By Michelle Mendonça Bambawale

I wondered what September would bring; good news, I hoped and prayed. Would I be able to lift off the unshakeable gloom that sat on my chest like an immovable weight? The dark clouds that floated in my mind every night — the climate emergency, the never-ending war on Gaza and now Iran, the onslaught of AI and big tech controlling our lives, too many friends and family dying too young, and too many others being diagnosed with the dreaded cancer, but the heaviest of all: the decimation of the Goa that I know and love.

I took a closer look at my house and garden, and decided it was time to sort them out. September mobilises me to spring clean. Cleaning helps me overcome this overwhelming feeling of doom and plays into this butterfly effect theory: if I put my house and garden in order, the butterfly effect will make sure that the whole world is somehow put back in order.

Siolim’s Plant Festival

I looked at my garden. It always makes me smile and shows me there is hope in the world. This September morning, it was beautiful, cheerful, and glowing in a billion shades of brilliant green. I had recently stepped out of character and added some colour, rearranging colourful coleus and crotons, and adding some flowering plants and trees. How can I take pride in my tropical Goan garden without the salmon shade of mussaenda blooming?

I was optimistic that all the flowers, birds and butterflies in my garden would bring hope to our troubled world. An important August milestone for me is Siolim’s St. Xavier's School's annual plant festival. I had promised myself I was not going to buy any more plants; the ones I buy never take, and I already had far too many. But, of course, despite attempting steely restraint, I came home with a boot full of blooms. I bought red, white, and salmon mussaenda, an assortment of flowery creepers and climbers, one called red-vein Indian mallow, and even an orchid. I was missing Bangkok; the last time we had orchids in our home and garden was when we lived there. Cautiously, I bought just one stunning, baby-pink orchid plant.

I was very proud of myself for showing self-control and staying away from the fruit trees. Lead us not into temptation, I muttered to myself as I walked in and out of the many nurseries selling avocado, mangosteen, mango, lime, chikoo, and pomelo saplings. I decided I would not feed my fruit to the greedy monkeys anymore. Maybe it was time to feed just the birds, bees, and butterflies.

I came home to a high-octane, all-day, cacophonous orchestra. The birds banded together at full throttle—not always in harmony—their chirping, chattering, and crittering reaching a crescendo. The poor woodpeckers get confused and peck against our glass windows in the afternoons; it is both annoying and endearing. A pair of peacocks drop by. They make an ear-shattering, shrieking racket until they fly back over the fence to my neighbour’s garden. At night, the toads, frogs, and bats all join in the chorus. I know the monitor lizards on my roof are multiplying, too. I can hear many more of them crawling every night, and I see the babies learning to walk and climb on my coconut trees and garden wall. Hopefully, the rat-snakes are eating the rats and both aren't multiplying.

The lotus pond has evolved into a bird bath. The waterhens have made it their home—playing, preening, drinking, bathing and laying eggs. I smiled at the thought of many little waterfowl waddling around, until they started pooing all over our balcão. Not so sweet anymore! But before I could shoo them away, the law of the jungle took over and a snake got to the eggs.

The bulbuls were luckier. They found a safe bush and crafted a cozy nest. The mother bulbul guards her three babies like a hawk, never leaving.

Cat Sanctuary

As much as I love all sentient beings and pride myself on being an animal lover, I can’t stand cats. I have now accepted that I have some sort of cat phobia that probably comes from unprocessed childhood cat-kitten trauma. Over the years, I have been working hard to overcome it.

Every time I visit people with cats or in a couple of desperate situations, when I have stayed overnight with cat parents, I have recurring nightmares and wake up screaming. In my dreams, cats and kittens crawl out of every cupboard in my home. They are under every bedcover, and in every bag, book, and corner. They even come out of the oven and microwave in the kitchen, in the toilet bowl and hanging on to the shower. When I try to evict them, they multiply. As I open every door, I am confronted with another army charging toward me. So, for my own sanity, I have decided to stay away from cats. If the world is put on a continuum of dog people and cat people. I will be firmly on the dog people side. I know my family and most of my friends will be right in the middle, loving both dogs and cats.

