No visit to Goa is complete without crossing the Zuari and having a meal with Mario Miranda at his family mansion in the village of Lutolim, Salcette. Though the last time I was there I was dismissed with a coconut cookie made at the village bakery, an excellent edible, crisp and fresh, the dessicated coconut mixed in the biscuit�s dough. Perhaps, Chef Piedad, who can cook a Goa curry in his sleep, was ill, or gone to Margao for the weekly marketing.

The Miranda house, though deep in the teak forests of Goa and somewhat away from the beaten tourist track, is well frequented, among others by fellow artists, various diplomats experiencing Goa, and people at cocktail parties whom the ever hospitable Mario meets and invites with a casual, �I say why don�t you come over to Goa.� My house is yours, my doors are ever open.

Actually, they are not. The doors are large and heavy, and built to hold back bandits in the days when bandits roamed the countryside. There is even an escape hatch in the house, in an area that Mario uses as his study. It�s a flap in the ceiling, you climb into it, pull the ladder up behind you, and close the hatch.

Upstairs, in the main house, there are ballrooms with springs in their floors and mirrors on their walls, and downstairs equally large receptions rooms, one of which wife Habiba Miranda has converted into the family dining room. The doors are also kept closed because of the dogs that the family has always had with it, besides rabbits, parrots, a pair of tortoises bought at Crawford Market in Bombay. The dogs keep running out of the house and digging up the crops that the local farmers are trying to grow. Hence, they have to be kept inside, the doors closed on them.

Past Mario�s studio, past the family chapel, past the pantry, is the cook house. This is Piedad�s domain, he cooks his vindaloos and sorpotels here, on wood fires that are kept going through frequent blowing on them. Much of it is wasted on Mario, who is a good eater but not a finicky one. He could as well grab a sandwich and settle down to watching TNT as having a grand Goan meal. That is a pity. And it is a double pity, because wife Habiba is also a great Goan cook, plus a Hyderabad cook. The Goan cooking she acquired, the other she was born with.

Like most Goans, Mario is a man of two cultures in food and wine. In Bombay he eats whatever is put in front of him, provided he can have a coffee at the end of the meal, in Goa, he goes to Longines in Margao and digs into its fish curry and rice. And he drinks feni in Goa, but only in Goa, in Bombay he prefers scotch.

This, I find is true of most people, including myself. In Goa, a little coconut feni, with lemonade, is all the sensuality of Calangute and Kolva beaches combined, but in Bombay I would not touch feni, the very smell drives me away. Some of my most pleasant moments with Mario are sitting in tavernas. either in Lutolim, or in Old Goa with a view of the Se Cathedral, drinking feni and caju by turn.

�Kopit,� he would tell the bar-tender, as another round would arrive in small glasses. Later, we would make our way to the beach for large-grained boiled rice and an oyster curry served in a drinking glass. Turn the glass over and empty it on the rice.