Goa? Sometimes u jus' gotta laugh

One year later...

2012-02-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

Another post, a whole year later. Why did I stop writing the column? Several reasons. Can't remember most of them but they were perfectly good ones at the time. The main reason was I just got bored with the whole Goa Situation. Yeah, two and a half people were reading the column in the Herald, but it made no difference at all. Since my time here is limited since at 56 I had just - how much - nine years of mental acuity before I began forgetting why I entered a room, or where I last placed my wooden leg. I don't have a wooden leg, but the way I drive, who knows....!

What's been happening in the meantime? In Goa pretty much the same. Everyone bemoaning the corruption around and doing nothing to stop it among their own family and friends. Education going downhill, with 90 percent of the youth I meet, totally uninterested in their future. They want money and that's it. That's clear, how they're going to get it is not quite clear, but they know that they will get it.

I started a website www.targetgoa.com. For Goans everywhere. I was certain, it was going to be a huge hit. Of course I got it wrong. I had decided I would not allow advertising from mining, casinos or dodgy construction types. My business partner said his hands were tied and could not get revenue for the site. So I said what the hell, I'll keep posting news, I will do interviews, I will attend press conferences, I will attend functions, I will take photographs and it worked for a while, but having ten fingers, two legs and just one body is a real drag.

Slowly the pages for business and sports and my pride and joy, the Help page where we would publish the hard luck story of someone needing help and smile beatifically as the help poured in from Goans all over the world. That page fell flat as a de-implanted boob for one reason and one reason only. No one who accessed the website needed help, or knew anyone who needed help. So the Help page was thrown out.

Still there were a decent number of hits, around 700 unique visitors everyday and some interesting rabble-rousers send columns regularly including hotshot media star M J Akbar. The site staggers on frequented by people largely pushing retirement with both hands. But I'm in the process of designing another one for youth. That one promises to be superb, but hey, what do I know.

The downside of reunions

2011-02-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

No one ever invited me to any reunion. Not my school, not my college, or post grad people, nothing. And when I meet my old classmates, they look relieved and say thank goodness no one has pushed the idea of a reunion.

We are all vain about our looks and those of us once full cheeked beauties now look like tired old bulldogs.

A relative who was a good decade older than I, was all excited over her batch of 1960 classmates who had converged from all parts of the globe to celebrate their reunion. The first thing they did was say a prayer for those of their batchmates who had died.

Since all of them had retired like, years ago, they all had a lot of leisure time. So the reunion was stretched to include events and celebrations over a month. Unfortunately, during that period three of the batchmates' spouses died and everyone of them was badly spooked. They wound up their celebrations after three weeks and hotfooted it back to where they came from.

Another relative attended his reunion. These were men who were once boys and thought they were boys once again. He came back saying a gala time was had by all. They ate, they drank (there were twelve bottles of Black Label and assorted boose and they made merry.

They must have made very merry because they looked terrible in their group photograph with death rictus smiles and unfocussed eyes. That group photograph was the clarion call for me.

I'll die before they photograph me in a group like that.

Breaking coconuts

2011-02-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

There's a new fad in Goa. They "launch" the hotmixing of a road. Remember the time not so long ago, when the steam rollers would roll and the tar drum would boil and the road would be completed without any fanfare?

Now the local MLA or the PWD minister with a goodly gaggle of their supporters with cameras a-clicking strike a pose, break a coconut and look fixedly into the camera nearest to them.

Which means that this entire road repairing thing must be top priority. Maybe even glamourous. Last time I looked roads were roads. After the monsoons they had to be tarred. So what next?

Could be a good idea, giving every mundane job a sense of ceremony. When the minister wakes up in the morning, break a coconut, light an agarbatti, distribute pedas, click a pic. He has risen again to brighten our world another day.

He reaches his office, break a c, light an a, distribute p, click a p, because he is going to do great and glorious things for us and the state.

He meets Illegal Guy wanting something illegal, b a c, l an a, d p because our minister is going to get a huge bribe from the illegal guy. Now he will send most of that money to his accounts abroad, but some of it he will distribute among the poor and needy.

He sets out to look for a poor and needy person. Why there are lots of them right outside his office! He can pick and choose who is likely to convert that gift into most votes. That's a good reason to break a c, light an a, distribute p and click a pic.

He reaches home and his family heave a sigh of relief. Ah their gravy train has not yet been killed, maimed or arrested. Enough reason to ___ yeah yeah...

At the very least more coconut trees will be planted and Goa will look and sound beautiful. Agarbatti and peda sales will go up and photographers will finally make some serious money. it's all good.

Forest leeches and the other kind

2011-01-23T04:04:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since I last had something to laugh about. The laugh we aim for here is the hollow laugh, so let me be clear on that. Hollow. With a hint of desperation. Let's see, this column used to appear weekly on The Mirror the Sunday magazine of Herald. I know for a fact that roughly 20 people read it every Sunday because I used to get feedback on my columns. So for someone to go and tell the owner of Herald that NO ONE was reading The Mirror was a dirty black lie. The owner of the paper harkened unto the person who told him no one reads Herald's Mirror and he shut it down quick as a steel trap shutting down on a wild boar's tail. He replaced Mirror with Heartbeats that wrote about the size and girth of penises and the importance of length. Mirror could never compete with that.

One was torn, I can tell ya. There was the relief of one finally not having two deadlines to meet, week after week. I used to whine and complain like nobody's business for every week of those more than five years. So when it stopped yes, it was nice not to turn one's nose up at looming deadlines.

On the other hand. There was the absence of an adrenalin rush when the phone rang. No one wanted to dismember or otherwise maim my person and that was sad, because adrenaline they say is a great cosmetic. With no one angry with me, it tells on my face. And I'm not liking what I see. Am I missing the whoosh of deadlines flying by? If I have to be honest I have to say yes. Because in my infinite wisdom, I have set far worse deadlines for myself with my new venture. I wind up for the day, or night, at 5 in the morning and that's not good.

Mirror had turned into a rabble rouser's gallery with Lionel Messias' red hot RTI produced column showing us idiots whose pockets our money was filling. I miss Lionel Messias' column. He even wrote it for my website www.targetgoa.com and if you haven't read it yet, shame on you. My website, not his column. Well okay, his column too. But then Herald with its huge number of avid readers and my website with its two and a half netizens checking it out did not seem a proper vehicle for all that effort. A pity. Goa needs to know how our leeches are sucking us dry.

At least leeches have limits, when they are full to bursting they drop off the host body. Our two-legged-Constitution-swearing variety along with their bureaucratic underlings seem to have unlimited capacity. Regular forest grown leeches sneak up on you without your knowledge. You feel nothing - no pain no trauma, except if you mash them by mistake. Then it is quite disgusting. Your life flashes before your eyes and you think you're gonna be so dead. Some idiot invariably mashes the repulsive thing filled with your good blue blood and it looks like Jack the Ripper has just done his thing. That's the forest leech.

The other kind and their bureaucrat underlings dipping their suckers in our till, do it openly and laugh at our agony. The only similarity between both species is that they both grow fat on our blood.

A sickle, or salt can get rid of forest grown leeches immediately, but our elected leeches can only let go of you if they die or when we dye our fingers with the purple-black ink once in four years. Or three, or two, or less. We hardly ever have any group lasting full term.

Turn the village/ward into a joint family

2010-11-21T07:23:00.000-08:00

This is the idea. Joint families may have disappeared, but wards and villages can continue the functions of the joint family even while the nuclear family thrives.

Look at the kind of elected representatives Goan society is throwing up. They are a part of us. If they are corrupt, it is because we as a society are corrupt. Clearly the time has come when we have to not merely introspect but also stem the rot that has permeated every class of people in the state.

We have turned into an instant gratification society and this has ruined us. From the slow measured pace of an agricultural economy which left enough time and energy to create a rich Konkani culture in terms of language, literature and the arts, we have become a fragmented aimless people with no purpose, no plan and no Larger Picture.

We have to sort ourselves out. I am not suggesting that we turn back the hand of Time, but we can build on the slow measured pace of our culture and adapt it to the needs of today. To this end the joint family has to come back, re-invented, to expand and include the entire ward or village.

The community – that is all residents of the ward or village, of all ages gathers together and pools their mental and professional resources to support and strengthen each other. This has special reference to our youth who are in dire need of help. This community becomes the mother of gram sabhas with every man, woman and child of the village pulling their weight equally.

Everyone regardless of age has a lot to learn and a lot to teach. It is not just the elderly who have the wisdom and wealth of experience who can contribute. The youth, middle-aged professionals, labourers, children, even toddlers with their wide-eyed innocence and willingness to learn, have something to offer to the community. It takes just five steps, but all hinges on the success of Step One.

Step One:
Coming out of your houses into the open spaces of your village or ward, gathering around, getting acquainted with each other, regardless of age, gender, class, caste and creed. If enmity between two neighbours hampers progress, give the warring parties their space, but fill that space with neutral neighbours who can implement ideas and, who knows, even remove the enmity in the fullness of time.

Step Two:
Discuss the strengths and needs of various members of the community. This includes both original inhabitants and settlers. For instance, if there are first generation learners; students who need extra teaching; those who can teach them must come forward to guide, coach and mentor. No money will exchange hands, but rewards will be huge when the youth in turn can help their mentors with indoor or outdoor chores. Cheerful interaction alone will work wonders with both youth and elderly. You will find seeds of respect and pride sown for both age groups. More importantly, respect will grow for the land and traditions of the village.

Step Three:
If the village can be developed in terms of maybe setting up small businesses, so that entrepreneurship is encouraged. The community can decide the who, what, where and when. For this a plan has to be made. A Community Plan that factors in the existing facilities in the area. Community farming that had made Goa one of the strongest societies on the west coast must be revived once again. The elderly play a vital part here in guiding the new generation to protect fields and waterways, to solve modern problems with ancient solutions that worked so well and are still relevant today.

Step Four:
Rope in the representatives, panchayat, assembly and Parliamentary to clearly explain and outline various schemes and plans that can be utilized by the community for the betterment of the village and its people.

Step Five:
Focus on reviving the culture and better traditions of the village in terms of sports, feasts, fairs, drama, music and literature.

This is not some Utopian flight of fancy. Something similar has been used in a village in Maharashtra called Hivre Bazar (please Google it), where a village looking at starvation, alcoholism and complete degradation, came together under one man who was their sarpanch for 15 years and turned themselves around. The village now plays host to study teams from the UN, from Japan, China, Africa and even Afghanistan. It was the focus and integrity of the sarpanch who passed his IAS exams, but was prevailed upon by the villagers to chuck the IAS and help them instead of accepting his posting.

They re-built the broken down primary school first, shut down all the country liquor bars except one, they discarded water guzzling crops and planted cash crops that did not need too much watering. Tube wells were dug for domestic use only, while the river water was used for agriculture. A law was passed that no land would be sold to an outsider. The average income of a farmer in the village was Rs 6 lakh, 8 years ago.

We can do it here in Goa. Why? Because it’s in our tradition. We used to have a planned society that was happy and contented. Ours was the sossegado life, not lazy, mind you, but slow, steady and solid. No one went hungry. Ours was a way of life that was the envy of all. No need to point out to you, that it is fast disappearing. No need to tell you too, that we can restore it for ourselves and our descendants. All it takes is a Community Plan. Not the government, not the panchayat. Just the people. Turn the village people and the ward stakeholders into a joint family. Why, it will even take care of the law and order problem, because a caring society becomes an alert, protective society. Our police force can go back to doing bandobast duty to make the MLAs look important.

(Published earlier in Times of India, Goa edition)

Monumental cheek!

2010-10-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

I think that is why activists are called activists. They cannot afford to relax for a single minute. There’s the whole Regional Plan mess, where the RP21 was supposed to be up and running but is not. In the meanwhile the cutting of hills and filling of fields continues. Activists have to be in ten different places at one time. This is woefully inadequate, because a hundred different places in this state are under attack at any one time.

Activists have to keep their eyes peeled. One eye on the builders, and another eye on the government, and somewhere in their peripheral vision they have to keep tabs on us the people of the state too, who are happily digging holes in the base of the boat we are all sailing in.

The latest danger the state faces is the Amendment to the Monuments Act of 1978. Today it is formally known as the Goa Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (amendment) Act, 2010. The Bill had received the Governor’s assent and it was passed in the last Assembly Session.

It would be interesting to know how, when and why Governor S S Sidhu signed it; whether he had his spectacles on; or if he was in a hurry to go off on one of his many cultural tours of the state where he speaks glowingly about how we should protect our heritage and our unique culture.

The amended Act has cunningly changed one word in the old Act and replaced it with two. The old Act had this main clause that the State would maintain the monuments, and see to their preservation and conservation. The Amendment has changed the word “maintain” and has substituted it with many words including these: “re-construction and re-erection” of the monuments.

And get this the Act comes into retrospective effect from March 1 2007. Any fiddling around with monuments like the Tiracol Fort or the Cabo da Rama will be A-okay with the Government now. Not only can they put bright yellow tiles on the ramparts of the fort, they can also break it down and rebuild it to include a swimming pool, spa and casino.

Another clause authorizes the government to permit “any other agency” to put any protected monument to re-adaptive use. Which means you can turn all of the forts into hotels, build structures on the hallowed sites of ancient temples and turn churches into music halls and entertainment centres. Heritage buildings like the old GMC hospital which is used for the IFFI can be given over to any Thapar or Varma or Sharma to build a mall.

The most interesting clause is the highly unconstitutional one which bars courts from taking cognizance of an offence punishable under this Act. This means if they turn the Chapel with the Growing Cross into a musical entertainment centre, you and I will be laughed out of court if we file a suit.

I could not find the Act on the official Goverment of Goa website, but did manage to get this elsewhere. Here’s the link you can check for yourself: http://www.goaprintingpress.gov.in/downloads/1011/1011-22-SI-EOG-2.pdf .

It’s a page of the Official Gazette dated 1 September 2010. It is ironically headlined “EXTRAORDINARY Number-2” any school going child knows what “number 2” means. Scroll down to the third page The Goa Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment) Act, 2010. Here’s the excerpt about how we cannot approach the court unless the government allows it.

“32A. Cognizance and trial of offence.—

(1) No prosecution for an offence punishable
under this Act shall be instituted except by
or with the previous sanction of the Government.

(2) No Court shall take cognizance of an
offence punishable under this Act, except
upon a complaint in writing made by an
officer generally or specially authorized in
this behalf by the Government.”

