Travelers spent most of their days on the beaches in Goa, but I wanted to find out what else the small Indian state had on offer. I hired a bicycle, headed inland and found a new world. The bike was a decrepit old bone shaker with no brakes and an unbelievably small saddle. Mr De Sousa hired it to me assuring me that it was in what he described as tip top condition, just the right size for me. It wasn’t, however I persevered and things were fine since there were no steep hills to ride down.

Mr De Sousa also tried to point me in the direction of countless Portuguese Churches, but that’s not exactly what I was looking for so I smiled and nodded for a while then left with his itinerary happily forgotten. What I did find was much more interesting to me, though admittedly not necessarily to others, and maybe not to you, whoever you are reading this.

Out along the road from Mapuça I saw chimneys rising up from a very large clump of bushes. I cycled closer and got off the bike, as much to give my backside the chance to recover as to investigate. What I could see from the road was the ruin of what must have been a large Portuguese residence. The Portuguese only left that small part of India in the 1960s, and it was a mystery to me why no-one had commandeered such a grand house for themselves. What a great pity that such grandeur should go to waste. I didn’t venture into the ruin or even walk too close to it because the surrounding bush had colonised it, with trees growing through the roof and windows, and I was sure it would be infested with snakes. However from a short distance it was clear to see that at one time this had indeed been quite a place. I let my imagination fill in the gaps and pictured similar occupied Portuguese houses that I had visited in Mozambique. I imagined the lawns and flower beds laid out with an approximate rather than an exact geometry. There would have been dinners on the wide veranda with children chasing each other and climbing trees, businessmen with thick cigars bringing the local Priest up to date with what had been happening back in Lisbon, and a grandmother dressed in black standing in the doorway supervising the servants. The Portuguese colonisers never seemed to suffer from the pretensions of a “civilising mission” as did the French and English. There were there for the good life and to make money. They were up front about it.