Nubia Mascarenhas

Oh Goa! Oh Goa!  My childhood friend,

What mind filling moments with you I did spend!

Winding paths to grey hills I would climb as a child

Quaint houses around me, rustic roofs neatly tiled.

Fishing rods we would wield, for catch that was plenty,

Brown rice from lush fields ensured plates weren’t empty.

Oh Goa! Oh Goa!  You’re being strangled now.

How can I save you? How? Show me how!

Your lustrous landscape, once, left the world agape,

Go to Goa they’d say, she’s a ‘Heavenly Escape’.

Now all you can offer is concrete and weed

Thanks to vile despots and insatiable greed.

Your fields they have filled, your forests they’ve felled,

For your waning wildlife they deliberate death knells.

They’ve fractured your hills, your topography’s shorn

In the guise of ‘progress’, to shreds, you’re being torn.

Alas! What a pity, such an ugly monstrosity,

Looms large, on your skyline of old.

Oh whither your mangroves, your beaches, your treasure troves?

They’re gone to sly bidders, they’re sold.

Marine life cannot spawn, even the dolphins are gone

In cahoots, rogues rake in their dough.

For high are the stakes, so the seas must be raked

 And no one dares stop the cash flow.

Toxins in your fruits, in your veggies, in my food

Hand in glove felines feed on fat bribes.

Cash cows in your rivers, formalin in fish slivers

Their poison I am forced to imbibe.

But I can’t turn to beeves, or to spinach leaves,

Cause the leaves are laced with arsenic,

And since the cow is my mother, I face lynching by brothers

For something I mistook for endemic.

Your wells they’ve polluted, your minerals they’ve looted

Scarce are birds, bird watchers once sought

Your sands are being stolen, your streamlets are swollen

With garbage, and faeces, and rot.

My Goa, I’m sorry, for I stand by and watch

The goings-on, going on very freely.

I tried but I failed, flimflam can’t be nailed.

My Goa, I’m a coward, forgive me.

You’ve been ‘gift-wrapped’ this mess, which they term ‘progress’

In lieu of what you were due.

For ‘Status’ you waited, and waited, and waited,

Your dream, now, will never come true!

Soon you’ll be prone, if they don’t leave you alone

To droughts, deluges, landslides,

Dear Saviour, save Goa, they’re out to destroy her

Please, Creator, with Goa, abide.