So how will it affect Goa? Who needs dilapidated old forts and churches no one prays at anymore? This is what will happen, said an activist. The fort in your area will be turned into a five-star hotel, your quiet village will quickly morph into a rabbit warren of taxi and rickshaw stands, handicrafts and readymade garment stalls, bars, cafes, cybercafés, sleazy lodges, many houses will be built to house the staff and merchants who set up shop around the area, the poor will erect huts on vacant fields and it will be Calangute repeated in 51 different places in the years to come. That is the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario would be … that the Act is re-amended to the 1978 Act where it is recognized that the monuments are the property of the people of the State, but given to the Archeological Department to look after, maintain, preserve and conserve. And also, that the Governor will get his eyes checked at any of the excellent ophthalmologists we have in the state, so he can read the blatantly unconstitutional amendments he puts his signature to.

Only the corrupt get great responsibility

2010-10-03T11:34:00.001-07:00

To watch or not to watch, that is the question. The athletes from around the Commonwealth world have done nothing to deserve a boycott, but with so many star athletes dropping out, die-hard fans may go on a holiday. Yet there’s a lot to be said about the taxpayers and downtrodden of India voicing a protest against such open robbery of public money in the name of the games. Money this country can ill afford, which has been pocketed by corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and international vendors. And it’s not peanuts. The cost of the CWG to the people of India is climbing close to the Rs70000 crore mark almost as much as that other invitation to corruption – National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Rs70000 efficiently utilized would have gone a long way to improving lives of the desperately poor in the country. What was most disturbing was the human excrement on the mattresses in the luxury apartments being readied for the CWG. This is a message being sent out to the haves from the have-nots. This is something the rich and powerful refuse to factor into their headlong rush to cheat and rob the public.

What is the point of creating luxury for the rich when they are surrounded by filth and degradation? It’s happening right here in Goa too, when the filthy rich decided to turn Goa into their private party zone. Life will only get better for the wealthy when life gets better for the poor. This disparity in lifestyles is what led to major social upheavals in different parts of the world at different times in history.

Collapsing over-bridges, filth, bad planning, over spending and an impending inquiry which will go on for decades is just one chapter in the book of corruption of India.

If we don’t watch the CWG as a protest against corruption, then we should also work against a government that has perpetrated one scam after another on this nation. Loans which were waived for desperate farmers went instead to their money lenders, many of who turned out to be members of the ruling party. The mathematics was simple. Banks would not extend credit to marginal farmers. They lent to moneylenders at low interest. Farmers borrowed from moneylenders at exorbitant interest. They committed suicide when they lost their land and still could not repay the loan. Reacting to the suicides the government declared a waiver of loans. The moneylenders and rich farmers benefited from this. They did not pass on the loan waiver to the debtor farmers. Suicide resulted in compensation. So farmers found that suicide turned out to be actually a viable option. It was this macabre situation that created India’s entry to the next Oscars Peepli Live

Where do you start? The Jeep Scandal involving Krishna Menon in 1948? Eight years later he was inducted into the Nehru cabinet without portfolio. Rotting food grains while people starve? And no one is punished? Therein lays the rub. The government goes out of its way to protect the corrupt in its ministries.

The latest instance showing protection of the corrupt has to be the greatest. The brand new Chief Vigilance Commissioner P.J. Thomas is Accused Number 8 in a corruption scam in a palm oil import case. He is out on bail; the case has not been cleared. As Telecom Secretary, Thomas is also under the scanner in the 2-G spectrum scam.

This is the Chief Vigilance Commissioner of the country. Someone who heads a bureau geared to prevent corruption in the nation. The candidate has to be above suspicion. So who selected him?

The selection of the candidate is also supposed to be arrived at through consensus by a committee of three of the (supposedly) most politically powerful people in the land – the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. “Consensus” means all have to agree. The Leader of Opposition BJP’s Sushma Swaraj registered her dissent against Thomas’ selection. She had no issue with the other two candidates. Her dissent was over-ruled by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister PC Chidambaram. Proving once again that to be seen to be corrupt is vital for success in government.

Way back in 1939 Mahatma Gandhi distressed by signs of corruption in the Congress even before we got independence made this statement: "I would go to the length of giving the whole Congress a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant." Mahatma Gandhi May 1939.

Who’s really running the state?

2010-09-26T05:35:00.000-07:00

Was in Mumbai last week and happened to read a startling news item. No it was not the little recording device which automatically started when you unfolded the newspaper and told you all about the wonders of the Volkswagon Vento. That ad was a hoot and got some paranoid Mumbaikars into such a tizzy they thought it was some kind of terrorist plot to blow up many households through the city. No; the startling news item was Peninsula Land the Piramal Group real estate company that has a joint venture holding with Delta Corp. The group has reportedly paid Rs 300 crore for an old mansion in Carmichael Road, Mumbai.

Who is Delta Corp and why should I waffle on about it? Delta Corp is the company that claims to effectively own 3 of the 6 offshore casino licenses offered by the Government of Goa to the highest bidder. They also speak of a casino management agreement operating the on-shore casino at Riviera de Goa that managed to get 5-star status cleared at state and central level.

Recently someone said that the casino operators are running the Goa government. If the Piramal group is running Delta Corp which owns half the casinos in Goa, then clearly, the Piramal group is running Goa. And if they can stroll in and reportedly pay Rs 300 crore cash on the barrel for a house in the most expensive area of Mumbai. They can buy anything and anyone.

Not only that, the Carmichael Road area is a heritage area and erecting high-rise buildings in the area is forbidden. Word has it that Peninsula Land is planning to put up a skyscraper on the property. Just goes to show where the real power is. The same power that can turn a 3 star hotel into a 5-star should not find it too difficult to build a modern skyscraper in a heritage area.

Which brings me to the casino boats clogging the once-beautiful Mandovi River ... They’re playing games at the High Court too. Now they say they are willing to withdraw their petition contesting the State Cabinet’s decision to shift them to the Aguada Bay. If they want to stay in the Mandovi River and place lives of other river users at risk, no one will be able to stop them. With that kind of purchasing power a state cabinet that is weak in Mathematics and ethics poses no problem at all.

Delta Corp owns Casino Royale, King’s Casino and Caravela. Caravela is to be replaced by a larger vessel M V Majesty. Delta plans to replace King’s Casino with a larger vessel too. Until they get a larger vessel to replace King’s Casino, they plan to move it to “the other river in Goa” since it can moor in shallow water and bring in people from South Goa or elsewhere in North Goa to gamble aboard the vessel. I’m not making this up, it’s all on the Delta Corp website: http://www.deltacorp.in/group.html Check it out for yourself.

Only the height of the Mandovi Bridges and the width between the pillars can put a spoke in their roulette wheel. If the bridges are too low for the casino boats to sail under or the width between the pillars too narrow to accommodate the width of the vessels, then the people of Ribandar and the local fishermen will not have to worry, or get their protest placards out.

A Ribandar resident said they have been requesting the government to give the village of Ribandar a football ground, Instead the Chief Minister has given the youth of Ribandar three casinos to gamble on.

Joy of Giving Week

2010-09-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

This is the Joy of Giving Week and one’s thoughts automatically go to the Canacona flood victims with their smashed houses and lives. There are many who were so moved by the devastation caused by the flood, the cause of which everyone is still unclear about. Purses and chequebooks came out in a rush and aid in the form of money, food, clothing, building materials and physical help, poured into Canacona.

There was no joy there, not in the giving; not in the receiving. It was just something that had to be done. And the shell-shocked recipients of the help took it mutely; still unable to wrap their minds around the suddenness of the deluge and the havoc it left behind. The crazy rushing waters had swelled the river to five times its depth. It swept everything in its path carrying large uprooted trees as if they were the lightest of twigs. One chunky macho local youth shook his head with remembered horror and said, “I never want to hear the sound of that water again, but I keep hearing it in my sleep.”

Indeed people gave generously. The media got the message out clearly and immediately with lots of photo-ops for all the politicians who rushed in struck an attitude and made wild promises to bring everything back to normal. NSS student volunteers did wonderful work and slowly tattered lives were put together.

Those who contributed generously to the Canacona Relief Fund should be doubly joyful, because they did not just contribute to the people of Canacona. They bought donation coupons of Rs 500 each (cash) and all those coupons, no one knows how much or how many, went in a different direction from Canacona. Some say the amount was Rs 12 lakh, some say it was Rs 22 lakh, there was one news syndicate that calculated it at a whopping Rs 85 lakh.

Which bank account it went into was a mystery, the number of the bank account was a mystery. A record of the bank account is a mystery, but the money is safe we are told. It was collected by the Youth Congress and the Youth Congress dutifully gave it to the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee, completely forgetting it was supposed to go to the desperate people of Canacona.

But as the spokesperson is reported to have said, there was so much aid pouring into Canacona, they did not need any more and that the money was not actually meant for Canacona; it was meant for help in any emergency. They stopped trotting out that line when they were shown a copy of the coupon which clearly mentioned the money collected was for the Canacona relief. Not any old emergency relief. It definitely did not say it was meant for Congress relief.

Should we be angry about this turn of events? Should we say: we’ve been robbed? No. Not at all. Our donations are going to be used by the nation’s oldest political party whose name typically begins with Con. And what a con it was, you have to admire the sheer gall of these people. Their damage control is even funnier.

GPCC President Subhash Shirodkar said except for Rs 20,000 for ‘relief work’ not a paise had been spent. He said they will find out how many Canconkars need help during Ganesh, and Diwali and they will distribute the money then, to needy persons. The Youth Congress will be doing the field work of finding out how many people of Canacona need help. And if there is money left over, why it will be used for other things...!

This is a lesson that should humble us and we have to be abjectly grateful to the Youth Congress and GPCC. They have taught us Life Lesson Number 7. When you give, give for the joy of giving, don’t follow up to check where the money is being used, how much is being used and how much is going into the personal accounts of fat cats.

I have taken a valuable lesson from this contretemps too. I have learned that the only way I can experience the Joy of Giving is to give one tight slap to liars and thieves who steal from the hopeless to feed themselves.

Ya, ya, it’s the papaya to the rescue

2010-09-12T01:52:00.001-07:00

This would go down in my imaginary diary as the week my faith in pharma and doctors died. And if you are thinking this is about Dr. Oscar Rebello, you would be wrong. At the risk of sounding like something out of Harry Potter, it’s about the Papaya Leaf and the Platelet Count. Because there are those of you who say, tcha, who’s going to read this rubbish till the end, in brief it is this:

If you or anyone you know has dengue or chikungunya or any illness which drastically reduces the blood platelet count of the patient, take one papaya leaf. It does not interfere with the medication. Wash it in plain water. Discard the stem and the hard central veins in the leaf. Cut the green leafy portion into small pieces and run it through a mixer or pound it to a paste. If it is too dry add a teaspoon of water, pound to a paste, squeeze the paste through a muslin cloth or a tea strainer. You will get about 2 tablespoons of nasty tasting green liquid. Make the patient drink it. I hear having it first thing is the morning is very effective. But those who have had it in the evening too say it works like a dream. The platelet count jumps within 3 hours. That’s the short version.

Herbal medicine in India has been saving lives for thousands of years. Ayurveda is probably as old as the Indus Valley Civilization dating back to 3000 BC. All four Vedas especially the Rig Veda carry references to diseases and their cures through herbs and roots.

The ancient art of Ayurveda was systematically killed by the colonialists when they took over the country. It was suppressed by the British. The East India Company banned and shut down all Ayurvedic colleges in 1833. When Ayurveda re-emerged for almost 100 years, herbal remedies were dismissed as “the poor man’s medicine” practiced in rural areas where western medicine was too expensive or not available. The irony was the country folk were healthier than the urban class.

The Portuguese in Goa actually did shut down Ayurvedic practitioners. The Vaidyas of Hindu Pharmacy were the only Ayurvedic dispensers allowed to practice after one of them saved the life of a Viceroy’s wife.

Only now more and more patients are realising that allopathy or Western Medicine is not just expensive, but has hidden side effects that cause more problems than the original ailment itself.

When the Chikungunya outbreak happened a couple of years ago, The Times of India Mumbai edition carried an article on the effectiveness of the papaya leaf juice cure to completely eliminate the crippling joint pains that kicked in after the fever ended. My brother read the article and was so desperate to try anything to get back to his active life that he experimented with the papaya cure. It worked the same day. He had another two tablespoons the next day and was 100 percent fit.

Later I learned the papaya leaf juice worked for dengue patients too. The common factor was a drastically reduced platelet count in both diseases. Dengue involved internal haemorrhaging too.

Delhi is currently in the grip of a dengue epidemic. The 8-year old son of a friend was laid low with a continuous fever. His blood test showed his platelet count had dropped. She called me to ask about the papaya cure. She drove 25 km to find a papaya leaf. Those in the city had been used up by many who believed in the cure. She bribed her son to swallow the foul tasting juice. He did. The fever subsided the very same evening and he was up and about full of beans.

That’s the long story. The short story is three cheers for the papaya tree. Its fruit is pure heaven to eat and good for diabetics. A slice of the raw fruit gets rid of acne, pimples and scars. It also tenderizes tough meats. Its leaf is a thing of beauty. Sonia of Soto Haus Candolim, who uses plant products for decoration in her lacquered furniture, used a yellowed papaya leaf for a table-top design and covered it with her special brand of lacquer. And then you have the green leaf. What can I say… It saves lives.

Why be apologetic about our Portuguese heritage?

2010-08-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

It is not as if we set about to grab great-grand ancestors Afonso de Albuquerque and his merry men by the hand and tell them: oh conquer us we are yours. Our ancestors thought Albuquerque and Co were a bunch of nice white-skinned traders who would help them kick the Sultans out of Goa. Of course they thought wrong. How can you blame them? We Goans are wired to think wrong. We did it then, and landed ourselves into such a mess for the next 450 years. We are doing it now. And unless Nature has patience with us we will make wrong choices forever.

We were forced to convert to an alien religion. If we did not our lands were confiscated. We were an agricultural community then mind you, not a government-servant/NRI community. What greater horror could there be than taking our land away from us? Our families were split up. Elder brothers took the family deity and escaped to Ponda to set up temples under the protection of the Raja of Sonda. They kept the family religion alive there. The remaining part of the family converted to Catholicism. Which is why we have not had communal tension between Hindus and Christians because families share both religions.

Traditions like cremation were turned into major crimes and worship of our gods and goddesses were just not allowed. The Mhamai-Kamats still celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi by using a paper drawing of Lord Ganesh rather than immersing a statue. That’s the way they did it then, in secrecy, defiance and deep devotion. Now it is a beautiful family tradition.

Those of us who converted to save our lands and those who converted in order to be gifted confiscated lands learned Latin prayers and parroted them. The previous rulers had no issue with our bare-breasted women and our kashti-clad men. But the Portuguese ruthlessly enforced their European dress code. Cover up or pay the penalty. One of my earliest memories was the village fest where men strolled around in awesome dignity wearing a coat, a tie, a shirt and a kashti with no trousers. And our ancestors thought that the Sultan was a tough customer.