By all reports, this September our home had been transformed into a wild maternity ward. We have unwittingly fostered a magnanimous nesting space. A teeny-tiny cat littered in our garage. Tragic that the feline world still deals with these teen pregnancies. I am avoiding this stray cat and her three kittens. My daughter who lives on the other side of two oceans and three continents gets daily updates on the health and well-being of these four felines. The rest of my family and household are all cooing, cawing, and “aww-ing" over them. They are probably feeding them secretly, but the story they are feeding me is: “You are such a kind and generous host that this mother felt so safe that she chose your garage to give birth here.” Others opined, “maybe it is time to keep a cat. It will make sure you never have rats.” When I refused to give in, they tried to convince me with, “don’t worry, as soon as the kittens are ready, the mother will take them and leave." It has been a whole eight days, and as far as the daily domestic reports filed with me go, they are all still here. I am not making eye contact with the cat creatures, but I sometimes catch a flash of grey stripes, or a fleeting glimpse of two tiny ears poking out and two melting eyes peering at me as I am getting into my car to drive out.

Peeing Uncles

One evening as I pulled out of my gate, I came up close and personal with a not-so-nice Goan uncle. He had parked his scooter at the gate and was peeing on our garden wall. Enraged, I stopped my car, rolled down my window, and in my two sentences of broken Konkani, asked him, “Kidhe korta?" He came right up to me, held up his little finger, in case I didn't understand what he was saying— “Hanv hanga mutta." He was peeing there. I asked, “Why here on my wall?" To which he replied, “Where should I pee?" I said, “Tujhe gharan!" " He replied, “My house is very far away in Assnora, so I will pee here." He was belligerent. There was no sign of fear, shame, or remorse despite the confrontation and being called out. I didn’t want to be late for choir rehearsal, and I realised taking videos to name and shame him would be pointless, so I drove off fuming about men and the state of the world. First a cat shelter, now a public toilet. No civic sense left anywhere.

Termite nests

Just when I thought this September could not get any more taxing—as part of the ongoing house cleanup, a giant termite nest was uncovered in our bedroom. It was as long as my arm, creating a hole the size of Brazil. Thankfully, we caught it before it ate through the entire beam. I empathised with good old Vitalstatistix who was so terrified that the roof would fall on his head. What with the termites, monitor lizards, monkeys and peacocks all clamouring on our roof that could well be a possibility here.

Non-Stop Amazon Deliveries

Just as I was contemplating my fate and that of the roof, I heard a familiar scooter honking at the gate. It is usually an Amazon delivery for a male member of my family who is keeping Bezos in his billions. I ignored the honking hoping someone else would go pick up the order. There was no one at home and the honking was getting more desperate so I rushed to the gate. The delivery guy asked for the OTP. I looked at the name on the envelope to decide who I needed to call for it. The parcel was in none of our names not even anyone we knew, though the address had our house name. It turned out that the neighbour’s new tenant was giving our address to receive their parcels. I have been warned about how these things work in Goa : “Next thing they will try to transfer your house to their name claiming it as theirs. They already have it as their Amazon delivery address.” I had now worked myself up into a panic, sweating bullets at this possibility.

Contaminated Well

I took a few deep breaths, drank some water and put my faith in the butterfly effect—ignore the downward September spiral and keep ticking off tasks on the to-do list.

I needed to register my well with the WRD. With Goa’s dwindling and contaminated water table, getting your well registered is important for water safety and security. Dealing with government offices in Goa is not for the faint-hearted and definitely not the place for instant gratification. It is a very long, slow, complicated, paper-driven, file-pushing process. Standard operating procedure in Goa for anything - 1 & 14 form, survey plans, electricity bill, and sworn notarised affidavits, in this case also a well water testing report to confirm your well water is potable. All the people who work at the WRD are very kind, sweet, and helpful. It is just that the paperwork pushes me to find patience in places I never thought I had. I have so far had to visit three offices to get this one report, drop water in one place, pay in another, submit documents in a third. But, it was September, and I was on a mission to sort out my life and the world in one week.

I just got the results of the water test. There are traces of both E. coli and coliform in our well water, so I can't get my well registered. There are septic tanks too close to our well. My fear that not just our beaches, but our wells and water table are also contaminated have been confirmed.

What a wild ride! We are barely halfway through September and life has been a chaotic comedy of errors. I took another deep breath, did some Om chanting, went back out into my garden and caught sight of that brilliant blue on those big butterflies. They give me reason to stay hopeful. If the world can be saved one garden at a time, I’ll keep flapping my wings.

Michelle Mendonça Bambawale is the author of Becoming Goan: A Contemporary Coming Home Story (Penguin; 2023). Her recent work appears in the anthology The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art 2025 (Cinnamon Teal, 2025) and in the anthology Appetite (Penguin, 2026). She is a frequent contributor to the Joao Roque Literary Journal.

Banner picture copyright Michelle Mendonça Bambawale.