It was Sunday evening and Benaulim beach had but a sprinkling of people enjoying the break in the rains by walking along the sands. Most were local residents dragged to the beach by their children or just there to allow their little ones some time and a little freedom on the sand. A few tourists, mostly honeymoon couples, stood out from the rest as they posed for selfies against the backdrop of the crashing waves. The shore was thoroughly covered by shells that retained sea water on the surface of the sand, water that would otherwise have percolated into the sand, and so keep the surface dry. One group of children had built a circular sand wall about three inches high and four feet in circumference and kept running to the breaking surf and back depositing something into their little pool every time. People strolling on the beach would stop for a few moments and look at what was in the pool and then move on. Some stayed longer and filmed the little pool.
On closer inspection of the pool what one saw were at least three dozen tiny crabs, live little crustaceans crawling and about three or four snails also making slow progress around the makeshift pool. The children kept returning and depositing more live creatures into their pool. One of them, a girl proudly exclaimed in Konkani, “All the crabs have been collected by us”, drawing some smiles and also a little admiration from the people gathered. As the sun set and the children were packing up to go home, they did something that should have made them even prouder – they broke a part of the sand wall and with their hands carved out a path from the pool to the shoreline creating a corridor for the crabs to crawl through and return to the water. And the crabs did just that. One after another they discovered the break in the wall and crawled away.
There are two lessons here. One, the Goa we once knew, before the advent of the digital age, when one didn’t need a plastic spade and bucket to go to the beach, is still alive in the villages. These children used their bare hands to make the sand wall and catch the crabs. It serves as an example that while some children may sit with their or their parents’ mobile phones playing digital games and so remain isolated in a room full of people, there are many others who will find their joys in dirtying their hands in the sand and no qualms about catching live crabs and other shellfish in their hands. Even as these children were scooping up the crabs in their hands, others their age, and evidently city dwellers by their mannerisms and affectations, watched but wouldn’t reach out to join the others in their crab hunt. But these children, the ones collecting the crabs, also knew that the creatures they had collected had to be set free, and they did just that. The break they made in the wall was towards the sea and not towards the dry sand, sending the crabs back to the water and so earning the respect from the onlookers and mention in this column.
This does remind one of the Olive Ridley turtles that lay their eggs in the sands of Goa and then disappear back into the sea, leaving the eggs to hatch and the hatchlings to find their way to the water. It has become necessary that guards be appointed at turtle nesting sites not only to keep poachers away but also to ensure that when the hatchlings crawl to the surface they go towards the sea and not landward. Turtle hatchlings that emerge from the sand are attracted by light and the surf of the sea is good enough to direct them towards it. Should there be lights on the land, they would instead crawl landward and perhaps not live to see the next morning. If these children could be smart enough to direct their crabs towards the sea, then surely adults should also be smart enough to accept that the turtles have the right to survive and that this right of theirs should not be tampered with. It has turned into a fight to ensure that lights are not switched on and loud music is not played on the beaches where the turtles have nested, where certain tourism groups have remained adamant on their right to party through the night on the turtle nesting beaches. If only the adults would have learnt a lesson from these children.
The second lesson, and a surprising one at that, is that there was none of the fabled “crab mentality” on display here. In the pool the crabs weren’t pulling each other back or down and once a way for their freedom was created, no crab did it either. They did not thwart the others escape, they actually followed the other, showing even a little of the herd mentality that is seen in cattle. Admittedly, this was not a bucket in which the crabs were thrown together, but if crabs have the nature of pulling down each other, then it should have been on display here too.
A search on google for ‘Goan crab mentality’ throws up 12,300 results most critical of Goans for pulling down each other and even giving examples. Much has been written about the crab mentality of the Goan, but, this instance is a classic case of the children thinking positively, and so too the crabs. The children knew that it was not right to keep the crabs imprisoned and so let them free, after they had got over the thrill of catching them. The crabs, once they had an escape route reached out individually for it and returned to the sea. It’s a positive that the rest of Goa should keep in mind and act upon.
(Alexandre Moniz Barbosa is the Executive Editor of Herald)