But then again we are Goans and we came through that 450 year period with grace. We took elements from the Portuguese culture and adapted them to our own. If they wanted churches to be built, they used Hindu artisans who must have chuckled that typical Goan high-pitched breathless chuckle of glee, while they carved Hindu religious symbols into the beautiful facades of the Catholic baroque churches.

At the same time the Portuguese brought in chillies and cashews and added new flavours to our traditional Konkan cuisine. It is this which makes Goan cuisine stand out from the rest. Our music developed calypso rhythms with new instruments like the mandolin, the guitar, the banjo and the piano adding magic to the percussion and wind instruments we already had. Our Konkani language took on a Portuguese lilt and Portuguese words too. Our architecture became a thing of fine art.

It was all good. There must have been bad too, but the good outweighed it as can be seen by the multitudes of delighted visitors who come to this state to marvel at our Goan culture. They think this is a foreign land. Foreigners, especially Portuguese, also think Goa is a foreign land.

This makes us in Goa unique and it is this uniqueness we have to protest and nurture. If our elected representatives cannot have the vision to see that we have to carry the past with us if we have to move forward with any grace, then we, you and I have to make sure they learn this one valuable lesson. It’s like recycling. Nothing should go to waste. Unless it is absolutely useless.

So when bodies like Semana de Cultura Portuguesa decide to celebrate the Portuguese aspect of our Goan culture, on August 27 and 29, my request to our freedom fighters is despite the clowns that govern us today, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for giving us freedom from the colonial yoke. But please do not bring out morchas and go on fasts unto death to kill that aspect of what makes us so unique. Let ours be the final victory. We are free. We sent the Portuguese colonialists packing, but we kept the best for ourselves. That is our victory.

Primer for Political Kindergarten

2010-08-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Politics is now a viable career option. Getting into the line is not easy. It’s tough. It starts with social service, social activism, and lots of media coverage. Media is a must. You get onto every talk show. Wangle an interview. Cultivate mediapersons. You have to be in the constant public eye. Then you stand for the small time elections, the panchayat if you are in a village and municipal council if you are in the city. Working for a politician is also good. You get a ringside view for learning the ropes as well as when the time is right – blackmailing your boss. If you’re smart you can buy your way in.

Once you’re in it gets easier with each year you spend in the kodel. If you have to make it a vocation, you’ll die by the roadside, unsung. If you want to be a career politician you have to make sure you keep your seat or give it to your own immediate family. There is so much opportunity to make so much money especially in a state like Goa. It’s as easy as taking candy from a sleeping baby. Goa has a literate but uneducated electorate. The opportunities to amass wealth are legend. But you have only two hands. You need help. So you rope in your children. You get them to take in commissions in dry weather and hand out saplings in wet weather.

You also have to be pragmatic. Think of the future. No matter how much money you stash away in your secret bank accounts, it will still not be enough when you finally throw in the kodel. You have to train your family members like any other entrepreneur. It therefore stands to reason that there should be a special kindergarten for children and grandchildren of politicians.

Which is why I urge the powers that be, to start at least one political balwadi in each constituency. We already have the Bal Congress which is made up of young teens who can barely tear themselves from their sms-ing to address the problems their children will face when they grow up. I am working on the syllabus. I have started with the Alphabet for Baby Politicos.

The Alphabet Primer for Political Kindergarten

A is for the Activist – damn the lot to hell
B is for Black money – and not a soul you’ll tell
C is for commissions – to build your fortunes fast
D is for Development – infrastructure that will not last

E is for Education – for ensuring a dumb electorate
F is for Finance – it’s fun, it’s free and appropriate
for G which stands for Goa ¬– this gravy train of ours
H is only Heaven – since you’re reaching for the stars

I is for Idiots or Indians which means the same thing
J is for Judiciary that thinks – it still is king.
K is for the Kangaroo courts we always set in place
For L which is the Law that we manage to erase

M is for the Money we are duty bound to make
N is for the numbers that come to share the cake
O is for the Opportunists that we are proud to be
P is for the Party, to join or leave – we’re free

Q is for Quality – the BADDEST word there is,
R is for Respect … oh, just give that a miss.
S is for Suspicion, a constant state you’ll be in
‘cause T is for those Traitors who’ll throw you in the bin

U is for Useless, a quality you’ll need
V is for the victory your cash will win for greed
W is for Wealth which is why you’re in this line
X marks the spot we’ll occupy in time

Y is the Yellow of your gold in large amounts
Z is for the zillions in your secret bank accounts.
So children learn your alphabet you really shouldn’t shirk
It so your great-grandchildren will never have to work.
© Bevinda Collaco 2010

Getting away from it all

2010-08-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

I was standing on the bank of a knee-deep stream, thinking no need to put my cellphone into a plastic packet in my knapsack, it’s not at all deep and how pretty the rushing water looks, all white and emerald green.

But the group I was trekking with had divided into two, one was looking tragic on the other side of the stream and we learned that two of its members had been swept by the current and the boy’s arm had popped right out of its shoulder when he saved the other. And I thought for the 175th time, why on earth did I agree to come on this trek.

Everyone was looking timorously at the rushing water and I am willing to swear it sounded like it was hissing and laughing at us. Instructions were shouted and a thin rope was flung across the water. We were told to keep on one side of the rope, hold hands and walk sideways.

Now when you are crossing a stream and someone is bawling out to you to walk sideways it gets confusing. Do you walk sideways along the length of the stream? Or do you walk sideways across its breadth.

I thought how difficult can it be, it’s a knee deep stream with pretty white water. Considering that I am 56, 5ft 6 inches and weigh a good 77kg I laughed the light laugh and stepped out first, holding the hand of a girl half my age and size behind me and the hand of an experienced strong male trekker who taught me how to climb sideways down an almost vertical slope, half an hour earlier.

Did I say I laughed the light laugh? In a few traumatized minutes, I was laughing on the other side of my face, terrified out of my wits, because that miserable stream had its own ideas of Sunday morning entertainment.

It would not allow me to place one foot down, kept waving it away and any fool knows, you cannot proceed anywhere on one leg. Everyone was screaming instructions and I announced I could not move. They screamed some more and logic dictated I had better shift somehow towards the other side of the stupid stream.

Big mistake. I realized too late that I should have waited there until the stream eased up sometime after the monsoons. This was August...like maybe December?

CAPTION: THAT'S ME STRUGGLING WITH A RED AND BLUE KNAPSACK ON MY PETRIFIED BACK

It swept me off my feet, the strong man grabbed me, but you know ... 77 kgs and a stream with murder in its heart. I took him with me and we were both tossed around like twigs in the white water.

With the immersion in the cold water, the terror disappeared immediately and I felt this deep curiosity about two things, where would it end and why for the 176th time did I agree to come on a trek because 56-year-olds put others at risk. But the stream got its laugh of the day and tossed us both near the other bank.

That trek to Dudhsagar was with a group called Off Trail Adventures run by the diminutive Bianca Dias. I will never forget that trek not because of that stream with a demonic sense of humour, but because it opened a whole new world. Pure, simple, beautiful, where the only sounds were the call of the birds, the laughter of the streams and the majestic roar and crash of the mighty Dudhsagar waterfall. Experiencing all this in the company of people half my age who showed grit and maturity beyond their years.

The boy with the dislocated shoulder was in agony, you could see it in the dullness of his eyes, which were sparkling with fun an hour before. He, like a few others, had lost his shoes in the monster stream and had to hobble with his dislocated arm held sideways over a buddy’s shoulders. I gave him my spare set of ladies sandals which he accepted gratefully, and he walked up steep slopes helped by everyone, crossed one more stream, not as vicious as the one that caused the dislocation, and then had to be hoisted up a vertical shoulder of land. And not a word of complaint from him.

We climbed up in the intermittent rain, up more slippery slopes and finally onto the railway tracks so that we could come up close and personal with a sight that shakes you to your core, the mighty Dudhsagar in full spate. There are few sights more beautiful or awe-inspiring.

After that a frantic hobble with cramping muscles over the tracks to a goods train; clambering on to the engine, trying not to think how the hero with the dislocated arm managed. The slow train ride from leafy pathways, cool streams in a thick forest with butterflies and birds, to a motorized world with dirty puddles of rain water and a concrete jungle. Two completely different worlds, straddled by us, humans, the common denominator.

This is what I want Mr Developer

2010-08-02T05:04:00.001-07:00

Developers complain that it has become standard practice for activists to protest against every project that is introduced. Even at one of those talks shows on one of Goa’s news channels, an environmental activist was at a loss for words when a developer asked him what he and his movement actually wanted. They keep saying what they don’t want, the developer complained to the anchor, but they never say what they do want. And taking a cue from that, the anchor asked the activist what it was that he and his people wanted. I waited with bated breath, but nothing clear-cut came through in a jumble of half sentences.

And I thought if I was asked the question I would say that I would like the Goa of the seventies back again. When the roads were clean, the gardens beautiful with bougainvilla and abolim and the houses large … Where we had a clean beaches and quiet fishing villages to the West and lush green hills to the east ... Where everyone had enough and was satisfied with what they had ... Where a woman could wear all her jewellery to the village feast with no fear of it being snatched from her ... Where doors and windows of houses were kept wide open during the day and on hot summer nights too…

But that is not possible so here’s my second choice.

I want a plan. Houses should be built in settlement land and not anywhere else. Goans were self sufficient when it came to food. We had fish, we grew paddy, fruit and vegetables. We had coconuts and cashews which gave us some of the tastiest cuisine in the world and the most potent brews ever. It was scary that when India needed to import sugar, there was a shortage abroad too.

We need to rejuvenate the communidades and plant the fields and tend to the orchards again and throw the Land to the Tiller Act into the dustbin of history. We can have clusters of industrial estates in each taluka on barren land and give them piped water. The main cities can have business districts where corporates set up offices to provide jobs for our urban people.

In order to get good jobs we have to have well qualified and skilled people, so our educational institutions have to be given a major revamp. From nursery levels, teach children to be unafraid of the unknown and give them the tools to learn. Change our syllabus to include subject matter that is relevant today and for the future. Select only the best people for the teaching profession, because they play a crucial part in forming the ethics of the people who will run this state in the next decade.

Government jobs should be reserved only for 50-year-olds who can work till they are 60. The burden will be less on the taxpayer and we’ll have more money for sensible infrastructure.

I want youngsters to avoid government jobs; I want them to start small businesses, which can grow into big ones. I want our engineering, medical and other professional colleges to actively encourage research and enterprise. If we have a River Princess sitting on a sandbank, we should have alert young minds finding solutions to remove her before she does any damage. We should have such seats of learning that the products and services we offer should be the best in the world.

I want an end to corruption. I want every corrupt person to stop cold turkey and do the right thing. I want people to get jobs based on merit, not on how much they can pay or how much influence they have. For that I want a group of 40 wise men and women who take on the business of governance as a challenge and clean out the rot from within. I don’t mind a few gated communities, but I want a proper sewerage system all over settlement areas.

I want the rivers to be desilted regularly so that our rivers live long and healthy. For that to happen I want the mining to be controlled and the forests to be allowed to make large amounts of oxygen for us.

I want the outsiders who have already come to settle here to respect the land and the people. I do not want more outsiders, because we have to think of space for our own children. We have enough migrant labour and if we need more let our engineering students build machines to do those jobs.

I want the police to serve, protect and enforce the law. I want a happy healthy society which is unafraid and ready for a good laugh anytime. And one thing I would not change is our food, music, drama and wit. That has come through undisturbed through the centuries. If our music and arts can do it why can’t the rest of the essence of Goa? Like the ad says: let’s just do it!

Goa is proof that all things don’t end

2010-07-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

The T20 League ran and ended. Who remembers who won? The Cricket World Cup always cracks me up because the world, for cricket, is a handful of ex-British colonies minus the US. Well that ran across our TV screens for a while. Then the FIFA World cup took over and ended with Wimbledon running in tandem. We watched Rafael Nadal of Spain take the Wimbledon cup and the Spaniards waltz off with the FIFA World Cup. There seemed to be nothing to watch on TV until of all things – the Goa Monsoon Session Assembly.

It was so much like the FIFA World Cup, two teams locked in a lung-to-lung battle; sometimes the ruling team members got caught up in the precision of the Opposition’s game plan and scored several self goals. They turned against their own Captain when it came to transferring the drugs-cops-politicians nexus to the CBI. Worse, one of their best strikers Dayanand Narvekar grabbed the ball and kept hammering it into the ruling dispensation’s goal, with the Opposition even acknowledging that it took guts on his part.

The ruling team even had two main players missing. One red-carded by the judicial system and the Crime Branch and the other nursing probably a lily-liver in a Mumbai hospital. The ref Pratapsing Rane, mixed it up with the NBA and called a time-out twice.

Goans watching the games had food for thought when MLA Francis D’Souza stated that the government was driving a wedge between North and South Goa. Salcete constituencies he said were getting the entire pie with nothing left over for the rest of the state, just a few crumbs here and there.

MLA after MLA said the same thing that only Salcete is not Goa and Goa is not only Salcete. They said that the wealth of the state has to be equally divided among all constituencies. You cannot spend Rs 15 crore on one constituency in the south and not even Rs 2 crore on another in the north. D’Souza even said that with the exception of Water Resources and Forests Minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues, all other Ministers poured money only into their constituencies. And there was precious little to show for all that money spent. D’Souza said they were breaking the solemn oath they took when they were sworn in as Ministers that they would work for the good of Goa.

And as I would react to a foolish move in the game, I sniggered at Francis D’Souza. If I had a vuvuzela I would have blown it. Did the Ministers even know what they were reading when they took their oath? Do they even know what a solemn oath is? If they are non-matriculates, maybe not even Stds 5, 6 or 7 pass, how the hell are they expected to know what a solemn oath is? Yes I know ‘Hell’ is an oath…

They have stood for elections, bought, bullied and blarneyed their way into office because it’s true. They wanted to work for the people. Of course they wanted to work for people. Their people. Their families and in-laws and maybe a few good friends, never mind if those took the Ratol way out. But they know with just a Std 5 to their name there doesn’t seem to be much of a future for them. They could maybe, be a tailor’s assistant, or a motorcycle pilot, worthy jobs in their own way, but hardly making the big bucks they get with dipping their hands in the taxpayer’s pocket. They have the power to change existing laws; they have the power to make new laws. They have the Midas touch where everything turns into Swiss bank accounts. Why would they even bother about an oath?

