I flew to Goa to look for a plot or apartment to buy. I decided that I wanted to move back to the homeland where my great grandparents came from, the ether from where the extended family emanated to various parts of the planet. A refuge from pollution, intellectual conversation and traffic jams. I imagined Konkani classes, writing on an old desk by a big window, walks through old Goan neighbourhoods, meetings with distant and quirky relatives, weddings and beautiful beaches
Goa………. a topic of conversation at family dinners where grand aunts would smile and talk about churches and breads and various relatives who had gone from which village to Canada, and what happened when Goa was liberated and in which church who was married and how the breadman would come by in the morning for a cup of coffee.
Pride in an idea of a place that was solidified whenever I visited Goa. Nice relatives and nicer hotels, big beautiful bungalows, old trees, empty streets, unique smells.
An edited Goa. A tight edit. December vacations, pretty girls on the beach, Banana pancakes with honey, great food, cold king’s beer, hot sleepy afternoons, the smell of feni and swimming pool chlorine, lazy lunches in big houses, little girls in white dresses, sea swims at dusk, cold showers, hot afternoons and sun baked pinkish white tourists who smelt of sun tan lotion.
I reached Goa and headed out from the airport in a taxi, to Morjim beach, to look at a piece of land. I was hungry so the taxi driver and I went to the “turtle bay shack” for a bite. There were no prices on the menu.
Me: How much is the prawns curry and rice?
Waiter: 600 rupees
Me: You must be joking
Waiter: In konkani to the taxi driver
My taxi driver berated the waiter and then enquired with the owner why “Indians” were not welcome at the shack. The owner said to leave if we didn’t like it. At a nearby table several British tourists watched. A Russian girl lazed on a deck chair. I realized that besides the owner and the waiters, we were the only other brown skins about. We left and the owner laughed as we did so. The waiter sneered.
The deck chairs opposite the turtle bay shack
Anger and humiliation. The Goa of my childhood, the romantic Goa I thought I knew existed in just one place….my head. It was absent elsewhere and I was guilty of abstraction, guilty of making my mind up on a place based on holidays only 1 percent of the population could enjoy.
Basically, I, Ryan Lobo, suddenly realized that I, Ryan Lobo, was a tourist. 
The Goa I enjoyed existed for a select few. The rest, including most Goans have to contend with casteism, classism, corruption and overpriced prawn curry for brown people only.
“Jail corrupt politicians” said another.
“Foreigners choice, Indians privilege” read the menu on my table.
To date educated Goans all over the world, including some members of my extended family would prefer that their children get married to Goans of the same caste despite belonging to a religion that does not support caste divisions. Maybe I simplify too much but in essence Goans identify themselves by the villages they come from and their castes. What lies outside, lies away.
I decided to take pictures. I found signs of change. A decay and destruction of the remnants of Portugese culture not equipped to survive the new economies and hungers entering its space. Goan culture or “Catholic Goan culture” or 40 percent culture is being inundated.... evolving.
Kashmiri traders, Bihari labourers and Kannadiga contractors have caught buses and have moved to Goa, setting up shop, construction companies and beach shacks.
Land barons from Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore have invested hugely on beach facing properties, shaving of old trees like weeds to put up badly designed vacation homes for Delhites, Maumbaikars and Bangaloreans. Whole hillsides converted to housing developments … but not for local Goans for the most part as much as for vacationers, people who might visit Goa once or twice a year.
Fishing communities on the coast are being displaced to satisfy a growing middle class's desire for holidays. sun with sunblock and sand with plastic wrappers strewn about.
A temporary economy. Empty houses being taken care of by those that owned the same lands once.
The Goa I remember from my vacations, from tourist booklets and from my imagination fades away. I wonder if it ever really existed.
It does, in the minds of vacationers.
