Stand Up, Speak Up: The brave shall inherit Goa
By Ethel Da Costa
Knock….knock, knock ….is the persistent drumming on my door early
morning. Pissed to be dragged off my cup of tea on a Sunday morning --
my I-don’t-care-to-be-disturbed day of rest, especially if it’s a
neighbourhood political wannabe trooping around these days who has
suddenly discovered your existence – I storm to my door and peek out of
the peep hole to give the intruder a thunderous piece of my mind. The
sight is distorted. I rub my eyes, rub the dust off the peek hole… the
vision is still distorted, I peer again ..concentrating…What I see is
unexpected…That’s no smiling neta. I almost think it’s a slip of the
eye…On a Sunday? Really? I see the familiar face….but why am I alarmed?
And the pounding of my heart, did it just catch a breath in my chest? I
pull on the door chain, cautious, and open the door…It couldn’t be. Not
on a Sunday. I’ve had a hard week. Come on. But it is…..and I can’t shut
the door, like you would knock a sales man off your doormat. It is a
moment when the merry chirping of birds greeting the early morning,
drops dead silent, instinct requiring a moment to decide: flee or fight.
I’m usually the fight person, so I open the door wide… A familiar nod of
mutual respect, no words of greeting required. I go back to my tea, now
limp cold in my steaming cup. I pour another for my Sunday visitor….and
wait…in silence. There are no words needed for kindred spirits..
I see twitching of the fingers as the hand reaches out for the cup…I
help. It must have been a long walk, knowing the pathetic state of
transportation in the State. Have you noticed that the desperate
improvement of this vital infrastructure has not featured on any
political manifesto so far? Sure, they want to change the language we
speak and teach?!! .. My mind shoots off, rambling, crunching the
political paperwork I have been reading off my desk these days. My
visitor fidgets, finally looking me straight in the eye to arrest my
attention… ’Why have you been silent?’ She finally asks me. ’I have been
listening to your anguish, and seeing the distorted threads of your
dreams’…’You, who see so clearly…why are you silent?’ ’Comforting
yourself with monotony and writing tears of anguish into empty
pages’….’Why are you silent, child?’ In reflex I almost turn to snap…but
my tongue is alien in my mouth…lifeless. The warm tea doing nothing to
beat life into it.
She torments, ’I heard your anguish tears the day the waters of Calvin
swallowed the lives of our little children.’ ’Yes, my heart cried, but
you were sobbing, so loud, I had to pause the tide flowing coursing its
way across the belly of Goa.’ ’And your anger...your rage…it never fails
to make me smile, because you don’t give up.’ ’I had to come see you.’
’Yes, on your Sunday, to make you understand that it has to come to
pass.’ ’For man’s greed and abandonment of his spiritual greatness will
exert the toll from the innocent…on the soil you love so much.’ ’Those
little children are safe, don’t grieve.. but I cannot promise you that
your Goa is safe. It has to come to pass.’ ’And it is not your fault.’
’But I have come to tell you that the brave will have to stand up, stand
guard, for it is who you are, because you see clearly’…
Since my last column went to print, much has changed of my beloved Goa.
And in retaliation, so have I. Like a child fighting with her mother,
the very evils we wrote of, lashed about, spoken freely in foresight
have stolen the sleep from our eyes. We have laid our little children
into their early graves, we have abused our young women into frightening
adulthood, we have turned our streets into killer neighbourhoods, we
have dug up our forests into death traps, waiting to break open and
swallow us alive…The people we love into an existence of selfishness,
where friendships and loyalty are measured by how many parties you
attend and who you suck up to. Celebrating mediocrity of thought, art
and life as a norm…Jostling for foot space to be noticed in newspapers,
insecure about who gets the best seat at the front row, who drives the
best-est wheels, which latest technology their brats take to school.
Yes, I have been silent…watching, fretting, watching…waiting…let them
all go to hell.
But Goa and her young, those I meet when I meet them, over a lecture at
a college class, a meeting room, my work or chill space, looking for
inspiration, looking to aspire, looking for a spark that will sing with
my soul. Will YOU, young Goa, be the voice of Goa’s anguish? To put your
foot down and say, ’We’ve had enough?’ WTF?’
I raise two young in my own home. I seek everyday to see a reflection of
who we are in their eyes, to know if I can be privy to the adulthood
that awaits them. Have I done enough? Do I need to do more? The parents
of Calvin, I know for certain, had a dream for their own, for the
toughest test of life is parenthood. Because your children are a
reflection of who you are. But have we done justice to our parent, Goa?
She, who nurtures us, feeds us milk and honey everyday, shelters us from
the evils of overt materialism with a deep rooted bonding of family,
heritage, respect, culture… now to be over-run by a bunch of social
psychopaths masquerading as Goa’s leaders, who want to determine the
future of Goa and her people? What bullshit! Yes, we have been silent!!
Too long, too comfortable, too bloody quiet. So, while we happily sold
our homes and our land, felt comfortable counting the notes in the bank
and gazing at fancy cars outside our parking lots (because courtyards
don’t exist anymore), we forgot to teach our children, watching us, what
truly matters in life. Self Respect. Our fundamental right to say `NO’
to the corruption of our souls. So, while the death of our young
children can never replace the empty hole in our hearts with the petty
compensation the government dolls out to you, (2 lakhs?! Seriously?)
like alms to the wounded, while they rape, loot, defile, spit on the
very ground you live, walk and then finally rest in.. DON’T LOOK THE
OTHER WAY. Don’t run home tsk tsk and say, `Thank God it’s them’ and not
you. For karma is a bitch. She bites you when you least expect, having
seen how we, who once beat our breasts and cried about being niz
goenkars, now shine our remodelled teeth into trigger happy photo
journos selling their wares to sundry rags for a living. Selling
whatever that is left of our homes, after the robbers have bolted with
the loot, in exchange for prestige, petty short-lived glory, page 3 paid
inserts and awards. Goa, I’ve had enough!! And I know, so have you.
So, I ask you, the robust Young and the thinking Women of our State,
will you really make the difference at the electoral poll like everyone
expects you to? Will the educated rise to claim a past that belonged to
their forefathers, for a future where caste and class will obliterate
into able leadership? Where our rivers will flow no more carrying the
guilt of our crimes and our forests will breathe, greeting every dawn
with a celebration of life? It is a stirring…even if violent, with a
clarity of purpose. Because it has come to pass.
She sat silently as words flowed out of my fingers….sipping tea from the
cup that never seemed to run dry. ’It will come to pass,’ her eyes
comfort me. ’Because Man is gifted with Free Will by God.’ ’The future
is moulded by the decisions of Now and who we want to be.’ ’That is the
destiny of Goa,’ she hums in my ear. ’The brave will guard the dark.’
’For in them rests the light of purpose and our hope.’ ’The teacher is
ready, the students will now follow…’
If we have taught our children well, they will make the difference at
Goa’s ballot box.
I know for sure, my Sundays will now never be the same again. (ENDS)
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First published in the Times of India, Goa - March 3, 2012
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