But we watch the game being played and realize that indeed this is a very, very strange game. The Opposition wins every round hands down, but when they come out of the House, Goa declares them the losers. Because we the people cheer the ruling party on and turn our pockets inside out saying rob us, destroy us. That’s why we elected you and will always elect you. You are doing a very FINE job!

Wrong choices can be fun

2010-07-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, of course Nadia Torrado made a whole lot of wrong choices and they ended up tragically for her and all those who loved her. So did the distraught lady who jumped out of a window of GMC when her doctors bluntly told her she was HIV+. Both Nadia and the HIV+ patient could have been alive and relatively happy today if they had some good commonsense counseling.

Counseling allows you to make the best of a bad choice. But here I wish to place before you, and I’m walking on eggs here mind you, that wrong choices need not be the bottomless pit of doom everyone is so afraid of. Wrong choices can be fun while they last, and when the fun goes, shrug it off, try and fix things, if they cannot be fixed shrug again and move on. No point in beating yourself up over it. No need to reach for the Ratol. Memory is short, even for those who have been hurt by your wrong choices. More than modern medicine, we can rely on Time to heal all things. And Time is the ultimate arbiter. Once your time runs out, like the Metallica song with the beautiful guitar riffs says: Nothing else matters…

Wrong choices lend colour to your life. They build memories, and once you cross 50, you realize memories are like a protective armour of laughter around you. So it didn’t work out. So what! That practical joke you played on a good friend and got them so mad at you. Falling in love with an unsuitable boy or girl, or man or woman... Taking a job and realizing you were totally unfit for it. Eating like there was no tomorrow, drinking like there was no tomorrow, partying like there was no tomorrow and then clutching your chest and gasping for breath in the emergency room as your life flashes before your eyes.

Bad choices… but they were so much fun when you made them. They seemed so right at the time and you have all those fabulous memories. Not reading an invitation properly, dressing your child up in fancy dress and then finding out he is the only one in costume. He would never forgive you as long as he lived. But he did, right? And you could both laugh over it years later.

Speaking from personal experience, I have made wrong choices all my life. Studying the problem for all of five minutes, I figured out the reason why. I invariably come to wrong conclusions about a given situation or relationship. I form wrong premises and based on wrong premises I make the wrong choices. But my general experience has been that they worked out just fine. Not perfect mind you, but just fine. And that’s excellent in my book.

You make wrong choices all your life. Sometimes, they turn out all right and you say things like, by the Grace of God, or what luck, or you dust your hands and say, well, we came through that mess all right. The trick is to go with the flow and when you come to the rocks, try to minimize the damage, sit on the rock and dry yourself.

So what happens when the wrong choices turn into a nightmare of unbelievable proportions? Then too you have a battery of choices, all you have to do is not panic. Calm yourself, study the situation, weigh the options and then make your choice. There is no problem which does not have a solution. So we make another wrong choice, which will also have solutions. Life is this big fat puzzle that we have to work through. We have a choice. We can choose to enjoy it, or we can choose misery. We can choose life or we can choose death. Me? Give me life any day.

From Migrant to Man of Means

2010-07-11T02:33:00.001-07:00

He used to come to the corner store to buy tea-leaves and sugar every day. Tired, weary, but dogged in his desperation to get the job done. He used to carry a large metal container with a tap, which he used to sell tea to the hundreds of office staff in the hundreds of offices at Patto Plaza. There were a number of tea sellers like him, but he caught our eye since he used to stop by our local grocer every evening to stock up on tea and sugar and a few meagre odds and ends he needed for himself. I think the grocer said he came from Rajasthan.

A while later, a woman began to accompany him. Definitely Rajasthani style brightly coloured saris with her pullo covering her head and shading her eyes and nose completely. She used to sit on the Patto side of the walkover bridge. She used to crochet little caps for babies and had befriended the Kannadiga woman who had spread out inexpensive wares like brushes, combs and mobile phone covers etc on a tarpaulin for office goers to pick up in their headlong rush to the bus stand or to work somewhere deep inside Panjim city. The Rajasthani woman crocheted the baby hats and the Kannadiga sold them for a commission. A small side business while her husband sold tea to sleepy office workers.

The husband of course kept office hours and returned after 5.30. He would come to the small crocheting enterprise, give his empty metal tea container to his wife to carry and together they would walk over the little pink bridge to the grocer and buy tea, sugar, grain and some vegetables.

Still later we saw them with a whole bunch of Rajasthani women, all chattering loudly and marveling at this new planet called Goa. They sat down with the crocheting wife at her place of work, a small parapet next to the Kannadiga woman selling small stuff. All their heads were covered with their pullos, but our crocheting small scale entrepreneur had her face completely open to the elements and the incurious onlookers. That was what Goa did to her. She found she needn’t hide her face here.

Recently we saw a young man accompanying the Rajasthani couple. He was an import from their home town. Now he held the tea container in his hand and he carried on the tea business.

The Rajasthani man, the original tea seller had now bought a second-hand motorbike and we saw him riding into the city. Apparently he had a proper job as a security man at an office in Panjim. His wife no longer sits on the parapet crocheting her baby caps. It looks like she doesn’t need to anymore, since her husband has a good job and also gets a commission for his countryman who is starting up the same ladder. Any bets? The teenage tea seller will get another relative to take over supplying their tannin fix to hundreds of office staff, while he gets his benefactor’s security job, once the benefactor gets a better position.

It’s the same with the unending line of boys in their late teens and 20s who come in from Orissa, Jharkhand and Nepal. They wash cars and have the cars of an entire neighbourhood pretty much under their control. They charge whatever they like and no one undercuts them. We, who feel embarrassed to wash the same cars that we drive so proudly, pay whatever they ask and feel the price is worth the chore of carrying a bucket of water to the car and wielding a washcloth.

I don’t really have the moral right to complain about migrants flooding into Goa, because a very nice Nepali boy called Shibu, climbs uncomplainingly up 82 steps to my house, takes a bucket full of water and washcloth and washes my car, all done with a big smile. If he didn’t do it, I would have to (wash the car I mean, not smile) and I don’t like doing a Jack and Jill number down the hill.

But there’s hope yet. In the Rajasthani woman who does not feel the need to cover her face any more. She shows her face with the same indifference that any Goan woman does. We take a simple thing like that as our right. The Rajasthani woman had to travel down the country to free herself. Life will be tough for her, but she can walk free among others without fear. Here in Goa. That’s why she will never go back. That’s why she will bring more and more of her family and friends to share in what she thinks is Paradise. Can’t really blame her…

The only problem exercising the old brain is this: Where can Goans go? To Rajasthan? We’re not built for hard work.

The frustrated activist

2010-07-04T14:27:00.001-07:00

We all like to feel like we want to do something to help. But when push comes to shove we find perfectly good reasons for sitting back in our balcaos and running the world from there.

I remember when I saw footage of the cops and the Goa Village Groups scuffling outside the Secretariat after the CM told the spokespersons he did not require their votes, I got all fired up and wanted to join an Organization. So I called up one of the early brains behind the Goa Bachao Abhiyan and said I’d like to join. She told me she was no longer on the committee, but gave me the number of one of the present committee members.

Slightly less fired up but still all eagle-eyed and crusader-like, I dialed the number and the person on the other side cut off my call.

There is nothing like a cut-off call to give you that What-the-Hell feeling. I looked at the phone moodily waiting for an apologetic or explanatory SMS to follow. What I mean to say is, there’s no need to be rude. One understands that the callee is a busy firebrand, surely a message could have been sent saying, “Sorry, bitng plicemn’s elbow”, or “Sorry @ meetng”, or “Busy now pls cll latr” ; the caller has feelings too.

I sent an email, no answer, which in my book, is the height of bad manners.

Called up another stalwart at his residence. Got his mother and wife respectively. They told me they were waiting for him to go “to buy bazaar”. I asked them to ask him to call me back. No call back. And there I was considerably less fired up, and with no place to go.

So it was back to the keyboard for me doing what I do best, rabble-rousing through the written word. Even started a website to do even more rabble rousing, not just in Goa but with Goans everywhere in India and around the world. That was and continues to be an excellent feeling. People send me news not just from Goa, but from Delhi and all over the world; as far away as Quebec about entering a Goan Float in the national Canada Parade. I write it and immediately it goes through the internet all over, the country and the state.

Still there is a feeling of incompleteness. Except for annoying Eduardo Faleiro, for me, the website has not hit the spot, neither has this column or the other one. Words do nothing to stop the wrongs being done to this land and to us. Wasteful expenditure, destruction of the land, marginalizing of the aam aadmi, pollution of water bodies we will one day die for…

There are too many tiny groups fighting with their backs to the wall, fighting against the mining companies, against mega builders, against politicians, encroachers, fighting against outsiders, fighting for validation, fighting for life itself. And the baddies just laugh and carry on regardless. We are the sheep and the farmer who is supposed to look after us, lets in the wolves and laughs over the fine sport.

Like the shoal of fish that frightens off predators, these small groups have to come together under one umbrella. Or failing that one civilian army should be set up. I would like to call it the new 3G. Goa Gheraoing Group. If anyone cares to start this group, I will gladly join as a foot soldier. It should be an amorphous group having no shape or structure, just a group that can be galvanized within an hour through yelling, smoke signals, telephone, SMS, e-mails any form of communication to help out the smaller groups with the sheer weight of numbers.

The only thing that turns the baddies’ knees to water is numbers and the threat of violence. This is the quickest way to exert balances and checks on them. If all of Goa has 4000 policemen there is a limit to what they can do with 500,000 determined people. Let the freedom fighters concentrate on Western culture and Portuguese names. We have to fight for our own survival and that of our children’s children.

My name is Swagatham

2010-06-27T02:55:00.000-07:00

I’ll be the first to admit it. When people ask me to bend, I crawl. When they ask me to jump; I ask how high. So when the great and glorious freedom fighter of Goa Naguesh Karmali gets worked up twice a year on Liberation Day and Revolution Day, I listen very, very carefully.

He had once marched into Fontainhas and smashed some really beautiful and very new ceramic tiled road signs built by the CCP for which you and I were overcharged. Karmali was really busy that day; he pulled out a signpost with the name of a Portuguese baddie and replaced it with an Indian name. He did all this with the enthusiastic help of a band of fighters. You cannot call them freedom fighters because technically they were free to do whatever they liked and are still free. If I went around smashing stuff, before you could say “Portugal Murdabad”, I would be dining on cockroaches at Aguada jail.

So with reality being what it is, when Karmali ordained that all Portuguese road names should be changed. I said yessiree, because really who cares about the garbage thrown everywhere and making your last will and testament every time you drink a glass of water, or brush your teeth with tap water. What is so wrong about buildings coming up on all our hills, and in our fields and all their sewage flowing around the place? There’s nothing wrong with large tracts of forest being cleared out on a daily basis. And really, why worry about the havoc created by mining on our roads, in our children’s lungs, in our rivers, our water sources and our agricultural lands? But I digress, if Karmali thinks that road name changes are the need of the hour, who am I to disagree?

And just see the foresight of the man. These freedom fighters believed in the concept of hard work which we miss these days. Once the road names are changed, picture the flurry of activity. Letterheads will have to be changed, new visiting cards, telephone directories; Lonely Planet and Rough Guide bibles of the traveler will have to rewrite their Goa chapters. Goa will have to change to Govapuri or Gopakkam or Aparanta, or Karmalisthan.

Who am I also to suggest names for roads, though I think I would prefer numbers. It could stave off Alzheimer’s Disease. Imagine Rua de Natal, the same one whose ceramic signpost Karmali’s helpers smashed to bits. It could be Road 325. Or 325 Marg. Fontainhas would be Phawara Nagar. Maybe they would name the roads after freedom fighters, but it would have to be Hindu and Muslim freedom fighters because Christians would have to change their names to make it to a road signpost.

Which was why I cunningly set in motion a plan to change my name, before Karmali tells me to do so. Mine is a Portuguese name, but I dropped the ‘m’ when I was in college since people made a sad mess of pronouncing it, to the point when it embarrassed me to introduce myself. Oh yes, they could pronounce Hingorani, and Chattopadhyaya and Kanakasabai, but Bemvinda, no! “How can the ‘m’ remain silent? If an ‘m’ is there it should be enunciated.” Only when I came home to Goa did my name roll musically off the tongues of so many. When they sent me invitations or left notes at my door, they added the ‘m’ in the middle of my name.

My name means “welcome” in Portuguese. My mother’s way of telling me that though I was her fifth born and a large 9-pounder, as far as she and my family and the world was concerned everyone who addressed me would tell me I was welcome. Even when they were snarling out my name.

But this would have to change because logically speaking after Karmali changes all the lovely lilting road names, because Portuguese is a pretty language, he will have to come after all those with Portuguese names and surnames. God help the Albuquerques or da Gamas. I decided that I would immediately change my name to its Indian translation. Henceforth I will be called Swagatham. I have not the faintest idea what my surname could mean, but broken up it could be Coal and Lasso. I could even have a double-barrelled surname – Kholsa-Russy. Swagatham Kholsa-Russy. It has a ring to it, a certain swing too which my current Portuguese name clearly lacks. And it is all thanks to the redoubtable Karmali. May his tribe decrease.

The miracle of email

2010-06-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

My old typewriter looks reproachfully at me from the shelf it occupies. It’s a portable Olympia which gave me excellent service. It is not completely demoralized though, because the Man-of-The-House prefers it to the computer. Before that I pounded out what I thought was pure literature on my father’s old not-really-portable typewriter. It was also an Olympia which would be welcomed by a museum that knows its onions today. My father used to be a frenetic letter-writer. He would dash off letters to relatives, civic officials, industrialists and editors. He loved that machine and the machine loved him. My job at age 7 or 8, was to take a brush and clean the metal faces of the alphabets, because the typewriter ribbons would deposit crud on the o, e, b, p, a, g, s and d. After brushing them I would take a pin and scoop out every last bit of crud, then do a test run.

But once I was introduced to a computer which was more of a word processor, at my place of work, I was a lost cause. The computer owned me from the day I touched the keyboard. Just the lightest of touches, a flat keyboard, where you didn’t see stars every time your fingers slipped between the keys. You saw the letters appear like magic on the monitor and life I thought could not be better. Those were during the Wordstar days, when one had to learn several commands for bold, italics, paragraphing etc.

And then there was Word. And my word, it was beautiful. No commands, nothing! You just selected the font you wanted, the size and away you went. Then came the Internet with the dial-up modem. Now with the speed of broadband I marvel at my patience waiting for that dial-up modem to do its thing with that irritating sound of it revving up. The Internet came into my life and I became its slave. There was so much knowledge at the click of a mouse. And email was so easy. You could get information out to any Tom, Dick or Harry. You could use it to get different types of work done. Even repairs of washing machines and refrigerators.