In the relative bad taste and money flowing into Goa lies a renewal of sorts. A death of older orders and the birth of new ones. When enough people from other parts of the sub continent come to Goa and build their houses and start their businesses, those who survive economically will write their own histories and in time they too will be upset when people from across the hills come to visit, especially if jobs and land are at stake. Hungrier people with no need for siestas are pouring in from all over the country. Old homes are being torn down and being replaced with “modern” square and ugly architecture, corrupt governance and police, reactions that include the closure of all music by 10 pm unless of course you pay off the cops, traffic jams and plastic pollution.
The discrimination has never ended in Goa. The caste system has always been present. Goa has never remained separate from India in the sense that Goans have made sure that a significant number of their own, regardless of religion have remained economically and educationally backward. Today its corrupt Goan officials who choose to de-notify protected beach areas with their short sighted "regional plan". It’s Goans who refuse to sell to their own and elect their representatives wisely and who unsustainably develop their tourist areas. Symptoms of a divided society where one looks for ones own immediate gain rather than that of the whole... longterm.
The "Save Goa Campaign" might have come into being a bit late and it remains to be seen if the youth can truly affect change, change in a way of thinking and acceptance of corruption and graft.
Young goans seem to be banding together, enraged at the degradation of their home state and environment. Their reactions are passionate though predictable in the anger towards "outsiders" and lack of action directed towards the creation of awareness and eradication of corruption and rot in their own communities and government. Corrupt politicians still function in office, apparently unaffected.
Jingoism, Goa for the Goans…..it won't work. It might for a while but not for long. When a culture is under threat it's people look outside themselves for the convenient enemy. A deep look within one's own culture seems lacking. Why corrupt politicians haven't been hauled up and why they got elected in the first place.
There a little over a million people in Goa. That’s about one thousandth of India’s population. Too few people in too rich and beautiful an area to keep everyone at bay for long, especially when the outsiders are either hungry for opportunity or have cash to spend in areas where cash is welcome, as its never been experienced before. India is "on the move" like the newspapers say and Goa is becoming another destination. If it weren't for the Portugese, Goa would be just another little province. In time it will become just another little province if Goans do not start looking after themselves, regardless of what caste one belongs to. They will need to clean up their government and have accountable candidates stand for elections instead of complaining about "outsiders," a symptom and not a cause. An underclass will vote its candidates in as they expect nothing from a society thats never looked after them in the first place. Spin, jingoism and free alcohol are sureties during elections whereas education and infrastructure require more blood and sweat than anyone seems willing to give or more importantly, expect.
Out of state labourers wait by the roadside to be hired
In time Goa and its culture, the remnants of 500 years of being under the Portuguese will possibly disappear. It will immigrate to Canada, other parts of India, Australia and the U.S where two generations down the line it will melt away. Goans will become the same "outsiders" in other places, as many have been for the last few generations, that they complain about now.
The poorer lower "caste" fishermen and traders sell their lands to men from Delhi and Bombay rather than develop the lands themselves. Quick money, for now. The cycle repeats itself and they will possibly remain poor.
I decided that I did not want to move to Morjim beach. Land was available but it was within the “protected” CRZ 500 meter construction exclusion zone of the beach, a "protected" nesting ground for Olive Ridley turtles.
“We can get you the permissions,” said the realtor’s friend…. “There are ways.”
Short cuts, bribes, violations of building and land use regulations.
I declined.
A hotel at Morjim beach within the 500 meter CRZ boundary
Morjim Beach or "little Russia" as its locally known
Last I heard, a group of businessmen from Delhi bought a lot of land there. A Russian mobster has invested there heavily as well as a well-known paedophile.
In time the cuisine will change, land prices will go up, apartment buildings will replace bungalows, fishermen will be displaced, the turtles will die, the beaches will become polluted and the illegal structures too close to the beach will be torn down by the same governent that was bribed to permit their building in the first place, when enough frustration and passion has built up.
I still want a place in Goa, minus the corruption. (Any guidance would be appreciated).
The turtles probably feel the same way.
One day the “foreign” tourists will leave for greener pastures.
People from other parts of India, hungry for opportunity will not stop coming though,
and they will stay.
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