The series of terror threats started in
December last year, as terrorists had allegedly threatened to target crowded
places – allegedly one or both the EDM festivals that attracted a mammoth crowd
from all across the world. While fortunately, nothing of that sort happened,
the series of threats kept coming. Two weeks ago, security in Goa was
strengthened after the Goa Police officials began investigating a postcard
which threatened Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar
Parrikar for their ‘anti-beef’ policies. However, all hell broke loose when
recently, the Jharkhand Police arrested two al-Qaeda suspects — Akram Sheikh
alias Masood and Mohammad Nasim who reiterated their plans of carrying out
terrorist attacks, preferably in the Northern part of the state where a large
number of parties and events attract a sizeable number of people.
Taking into account all of this, it becomes
important to see if these threats have affected the regular party-goer in any
way. Have the tourists now started to look at options other than Goa for their
dose of partying? Have the locals altered their weekend plans? Alisha
Gonsalves, a young student from Calangute who usually accompanies her friends
to the nearest nightclub for her share of weekend partying, says, “It certainly
has affected me. Although I know that unfortunate incidents like terror attacks
can happen anytime and anywhere, our parents who are naturally protective of
us, at times prohibit us from going out.”
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Cohiba, one of the nightclubs situated in
Sinquerim, pulls in a lot of crowd, thanks to their successful Wednesday and
Saturday night gigs. When Gautam Bakhale – one of the proprietors of Cohiba,
was asked if these threats have influenced the number of people visiting his
property in the past few days, he says, “Not at all! We as Indians have always
taken these threats positively and overcome them. It hasn’t and I don’t think
it will affect us in any way. We have full faith in the security systems of our
government and will never cower down by anti-social elements.”
While what Bakhale says should be the ideal
approach when dealing with terror threats, restricting oneself owing to such
threats would amount to lending a helping hand to the terrorists by being
terrorised. Perhaps we can take inspiration from the neighbouring mega city,
Mumbai, which stops for nothing and no one and truly
understands that, ‘the show must go on!’