I managed to get a washing machine with expired warranty replaced free with a brand new one, got my refrigerator fixed and generally became the bane of local service centres for electronic goods. Every time they took their own sweet time fixing my stuff, I would locate their head office and dash off emails and utilize the cc with great gusto. The cc in a typewritten letter could be a lie. You can inform the receiver that you have sent a carbon copy of the letter to his bosses and the Queen of England too; he could call up the Queen and find out that you were telling a big fat lie, but with email, the c.c. never lies. If there’s an email address in the c.c. slot, sure as the nose on your face, it’s gone to the person concerned.

The original receiver can see that he is not the only reader of that mail. His boss’s boss is also reading that mail. And if it has criticism of him in it, his boss’s boss is also reading it. This puts the fear of God into a lazy employee who feels his bosses are far, far away and he can do pretty much as he pleases. Uh-huh, not with the email c.c. It never fails to get the job done.

I am most grateful to whoever invented the computer and all its add-ons for one thing and one thing only – the music that plays on my radio every day. I love music and I am one of those strange characters that loves good rock, good metal, good reggae, good country, pop, jazz, rap, any music with melody, rhythm and attention holding lyrics. I hated rap but became a convert when I heard Baby Got Back. I still hate hip-hop.

But one day my world lost its lustre when my favourite RJ Mark Rocha went off the air. Along with him went the glorious mix of music from all decades. The new radio jockeys were only familiar with hip-hop and Lady Gaga and undiluted hip-hop and Lady Gaga clogging the airwaves throughout the day can make you gag. I actually switched the radio off. But I was not happy. I cannot do housework without music. And changing CDs while juggling mop and broom is an accident waiting to happen. Then email came to my rescue.

I found the radio station website and dashed off an email explaining to them the benefits of playing a mix of music so that people of my vintage who knew ‘real’ music could appreciate a little rap and hip hop. And the present generation and genext could appreciate the rich music of the 70s and 80s. I cunningly pointed out the demographic of those who listened to their station during the day, mothers and grandmothers at home, sitting ducks for good advertising. Someone somewhere read my email and the radio station began playing its lovely mix of music genres again. Now they are recruiting for sales and rj’s who know their music. It’s a win-win situation. Thanks to? The miracle of email of course.

The Section 304 coincidence

2010-06-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

Two cases made national headlines on one day. Both slapped with Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code, which is culpable homicide not amounting to murder. One was due to the mass killing of 20,000 people in Bhopal 26 years ago through corporate negligence at the Union Carbide factory at Bhopal. The other was the death of a young woman in Goa through her romantic association with Mickky Pacheco, a politician with a highly chequered career. One has caused great revulsion across the nation and the other has done the same in Goa.

Section 304 was slapped on Warren Andersen the CEO of Union Carbide 26 years ago and on former Tourism Minister Mickky Pacheco three days ago. Mickky Pacheco used his contacts to fall off the grid and disappear. Warren Andersen used the Government of India to falling off the grid and disappear.

In both cases poisonous chemicals were used to cause death. Mickkys 304 was due a tube of rat poison, followed by death and destruction of evidence. Andersen’s 304 was poisoning with deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant and killed over 20,000 people in what is arguably the worst industrial disaster the world has seen. Followed by a government cover up to make the disaster look less like a crime and more an Act of God.

In Mickky’s case, the state government is pulling out all the stops to nail him. In the Bhopal gas tragedy the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister’s office actually sent a government plane to fly Andersen to New Delhi and then out of the country to the safety of the USA, where his government refused to extradite him to face charges in India. They said he was not responsible, the Indian management was. Yet in the case of the British Petroleum oil leak into the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, the US government is pinning responsibility on the CEO of the company and demanding compensation amounting to billions of dollars. The Bhopal victims got approximately $500 each and a US spokesperson said these memorable words: “$500 dollars is pretty good for an Indian.”

Andersen was warned that the Bhopal plant had major mistakes in its system. He ignored the warnings. But it is significant that Warren Andersen immediately corrected those same flaws in the factories in the US plant.
In Mickky’s case, the police, the media, the public prosecution and even the court is focused on nailing the culprit. In Andersen’s case the authorities released Andersen on the same day he was arrested and flew him out of Bhopal in a state government plane.
Congress leader Arjun Singh, was Madhya Pradesh’s Chief Minister in 1984, but he refuses to comment on his actions at that time.
Anderson was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, grievous assault and killing and poisoning human beings and animals due to leakage of the MIC gas from the Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal.

A Bhopal trial court last Monday convicted eight Indian officials of Union Carbide. Anderson was not even mentioned in the judgment. They were sentenced to just 2 years and were given bail almost immediately and escorted out of the court through a back exit. The trial court watered down the case on the instructions of a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (SC).
All three SC judges are doing very well after that ruling. One became a member of the International Criminal Court at The Hague. One is now a Congress MP and chairman of a commission of Dalit Muslims and Christians and the third shockingly, has been presiding over the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed super-specialty hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide.

The Rajiv Gandhi government’s zeal to shield Union Carbide from justice as well as from paying proper compensation to the victim’s families is the stuff of legends. It continues till today with the Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi legally representing Dow Chemicals the company that bought Union Carbide. He made sure that a) they cannot be held responsible for the Union Carbide disaster and b) could not be held liable for cleaning up and contamination of the site in Bhopal, as even Union Carbide had not been held liable.

Mickky may get away scot free from his case, while the axe may fall on the family of Nadia Torrado, who may also get away with a slap on the wrist. The end result will just be a feeling of foolishness on the part of the Goan people who actually select people like Mickky to govern the state.

In the case of Bhopal, we will continue to feel anger, revulsion and deep pain as generations of children will be born deformed and cursed from birth due to the criminal negligence of a company that was specifically warned of leaks in the system and impending disaster. Only now, 26 years later, a much more aware media armed with Right to Information, has uncovered the criminal negligence of the government of India itself. Our elected representatives that bent over backwards to protect an American company but turned their back on the deaths or 20,000 innocent people. And they continue to turn their backs on disease and suffering of countless numbers of those unlucky to survive the gas leak at Union Carbide in December of 1984.

Boneless chicken

2010-06-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

Actually it was Manohar Parrikar who came out with it. He looked at the media-persons before him and said, what kind of a government is this? Ministers are involved in sex scandals, rape scandals, murder, excise scams, illegal mining… We have a boneless chief minister, a man with no backbone.” I heard it on the television as I was preparing Murg Makhani, butter chicken that can adapt itself to any occasion, any cuisine situation. It is chicken marinated overnight in curd, along with spices and cooked in tomato puree.

I listened to the news item while rubbing the marinade into the chicken. What Parrikar meant was that the Chief Minister did not have the courage to put his foot down. He was too chicken to do anything about his ministers, because he was so afraid of losing his seat. One image led to another and the allegory I ended up with was a boneless chicken.

Boneless chicken which is used for Murg Makhani gets along very well with a variety of spices, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, lime, cumin, methi, ginger and garlic. By themselves each cannot do much, but together, they make a formidable combination. Just like a coalition government actually. Bits and pieces of other food groups, nothing much by themselves, but together, they mix and merge their interests and they cling to the boneless Chicken Makhani (we’ll call it CM). Together with the CM they get a uniform flavour, and with all that rubbing they are embedded deep in the CM. The CM cannot move without them, they are always with him in everything he does.

Making a CM to your specifications is not at all a difficult task, provided you have the right recipe with you. So I am going to give you a recipe for a CM that is easy to digest.

How to Make Boneless Butter Chicken (Chicken Makhan)

Ingredients:

For Marinating
• 80 kg chicken (boneless)
• Sour comments from opposition
• His own colleagues trying to topple him constantly
• 1 powerful but independent minister
• I handful of openly corrupt leaders who everyone is too afraid to expose
• A sprinkling of fiery orators who can whip up the masses.
• Lots of infrastructure projects for the ministers
• Mining Lobby
• Building Lobby
• Lots of empty promises

For the Gravy
• We the people of Goa, whipped and beaten.

Instructions
• The chicken cuts himself into small pieces. He mixes, well all the ingredients for the marinade and thoroughly rubs the mixture into his chicken pieces
• Let the marinated pieces stand for an entire term.
• You will need lots of grease to grease the chicken. Put him in the pan. He will not move. He will just sit there in his boneless way, because he knows if he jumps out of the frying pan he will end up in the fire.

And that’s how you get the perfect Chicken Makhani, hereinafter known as CM. The CM be warned, has a shelf life. No matter how thick the gravy, the CM can get rotten. He needs to feel the heat regularly. Therefore the gravy too needs to be heated constantly, else it will just sit and congeal.

Education and Bal Congress

2010-05-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Any way you look at it Bal Congress is a great idea. Bal Congress is the Congress Party’s bright idea of grooming young netas and netesses in schools. It’s a great idea because all other parties are going to go the Bal way. We will have the Bal Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bal Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Bal DMK, the Bal AIADMK, the Bal RJD, Bal Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bal Nationalist Congress Party, the Bal MGP. Our education system will be all Bals.

Each party will set up its own schools in every hamlet of the nation. Working along the lines of catch-em-young, we will be raising little netas from nursery level. Instead of learning colours the regular way, they will learn orange is actually saffron, red is for communism, green is for Islamic parties. They will learn black is the best colour of money, white the clothes you wear to parliament, blue the colour you turn when the court convicts you, yellow the colour of investigative journalism. The toddlers will learn symbols, the hand, the lotus, the lion, the bicycle, the lantern etc.

Admissions will be given to toddlers purely on winnability. Uniforms will be white cotton kurta pyjamas and white Nehru caps. The syllabus will be changed with different textbooks for different schools depending on their affiliation.

Mathematics will be an important subject, very, very important. The little netas will be proficient in numbers, in profit and loss (profit to them and loss to the nation). It’s all good! Instead of learning the composition of mass, they will learn about the compostion of the masses. How to keep earnings of the masses low, and how to increase their own.

There will not be much focus on pure sciences, because lets face it, what role does science play in politics? Let the private schools deal with new breakthroughs in science, engineering and technology, the little netas only have to learn how to make the right purchase of bad technology so that they can collect huge commissions and kickbacks. They will learn how to open secret Swiss bank accounts and stash their ill-gotten gains for their children.

The little netas will learn how to formulate tenders; why else do they call it the tender age, huh? They will learn how to negotiate with a favoured company, fudge the amounts, take money under the table, stash it away in aforementioned Swiss accounts and take on a bad company to build bad infrastructure or provide a bad service, like pre-monsoon works at Vasco.

Geography will be ruthlessly broken into constituencies first, then states, then countries. Position and flow of rivers will be very important, because rivers are a huge source of income for parties and netas. Dams can be built in the wrong places, huge dams, rivers can be silted up, because floods are a gold mine for our netas. They will learn how to destroy good agricultural land and entire agrarian societies.

They will concentrate on Languages, Tweaked History to show their party in the best light possible, Religion will be a very important subject, where the little netas will learn how to play one community against the other. For that you need a good knowledge of all religions so that you can play on the emotions of the masses.

Higher education will focus on commerce, book-keeping, accounts fudging, banking and yes management. You have to have great management skills to be the champion puppet master. Physical fitness is not desirable, why should it, when you can hire legs and arms by the hundreds to do your work for you. Sports are definitely out, because team spirit and a sporting spirit are bad words in the political lexicon.

Yes the Bal Congress idea is a great one. Especially if you want to ram that final nail into the coffin of Government education in India. One believed that our education system had reached the furthest depths it could. But then one cannot underestimate the nation’s oldest party to barrel through again, digging a deeper pit to shove the institution even further into the depths.

Save the Goan

2010-05-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

The realization struck when I saw Carmen Miranda announce to the television cameras that CM Digambar Kamat said that he did not need her vote, he gets enough votes from the migrants. Like the tiger in India, the Goan in Goa is definitely on the endangered species list. And we are doing as sloppy a job of saving the Goan as we are of saving the tiger. Look at the measures taken to save the tiger: a little bit here and a little bit there with poachers doing pretty much as they please. The tiger sanctuaries are vast and the forest rangers say it is impossible to catch them. Often it is the rangers themselves and locals who are hand in glove with the poachers. If only the tigers could get together and turn against their killers. It is no different here.

Here the poachers keep coming in from all directions. They don’t actually take a gun and shoot us, skin us and steal our body parts. Instead they overpower us with money and sweet promises and steal our souls. Like the tiger we try to protect ourselves, but we Goans are also wired to bask in the sun. Attacking and fighting was never the Goan way. We have welcomed invaders throughout our long history, allowed them to rule over us and over time merged with them to morph into a new and even more fascinating entity that remained essentially Goan. This time it is different. We have run out of the Goan essentials. Too many of us are okay with the instant gratification policies of the poachers.

Our enemies know only strength. They respect and fear mass disobedience. They quail before the threat of violence. If it is the electorate that has got them into power allowing them to sell themselves and Goa to the highest bidder, it is the electorate that has to curtail that power. I don’t mean we have to wait until the next elections. We have to act now. If we continue rolling over and playing dead, we are in serious trouble.

We owe a very great debt of gratitude to the disparate groups that fight pitched battles with Goa’s new invaders in the hinterland, or the plains, or the hill slopes. We owe Goa Bachao Abhiyan. We owe Claude Alvares and his Goa Foundation. We owe Mathany Saldanha. These are people who have professions, jobs, homes and families, who have given up their time for a larger cause. The cause of caring and protecting the Goa that has been preserved for us by our ancestors and passing it on to our children and our childrens’ children.

We are a package deal. Goans are Goa. If Goa is gone, so too will Goans be gone, pushed out from the one small, beautiful place they have always called home.

We have to come together, get out of our comfort zones, face the heat, both in terms of the fearsome sun and the heat of grappling with police, goons hired by miners, industrialists and builders to terrorize those who dare to object to the rape of their land. We need to unite under one umbrella organization. Form a network that can reach the smallest house in the smallest hamlet to offer support and protection. We already have one organization, the Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) which is recognized in most parts of Goa. We need to strengthen the GBA and take strength from it. They are fighting an impossible battle, stretched out thin, unable to fight simultaneous attacks from all sides cheered on by our political class who we have selected to fight for us.

