Why foreign women and wine have a bad reputation in India - Part 1

Ok so I’m putting women and alcohol on the same level. Sin and Sin again some may say. And sadly, India is not the only place where both are highly prejudiced.

But in India at least there is an underlying reason which explains it all. A vessel that links foreign women and booze. Three letters …

Goa.
How did this happen? Follow my words…

As I do not want to bore my very few readers to death, I will divide this article in 2 parts.
Part 1 – Women

Goa has many names: city of sin, city of wine, city of the Portuguese Inquisition.
The smallest state in India yet the most frowned upon.
Goa started out its road towards fame by being a Portuguese port. There, Saint Xavier, one of the founders of the Jesuit order – with his friend Ignacio from Loyola – was an active converter. In fact, the Church was so adamant about converting Hindus to Christianism that the hundreds of temples of the State were destroyed by the Portuguese. The Inquisition played a scary and famous role in making of Goa one of the most renowned places in India.

Yet, by the 1970’s this bloodthirsty past was very well over.

The vicious members of the Portuguese Inquisition – I won’t describe what kind of torture they used on recalcitrant Hindus because this is a food blog after all – gave way to vicious people of another kind.
Hippies.


In the 1970’s, Goa became the hub for nudists, hashish and trance music. People knew how to have fun back then. Sex, drugs and swimming naked in the ocean were basically the 3 main activities of the westerners living on the Goan coasts.

(for the sake of my readership I kept this image in small format ...)


Consequently, as you may imagine, local Indians were a little taken aback (major understatement). Indian men probably didn’t mind having a pot-headed, dreadlocked, all-loving western girlfriend but they sure as hell didn’t approve of them.

Because you see, Indians are pretty conservative when it comes to women.

Women should be covered by clothing from shoulder to toe. They should be married by age 23 – with a male selected by the family of course. And then wear signs of their married status in order not to entice other men.

Oh, and trains have separate wagons for men and women of course.

So when foreign women in Goa started showing their assets a little bit too conspicuously, people started thinking. They started to think that foreign women were easy (to put it nicely). And now, for this reason, I have to wear big bangles when walking alone in Mumbai.

Where does "mumbai" come from, the Kolis, and other random facts and pictures

Mumbai is a bustling city made of many paradoxes. For the classic European traveler it may prompt many surprises...

Actually it is said that the European word Bombay (the previous name for Mumbai) comes from Portuguese sailors who cried "Bom Baia" (Beautiful bay !) upon their arrival. 
Originally, the city of Mumbai was made up of seven small islands- Bombay, Parel, Mazagaon, Mahim, Colaba, Worli and Little Colaba.

The seven islands were a part of the Magadha Empire ruled by Ashoka (the most famous Indian emperor) 3 centuries BC. However, after the fall of the Magadha Empire, deep-sea fishermen called the Kolis became the island’s chief inhabitants. These fisher folk worshiped Goddess Mumbadevi from whom the city derived the name “Mumbai”.

What is interesting about this is that the Kolis are actually still present in Mumbai and have their own little port in the middle of the bay area. 

What is even more interesting is the way the other Indian communities describe the Kolis.

Here is what I found on Indiaprofile.com a site dedicated to tourism in India. Insightful as well as entertaining ...

The Kolis-fisherfolk-of Mumbai are a distinct community. In Their dress, their language, their food and their lifestyle they are easily distinguishable. Especially the economically independent Koli women who are aggressive to the point of being quarrelsome.

Blocking the exit of the ladies compartment in the local train, dressed traditionally in their bright patterned sarees, noisily exchanging greetings, are the fisherwomen who squat on the floor of the train with their huge baskets of the fish. Working women hold their neatly pleated, flowing sarees well above their ankles as they gingerly tip-toe around them to avoid any close encounter with the fishy kind. If you hold your nose close to the offensive smell, the fisherwomen range in annoyance and God help you if you dare to object to the presence of her stinking fish in the commuters compartment. She’ll not merely threaten to douche you with fish water but I have been witness to a wrathful fisherwoman fling a fish rather accurately at a very well dressed young woman reducing her to tears!

Kolis, as the fisherfolk are known in Mumbai, are known to be easily excitable. Even an ordinary conversation between them often leads to a noisy quarrel in which abuses are easily exchanged. An exaggeration it may be but the statement is not inaccurate, that ‘a Koli sentence never begins without a vulgar epithet.’ Rather pleased with her aggressive image is the kolin and in the regional Marathi language kolin has become a synonym for an ‘abusive quarrelsome woman’. 

 OK. 

So you can guess that India is a country were casts, differences and "races" are quite significant.

As a living proof of this let me tell you another interesting fact: 

any Caucasian looking women walking in the street of Mumbai will be the target of Indian men pinches (and I am not talking about slight discreet pinches, what I am referring to is hard-core crab-like intentional pinch). 

A friend of mine who has been living in Mumbai for over a year now, gave me her secret weapon for retaliation: 

Bangles. 

It sounds stupid I know, but she actually wears broad metal bangles on her forearms (I'm sure she would wear spiky ones if you could find some on the market) in order to give those nasty pinchy fellows a good hit on the fingers. As she shrewdly told me: it does prevent them from doing it, but does give me a personal sense of gratification... and an excuse for buying jewelery !