All that glitters…
Little do the tourists know the real Goa and its problems, says ERVELL E MENEZES
Ours is the land of fun and frolic, a holiday destination, paradise or that is how it is projected after the hippies first set foot on it in the late 1960s. But beneath that glittering front, there is a much rumbling, corrosion, even destruction and all that glitters surely is not gold. The recent Carnival, which is fast losing its commercial gloss, the film festival, fashion shows and beauty contests continue to attract tourists, to say nothing of it being a wedding destination. So, there’s no dearth of reasons why folks should not make a beeline to Goa.
But little do the tourists know the real Goa and its problems. The recent agitation at Cavrem Pirla is just one example where 150-odd tribals under the banner of the Cavrem Adivasi Bachao Samiti marched to Panjim and after a 12-hour ordeal saw that the Mines Department and the Goa State Pollution Control Board ordered the closure of the mine and removed all machinery. It is a small victory but the problem of mining is deep-rooted and has been going on for decades, even under the Portuguese regime.
It is a well thought out modus operandi of first getting the villagers involved by promising them jobs, giving them loans to purchase trucks to be used in the mines and virtually buying their consciences. But at the time, they are not even aware of the price they are paying for allowing the mines to function. The land gets arid, devastated and the perennial dust and grime inhaled brings with it diseases and death. And today, the mines are no longer owned by a few families. Politicians have moved in like bees to a honeycomb and the “chalis chor” or the first few of them have struck rich (or is it richer?) by becoming “raising contractors” which is a term used to absolve them of ownership, but not its benefits.
Like the drug mafia and the “River Princess,” these are perennial problems that little can be done about, because there is no political will to act and may be only a people’s movement will be the ultimate answer. But will that ever happen? During that unforgettable 19-month emergency, courtesy Indira Gandhi, this writer thought “even a worm will turn, but not an Indian.” But that has since changed a good deal. That Mrs Gandhi met her Waterloo by listening to her inner coterie (read chamchas) and going for elections is now history, and a lesson for others to learn.
In the same vein I think that the Goans are too complacent or otherwise occupied to start a people’s movement. We put up endlessly with the hollow promises of a dithering Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and his equally devious Cabinet Ministers, a Home Minister Ravi Naik with a number of skeletons in the cupboard and other infighting Ministers already acting as Chief Ministers. Where does that leave the much-mentioned in rhetoric, aam admi? Well, out in the cold, that’s where he has been for decades and will continue to do so, for many more.
Another major problem in Goa is the sexual exploitation of children and among the earliest villains or the patron saint of paedophiles, is that foreigner Freddy Peats who under the guise of doing good for kids, exploited them ruthlessly. Now, a path-breaking bill dealing exclusively with sexual offences against children was introduced by the Union Cabinet last week, providing for a jail term up to 10 years or even life imprisonment for the guilty. While welcoming the new law, one must add that it is the implementation that is even more important, and in Goa, it is more the rule than the exception that these laws are never put into practice. Therefore, it will not be easy to stop this evil, unless there is a widespread and sustained effort by the people.
The incidence of crime is on the rise, and the inability of the police to check it, makes it even worse. Here the setting up of a forensic laboratory in Goa, will surely expedite matters. Having to send samples to other states and waiting for the results, is delaying and denying justice. A premises for the laboratory has been set up in the Verna plateau, over three years ago, but the personnel must be employed. This is a common malaise in Goa. The same is the case with the government hospital set up in Mapuca some years ago, but still waiting to be operational and there is much opposition to privatising it. The case of Scarlett Keeling dragging on for years is a glaring example of the inordinate delay in dispensing justice. The police force in Goa which is notorious for its acts of omission and commission, must be totally revamped and it must be insulated from political interference, though that appears to be an impossible dream.