We have so many heroes fighting the good fight, Aires Rodrigues who revels in the fact that though many have tried to kill him, he celebrates his 50th birthday tomorrow, Dr Oscar Rebello who is the face of Goan resistance to the rest of the country, the no-nonsense Sabina Martins who thinks nothing of spending long hours into the night to force a promise from one of the slipperiest chief ministers Goa has ever had. Patricia Pinto, Anand Madgavkar, Claude Alvares, the 85-year-old Dora D’Souza, her daughter-in-law Sheryl, and Sheryl’s eight-year-old daughter, Prajal Sakhardande, Pravin Sabnis, Nandakumar Kamat, Rajendra Kerkar, Seby Rodrigues, Carmen de Miranda, Judith Rebello, Judith Almeida, it is impossible to list them all here.

There are easily hundreds of hardworking men and women who love this small state of ours so much that they forgo the comforts of blinkers, ear plugs and gags that most of us use. It’s time we stopped being passengers going along for the ride. It’s time we took the reins, or at least got off and walked shoulder to shoulder with those who are fighting to preserve our identity.

That is the only way we can beat the poachers at their game. This is the only way we can preserve some of our cultural wealth for our descendants. This is the only way the Goan can survive.

Sussaygaaad Goanese

2010-05-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

Don’t know if it bothers you as much as it bothers me, but when a non-Goan Indian uses the word ‘Soçegado’ and pronounces it “Sussaygaaadoh”, I feel a need, a burning need, to rip my arm off and whack the fellow across the head with it. It’s worse when they use the word “Goanese” to refer to all things Goan.

A relative who has made it big in the furniture business in Mumbai could not wrap his mind around the fact that the only dealer of wood in Goa he wished to use was not interested in keeping his shop open during the siesta hours. “But I am giving you business worth lakhs,” spluttered the relative. “Gentleman,” said the wood shop man politely, "my shop will be closed from 1 to 4.” “But that is the only time I can come to your shop,” argued the relative. “Sorry,” said the wood shop man, “try and come after 4, but before 7 because that is when I close my shop for the day.” My relative was shocked that the wood shop man had no business sense whatsoever. “He wouldn’t last a day in Bombay with that attitude,” he said.

I reminded the relative of the fabulous times we all used to have during our summer and winter vacations at our ancestral house in the village. The early rising, the days packed with doing things that gave us such joy. Settling down under a stationary bullockcart in the heat of the afternoon sun, watching a couple of butterflies winging lazily by. The wonderful food that tasted so good because it was cooked in earthen pots on wood fires by cooks who loved us and who began slaving over the meals at dawn. The amazing quiet, broken only by the twittering of birds and the soughing of the wind in the trees.

How we were welcomed by the villagers and given small jobs to do, like collecting fat kokum berries, spreading sour mango pieces on coconut mats to dry before being carefully stored for use in those heavenly curries. How we also danced on the cashew fruits crushing them under our dusty feet along with the men who ran the distillery up in the hills. How they laughed that soft high-pitched Goan laugh when we drank the neero in leaf cups made of cashew leaves. How we stole a few smoked sausages from the store room skewered them on sticks and roasted them over a small fire we made of sticks and leaves. How we ate the half cooked, burnt things and still feel nothing in the best restaurants in the world ever tasted as good. How we “borrowed” the fisherman’s canoe and paddled down the river. How one deranged cousin tried to look under the boat, tipped it over and sent all of us into the water. How we tried to turn the canoe back right side up, but our knowledge of physics was non-existent as was our muscular strength. How the owner of the boat waded out, turned it over and then whacked whoever his long wiry arms could reach. How he later taught us how to fish and even prised a catfish that had impaled itself on a playmate’s hand, before pouring feni on the wound.

I reminded him of the village feast, the food served to the villagers on banana leaves in our grandfather’s massive balcao, the pigs that had human names, the slow, measured rhythms of life in the village. That was socegado, I told him. It meant contentment, not laziness. Goans were not lazy, they were content with a little, but that little was so rich in quality. It was a quality of life that allowed them to live a healthy, happy and really long life. People hardly ever died of unnatural causes in the village. They were very fit. My grandfather could hurdle over a two foot stone wall to chase a woman who was robbing fruit from his trees. He was in his early eighties at that time. No one had cars. There was one Mercedez Benz taxi in the village, that was hired to bring us from the ship to the house and take us back to the ship when the school term was beginning. We used to be in tears as we left and our grandfather and his retainers would also be in tears. We were the privileged ones. Privileged to have lived and laughed in what I can only call Paradise.

The relative spent the siesta hours with me talking about those days that we realized were so special and went back to the shop at 4.30. “Let’s give him half an hour to get organized,” he said with a smile.

Socegado, I would like to tell my non-Goan friends, is the common goal in the traditional Goan ethos. All actions were aimed towards doing enough to get by, so that there was enough time for the things that mattered, like song and dance, fishing and feasting, conversation on the balcao with family and friends, family prayers, the laughter of little children and a sip of feni as the shadows lengthened. The pity of it is that all our actions today are resulting in socegado dying out, slowly but surely, and taking the traditional Goan away with it. Then “Goanese” will be the correct term for us. And I’m the idiot who will live out the rest of her life with only one arm.

Disabled? Hardly!

2010-05-13T12:57:00.001-07:00

The general trend among most well-meaning people is to treat disabled persons with kid gloves. If they meet a blind person, they generally end up shouting every word out, presuming the poor guy cannot lip read therefore they must shout to get their message across. When they are thrown into close proximity with a deaf person, they wave their arms frantically trying to dramatize every word and end up making complete fools of themselves, leaving leave the deaf person either amused or frustrated.

It has been my experience, so you know I am not talking out of the back of my head, that disabled persons have one, sometimes two super talents. Way, way superior to able persons.

I know a deaf artist who paints beautifully, and sculpts even better. His sculptures and plaster models are stunning. He’s a stickler for perfection and can throw a proper tantrum when he does not get what he wants.

I remember Cosmos a college friend who was born with a spinal deformity. He was very short, very thin and had a twisted body. That did not stop him from grabbing a hockey stick and joining a game, lurching this way and that, whacking the ball when he could and other players’ legs when he couldn’t hit the ball.

He had the naughtiest twinkle in his eye and was quick to poke fun at anyone, even people three times his size. Cosmos, or Cozzie as everyone called him, could play any musical instrument exceptionally well, except the drums. “My legs are too short,” he would laugh. When he played the guitar, people stopped what they were doing and listened in wonder.

He used to ride a scooter with a side car and thought nothing of breaking traffic rules in Bombay where the beefy RTO police used to slap first and ask questions later. Cozzie decided that it was pointless going all the way down the flyover at Peddar Road when all he needed to do was cross the road divider and get into the south bound traffic lane. Of course his two wheeler which was actually a four-wheeler with the sidecar, got stuck on top of the divider. Of course the RTO came riding up on a huge motorbike. He looked at the slightly worried Cozzie perched helplessly on his scooter trying to coax it over the divider. The inspector’s head sank into his shoulders and Cozzie quickly scrambled off his scooter and pathetically said, “I’m handicapped”. The Inspector, saw the barely concealed twinkle and said gruffly, “I’ll make you more handicapped! Don’t you ever do this again.” He helped Cozzie over into the south bound traffic lane and sent him on his way.

Cozzie was brave. No challenge too tough for him to face. He lived off one of those quiet lanes with pretty cottages and gardens in Bandra close to the Bandra Fair. He was returning late one night dressed in a black suit, because he used to play at the Taj Intercontinental twice or thrice a week. The Bandra Fair was going on but since it was so late about 2 a.m., there were hardly any people on the road. A man walked up to Cosmos, pulled out a knife and demanded money. Cozzie looked at the knife, then at the man and calmly asked him why he was robbing people when he was strong and healthy. “Look at me,” said Cozzie, “I am handicapped but I am earning my living.” “Stop talking and give me your money,” said the thief poking his knife at Cozzie’s suit. Cozzie pulled out his wallet and told the man, “Okay, I’ll give you the money, but I need the wallet, because it has my telephone book and documents that I need.” The thief tried to pull the wallet out, but Cozzie’s grip was pretty strong. Just then a crowd of young revelers came by. The thief stepped away from Cozzie and said, “Okay, okay, you can go away.” But Cozzie did not walk off with the revelers and his wallet. He stood there and earnestly tried convincing the thief of the error of his ways. As soon as the crowd was out of earshot, the thief pulled his knife out again and demanded the wallet. “Don’t waste my time, or I’ll kill you,” he said. Cozzie sighed and handed over his wallet. The thief took it away, telephone book and all.

When we heard about it my first reaction was annoyance at his foolishnessness. “What happened? Your brain wasn’t working?” He grinned, “I don’t think so; I wasn’t even sitting on it…!”

In one of those obscene twists of fate, Cozzie died of a brain tumour. I lost a good friend, but the world lost a little of its beauty when he was no longer in it. I never considered Cozzie as disabled, or differently abled, or “handicapped” as he liked to refer to himself when he was up to no good. In music he was a genius. In spirit he was a giant.

Photo ID blues

2010-05-10T07:20:00.000-07:00

There are two things most people dislike. Posing for photographs and showing photo ID. The first part is traumatic. You sit there aware that maybe you did not comb your hair properly, maybe your skin is too shiny, maybe it is too powdery. Maybe your double chin cannot be hidden. A person beset with doubts is not tranquil; not happy and will definitely not make a good photograph. Which is why nine persons out of 10 end up looking like rabbits caught in headlights. All those instructions from the photographer were a complete waste of time too. His “little chin up; little chin down; not smile pliss,” translated into nothing, nothing like the Mona Lisa.

We will gloss over the cringing horror of going to collect your photo ID card which embarrasses you so much that you forget to check for inaccuracies in the information. The real test of the steel core in you comes when you have to show photo ID when it is demanded. You are dressed well, feeling confident, you march through the security check, or rather you march to the security check and they ask for photo ID and your world crumbles as your trembling fingers reach for that small plastic scrap of your moment of shame.

In a way it is a good thing that Goa being the smallest state of India, we get lumped with all the ‘pilot projects’ involving a lot of door-to-door surveys and people asking the same questions all over again.

I was stopped at Hyderabad’s new International Airport entrance by a severe looking security man who told me a ticket printout was not enough to get me into the spanking new airport. One needed photo identity. I told him I had lot of photo identity cards because I came from Goa and Goans especially from Tiswadi taluka had lots of identity cards.

As usual when I tell people I am from Goa, they give me the red carpet treatment. A broad smile broke his granite face and he said he liked Goa verrrry much Modom, but wokayright, I had to show him some ID, like maybe a driving licence?

I opened my wallet which was full of cards, but the driving licence, still in its glazed paper case, was stuck in its slot. I yanked it this way and that, while the granite came back to the security man’s face. He peered into the wallet and looked at my Social Security card that I was least proud of and said, wokayright yes, that one will do.

I said no, that was not a good one and did not do justice to me. He said it looked exactly like me and waved me on. But the granite came to my face now and I pulled out my newspaper ID card taken at around the same time where I looked much better, a slightly amused smile, a twinkle in the eye and wonderfully neat hair. I insisted that he check that one. He looked at it and said severely that that was not wokay since it had already expired.

So I pulled out my PAN card, my gymkhana card, two voter ID cards, two bank ATM cards, my IFFI identity cards for the first two IFFIs and finally my Multi-Purpose Card. What is this card, he wanted to know. I said, oh, that was a pilot project for Tiswadi taluka of Goa only and we had these cards done. I said it was even more recent than the Social Security card that was done nearly 10 years ago and that it looked better. He said there was no need to carry all these cards with me, only one was needed. Maybe two. A voter’s id or a passport. I said it was risky carrying a passport all over the country, and I looked like a deranged serial killer in my Voter’s ID. I told him firmly that I would only show IDs where I looked halfway decent.

He said wokayright and waved me in hurriedly and I noticed in all the arguments of which card had a better photograph¬¬ - he forgot to check my name and details against those on my plane ticket.

I looked at all the photographs on all the cards. For some reason, the web cams that are used by the agencies who get the tender to take photographs for ID cards of all sorts are just no good at taking pictures. I have to accept that I am not a good poser for pictures, I either get a death-rictus grimace or look like a bull-dog that has lost the will to live.

And once again ... There’s the census man who came around, took all sorts of details, beginning with what caste I belonged to, to where my children were staying. Then he left a slip of paper and said the dreaded words, “Take this with you when you will be called for taking photo, madam.”

A day later one learned that Goa had also been selected as one of the first states for the introduction of the UID or Unique Identification card. Yet another photo session … And the unpleasantness lives on.

Single blessedness

2010-04-21T13:20:00.001-07:00

Today I am tired of all the worry and tension of mining and construction and corruption and all the rest of that basket of bad news. I am giving you a break from that. This change of heart happened after a long telephone call from an old friend I have always been envious of.

He has a battalion of friends from all walks of life, who like having him around. He refused to sit for exams which would guarantee promotion because the same promotions would guarantee transfers which he did not want. He lives in Mumbai with his mum, a cheerful lady who used to fling slippers at him when he was young and reckless. He has always been a positive person taking life and whatever it threw at him with a delighted grin, (even his mother’s slippers) because life threw good things at him.

Our conversation came round to how life throws positive things to people with positive energy and negative things to people with negative energy. I asked him if he was happy with what he had. He thought about it for a second and said, well I would have liked to have a wife, but I have had no luck in the girlfriend department.

I told him it could be that, that was an excellent piece of good luck he had. If he had a wife he would not have been the happy-go-lucky person that he is. Never mind that he remains the quintessential bachelor boy. In his mid-50s, he is the same vintage as I, maybe a year younger, but his face is unlined and he does not dye his hair. He still walks like a fairly strong wind was pushing him forward, the way he did when he was a teenager.

He does not suffer from all the worry of high cholesterol, or blood sugar or aches and pains. He has a simple rule. He lives life king-sized throughout the year and during the 40 says of Lent he keeps away from rich meals and strong beverages. I think he even gives up smoking, but I cannot be certain about that. His healthy Lenten lifestyle keeps him free of the pill-popping regimen that rules most our peers’ lives.

Every weekend of his calendar reads like the diary of a busy socialite. It is full of invitations to engagements, weddings, christenings, anniversaries, invitations to be godfather to new born babies, invitations to birthdays and first salary parties, invitations to picnics and dances, lunches and dinners. This is ample proof that he is liked by many. That he goes to the functions, often involving flying out of Mumbai, is that he likes them too.

He laughed long and loud and said he liked my choice of words: “an excellent piece of good luck”. And I said that except for a couple of couples I know, marriage has not turned out to be such a great institution for most of the people I know. Not for the couple and definitely not for their children.

He agreed and he should know because he has had a ring-side view of many families who count him as one of their own. And he quoted his mother who said, courting time is the best time. Both people are on their best behaviour, but you never know what someone is like until you have lived with that person for some time. I had to agree.

He said, but at least you have children who will look after you when you are old and ill. He laughed again, long and loud, when I used some pretty strong language which translates into “uh huh”.

