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Goa -- Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Reflections of a Goan in Exile.
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? If we do not own
the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
. . .The secret corners of the forest [are] heavy with the scent of many men
and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the
thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. The end of living and the
beginning of survival. (Chief Seattle?s reply to the Government of the
United States offer for a ?reservation? for the Indian people.)
In the name of progress
Everybody?s gone too far
In the name of money
Who do we think we are
I can hear the planet call
Show a little respect
Beautiful- to everything that is beautiful
And if you want to save it all
Show a little respect.
(Michael Learns to Rock from the album 'Animals, Wild Rivers and
Waterfalls.')
When I called up Goa last week and asked for some ideas on change in Goa for
this discussion the speaker after some thought said 'What changes'?.
'Change' is neither defined nor perceived in the same way by all of us.
Change is usually spoken off in comparison to what existed before and varies
with the experience of the person. As a result the perception of change is
usually value laden, viz. we say , 'This is a good change' or 'This is a
change for the worse.'
I am perhaps unable to speak for everybody in Goa or in Delhi in this paper
and within this time but the writing is on the wall. Change happens across
a period of time. So I am unable to understand where there is no mention of
the past in the original title. If our reflections this evening are limited
to only the present and the future we are walking in darkness. Because
where you want to go requires you to know where you come from.
As a fugitive. I work in Delhi, but I breathe in Goa, I like to say.
Timing my trips home like a pilgrim for December 25th at Christmas and
mid-year for the feast of St Joao on June 24th and the traditional jumping
in the well.
Perhaps because of, not inspite of my bi- annual trips I see change in Goa
every 6 months. For me my identity as a Goan in Delhi is constantly under
seige -- in terms of culture, language, ethos and ways of living. Goa used
to always be the watershed, the benchmark with which I used to say 'I am
different. I belong elsewhere. I'm just passing through.'
But today that identity is blurring. That distinction is being erased. For
Goa is getting to be no different than Delhi and sometimes worse.
Skyscrapers dot the Panjim praca where once stood the gaddo or possro.
Faceless concrete slabs have replaced the old houses of Goa -- with ugly
telephone lines and electric wires lurching crazily across buildings.
Buildings like Massano de Amorim -- a primary school in Portuguese days --
famed for its rare Neo-gothic and Graeco-Roman styles are to be razed to the
ground to make way for a commercial block. Ancestral land owned by Goans is
being sold away to faceless others/ builders in the name of 'development'.
Those who are in Goa are not interested in the land and those who are
outside Goa and long for it, cannot take care of it. In consumerist Goa
money wins over land. Life is brief so live it up. So what do I come back
to in Goa -- except the sea? I'm a global Goan with a box of memories for
my identity.
Homecoming
-Brian Mendonca
The red flame glows
at the altar in the home
As the ageing skies
intone the litany of rain
The mazor scrawls
its shrill displeasure
as the frog and the cricket
peel the soul of night.
Gone are the trees
from the hillside green
As the sons of the fathers
Seek homes of their own.
Hemmed in by buildings
The moving train calls
I rush to my balcao
To listen
Where once as a child
I could see . . . .
Houses of Goa
Thy death knell is nigh
As the axis shifts from
Squat to high.
Keeper of the flame
my witness be
the guava, the coconut,
the mango tree
Stay thy hand
For I trust in Thee. (July 7, 2000, Mangor Hill, Vasco, 4 a.m.)
Nishte still comes to the door (with rocketing prices though) but the last
one I had, had kerosene in it. Sleep at home comes at a premium since the
quantum of traffic on the road across has increased four fold and now
includes trucks and heavy vehicles through residential areas.
Residents of Vasco are now becoming victims of coal pollution with coal
particles being blown in from the Mormagoa port. Huge pits of garbage, from
out of a sci-fi film, assail you as you step out to enjoy nature.
At Sonsoddo, Raia the location of houses is explained with reference to its
nearness to the pit. The government has acquired 33,500 sq mts of land on
the Saligao-Calangute plateau as dump site for all of north goa. Local
villagers are facing air pollution with burning of plastics and kitchen
waste and cattle are dying of consuming plastic.
Familiar for Delhi isn't it? But friends this is Goa. Wells are drying up
with depleting ground water resources and the water mafia in Bardez is in
place. Much of the water resources, like the fish is siphoned to the huge
starred hotels when tourists would much rather live simple lives away from
the hype. With agricultural land being claimed for the building sharks,
coconuts are hard to come by and the recent diagnosis is that the mangoes
are saffron in colour. Vegetables as it is come from Belgaum.
A composite social structure is breaking down and dying away in Goa. The
older generation like Mario Miranda and my mother are seeing it before their
very eyes. Today on the streets of Goa you may probably have to search for
a Goan -- and if he/she can speak Konkani consider yourself lucky. Vehicle
number plates tell their own story -- JK, KA, DL and TN.
