What do we do when we are left in the dark? Perhaps, we have to learn to be in the dark. We may have to learn to think in the dark by stretching ourselves, touching our surroundings and embrace a thinking that is tentative and tactile. We have this challenge to make sense of the sudden silence and deathliness that we are made to face. In this condition, we have the imperative to think life. Death and darkness are often thought together. We can also think simultaneously darkness and life.
To some extent, we in Goa seem be held captive by a sense of being in dark. What is proposed as development, seem to be dark plan that leaves Goans behind and put the last nail on the coffin of Goa and Goan-ness. Even if we can see a light at the end of a tunnel, we may have to agree that it is a headlight of an Engine that is coming to crush us. This has been the case of political organisations that purported to stand up for Goa and Goans, particularly the party that simply played spoilers during the last electoral hustings.
Unfortunately, we seem to be taken up by a sudden immobility of thought, a kind of unprecedent paralysis of reason. Hence, the question, ‘how are we touch upon the liveliness of Goa and Goan-ness?’ becomes sharp and critical. We seem to have lost this ability. The ruling benches has taken almost everything from us. MLAs elected by us, our water resources, our land, etc, are being handed over to vested interest to whom Goa is simply a raw material to create wealth. Even Dabolim Airport seems to be put up for grabs. We are truly pushed into a dark place. Yet we have the challenge to think in the dark without becoming cynics and overcome by pessimism.
We can indeed hope for a better tomorrow where the dark night will disappear into the sunshine. But will it not be a postponing of a better Goa and make us passively wait for another day? Maybe we have to face the darkness that is enveloping us. Maybe we need to become like Morpheus who descended into the underworld to reach to his beloved Eurydice. Morpheus strove to see his beloved in her passing and come to touch upon her absence. Unless ,we see and feel the passing away of Goa and Goan-ness and touch upon this absence, we may not be able think for Goa. We have the challenge to think of Goa without of course being able to predict where it will all lead us.
The closed futures/futures of promise have failed us. The ruling BJP, and others before it, offered several promissory notes. But most often they took control of our priceless scarce land. Unfortunately, we got lost in the promise of the pie in the sky. Hence, we have the Goan imperative to see the nocturnal side of Goa. Maybe in many ways, we are also responsible for its dark condition. Maybe seeing her in the dark is the only way we can truly see our beloved Goa. It is the only way we can touch her as absent and dying. Seeing this dark side, will bring us to our senses. We will realise that we too are no less dead. It is in this dying of Goa that we will see our death. We will touch our death. Dying Goa tells us we are living dead people.
Death has become a living thing. It is living in dying Goa that is living in us, in our silence and inaction. If we let the Goan in us die, Goa will surely die. We have to come to terms with this dark truth. There are many attempts to kill the Goan in us. We can see that the Goan in us is being murdered in daylight. Religious identities, love for national heroes have been used diabolically to poison the Goan in us by the day. Death is crossing us every day. We have indeed reached a precious point of our life, a point at which death of a Goan in us will lead to the death of Goa. Paradoxically, this dark point is the most living point for us. It can turn things for us. It is point of crossing death and coming to life. If we cross death and come to life, Goa too will live.
Our hearts are beating for Goa. We as her true sons and daughters will do everything to find her breathe of our life again. But before that we have to find a way of reviving the dying Goan in us. What is the breath of life that is unique to us Goans? How are we to get to it without generalising it into some developed notional identities of being Christians, Hindus or Muslims, etc. Perhaps, the breath of life of us Goans is in what might be called, ‘being-with’. It implies a sharing of life. It requires sharing even our unsharability (That may include our other identities that can divide us). Our being-with is primarily with Goans, Goan-ness and the land of Goa. Our sharing of life is singular, corporeal and concrete and not some kind of abstracted ism. We just share life by being rooted to the land, way of life, and people of Goa. It being a being-with is never closed to others ( Indians, others etc.)
May be being together and just sharing life with the land of Goa is the most primordial way of being a Goans. We may describe Goans and Goa with other developed qualifications but these later added elements can unite some and divide others. This is why, we have the challenge to embrace the primordial way of being Goans. It will unite us all Goans and bring vigour and vitality to Goans, Goan-ness and Goa. We have to choose this way of being Goans to let Goan-ness and Goa live. It is the relational ecology of Goan-ness that we will enable us to flourish as Goans and let Goa flower with India. Looking at Goa from the location of darkness enables us to rise above all entho-religio-centric bigoted life killing ideologies of the right wing. Goa, Goan-ness and Goans have the challenge to choose life and not death. We can do it only when we think in the dark. It is this thinking in the dark that can bring us to light and life.
(Fr Victor Ferrao is an independent researcher attached to St Francis Xavier Church, Borim, Ponda)
