STEVE CORREA
My earliest mem ories of Goa are not of beaches. They are of a house. Our ancestral home in South Goa, which my parents and I visited, seemed enormous to me as a child. Perhaps it was. Or perhaps childhood has a way of enlarging the spac es where we felt loved. I remember the bustle when we arrived: relatives emerging from every cor ner, overlapping voices, calls from room to room, people vanishing into the kitchen, and children rac ing through the house. At dusk, we lit lanterns whose warm glow spread across the walls and fac es, filling us with com fort. The house seemed to draw everyone in. Mornings had simple rituals: drawing cool, startling water from the well for a bath. No thermostats, elaborate showers, or humming pumps—just a bucket of water.
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Then there were the walks. My cousins and I wandered the village road with no particular destination. That may be childhood’s great luxu ry: the destination didn’t matter. We walked be cause there was a road— and because we had one another. We were happy and content, though occasion ally we became thieves. A neighbour’s fruit tree was irresistible. We stole a fruit or two with hard ened-criminal serious ness, then fled laughing, convinced terrible retri bution was imminent. The local Church stood nearby.
As we passed, the familiar litany sometimes drifted toward us: Ora pro nobis. Pray for us. Its words mingled with bird song, conversation, bicycle bells, and village sounds. Sacred and ordinary coex isted comfortably. Eventually, we re turned home to generous, fragrant Goan food, pre pared without fuss and served with little cere mony. There was always enough—and somehow, room for one more. These are warm memo ries I carry. I never felt an ything was missing—only quiet, peace, and con tentment. Knowing how precious they are, I in creasingly wonder what happened to that Goa. I do not wish to ro manticise the past.
The Goa of my childhood had hardships and limited op portunities, forcing many Goans to leave home for work while families depended on relatives abroad. Modernity has brought education, mo bility, healthcare, connec tivity, entrepreneurship and prosperity. Young Goans should not have to sacrifice their aspirations to preserve my memories. Goa must change. But must it forget itself in or der to change? Today, the vocabulary we use about Goa is re vealing: land becomes real estate, homes be come properties, villag es become destinations, views become premiums, and old houses become development opportu nities.
We have become skilled at calculating Goa’s worth, but perhaps less able to recognise its true value. The old house shows the difference: its laterite walls may be damp, its roof may need repair, and generations of feet may have worn its red-oxide floor smooth. Slightly crooked photographs of the dead may still hang on the walls. Outside may stand a well and a mango tree planted by someone barely remembered. A developer sees acre age, floor-space ratio, and return on investment; a family sees births, marriages, arguments, deaths, meals, and mem ories. They view the same house but see different things.
This may be the strug gle for Goa’s soul: con fusing ownership with belonging. Who does Goa belong to—the per son whose ancestors lived here, the Goan who migrated but dreams of returning, the migrant worker who builds our homes and serves in our restaurants, or the new comer who has planted roots in village life? Be longing may not come from a title deed. It be gins when a place can make demands of us. To belong is not only to say, “This is mine,” but also to ask, “What do I owe this place?” That ques tion is increasingly ur gent because Goa is los ing something difficult to restore. Silence belongs to no one. No survey num ber or title deed claims the crickets after dark, rustling coconut palms, distant church bells, or the stillness of a Goan afternoon. Yet anyone can destroy it: a gener ator starts, music rises, cars honk, construction begins, aircraft pass, and celebrations add loudspeakers. Gradual ly, silence retreats—as do fields, groundwater, trees, and old houses. Be hind our prosperity, its shadow grows: sewage, plastic, traffic, waste, noise, and mounting pressure on a small, frag ile landscape.
The irony is painful. People come to Goa ex hausted by the cities they built elsewhere—Mum bai, Delhi, Bengaluru and beyond, seeking what Goa still offers: space, nature, community, slowness, anonymity, perhaps even themselves. Yet we recre ate the world we escaped, demanding wider roads, faster internet, more vil las, restaurants, enter tainment and conveni ence. The traffic, concrete and urgency follow us. Finally, so does our rest lessness. Even susegad, that wonderful Goan disposi tion toward taking life as it comes, risks becoming a T-shirt slogan rather than a way of life. Goa may not need more peo ple who say they love it, but people willing to care for it. Love is easy when the sunset is beautiful; care is harder. It means asking whether anoth er tree must be cut, field turned into a car park, or swimming pool filled while wells struggle. Whether music needs to be so loud, or develop ment must always mean building. And whether the most civilised act is sometimes to leave something alone.
I often return in memory to that ancestral house: lanterns lit, someone call ing us to eat, my cousins and me returning from another expedition, per haps laughing about the fruit we stole. Nearby, the church bell sounds. Ora pro nobis. Pray for us. Perhaps that prayer means something differ ent now. Pray for this little piece of earth entrusted to us. Pray that prosperity does not impoverish what money cannot buy, and that improving Goa does not destroy what earli er generations under stood. Pray that a good life means a house full of people, food on the table, cool well water, cousins nearby, a village road with nowhere urgent to go, and the remarkable realisation that what you have is enough. (Steve Correa is a Leadership Coach and OD Consultant, who has had over three decades of corporate experience. He is author of, The Indian Boss at Work: Thinking Global Acting Indian.)
