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My Village, My people Picture a small paradise. Calm, serene with an empty beach lined by casuarinas trees, two parallel rivers, a patch of lush green fields and two communities living in perfect harmony. That is Galgibaga in Canacona, South Goa, a secret enclave sandwiched between the Arabian Sea and a tiny hillock. Passed over completely by the sands of time, Galgibaga beach is ideally a poet’s delight and a Philosopher’s retreat for its mystical and meditative ambience. It offers a breath of fresh air to city-weary souls in the warm embrace of nature. “It’s a paradise,” says Orest Kap, a German painter “It’s something to be felt and experienced. It is an individual experience, to verbalize it is to limit it.” If you come to our village you won’t have the heart to leave it if only you see the wonderful estuary and hear the endless vast ocean making amazing music of love for the villagers and at times beating drums of war in all its ferocity for anybody who dares to violate it. If you come to our village you won’t have the heart to leave it if only you see the lovely cottages of fine architecture resting amidst slender coconut trees and palms that sway gently to an unknown rhythm. If you come to our village you won’t have the heart to leave it if only you lie a while on the soft bed of pines of the Casuarinas (trees) that dot the Galgibaga coast. If you come to our village you won’t have the heart to leave it if only you venture into the river on a fine moonlit evening with a bottle of feni or urak on a tiny canoe for that mysterious over-the-moon feeling. If you come to our village you will not have the heart to leave without a glimpse of an Olive Ridley turtle crawling majestically on the singing sands of Galgibaga. If you come to our village you will not have the heart to leave it if only you meet its people. Their warmth, hospitality and charm will wrap you in a spell that is hard to break. And their courage is legendary. When a Chinese ship wrecked on the shores of Galgibaga with a thunderous bang in the wee hours of a day in June 1960 the daring villagers unmindful of the monsoon fury of the waves ventured into the sea and managed to rescue some of the crew. The wreck, seen better during low tide, bears testimony to that heroic moment. If you come to our village you will not have the heart to leave only if you come. But don’t forget Galgibaga is like a lovely rose hence there are bound to be some thorns around. And the rose would not be half as beautiful as it is without the thorns. Can the day have any meaning without the night? Don’t be shocked when you hear Ladrus and Pedrus exchanging choice obscenities at dawn. For at sunset you’ll be as surprised to see them coolly sipping feni together in a pub. Just like the best pals in the world. Obscenities are as much a part of Galgibaga as are the gentle roaring beats of the ocean and the singing sands. And there are a few Jakis and Jakins who have the perennial habit of talking about others. Who is with whom and whose wife has plans to elope with whose husband and so on. And there is Tom who feels that he is the President of the States because his neighbour thinks that he is the Prime Minister of India. All the same it adds to the spice. And yet not all is well with this paradise. If you come to our village you would not have the heart to leave it without a tinge of sorrow pulling at your heart when you look at the small hillock just behind St Anthony’s High School. A hillock that had remained a witness to all generations. It had stood there for hundreds and hundreds of summers and nobody could doubt that it would always be there from now to eternity. But today there is very little left of the hillock. The serpentine Konkan Railway has almost eaten it up. The hillock lies bleeding and torn into shreds. With an amputed look it feels naked, stripped of its grandeur and beauty. Galgibaga now has the brow of many an eco-conservationist and others clouding with worry over a move to set up beach shacks in this virgin territory. This, despite the fact that the beach is a protected area for turtle nesting and sees the hatching of over 3000 eggs every year. A villager expressing his apprehension says, beach shacks can only make our beloved Galgibaga another haven of sun, sand, wine, women and sex for the hippies who have nothing to offer us except drugs, nudism, a philosophy of free-love, sex and AIDS. Beach shacks or no shacks the rape of this unspoilt child of Mother Nature is imminent. If you treasure any fantasies of visiting this shadow land of dreams, pack you bags and get going today. Tomorrow this wonderful place may well go into the oblivion of history as another paradise lost. Tony Martin (Naked Goa) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail