Chris Fernandes
Our precious Goem has had to bear yet another shameful scar, the two rapes on her sacred beaches. To niz Goemkars sadly, this is just another day in our lives; we see our living beaches being used and abused on a daily basis. Our hallowed “guests” treat our fields, sand and sea like a cheap motel, with a deplorable law and order system in place that nigh encourages the same. Maybe now our coastline will be afforded Z-level security like eco- sensitive Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh receive.
Thankfully, no one was killed. Our beaches, which are used to being raped and ravaged bear mute witnesses to their own sons and daughters’ silence. Paying crores to pick up broken glass and plastic from ancestral sands that should be revered and protected is a crime all of us locals will have to answer for someday.
The Goa allegretto column by Alexandre Barbosa brought to the fore the issue of Catholic “insolence”, a complaint which is as amusing as it is nonsensical. Our schools and colleges, orphanages and old aged homes have helped this great country in numerous ways; it might be arrogant to claim that our churches have turned away the wrath of God from us all many a time but the faithful will still believe it in our hearts. The charge against our benign faith is as juvenile and sadistic as slapping a mother for teaching her children to cross a busy street the right way.
I do have a complaint to add to my blessed, angry brothers’ gripe: that of our educational institutions churning out vast numbers of sub-par Indians of all faiths, who fall prey to vices like corruption, drugs, littering and being unable to ‘hit the ground running’ when life throws a wrench into their smoothly functioning works.
I believe our Catholic institutions should boast of their alumni being faultless, using their aptitudes to the maximum and being 100% free of the stains that make our people and living standards as low in global standings as they are. Bad or righteous(sic) governments will come and go but truth, tolerance, humility and love will always be around to help the drowning, no matter how badly they claw at or spit on the hand that will never hesitate to save them.
