--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2008 International Goan Convention Toronto, Canada
Early Bird Discount Registration closes March 31, 2008 http://www.2008goanconvention.com/regform_print.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LEADER ARTICLE: Sun, Sand & Drugs 22 Mar 2008, 0029 hrs IST,Soutik Biswas There's a kind of hush all over Goa these days. It all began a month ago, to be precise. First, a British teenage girl's body washes up in Anjuna, its most (in)famous beach and hippie hangout. Then, not surprisingly, the local police goof up, saying that she drowned in shallow water. A media outcry and public outrage from the mother later, the police order a second autopsy, and conclude that the girl was raped and left to die. Two men are arrested for allegedly plying the girl with drugs, sexually assaulting her, and leaving her to die. So is Goa paradise lost - once again? Four decades after catapulting to the world's tourism map for its excellent climate, palm-fringed beaches, cheap alcohol, whitewashed churches, brown-tiled, low-slung homes, clean villages and easy availability of drugs, the place was - and remains - India Lite, as someone called it. Or, if you like, a place to escape the real India. The hush is more pronounced in Anjuna these days. Famous for its grubby beach shacks, crescent-shaped beaches hemmed in by lush hills, crowded flea markets, drug-fuelled parties and seedy Ayurveda spas, the place is getting all the attention for all the wrong reasons. Discovered by hippie travellers in the 1960s, Anjuna is where Graham Greene, during an early visit, found it possible "to forget the poverty of Bombay, 400 miles away, the mutilated beggars, the lepers..." It is where, some four decades later, William Dalrymple spotted on the dunes by the shore what "appeared to be a topless six-a-side female football team - an odd sight anywhere in the world, but an astonishing one in India". In the years between, hippies, punks, Rastafarians, devotees of new-age gurus all hung out in Anjuna, swapping drugs, music and sexual partners. Bob Dylan, John Lennon and The Who, according to legend, dropped in during the mid-1970s. The beach even birthed the Goa trance, a home-grown electronic dance music, before house and techno music invaded the scene in the early 1990s, and even spawned a 'world-famous' eponymous deejay. Tourists bent rules bribing a typically feckless police to take over parts of beaches, putting up 'Indians not allowed' signs to keep away the natives from the parties and raves and nude sunbathing. The place was seen by many as a secluded, whites-only haven for hippies, who according to a researcher, could "freely indulge in drugs, nude sunbathing and all-night full-moon parties". In a strange way, Anjuna exemplifies what is right and wrong with foreign tourism in Goa today. Foreigners - hippie, white trash and otherwise - have lifted living standards in the area. Business at the weekend flea market hawking anything from tribal jewellery to Hindu charms to imported thongs and lager remains brisk. As at the shacks selling 'six-pack menus' - Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Organic, Thai - and everything else. Live bands with names like Kundalini Airport and Bindoo Babas draw in the audiences. Friendly locals rent out cheap rooms to foreigners. The bad news is 17 of the 74 foreigners who have died in Goa in the past two years were in Anjuna, and 11 of them are suspected to have died of drug abuse. (Their viscera reports are still awaited because the samples have to be flown to overworked federal forensic laboratories in Hyderabad and Mumbai.) Anjuna's only hospital, a 20-bed private operation, treats an increasing number of drug overdose cases. So does a neighbourhood alcohol and drugs rehab and detox centre. Young men drop out of school, hustling tourists and earning easy money. Goa eminences hate the place - designer Wendell Rodricks told me that it was a "dark spot" on the state. "I don't go there", he told me. "It is a place that is hung over from the 1960s, but sadly with more potent drugs than hashish". In the end, Anjuna appears to have become a victim - as many parts of Goa - of its warped success. 'White trash', as locals scorn backpacking tourists, have lifted living standards of natives, but material progress has come at some cost. The government-licensed shacks are an eyesore and wouldn't be allowed anywhere in the developed world, as would be the easy availability of drugs. But, obviously the girl's murder and the rising notoriety of beaches like Anjuna, is not going to slow down foreign tourism to Goa, thanks to its cheap and cheerful charms. And even if the foreigners went away, Goa would not have much to fear - Indian tourists regularly out-number their foreign counterparts by seven times every year and outspend them too. The place is no less safer from many other places frequented by hippies and freaks anywhere else in the world - Bali and Kathmandu, for example. Women are safe - in the past two years, there have been three cases of rape of foreign tourists, before the murder of the British teenager. No wonder Goa has been consistently getting over two million tourists annually for the past five years. To talk about making the place more pricey and expensive to mop up more tourist dollars, as many have been saying, is plain silly: a mix of growing domestic tourism and budget, backpacker, and high-end foreign tourism possibly suits Goa and its people the best. Clean up the beaches of the detritus, drugs, ugly shacks and cheap thrills, and the place will get its groove back. The ageing remnants of the flower children - "fossiled relic of Haight-Ashbury", as Dalrymple describes them - may complain feebly, but who cares? (The writer is India editor of an international news website.) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/LEADER_ARTICLE_Sun_Sand__Drugs/articleshow/2888578.cms