Violin at the Night Market

Goa's beaches are almost as famous as it's night market - the Anjuna Saturday Night Market, that is. The kids took a nap on Saturday afternoon and everyone loaded into cars and cabs and drove off to the market at nightfall.

And everyone else in north Goa was already there or on their way there. Hippies and hipsters and beach bums and locals in their Saturday night best. Bands played. Cocktail glasses clinked. Food was cooked and bought and consumed in large quantities and varieties - German bakeries, Punjabi tandoors, a wall of rotisserie cookers slowly cooking hundreds of chickens, middle eastern shawarma and tzatziki, Belgian waffles and chocolate, pad thai with a fried egg on top.

In the middle of all this was Sabs and Sim's Azaad Bazaar stall and Bad Ass Hair salon and Sab's hand-made very cool steam punk jewelry. Vivian and I took up residence there. Sabs trained Vivian in the art of selling and pretty soon she was doing quite a job of bringing in new customers ("Hello there - come and see what we have here") and selling ("this is very nice and it's on sale tonight"). 

Then Simran did something very brave. Something she had said she was going to do. She unpacked her violin that she had hand-carried all the way on her lap from Austin, Texas. And she set up an upturned hat on a chair beside her and she started to play. Vivian immediately did what she told us she would do - she started dancing in front on Simran. 

In moments there was a crowd of people listening and watching and tipping. At one time I counted four cameras trained on Simran and Vivian.

The old folks and me (or is that redundant?) and the kids headed back to the hotel at about 11pm. A sleeping Evan was transferred from Jo's carrier to Jeane's lap in the cab without as much as a twitch of an eyelid. Simran and the others stayed on till closing time - 1pm. She made over $70 in tips - that's a lot of rupees. And she had a great time.