What appear to be red bricks below (at left in the photo, and on the wall surrounding the yellow building) are in fact quarried blocks of laterite, a porous red stone common in India and other countries. In Goa the laterite blocks are usually grouted and then cemented or plastered over and painted. All three stages are visible below. The famous brilliantly coloured houses of South India (below, and next post) are usually built this way. If owners run out of money during construction, the houses are lived in with just the unfinished grouted stone. Above, four differently coloured treatments for common laterite garden walls.
House painting is also a constant job on the Indian coast—the summer monsoon is so extreme (it removes all the sand from the beach, only for it to return the next year) that a newly painted house can look blackened and decrepit within one year. Someone needs to start up a pressure-washing business in Goa. Perhaps someone already has.