Nubia Mascarenhas.Oh Goa! Oh Goa! My childhood friend,.What mind filling moments with you I did spend!.Winding paths to grey hills I would climb as a child.Quaint houses around me, rustic roofs neatly tiled..Fishing rods we would wield, for catch that was plenty,.Brown rice from lush fields ensured plates weren’t empty..Oh Goa! Oh Goa! You’re being strangled now..How can I save you? How? Show me how!.Your lustrous landscape, once, left the world agape,.Go to Goa they’d say, she’s a ‘Heavenly Escape’..Now all you can offer is concrete and weed.Thanks to vile despots and insatiable greed..Your fields they have filled, your forests they’ve felled,.For your waning wildlife they deliberate death knells..They’ve fractured your hills, your topography’s shorn.In the guise of ‘progress’, to shreds, you’re being torn..Alas! What a pity, such an ugly monstrosity,.Looms large, on your skyline of old..Oh whither your mangroves, your beaches, your treasure troves?.They’re gone to sly bidders, they’re sold..Marine life cannot spawn, even the dolphins are gone.In cahoots, rogues rake in their dough..For high are the stakes, so the seas must be raked. And no one dares stop the cash flow..Toxins in your fruits, in your veggies, in my food.Hand in glove felines feed on fat bribes..Cash cows in your rivers, formalin in fish slivers.Their poison I am forced to imbibe..But I can’t turn to beeves, or to spinach leaves,.Cause the leaves are laced with arsenic,.And since the cow is my mother, I face lynching by brothers.For something I mistook for endemic..Your wells they’ve polluted, your minerals they’ve looted.Scarce are birds, bird watchers once sought.Your sands are being stolen, your streamlets are swollen.With garbage, and faeces, and rot..My Goa, I’m sorry, for I stand by and watch.The goings-on, going on very freely..I tried but I failed, flimflam can’t be nailed..My Goa, I’m a coward, forgive me..You’ve been ‘gift-wrapped’ this mess, which they term ‘progress’.In lieu of what you were due..For ‘Status’ you waited, and waited, and waited,.Your dream, now, will never come true!.Soon you’ll be prone, if they don’t leave you alone.To droughts, deluges, landslides,.Dear Saviour, save Goa, they’re out to destroy her.Please, Creator, with Goa, abide.
