Hey Mohit, I am really happy you had your second honeymoon at the Cidade de Goa. Yes, it is a pretty nice place isn't it? Neo-Goan-Modernist architecture of Charles Correia, beautifully and even tastefully maintained.
But that beach on which the hotel is built, that was public way, way before, when I was in college. My mother has a house close by, and it has been a high point of my life visiting the beach, and forcing the hotel to open the chain blocking public access to the beach. I've seen Goan beaches right through college, and the Goans themselves never littered them. That came in the late 70s when the hotels (owned by non_goans) came up, and with them Indian tourists on the honeymoons, who wanted the bhel-puri carts and all the other junk that makes a chowpatti a chowpatti. It is just not true that one can casually walk to the beach, although guys like me who insisted in talking to the GM and getting the piublic access opened were offered this bad-tasting carrot. (Samir, perhaps you should send Mohit, some of Advocate Norma Alvares' article on this case she won). Oh, I have also attached the 'Cidade Ordinance' as it is now being termed...that legalizes the illegalities so to speak and, overturn the Supreme Court verdict. The hotel is open to you again, just the way you know it... Sure Baga sucks, I haven't been there for 15 years now, even though my ancestral home, is barely three kilometres away as the crow flies. You must see this in context though. In Goa, we have been witness to corruption between industry and government for the last thirty years, starting with The Fort Aguada Beach Resort and Zuari Agro Chemicals, one which 'privatised' a beach and took over a hill, the other that happily polluted traditional wells in the village of Sancoale. It is not my intention to meticulously note the many trangressions of law, and the appropriations of what one call only call the 'commons' by unscrupulous businesses. Men like you I suspect, will see this as the work of a person who writes crap, or who gives 'fart' because he has time on his hands. The company that owns the Cidade de Goa made its money by destroying forests and aquifers in the Western Ghats in their greed for iron ore. That is an ongoing agitation. Do you know that the Timblos start mining before they even get their so-called 'environment clearances'? One suspects that in far less jest and sarcasm, you would have strongly endorsed the Supreme Court ruling that gave Vedanta the right to destroy Oriisa's forests and displace the tribals living there for centuries. As Damian Grammaticus showed, the Adivasis were saying that the forests and hills were their Gods, the tribals worshipped them. When we break the nexus between industry and government in Goa, and maybe conscientize people enough so that they place voluntary limits on their wants ansd sometimes greed, I have strong reason to believe that Goa will be the place you can have your third honeymoon in. But before that, you will please not take the perhaps involuntary position that Goa is only a place for the well-heeled to chill out. The same company that owns the beautifully landscaped Cidade de Goa, even as this is being written, is happily destroying the foothills of the Western Ghats in the south-east. If you had been following the groundswell of the thinking Goan public, I suspect you would be sensitive enough to put your weight behind us, thereby ensuring a more beautiful Goa for all of us. But then again, for guys like you, Goa, or what you choose to see of it, is beautiful right now. When the Timblos decide the mining has much more value and starts mining the plateau adjacent to the hotel, you'll probably move to the Maldives for your trysts with romance. If that, thanks to the rising levels of the sea goes under, you'll move to Bali. If there's bombings there, you'll move to Surinam or Puerto Rico. Trinidad may not be such a good place, because Essar Steel plan to build a steel mill there! It's not just a question of a bloody luxury resort! Cheers, Hartman
