"Hate Christmas," Miranda cuts me off. "Hate being forced to be happy."

When I ask to see him, he demurs. Five minutes, I beg. I am a friend of the Coutoses.

Later that afternoon, Mario Joao Carlos do Rosario de Britto Miranda—gray-haired and with keen eyes—receives me in his study. "Call me Mario," he says. The high ceilings, orange walls, black-and-white drawings, ancient typewriter, and gramophone all make it feel like a European salon or a well-preserved Park Avenue penthouse. I am tongue-tied. I congratulate him on his numerous awards, on the lifetime-achievement honor he received from Louis Vuitton a couple of years ago. I was at the post-award party, but Miranda never showed. "Hate parties," he says, waving off my praise. He asks about my life in Bangalore and, before that, New York, where his elder son is a coiffeur. I ask about Goa's future.

"Goa is finished, as far as I am concerned," he replies. He tells me about his neighbors, a Brit and a Kiwi. Lovely people, he says, leading the good life with Vespas and an in-ground swimming pool. However, Goans are now a minority in Goa, he claims.

Like the Coutoses, Miranda honors his Hindu roots. His ancestors promised to deliver a sack of rice and a hundred coconuts to the local temple of the goddess Durga at the start of each harvest, he tells me—a commitment they've kept to this day, even though their lands have been disposed of and "Portuguese is my mother tongue."

This layering—of a Hindu past with a Mediterranean soul, of Latin beats with sitar strings, of Indian spices with European stews—is part of what makes Goa so irresistible.

That evening, I stroll down Arossim Beach from my hotel in South Goa to a makeshift shack and order a beer. All around me are singles and couples—a rainbow of colors and predilections—reading books, nibbling on shrimp, listening to local musician Remo Fernandes's hit "Muchacha Latina" on boom boxes. Anywhere else in India, I—an unaccompanied woman—would be the object of curiosity and questions. Here, nobody looks at me twice. Solitude, a multi-hued sunset, a salty breeze loosening tendrils of my upswept hair, all topped with a brawny beer—to be sure, this is the good life. No wonder the foreigners came.

The Portuguese were the first to occupy India and the last to leave, arriving with Vasco da Gama in 1498 and departing a mere forty-five years ago at the behest of the Indian army. Since its "liberation," Goa has accumulated many plaudits. India's smallest state is also its richest, with a high rate of literacy and few beggars. Barely industrialized, it is less a cohesive entity than it is a collection of villages, or communidads, with musical names like Calangute and Candolim, Mapusa and Morjim, all delivered in lilting Konkani.

I decide to start in South Goa and work my way up the coast. Goa has resorts and homestays to suit every budget, but most are booked a year in advance. The more popular ones sometimes require a minimum stay of a week during high season, which begins in October and ends in March. In my view, the best time to visit is late December and early January. Just as Kerala is decked out for the Onam festival in September and Delhi is best seen during Diwali (India's biggest Hindu holiday) in October, Goa is at its most magical during Christmas and New Year. Christians comprise only thirty percent of the population, but they are an expressive and highly influential presence.