One of my Goan friends saw this as Goa becoming "a melting pot". But on the
beach belt at least this means far more competition to local youth. The
logic being, you don?t have to come to Goa to buy a pashmina shawl.
Corresponding with the influx of people from other states into Goa has been
the rise in crime. Rape, murder, robbery -- recently of an aged couple --
are the order of the day. Numerous long-distance trains passing through Goa
some at wee hours enable thieves to arrive in the morning and decamp with
valuables under cover of night with none the wiser. Which is why Mario has
decided to put up bars on his window in his ancestral house in Loutolim.
Which is why today we are seeing literature of a different kind in Goa.
Pundalik Naik's novel Acchev written in Konkani (1977) and translated as
'Upheaval' (OUP, 2002) tells of the breakdown of the family and the old way
of life due to mining in Ponda.
If read at one go one emerges caked in soot of the mines of Shenori, the
dust on the begrimed leaves on the route of the tipper trucks and the
blood-red waters of the once blue river? -- Acchev review.
Damodar Mauzo in 'Minguelileche Ghorchim' (Minguel's Kin) dwells on how a
father is estranged from his son and daughter and finally even from the
coconut tree with the birds nest as someone comes to cut it down. In a
macabre dance of death, as in a Durer woodcut, contemporary Goan literature
finds its inspiration in the pillage of 'progress' and the human toll
concealed by pretty economic statistics and projections. As Maria Couto
says Goans still have to record their responses to the cataclysmic
developments post 1961 in this youngest state of India. As Goans today, we
have to come to terms with a sense of loss, the literature of loss of what
was once precious.
We choose to ignore our traditions and age-old customs. A Goan friend told
me how she insisted on having the chuddo (bangle) ceremony for her wedding
though no one of the girls of her group did. She was drawn to do this as
she had often witnessed this as a little girl, when the would-be bride
would put a few bangles on her arm much to her delight. Her wedding mass
too incorporated Latin elements of old ('aura pronobis') reminiscent of the
time when mum used to call us home for the angelus when the church bells
chimed 7 in the evening. Later village elders in Saligao said they had not
heard such a mass in 50 years.
Even in national platforms we or the government of Goa give mixed signals.
At the recently concluded national theatre festival organised by the
national school of drama (NSD) New Delhi, the only entry from Goa was a play
in Hindi 'Bhagwaddajukkiam' infused with elements of yakshagana, the
influential dramatic form from Karnataka.
At the World Book Fair and the Delhi Book Fair publishers and booksellers do
not see it worth their while to come to Delhi. As a result Konkani gets
pariah status among other Indian languages. At Pragati Maidan too we do not
have a Goa pavilion like some other states. Whos to blame for this? And why
can't we have a national Konkani channel on TV? Like so many other national
regional channels.
When I visit my friends from Andhra they are watching the Telugu channel,
and my friends from Kerala watch the Malayalam channel. Do we lack
imagination or are we just lazy? Will someone please wake up? When it comes
to music apart from Remo, Lorna and few others, most are content to sing
other people's music (like Boyszone or MLTR) rather than compose their own.
Which led a Goan friend of mine to observe that Goans are not bold. We are
a subdued people, paranoid of the fear of failure.
Our educational system does not prepare our children in Goa to compete with
the rest of India and certainly not Delhi. The books are perceived to be
substandard and the level low. The new education policy requires that in
Government aided schools like Britto's and Guirim, the child study upto the
4th standard in Konkani medium. This means that all the questions have to
be answered in Konkani in the devnagri script. Many Goan mothers feel that
this retards the child's intellectual development. At class 5 the child
finds it a big jump to switch to English as the medium of instruction.
Private unaided schools offer English as medium of instruction but with
strings attached -- that of donation fees. The going rate for such a school
in Panjim is Rs 12,000 per child and Rs 800 as monthly fee. In terms of
higher education too the system leaves you feeling ?inadequate? with limited
exposure and options. Which is perhaps why I left Goa after my MA to do my
research under Poona University, Pune and later at the Central Institute of
English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL) Hyderabad. When I was offered a job
in Bangalore or Delhi I decided to take it. I haven't gone back since.
Preferring to shuttle between living and breathing.
I am told, by a Goan woman, that the Goan woman has made more strides
recently than her better (or worse) half. She is salaried, manages home and
office and has studied more. Many of my lady friends have got into business
but one of them I was in college with has actually fled to the Gulf to
escape the rot of the system in Goa.
Corruption is rampant in Goa and honest ventures don't stand a chance. A
newly married Goan girl in Goa feared for her life afraid of being harassed
since she complained to the electricity department about the lack of lights
and of her children being unable to sleep. Normally a forthright girl, she
now is too scared to voice her protest when the bus does not move as she may
be attacked or knifed. Since, at least in the town of Vasco, there are
numerous non-Goans, no one supports her, leaving her to be victimised by
antisocial elements.