And then in one of those inexplicable coincidences that life is so full off, I received another call from a worried mother, who was looking for a girl for her son. I asked the question why? Why rock the boat? She was offended.
“Because everyone should marry,” she said, “The Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helpmeet for him.”
“Then why” I asked, “do they refer to the single life as a life of “single blessedness””?
“You…!” She said and slammed down the phone.

Modern India Goa’s new invader

2010-04-11T01:50:00.001-07:00

Goa sat quietly on the west coast since the beginning of time. First we concentrated on rearing cattle, growing crops, orchards and people. Upheaval was the name of the game in the rest of India and every change that convulsed Goa’s larger neighbours affected Goa too, with new rulers every couple of hundred years or so with the only representative of the king being the tax collector.

First it was a series of Hindu kings who set up empires all around, so Goa while ostensibly changing rulers every time, actually was left alone to develop a strong culture of her own. The land was fertile, the weather perfect, the people prosperous and peace loving and we have enough evidence that our ancestors had their own music, art, literature and poetry. They had a very successful system of community farming which remained pretty much untouched for centuries. The Sultans found that it was a good idea to continue the Gaunkari system of village community farming, as did the Portuguese who renamed it the Communidade.

So, it must have been a slight shock when the Bahamani Sultans conquered Goa, only to lose her to the Vijayanagara Empire. After another 100 years the Bijapur Sultans ruled over Goa and the culture shock must have been immediate and long lasting. Islam added itself to the tapestry of Goa and then came the Portuguese with their vastly different culture, clothing and creed. Almost five centuries of being an important part of the Portugal ethos, the Goan people morphed once again into a beautiful Eurasian type of culture with a strong Indian core. Liberation which saw Goa become part of the Indian nation. And in less than 50 years we are bang in the middle of another culture shock and a very different one this time.

The difference is this: In the past the changes in Goa were wrought on the people in their creed and culture; their style and standard of living. Invading armies left the land alone. They added to the forest cover introducing new species from Brazil and Africa. Post Liberation the culture of which can only be called Modern India is cutting haphazard swathes across what was respected as Nature’s bounty. Previous invaders (yes, it’s time to call a spade a spade and Modern India is the new invader of Goa) recognized and respected the traditional systems for nurturing the land.

Modern India has no time for that. Because Modern India worships at the altar of Instant Gratification and has found more than half the population of Goa an eager convert to this way of life. “I’ll vote for you tomorrow provided you give me a motorbike today.” “If the price is right I can change forest land into settlement land with the click of a mouse.”

I wish the news channels would do an aerial shoot of the changing face of Goa as the plane circles, banks and lands at Dabolim. I wish they could introduce it on a fortnightly basis so that Goans could see for themselves, the terrible changes happening in our hills and plains practically every week.

Even when flying in to Goa, it’s the tourists who are all agog with their noses plastered to the windows, Goans stare at the seat backs in front of them. Is it because they cannot bear to look out? Or because they just don’t care?

Hotels and farmhouses are built in seemingly inaccessible places, they spread over what they refer to as a “small area, just a few acres”, but 20 metre wide roads connecting them to airports and road and rail networks, gouge out centuries old portions of the rainforest and the forest cover shrinks again and yet again.

Meanwhile in the towns and villages that were known for the beautiful proportions of their structures are changing by the day with old houses pulled down and apologies for architecture shooting up. Tiled roofs cower beneath steel glass and concrete and art-deco structures, as if the tiled roofs know that their day in the Goan sun is comprehensively over.

The secret of youth

2010-04-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

There is something very annoying about the constantly cheerful person. You meet them every so often, grinning like there’s a clothes hangar in their mouth, always breaking out into a ripple of laughter. I’m all for the occasional belly laugh, but if like they say laughter is the best medicine, logically speaking like medicine, laughter should be had in small doses.

Having said that, there’s something equally annoying about the habitual grouch. Mouth always turned down, face set in heavy lines of disapproval. The grouch’s sole aim is to wipe the smile off happy faces. There is nothing to celebrate, nothing to cheer about. And yet under that unsmiling countenance there is a dark pleasure in being a wet blanket. The grouch is cunning, watches you carefully finds chinks in your armour and gets under your skin. The cheerful soul is therefore more welcome.

It has been my pleasure to meet a cheerful person, well into his nineties, yet not bowing to the tenets of age. His face sparkled with the uncomplicated delight you would find in a child, and one discovered that he spent his life finding joy in whatever he did. Even when he complained about getting so tired after reading three newspapers over breakfast, that he had to take a nap, the images his words painted were comical to him and he grinned.

I have met people well past the three score and ten Plimsoll line the Bible tells us is enough time to sail through life. To a man (or woman) as the case may be, I have found octogenarians and nonagenarians to be quiet, a little vague and moving very, very carefully as if making certain all limbs were properly aligned and accounted for before any action. It was not so with this man.

He did not give his body undue attention. He gave me undue attention. I told him, I had come to visit him out of plain old vulgar curiosity, to find out what make him tick. He told me he could not hear very well and would I please sit on his left side and speak up. It is a little tiring to carry out a conversation with flow and nuance at the top of your lungs, but one soldiered on because as I said, he was fascinating. But it was he who had more questions. He wanted to know what I did, who I married, where was my ancestral village, where was my husband’s ancestral village. He looked for and found connections with various members of my family. He wanted to know about my children and what they were doing. It was not out of polite curiosity. He really wanted to know.

We spoke inevitably of politics and instead of griping about the situation as is the case wherever one goes in Goa, he was amazed at the general uselessness of the men who were running the state. Amazed that they kept returning to power again and again. Amazed that we kept returning them to power again and again.

He spoke of Pakistan and how happy he would be if Pakistan joined India. How most of the problems haunting both countries would be over.

I studied his face as he spoke and gesticulated. His eyes shone behind his spectacles and there was no flagging of his voice. His face was hardly lined, avid, eager and the tilt of his body showing his hunger to learn more. He was talking about how he had always read very slowly, because he savoured every nuance of every word he read and that now he read even slower. Of course, like every printed word, he also savours every nuance of every moment of life. And I thought to myself, this is it. This is the elixir of life, or if you like, the fountain of youth. He is the Observer who instead of sitting back detached and letting life wash over him, engages with Life to learn even more. It is that engagement; that spirit to take it all in, which keeps him vital and smiling and walking around without a stick even at 95.

The Constable’s Lament

2010-03-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

Constable Caetano was in a foul temper. Definitely not a happy man. He was sitting delicately on an air cushion. I asked him what was the matter – though the air cushion seemed self-explanatory. “Injured yourself, did you?” I asked sympathetically. “Was it in the line of duty?”
“Dooty, booty, my eye,” he replied. “I got it while cycling.”
“You had a fall?” I asked.
“No fall. I’m sore and I got blisters with sitting on that hard cycle seat and cycling all over Vasco,” he said.
“But they have not yet actually begun the Cycling Squad. So why have you started?” I asked.
“My seniors told us to start practicing and I did not know if I remembered how to cycle,” he said. “It is very difficult with all the weight I have put in recent years.”
“Well it will make you more fit,” I said. “Cycling is a very good form of exercise and fun too.”
“Fat lot you know about cycling and fun,” he said sourly. “I’d like to see you sit on a cycle and move in and out of all the lanes and by-lanes of Vasco.”
“If I have to cycle, I will use an exer-cycle, these roads are not very good,” I said.
“Oh ho, changing our tune are we?” he snorted. “What happened to cycling being a ‘fun exercise’? It’s bad enough in the day, but at night it’s worse. We are supposed to follow criminals without being detected. Have you tried cycling in the dark? The headlight on the cycle is like this idea to make us use cycles – not bright at all.”
“So tell your superiors,” I said.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” he asked, “We are getting such bad press with all our so-called corruption, taking bribes, being on druglords’ payrolls, etc and now this joker in the Sada jail goes and dies in judicial custody. Everyone is trying to pin the blame on us.”
“They say your colleagues even supply drugs and liquor to the inmates at Sada Jail,” I said.
“That is a black lie,” he said.
“The how come all those bottles have been found outside the jail?” I asked.
“How is toothpaste made,” he asked.
“Eh? What does that have to do with supplying drinks and drugs to convicts? I don’t know how toothpaste is made,” I said.
“Precisely my point. We don’t know everything,” he said, “just like how no one knows how the bottles of drink landed up outside the jail.”
“Putting two and two together is not rocket science,” I said. “Obviously there’s a thriving business in the jail.”
“Everyone is targeting us for no reason at all,” he said sadly. “How are we supposed to make money, eh? Everyone does what they can do. We are at such a disadvantage; we have to make up the money we paid touts to get this job. It’s not easy making one lakh, leave alone seven lakhs.”
“Some would say that is why there is no law and order to speak of in Goa,” I said. “That is why no one has any fear or respect for policemen like you. You have come into this profession to make money and you set about doing that only.”
“Thieves and murderers will rob and kill, no matter what we do. We are just trying to make a living for ourselves. We earn a small salary. Think of us as waiters in a restaurant; we augment our income with tips,” he said.
“There’s a big difference between a tip and a bribe,” I said.
“Don’t blame us. Blame those who charge us lakhs to get a job in the first place,” he said.
“Don’t you have a dream for a just and peaceful society?” I asked.
“Oh I have a dream,” he said.” My dream is to get on the board of people who decide who gets a job on the police force. That is where the real money is.”

Final exams are not final

2010-03-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

One of the pitfalls of parenting is that we want our children to be better than us. The only problem is we don’t look at this goal from the other end. Because when they do become better than us, we don’t really like what happens. Oh there’s a certain amount of brag value as in my daughter is the Chairman of the Board, or my son is running this huge corporation. But it rings hollow after a while.

The fact is those cute little kids with grubby hands and trusting gap-toothed smiles, whose faces lit up like the sun when they saw you enter a room are long gone. They grow up, they do well and then they find this home, this town, too small for their ambitions. They leave. And we, the proactive parents who spent the best years of our lives taking them to a plethora of classes, activities and entertainment in our on-going effort to make them think outside the box, end up alone with a feeling I can only best describe as ‘what-the-hell’.

What-the-hell is an inglorious mix of feeling cheated, bewildered, foolish and consumed by a deep desire to kick yourself hard. Just imagine, if instead of pushing them to get better grades, sitting up with them till the wee hours of the morning to produce that perfect project, we just let them do enough to get through. If instead of stoking the fires of ambition, we just let them enjoy the day and live the simple life, maybe they’d be around close by instead of in a whole different state or country.

Some parents just sit around and dessicate. Others shake off the blues and say aha, my life is my own again. These take another stab at life and do better physically, mentally and more importantly, they get their groove back. Not so the empty nest victims. But I digress. Back to the examination fever caused by parents, fuelled by institutions, suffered by children…

Why are there so many counseling centres today? Why so many helplines to prevent stress and suicide? The reason is simple. It’s we the parents. We want to be proud of our children. We gave up our careers or probably soft-pedaled them so that we could give our children more attention. All that professional torque had to be channeled somewhere. It went straight to our children. They became our project and it was as if our lives depended on it.

There doesn’t seem to be much difference between losing your child to suicide or to another country. You are, to all intents and purposes, quite alone. I have seen and felt the empty-nest syndrome. It saps you of energy. So pushing them to perform for Board Exams and Final exams is in the final analysis self-defeating. They are miserable, you are miserable. Maybe if like water we let them find their own level, society would be a happier bunch of people. Failure in exams seems to be a fate worse than death today. And often death is the choice many traumatized children take.

It would be a good idea if parents too sat for a series of final exams on life priorities. My suspicion is the deep rural parents, who live close to the land with little money and fewer needs, would come through with the Distinctions. Parents like me from the urban middle class would sink like a big fat stone.

I was talking to the Man Who Knows Too Much and we both agreed that getting Distinctions in final exams does not mean life will be sunshine and roses for the child. There’s always that bogey of stress and its army of related diseases lurking in the shadows.

Life has a bad habit of grinding everyone together, the good, the bad and the ugly and only a few come through none the worse for wear. Those are the ones who don’t get crushed by setbacks and failures. For that to happen, you have to be used to success and failure in equal parts.

We must teach our children that final exams and board exams are a series of small steps we take. The final test is whether we weather both victory and defeat with grace. If we laugh in victory, we should also laugh in defeat. I know that now. Wish I knew it when my kids were growing up.

Days dedicated to whatever

2010-03-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

One can understand Republic Day, and Independence Day. Those were events which actually took place on these days. But Valentine’s Day, Friendship Day, Mother’s Day, HIV+ Day, Father’s Day make no sense at all. Love for friends and sweethearts, love for mothers and fathers, care and support for AIDS patients are concepts that should be vigorously pursued throughout the year, not just on one day.

One day in particular that disturbs me is Women’s Day. It would make more sense if something had happened for women on March 8. In India for instance Women’s Day should not be on March 8, but on March 9 the day the Bill for 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament was introduced and passed in the Rajya Sabha.

Who sits down and decides which days are dedicated to which species or group? The card companies? Florists? Courier services? Confectionaries? Could I do it? Would my selection of days be universally accepted? I would like to introduce a Dogs Day, a Cat’s Day, a Doctors’ Day, a Nurses’ Day; what about a Lawyers’ Day or a Housemaid’s Day.

The Chinese dedicated entire years to animals – the year of the Dog, The Year of the Horse, The Year of the Dragon and so on. Today I missed banging into a metal post by a whisker, I would like to call today International Missed an Accident Day, but I would be celebrating it alone and where’s the point in that?

We have choices every step of the way and I have decided to feel insulted about Women’s Day. Why should only one day be set aside for worship/appreciation/recognition of me as a woman? Why should any day be set aside for worship/appreciation/recognition of me as a woman? It puts a whole lot of unnecessary pressure on the woman aspect of me.

I’m an average person like so many others, capable of random flashes of genius, but by and large pretty ho-hum as far as achievements go. I’m a mother, but not a great one. I can nurture and care for wounded and hungry stray animals, but tend to treat stray human beings with suspicion.

My home is fairly clean but hardly spotless and sparkling. I am capable of unbelievable disasters in the kitchen where but for a pinch of salt many appetites were lost. I will not stand when I can sit. I will not sit when I can sleep. I think sacrifice for others is highly overrated and achieves nothing except for a nagging sense of what the hell.

And then people send me messages on Women’s Day about the strength of the woman, the many skills of the woman, the committed and caring godlike entity that is the Woman and it annoys me no end, because I am none of those things. More importantly, I know that I don’t want to be any of those things.

