Changing Goa By Frederick Noronha fredericknoro...@gmail.com
"Climb on my bike," I told my Bomoicar (Bombay Goan) friend. He promptly agreed, and we took off on a ride to somewhere. We spent a part of the evening visiting a hidden Goa, one which we know so little of, and one which is changing so dramatically even beneath our busy eyes. Our Bomoicar has been making regular trips to Goa for quite a few years now. He has been caught up in a tenancy dispute. Someone whom his family was generous to, and had permitted to stay in their only family house, stayed on and has claimed tenancy rights. A few hundred square metres of land lost. With it, their ancestral link to a region they consider home. And, the bitterness of having to face an unfair system. Frustrations on realising that this might be affecting so many other individuals, each of whom is unaware of the other's problems. Repeated visits to Goa, frequent adjournments, and being treated as an alien in your own land. This has been his story. Nobody is in a hurry to sort out this decades-old problem. Meanwhile, he stays in paying guests accomodation, or modest hotels, on each visit. The family which was offered shelter out of pity, clings on and claims 'mundkarial' rights in a home they were merely allowed to temporarily live in. Local religious leaders refused to offer a world on what should also be issue of ethics. Families not staying here do not have a single vote; so politicians would favour those who have the numbers on their side. Here. For the last many decades now, Goa has been dazzled with an amazing set of statistics. We have been repeatedly told how rapidly the state is changing -- for the better, of course -- and how the figures support this claim. But figures can misrepresent, if not actually lie. Figures also ignore human tragedies and the bitter tales of many groups of individuals. When my family returned to Goa in the 1960s, there were many people moving both out of, and into, Goa. The trend of migration into Goa was a fairly new one, due to the jobs that were then just opening up in some sectors. But out-migration had already been established for a few generations. Even as a child, one could notice that the village of the Goa of the 1960s comprised mostly of grandparents and grandchildren. There was a missing generation in between. In the central coastal areas of Goa, there were, even then, more people moving out, than moving in. Houses were easy to rent out. Our family took on a largish, maybe 300-400 square metre house, at a rent of a mere Rs 15 per month. In those times, people trustingly allowed you to live in their homes, not knowing what was to come up soon. They would not bother with 11-month-leases and the like, and everything ran on trust. By the late 1960s, people wisened up to the situation. If based outside Goa, in those days where media was not as active, they took time. Our landlady pleaded that the family needed back their home in a hurry, so could we find some alternative place urgently? As chance would have it, we were already preparing to move out, and sought a few months more. It probably didn't strike my parents that they could grab someone else's house due to a loophole in the law; or if it did strike them, thankfully they did not have the treachery enough in them to carry this out. * * * Statistics tell us that Goa's per capita income is tremendiously high. That we have more jobs on offer than any time in the past, since when statistics were maintained. We rode right on to encounter this reality. The main road that once lead into the village has meanwhile become a side road. The bigger road ran past some major industries, and on to a bridge taking you to Mumbai, some 600 kms away. Decades ago, when we sat in the old carreira (or caminhao, the old style bus of the Goa of the 1960s) headed down this path, it was one hell of a drive full of anticipation. Now too, like then, the curved road down the slope showed up. Then the overbridge, a strange structure. To the right, was the old bus-stop, and the chapel, almost invisible a little distance ahead. Going under the overbridge took you past the school. It was a tiny shalla then, where the caminhao parked. Now, a large school structure was up in its place. The village looked the same, except with a lot more houses vying for the same space. The affluence and vitality which came back with the Africanders (Goan expatriates returning from Africa) was clearly lacking. The village looked dusty and aging. The houses came in different types. For some reason, there were few or none of the flashy Gulf-funded houses that one sees in some parts of Goa. Instead, there were a larger than expected houses in a poor state of maintenance. The kind of home that has seen better days, built in times of affluence, and has now probably passed on to someone else who doesn't have the resources to maintain its earlier state. Some homes were in dilapadated state, open only from their backdoors. Where had the families who once occupied them gone? There were also homes built on local incomes, which were mostly smaller than the others. A few grand homes one could encounter too; but the aging wrinkles in their upkeep suggested that the young and active were staying in some other part or had shifted overseas. The recently-screened Konkani film 'Enemy?' tackles the issue, but somewhat tangentially. A Goan family, part of which has settled in Pakistan, is threatened by the loss of their property. The 'Custodian of Enemy Property' takes over their only home, even though the son of the family has served and sacrificed in the Indian military. Real life may be even more harsh. We fortunately don't hear of too much such problems as far as the Karachi Goans go. For good reason: they were clearly economic migrants who migrated there many years or even decades before the birth of Pakistan. Their shift was not a political decision. Likewise, the Evacuee Property issue might have affected some Portuguese families, and one also hears references to a few Goan families returning back to Goa in the 1960s to reclaim their land. But what happens to those Goan migrants, often settled within India itself, who lost their only homes under tenancy and mundcar laws which were meant to promote justice and agricultural productivity, but achieved little of either? * * * This place was home to many of my pleasant boyhood memories. We visited here for our holidays. The elderly matriarch of the household was the closest we had to a grandmother. Her husband was a peaceful old gent, who liked his drink after meals. They had all kinds of animals in the stalls alongside their home. It was here that we realised that mackerals could be cooked tasty over a rough outdoor fire, bundled in a banana leaf. Or where we encountered cattle, goats, hens and even guinea-fowls. This was where we walked to a quaint church, located maybe two kilometres away, where villagers took their own stools to sit on, probably because the pews were few. It was here that we spent time on the wetlands, played around in canoes, or even fell into the shallow waters. Life changes, and time moves on. Development has come to the villages. Affluence has grown, and so has dissatisfaction. The figures look good on paper. But who will tell the other side of the story? It was past dusk by now. A lady walking alone on the road, overgrown on both sides, felt safe enough to respond to our query for directions though it was past dusk. She pointed out the way to town. "Where does this road go?" we continued to ask. She answered, and counter-questioned: "But where do you want to go?" "To nowhere," we replied. As is sometimes said, any road can get you there. ### The writer can be contacted via SMS on +91-9822122436 or @fn