The 60 of us watched in dismay as our elderly second grade teacher sat weeping at her desk. After composing herself, she meekly confessed she was thinking about her late teenaged son who had overdosed. She asked us to pray for his soul and for his friends who were still drug addicts. We didn’t know what ‘overdosed’, ‘soul’ or ‘drug addicts’ meant but little as we were, we knew she was heartbroken. Three decades later, I know what a soul is, was conscripted into the world of drug addiction, fully understand the risks of overdose and it was my turn to cry when I read that our gentle teacher would finally meet her son again this year.
I was one of the lucky ones; forcibly yanked out of Goa’s glitzy hedonism and taken hostage by grace, I revile the costly transient satisfaction that millennials my age consider ‘cultural heritage’. I see how alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and lust for cheap thrills keep Goans submissive. We accepted the unshakeable truth that drugs have morphed the world – the North Goa coastline into an unrecognisable refuge for gunslingers, pimps and ruthless dealers, with unabashed patronage from politicians and law enforcement.
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Before Lent this year, YouTube’s sagacious AI algorithm recommended two links. The first was a news report by Al Jazeera on Cambodia’s violence-ridden gambling cities, and the similarities to Goa sickened me. With our ministers’ track record of criminal negligence and the current trajectory of financial and moral bankruptcy, Cambodia’s sepsis will soon be Goa’s in the immediate future, and the credit will go to Panjim.
Here are a few trends to look out for:
Gambling is illegal in mainland China but is being pushed by Chinese investors in Cambodia.
Rent in the gambling district went up 1,000 per cent, rendering many locals homeless.
The lure of higher paycheques draw underage girls to work as croupiers; they are often solicited for sex by cash laden businessmen.
Industry insiders admit gambling is a front for money laundering, with cash entering via roads and ports. The UN and IMF took cognisance and issued warnings. Violent crime rates shoot up, with the world’s most feared crime syndicate, the Chinese triads, entering the market and offering protection to rich businessmen.
Politicos collude with casino heads but shy away from photo ops. Chinese investors dub Cambodia the new Wild West, where pots of money can be made overnight.
The end-piece was encouraging: a local youth activist, who was imprisoned for five months, had a sea front casino shut down for discharging raw sewerage into a protected water body.
The second link YouTube lobbed my way was a TED talk from Estonia and how their visionaries used the might of IT to revolutionise e-governance to the point where corruption is next to impossible. Goa remains in the dark ages while MLAs (and their progeny) issue diktats guaranteeing their fringe benefits in perpetuity.
Society exists to protect the innocent child, the knowledgeable elderly, the headstrong yet priceless youth and post COVID-19, should be rebuilt on the renaissance of good sense and ancient wisdom.
