AMITA KANEKAR
The huge attendance at the recent public meet ing in Panjim to create awareness about the worsen ing casino presence in the city was illustrative about how anti-casino the people of Goa are. The packed public meet ing – with every single seat occupied, over a hundred per sons standing at the back, and many more outside the hall – was attended by people from all over Goa, showing how this business is publicly recog nised as a Goa-wide menace, threatening social peace, pub lic safety, the Mandovi river, and the short- and long-term future of Goans thanks to the resultant criminalisation of our already-corrupt politics and public sphere. The immediate cause for the meeting now was the news that a gigantic new casi no (catering to 2000 patrons) is to join the old ones on the river, on the pretext of ‘replac ing’ the tiniest one (for, appar ently, just 70 patrons). That this will be a monumental nail in the coffin of both Panjim and the Mandovi goes with out saying, given the fact the river – whose bed has been dredged for days to accom modate it, thus assaulting its flow as well as marine life – is already horribly polluted with casino waste, and that Panjim is already unable to cope with the sewage, garbage, parking chaos, and general lawless ness of the existing casinos. It is not just the ‘spas’ and ‘massage parlours’ mush rooming in the city; or the groups of drunken male tour ists that have become a ubiq uitous sight; or the offensive casino advertising swamping the city, including inside gov ernment offices; nor even the drug, prostitution, and other rackets that go hand in hand with the casino business; but also the spate of destruction of old Panjim buildings and their rebuilding into towers accommodating more and more Airbnb flats – for casino tourists. What is this, if not a full-fledged casino city? It has become almost diffi cult to recall how things were earlier in this city of Pangim/ Ponje/Panjim/Panaji which was declared the capital of Goa 183 years ago. But may be it is worth trying. Perhaps the longest-running capital city in India, this was, after 1961, surely the best city in the country. Converted over the previous two centuries from paddy fields, coconut orchards and swamp, it was “a little tidy provincial town with whitewashed eighteenth century (sic) buildings…” ac cording to Graham Greene in “Goa the Unique”, written after his 1963 visit; a town “with tidy streets and the great clean river.” This is a description that fits almost to the end of the century, a time when Panjim boasted a human scale, open gardens, many public squares, and a great many huge trees. When it was a pedestrian’s city, with few vehicles on its shady roads, and wide pavements, many of them covered. When it was – astonishingly for an Indian city – clean, with no visible garbage, no spit stains, and nobody urinating in public. The riverside boulevard – laid out under the Portu guese at the beginning of the 20th century – was surely the best road in India, with road widths comfortable for both vehicles and crossing pedes trians, wide sidewalks safely away from the vehicles, and, above all, lavish planting with giant banyans, peepals and other trees creating a green tunnel that filled one’s heart with pleasure (and lungs with oxygen). As if all this was not enough, there were the many her itage buildings across the city, which offered a varie ty of architectural aesthet ics, including Modernist, Art Deco, Revivalist, and nine teenth-century Goan. Among them was the first medical college hospital in Asia, Goa’s first Modernist (and beau tifully-designed) apartment housing, a number of public li braries, and the city markets, all within walking distance of everything else. And the river, always nearby; and beyond it, the sea. What more could a city resident want? I am romanticising a bit. Especially when one knows that there have – perhaps al ways – been Ponjecars who were not treated well by the city. Like the mundkars of Miramar who were evicted for suburban residential de velopment in the late 1960s; they were promised homes elsewhere but some never re ceived these, leaving them on the edge of the St. Inez creek and labelled as slum-dwellers. A similar story can be told of the original fishing commu nities, of migrant labourers too. Panjim was not a perfect place, definitely not. But it had the potential to right these wrongs. What happened was, in stead, the opposite. Has there been any improvement in Panjim in recent times? In fact, if you leave out Kala Academy (now in the dol drums), one struggles to find anything good in the entire 60 years after the Portuguese left. Even the trees have de clined in huge numbers, as has the beach. Today Panjim is a capital city only in name, with many government of fices heading out or already gone, and old venerable gov ernment spaces disappear ing too, or being privatised. It has become a party town – because that’s the way In dians see Goa, and how Goa’s government wants them to see Goa. A cheap, dirty, sad little party town, decked up every night for the custom ers, to glitter with thousands of strings of shiny lights and shinier casino signage, al ways in garish festival mode. Graham Greene saw Goa as far better than what he saw of India and, very prescient ly, believed that the former would be ruined by the latter. Inevitably so. As he put it, “… you cannot hang a skull at the entrance of Goa as you can on a mango tree to avert the en vious eye.” So, is it time to write a req uiem for Panjim? Is it true that casinos are here to stay, because Panjim needs them economically? NO. There are many ways for Panjim and Ponjecars to earn a living; Ponjecars themselves, like architect Fernando Velho (on social media) have a host of suggestions, including the declaration of Panjim as a her itage city. The only ones who need casinos are those with a finger in that criminal pie. And most Ponjecars are not in that category. With thanks to the artist (unknown by me) who coined the word “CasiNO”. (Amita Kanekar is an architectural historian and novelist)
