire a car for our use during the week?”

“Hire a car?” he said his ears drooping like a hurt puppy. “Not as long as you are in Goa and I am alive. My Ford Cortina is at your disposal. I can never repay you enough for fixing my son in that foreign firm in Mumbai”

The old girl was visibly impressed. She opened her handbag and handed over an expensive gift for Santan’s wife. A gift that had been bought for a much loved aunt.

Santan directed us to the car, handed over the keys and jumped into a Tourist Hotel bus leaving for the city.

It took us the entire day to get the car across the 25 odd miles to our ancestral home in Divar. Finally it went completely dead on the ferry boat much to the embarrassment of our kids.

Having pushed the thing to a relatives place and taken the only taxi in the village to drop the family to the house, I had to take several auto rickshaws the next day to have the car towed to a garage.

It cost me several hundred rupees to treat the tonsillitis of the tappets and revive the dead engine.

On the fourth day the axle broke and the horn refused to bleat, the wipers had a nervous breakdown and the consumption of fuel was so high that I could drive only within the radius of a few yards of the petrol pump for fear of running dry.

If we wanted to go any further to attend the celebrations we had come for or to visit our aunts, we had to rent a taxi.

By the end of the week however, with the reckless use of my credit card, we had got the car in immaculate shape.

Tearing himself from a farewell embrace Santan said that the car was at our entire disposal anytime we visited Goa. Could I fix his second son in another foreign firm, he asked.

From our Goan friends, O Lord, deliver us.