With tourist footfalls down, down by a heavy footfall of 30% this season it is time to do a diagnosis of the hospitality disease. Where is Goa heading?
Anyone who has been in Goa over X’mas and New Year must be blind if they have not seen the new-age hippies of India, here, there and everywhere, eating, picnicking and sleeping under the open sky. These are the people who are bringing a new cycle of sorts to Goa’s tourism sector.
Some of us – like yours truly – who the God’s don’t like very much, as I am still here on this planet, have a sense of deja vu: where have I seen this before? It appears as if it was only yesterday when the hippies first arrived in hordes and started to shake, rattle and roll their charas joints in this once-upon-a-time quiet surf and sand former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India.
Now, we have new land surfers who are Indians predominantly from Karnataka and Maharashtra. They remind me of the hippies as they have in common one thing: the hippies had the D-currency and the neo-hippies have the automobile. Both love the beach. Unfortunately, neither are known to be big spenders!
Calangute, a once sleepy village, owes its rebirth to the hippies as the fishermen more than welcomed them with open arms, fed them simple meals, rented their porches, and then their rooms. In no time at all, the hippies were living in the houses and the fishermen were sleeping outside. The houses were invariably extended to include more rooms.
And, through the years a lot more houses than rooms mushroomed all over the village and surrounding environs, a great number of which were illegal.
And so began the saga of a village, the growing up of a juvenile delinquent, and today, Calangute is more a crowded town than anything else. Unplanned development came in, rushed in you might say, and the villagers went all out to accommodate the hippies, and grew rich rapidly.
The hippies made Calangute a prosperous village, and a rowdy village, too, which has grown in prosperity along with other villages on the extended beaches. Flea markets, all-night drug parties were in fashion, as was voyeurism: hippy meat was more sacred than any other, and certainly the most expensive. Indians from all over India, veg and non-veg zeroed in on Goa. Our State even became a star in Bollywood.
How is the government going to handle the neo-hippies who often sleep in their cars, vans and buses when they are not sleeping under the stars? Camping sites for vehicles with all kinds of facilities is an obvious solution. But the problem is not simple, and in the face of the local people. Let us hope the Calangute model of anarchy will not be replicated all over Goa.
Today, the cycle of prosperity is starting to spread to south Goa, albeit decades later, and rooms are now available for a paltry five hundred rupees a night in some villages or less if you stay for a month. This is, of course, for people who want to rent a room and do not want to sleep in their vehicles or in the open under the starry sky, for free.
And, of course, you have the support system: kiosks which serve unhygienic food to the low-spending tourists with almost every cook touching the food with his bare hands. I overheard one tourist tell another to try the ros omelette as it is Goa’s most famous food and is available only in Goa.