With the Congress image at the Centre taking a drubbing with each passing day, the latest being the quashing of CVC, P J Thomas’ appointment, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) must be girding its loins for a comeback at the Centre with “evergreen” L K Advani blogging every morning (except when India is playing in the World Cup), Sushma Swaraj tweeting during the day and Arun Jaitley featuring on TV in the evenings. And Goa’s former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is trying to capture the Corporation of the City of Panjim (CCP) via the back door. By invoking the support of PINC to back BJP candidate Ashok Naik, it is likely to divide the Christian vote and eat into Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate’s vote bank. It is a case of “your enemy being my friend” and Parrikar ad Monserrate being sworn enemies, they are both vying for control of the CCP. It is for the Panjim voters to pause and take all the possibilities into consideration, before casting their vote.
The latest entry into politics is yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who has attracted the attention of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh who has asked him not to point fingers at others, unless he wanted to bring his yoga empire under a scanner. Says Ramdev “I have a billion followers across the world. Will they believe I am a thief and not to be trusted with their donations?” He then goes on to say “I am a sadhu and don’t own anything other than my saffron robe and clogs.” Social psychologist Ashis Nandy likens Ramdev to what V P Singh did to the country by entering politics in 1989. Though he professes to address corruption, may be the operative colour is saffron.
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A thought for the aged
By Marc de Souza
Everyone hates getting old, and wish to stay young or atleast middle-aged. But time keeps on marching.
It’s the morning after my 79th birthday. Appropriately, the idea of obsolescence was on my mind, as I discovered when I attempted to define the word ‘Obsolescence’ as the sin, the crime people commit against themselves when they start believing that their shell life has expired.
At my age, I could be a sea wreck washed upon the shores of time, but on whose calendar? On God’s calendar, perhaps, though the Ancient of Days has never told me that I am no longer young in his eyes.
On my daily long walks, I meet trees that have lived intimately in all seasons with the sun and the rain for more than a century. Trees that neither spin nor toil, survive night winds in the monsoon. They wait with inexhaustible patience for the bright day to come, so that they can again serve the wild things as hosts and benefactors.
The woodland is thrifty, and allows nothing that exists to outlive its usefulness. The hollow trunk of a tree that lightning has killed can become a gold treasury where bees store their honey, or squirrels make a home. Some wild flowers grow best in soil kept damp by a fallen log. Ants can make their colonies in its dry rot as well.
But which flowering garden did God make in his own image? Which of the sequoias did he invite to his table saying “Take and eat, this is my body which is given to you”.
If this is my Father’s world, why are the old dears whom he loves so much, treated as though the age that is withering them, has left them good for nothing? They would get more respect if they were wild flowers, born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air.
Why do we round up the aged, and keep them in aged homes, where they can weep at the sadness of seeing each other, like a mirror image of themselves grown long in the tooth? Why do doctors keep inventing miracle drugs that insure long life, if old age is more burdensome to deal with, than the sins the parents have visited onto their children, unto the third and fourth generation?
If this meditation is getting on your nerves, please remember that it represents the first fruits of the morning after my 79th birthday.
The crowd I grew up with, did not take time out of fragment into groups needing to have their hands held, when they felt sorry for themselves. Going to school we had first the great depression, and then World War II, to keep our minds of the luxury that was later called ‘the generation gap’. In the 50s when Elvis came along, the accent was on youth. My contemporaries were too long in the tooth to sing: “They try to tell us we are too young”. Many things happened thereafter. By the time the 60s were starting to unfold, we were too old to be tempted to join the beatniks.
My grandmother started to die when she was the same age that I’m now; it took her 20 years to complete her exodus. My grandfather died at home in his favourite chair when he was 74, after a three week illness. Who was luckier?
It seems elderly people are the last guardians of polite language and rampart against the rising floodwaters of vulgarity. They provide a pleasant link with the past, and they have a feeling for homely things: like teapots and walking sticks, flowers and babies.
At the Miramar Beach, the lady of Goan beaches, in the cool of the evening, I was listening to two moms carrying on a booming conversation about the Muncipal elections and a young mother and her baby. Nobody but the elderly woman was paying the baby any notice. She was watching her with the special rapt attention with which old folks look at kids. She struck me as being a person with a sound sense of priorities, one of the many valuable qualities we should learn to cherish in senior folks.
Those in the golden years should count their days by smiles and not tears. Also to count the age by friends and not years.