The image of the Goan girl or of Goa in the national imagination is largely
what is projected in/by the media. The 'tits and arses' cover picture which
glossies favour (Outlook, November 2001) does little to behove Goan women.
In a consumerist world everything is up for consumption and packaging is
everything. The India Today (December issue) also had the cover devoted to
Goa but this time a clothed model.
What surprised me was that the lead story entitled 'The Annual Goa Guide'
was by a Goan editor of a Goa based magazine The Messenger -- whose
clientele is largely middleclass. But in the India Today article all he did
was gush over all the packages by the starred hotels (Rs 3500 per night, Taj
Exotica). I ask myself what was Goa about this. Can the average Goan
afford that kind of money?
Here too a misleading sense of the "complete picture" ('The Annual Goa
Guide') of an exotic location is agressively marketed as the 'authoritative'
statement on Goa when in fact the article panders to the senses of only a
miniscule percentage of people in the world, the jet setters around the
country, and perhaps not a single Goan who prefer to live in the village.
Dubious coverage like this has got to stop now and we can raise awareness
wherever we are, whatever our areas of work/interest. Like the campaign by
Goenkaracho Ekvott to stop the use of the name 'Goa' in the chewing
ingredient Goa Guthka.
Antisocial elements were also out on the streets in Goa during the Gujarat
pogrom. Margaret Mascarenhas author of Skin -- a novel with its roots in Goa
-- noted how people were afraid to come out on the streets. The shadow of
communalism is over Goa. In insidious ways one can already see a
proliferation of lumpen ideology which can seethe through Goa and make it
another Gujarat at a flashpoint. And here too the silent multitude will
continue to watch. Earlier a mosque in Soccorro, Porvorim was damaged.
Also a village chapel was burnt because a candle caught fire. And we cannot
forget the bomb blasts in St Andrews Church, Vasco, which rocked Delhi.
It needs to be said that dismayed with the fallout of Goan modernity more
Goans are organising themselves, committing themselves to social action in
Goa. 'Friday Balcao' is a case in point. Run by Goa DESC, a documentation
and research organisation along with Goa CAN (Consumer Action Network)
Friday Balcao takes up burning issues in Goa once a month by inviting a
speaker at the balcao premises. Goanet has enabled Goans world wide to keep
in touch with virtual Goa. This augers well for the future because finally
we are also likely to be virtual Goans with no real identity or locus/ place
except an ephemeral concept of "Goanness" which may well be skewed or
incorrect the moment it is formulated.
At times I feel my bleak views are misplaced . Clinging on to an
Edenic/ideal past in Goa itself qualifies me as outdated and out of sync
with the times. Because that mythic past -- with all its memory and desire
-- is something which I will never return to. We will never be young again,
which is why we cherish what was pure in our lives. And want to leave it
for our children. We do not own our land we have only borrowed it from our
children.
But my cousin in Caranzalem was very positive about changes in Goa. All set
to rock with Deep Purple performing at Campal tomorrow, she said there were
far more options in Goa today. She noted how Bombay Viking a music group
from Mumbai was shooed away by Goans since they played only one number and
charged Rs 600. Deep Purple tickets started at Rs 200. There were many more
eateries offering fusion cuisine. Foodland had a Panjabi festival on with a
meal for Rs 60 and a free beer thrown in. The Goa Food Festival was
currently on at Miramar beach to which she would take both the kids.
A better railway network offered possibilities to travel to any destination,
given the money. Small scale industry was doing well in Goa. Having worked
with Titan watch company for eight years at the Verna industrial estate, my
cousin opted for home when the kids came. To me she is content with life
and her little world and when we met in December for a beach party with feni
and pulao, at the inlet at O Pescador, Dona Paula they were thinking of
buying a flat in Santacruz.
This is you like is my view of 'Goa Today'. An assemblage/set of ideas
which ranges from music, education, food, lifestyle, living spaces, family,
literature, values and tradition.
The picture is complex, and not all of it may be agreeable but to speak is
the first step. Ours is a beautiful, radiant culture with exceptional
achievements in every field. Today we are like the Roman god Janus --
looking forward and backward at the same time.
What are the lessons for us? Unless we intervene we stand to lose what we
have cherished for centuries. We need to draw the line. To begin with lets
network with those in Goa and talk to them email them about what is
happening and how we fell if we do feel at all. The theme of todays seminar
is 'Goa: Today and Tomorrow.' Friends of Goa and members of Goenkaracho
Ekvott I can only say this. Arise today. Tomorrow will be too late.
-Dr Brian Mendonca
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Project Editor, Oxford University Press, New Delhi
(This paper was presented at the seminar on 'Goa Today and Tomorrow -
Sociocultural Changes' organised by Goenkaracho Ekvott, Delhi, on May 4,
2002, New Delhi)
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