My sons, my daughters, my beloved heirs! I had beamed with pride at each of your births, cuddled you with every care as you scampered through my green fields, bent down the boughs of my fruit trees for your hungry little fingers to have their fill, staved of famine, draught, flood, war with tears and entreaties to the Creator, save for your sakes, that you may always be provided with the best that life can offer so that you might be beacons of inspiration to the world! To enlighten the less fortunate, to showcase how prolific my sons and daughters are, infused with talents and skills that can only blossom in the rarest of environs … musicians, artists, dramatists, doctors, scientists, philanthropists, athletes … these were the seeds that were lovingly sown into your hearts, and nourished by silent sacrifices but what have you to show for it? You have exchanged piety, devotion and sobriety for vice, hollow celebrations and drunkenness?
Do you live in war torn Syria, or amidst the carcass strewn deserts of Iraq? Do you not have miles of spellbinding shoreline, waterfalls, hundreds of towering hills to behold? Do you not hear the bells of the churches and temples your forefathers built? Do you not hear the trumpet blast of angels ordering you to pay homage to your Creator? What have you created today, my child? Descended from prolific artists like Alfred Rose, Shenoy Goembab, Mario Miranda, Asha Bhonsale. What have you done to beautify this world?
You commit sacrilege at every turn, invite curses at auspicious events! Is there none left among you to stamp out injustice and stem this addiction to ineptitude? Don’t you want my grandchildren to have schools that lack for nothing, that impart sound moral and intellectual education, where kids learn to start each day with their parents’ blessing rather than with a beer and cigarette?
Listen to your mother, Goans… today it is the river Uguem and Vani Agro… tomorrow, the Mhadei and Karnataka.