Oh yes, there are the great achievers, the superwomen like Kiran Bedi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mother Teresa, my mother Maria Felicia Especiosa Pereira e Dias, my mother-in-law Enid Terese Sodder Collaco, Urminda Lima Leitao who passed away recently, Mangala Wagle the founder of Hamara School, Manju an angel who cleaned my home and cooked my meals for many years. These are women of substance, some who have passed on and some who are still around making a difference in this topsy-turvy world, but even they had moments of petulance and what the hell. This day brings too much pressure to women like me who know the truth about themselves.

It would be better to have a day in the year set aside for something ignoble. An Enemies’ Day, Ditched Lovers’ Day, Failures Day, Fired from Jobs Day, Stubbed Toes Day, Missed Deadlines Day, Gluttony Day, Distant Cousins’ Day, Forgettable Relatives’ Day… so instead of impossible aspirations and feelings of guilt we can just let our hair down and be real for a change.

No point in obsessing

2010-03-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

People with nothing better to do, can find parallels to the human condition anywhere. Take this one for instance. There are the waves that smash against rocks and there are the rocks that take the assault without flinching. Much like all of us.

We have those that burn with passion, obsessing over this, that or the other, flinging themselves against the status quo trying to change things. Then there are those who stand steady taking whatever life flings at them. There’s another piece of imagery that someone emailed me: Some days we are the birds; other days we are the windshield.

Life goes on regardless of all the careful plans we make. Life takes those plans and turns them on their heads, sometimes Life lets our plans work for a while and then gives us problems later on. Which makes people like me who have burned their fingers say ruefully, be careful what you wish for, ’cause you just might get it all. There’s no point in obsessing over things; all you can do is hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

Recently I wrote a column on the stupidity of terrorism. An email came almost immediately telling me my writing was stupid. I was informed that innocent Muslims are being blamed for everything, but no one complains about the atrocities against Iraqis, Afghans etc. He told me that the RSS were responsible for the 26/11 massacre in Mumbai, that they assassinated Karkare. Was Ajmal Qasab an RSS man then? Oh no, Ajmal Qasab was a convenient scapegoat who had been caught by the cops in 2006 in Nepal. I also learned that the twin towers in New York were already in the process of being burned from the inside before the planes hit them. This despite enough documented evidence to the contrary.

He urged me to join an all-faith meeting for peace which his group is involved in to spread awareness and peace. Now how can you spread peace when you spread bare-faced untruths beats me. Unless the whole concept of peace itself is a lie, because man can never live in peace with his own kind, nature, or other animals for too long. He will fight wars, he will destroy the environment and wipe out animal species for ridiculous reasons.

Now I thought I was a peaceable woman until a Russian who is married to a Goan man took offence at last week’s column “The Russian and the Princess”. She accused me of stirring trouble between Russians and Goans.

Now I admit I do obsess about Goans becoming slumdwellers in their own land. My children live in rented premises in Mumbai, because they cannot get jobs they were trained for in Goa. And if they worked in Goa, the wages they would have earned here would not allow them to buy even a square metre in a residential area they would find convenient and comfortable. Come to think of it, they would not even find place in the slums of Chimbel or Mapusa or Moti Dongor because there the first preference is given to non-Goans.

The Russian woman lives in Moscow and Majorda which I think is the perfect solution for the next generation of Goans. Her children are lucky. They can settle down in Goa or in Russia. Our children should marry non-Goans, so they will at least have a choice of settling down legitimately in another land, because Goa will be out of the equation for them. They will also be helping end racism by making all of mankind a uniform golden brown colour.

So what’s the worst that can happen? Our children’s children will have no place to call their own in Goa, but by then, who will want to stay in Goa? The green fields will have become gated communities. The hill tops will be gated communities. Slums will spread between the two. The forests would have gone with the frenetic mining that’s going on. Well water, spring water and a swig of feni that our grandparents swore kept them alive and kicking well into their nineties, after which they just died quietly, will be impossible to get for love or money. So why obsess, I ask myself. If foreigners are dividing the coastal areas among themselves and the rich and aimless are buying up fields and hill tops and the miners are digging out the forests, where does the Goenkar go?

The Russian and the Princess

2010-02-27T23:26:00.000-08:00

“I would like to stay in this country and be a part of it,” said the Russian absently throwing a stone at a passing taxi driver.
“I don’t think you are very welcome,” I said as we ran for our lives to his hired house near the beach.
“Of course I am very welcome,” he said, “I am Russian and we Russians have lots of money and we Russians pay our way.”
“Like everyone else, you are okay in small doses,” I said, throwing my weight along with his against the door that was being pushed open by a crowd of angry taxi-drivers.
“Nonsense, we are here for the long haul,” he said. “Go anywhere and you will see we are practically one with the people. They welcome us with open arms. We don’t even have to learn the local language. The locals have learned Russian.”
“That’s only because the locals want your business, but I admit, I am amazed at how they can speak Russian even in department stores in Panjim,” I said.
“In time we will turn Goa into another of our Federal Districts, who knows, next we will turn all of India into a Federal District of Russia. We have eight Federal Districts. Goa and then India will be our ninth. We have begun putting up signboards and notices all over parts of the beach belt that we would like for Russians only,” he said listening to the police sirens getting closer and closer.
“If you keep annoying the locals, by flinging stones on them, abusing them and attacking them, you will be deported,” I said.
“That will never happen, because we already have lots of martyrs here in Goa,” he said, “lots of Russians have already died in Goa.”
“Not lots, only a few,” I said.
“Well the police understand our plan and clearly they are duly respectful of it,” he said, opening the door to the sub-inspector who looked severely at him.
“What is all this nonsense,” asked the PSI. “Why did you throw a stone at these men?”
“I did not throw a stone at them. It slipped from my fingers and they began chasing me,” he told the PSI.
“Tell these Russians to get out of Goa, we don’t want them!” chorused the taxi-drivers.
“Apologize to them at once, or I’ll put you inside,” said the cop.
“Ok, I will apologize,” snapped the Russian.
“There you are then,” said the cop, “now shoo all of you. Go home.”
“See? The police understand,” said the Russian with a pleased smile. “But don’t worry, I have a plan.”
“You cannot have a plan. You can come here for your winter holidays, but you must go back to Russia,” I said.
“I shall do this legally,” he said. “I will contract a marriage of convenience.”
“That used to happen with drug peddling foreigners marrying fisher-folk daughters so that they could come and go as they pleased,” I said.
“The problem with having a Goan wife here is that my actual wife will object and Russian wives can object very strongly. My plan has my actual wife’s blessings,” he said.
“A marriage of convenience is still a marriage,” I said, “Your wife can sue you for bigamy.”
“She won’t mind this,” he said. “I propose to marry the River Princess. I see her everyday. She will soon be able to apply for citizenship and get a ration card and voter’s ID. She comes with her own patch of land on a sand bank off the beach. She is strong and not very old. And she doesn’t roam around all over the place. She sits still. She doesn’t even need any maintenance. She will make a good and convenient wife.”
“I never heard such nonsense in my life,” I said.
“Just wait and see. I am already writing out an application for her hand in marriage and giving it to Anil Salgaoncar with copies to the Chief Minister, the Governor and the Tourism Minister. They are so desperate to get her off their hands, but they want to keep her in the same spot. They will give her to me with their blessings. It’s a win-win situation. And I can begin the process for turning this place into the ninth Federal District of Russia.”

Stupidity of terrorism

2010-02-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

Bear with me here. I was reading the stories of five of the victims of the German Bakery bomb blast in Pune. A boy invited his sister and three of her friends to celebrate his promotion over a celebratory snack fest at German Bakery. The five friends selected a table and sat down. The bag with the bomb was under their table. It killed all five. They were all below 23. They were bright and beautiful and had already begun to take on the world.

They will be bitterly grieved by their families and friends for years to come. The rest of us will forget them within a week. We will continue going to German Bakery to buy some of their famous goodies once the premises are repaired. Life will carry on. People will be jumpy for a while and then settle down to the rhythm of life. So what is the point of blowing up people who have nothing to do with Kashmir or Palestine or Afghanistan or Islam. How will the death of five youngsters and four others and 33 injured victims help the cause of the Al Qaeda or whichever morons perpetrated this obscenity?

The point of terrorism is to spread terror towards a specific end. The plan is to chase intruders out of your land. Here the terrorists are the intruders. Their home is far away. The purpose of terrorism is to spread terror; to keep the enemy in a perpetual state of fear; to destroy any quality of life their target may aspire to.

It cannot work in India.

It cannot work because our sheer numbers are impossible for any group of crazies to wipe out. Even if you blow up ten trains on 10 days in Mumbai, huge crowds will still rush onto the remaining trains, hanging by their fingertips if required to get to work. Terrorists don’t seem to realize that the fear of having no money is greater than the fear of bombs.

We need money for housing, food, clothing, education, health, entertainment. We can get that only by going to work everyday. It’s not a question of being “resilient”. We cannot miss a day of work and that’s why we step out of our homes eagerly every morning and don’t even feel grateful when our heads touch our pillows at night. We take it as a matter of course.

What about the rest of us elsewhere in the country? Can they convert the entire country to Islam? Goa is proof that forced conversion does not work. The Portuguese tried to convert tiny Goa to Christianity. It did not work. Remember, Goa was even tinier in area at that time.

So why do they waste so much time, money and effort on a futile exercise? These deaths and maimings are merely drops in the ocean of pain that India has suffered over the centuries at the hands of invaders unafraid of showing their faces. They say Al Qaeda is being funded by Saudi Arabia, aided by China, by Pakistan, by the CIA of the United States of America. It seems such a waste of time and effort.

There are families in Mumbai who “sell” their sons for anything from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh to militant recruiters. Their sons are sent off to Pakistan where they are brainwashed and trained to kill the infidel, even if it includes friends and neighbours.

Even the David Headley exercise was to my mind a total waste of money. There was no need to send him, unless he brought money with him to spread around his colleagues in the country. Al Qaeda has sleeper cells in India. They have the Indian Mujhahideen to do the leg work. It does not take much knowledge or effort to place a packet of explosives at any soft target like a restaurant or train or festival. No one bothers when the metal detectors bleep at railway stations. So what is the point? We Indians are already so neurotic, we have so many fears, we jump at so many shadows, terrorists should know that even if we die, we will survive. Life goes on, regardless of death. I wish the handlers of these purveyors of death were among the two-and-a-half people who read this column. If you know anyone please send them this cutting.

Class Distinctions

2010-02-15T02:19:00.001-08:00

There’s a Mr Moneybags with dubious sources of income who is one of the most pious people I have ever met. His wrist is covered with sacred red threads which never seem to fade, or maybe he gets his threads renewed with every new visit to a temple. There is also a Mrs Pauper who wears ragged dirty dresses three sizes too large for her slight frame, who is most devout. She spends most of her time praying before roadside crosses and in churches. I know both of them rather well and the similarity of thought, word and deed is startling.

When Mr Moneybags speaks to me, he speaks of good things. He talks of all the good deeds he has done. He had helped get his neighbour’s daughter a job in the police force. He had given money to a boy who broke his leg in three places to tide him over until he could work again. He had just finished one pilgrimage and was planning to go on another as soon as he finished some pending work.

When his employees talk to me, they only speak bad things about Mr Moneybags. He is tight-fisted, mean minded, mean spirited and had a gang of goons on his payroll who could do anything from stoning your house to attacking you with swords and sticks. He ate like a pig and drank like a fish, got into a drunken rage and had a thing for very young women.

Mrs Pauper generally wept when she spoke to me. If she was not weeping, she was sighing. She too would speak of good things like how she was struggling to give her family a good life through honest means. That she did not have money but she had God on her side.

When her neighbours speak about her, they talk about how she has a filthy tongue in her head, how she abuses them regularly, poisons their domestic animals and birds, how she throws filth in front of their homes. They spoke of how she didn’t have money to feed her family, but she had enough to drink herself into a violent rage every day.

And it struck me that both the very rich and the very poor have so much in common. Both rich and poor get a huge amount of freebies. Both belong to privileged sections of society. Mr Moneybags is wooed by the powerful with an eye to his wealth. Mrs Pauper is wooed by the powerful with an eye to her vote. A simple enough concept since using wealth to buy votes leads to more power to the powerful.

Mr Moneybags is not in politics; he owns politicians; he dictates policy. Mrs Pauper just has to ask her MLA to allow her to build an extra couple of rooms on a precarious slope. He makes the necessary calls and even builds a retaining wall so that her house and those of her neighbours don’t slide down the hill.

The very rich and very poor can break the laws with impunity. They don’t even bother to laugh at CRZ rules; they just build their homes, sprawling or simple and get on with life as they know it secure in the knowledge that no one can touch them.

They are dangerous enemies since both resort to extra-judicial activities to sort out issues they may have with others. They think nothing of publicly harassing, abusing or killing an enemy.

Their moral standards (or lack thereof) are similar. Crimes of passion, murders of paramours and spouses are common with both classes. And yet they are so devout.

Laws, morals, ethics and moderation fall to the lot of the middle class. They cannot afford to break the law because they have too much built up through hard work, to lose. As piety is the armour of the rich and poor, respectability is the armour of the middle-class.

The middle class moves in a never ending bourgeois dance between the two other classes. Moving forward always trying to catch up with the very rich. Always looking over their shoulder at the poor, terrified that they will slip backwards into poverty if they don’t work hard enough. Seems like such a waste of time.

Why I didn’t get a Padmashri

2010-02-07T04:11:00.000-08:00

Time heals all. I have only just begun to get over my shock and disillusion at not finding my name in the list of Padmashri awardees. Like Santa Claus I read the list and checked it twice. If you have been wondering why you too were left out of the list, I have given the matter some thought and here are my findings.

It is really unfair, I mean come on, the Padmashris are like the runt of the litter, right at the bottom of the Awardian Barrel. They are practically giving them away. 81 of them. Surely they could have included my name. Or yours. They have people like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan cosmetics model, actress and Bachchan bahu; and Saif Ali Khan chargesheeted for slaughtering two blackbucks along with Salman Khan. The charges were dropped.

Next from the Awardian barrel comes the Padma Bushan. 43 were awarded this year. These are reserved for the big guns like Sant Singh Chatwal who has reportedly defrauded many millions of dollars from Indian and American banks, declared bankruptcy even while living a luxurious life and jet-setting with the rich and famous. They say he was even arrested by the CBI and escaped.

After that we have the Padma Vibhushan which was won by 6 people. Last, the grand-daddy of them all – the Bharat Ratna which was not awarded this year.

So how come I didn’t get the Padma Shri?

I didn’t get it because first of all I don’t know the President Mrs. Pratibha Patil. But they tell me, even if I knew her, I would not get the Padma Shri because it is the government which tells her who she should give it to. I don’t know anyone important at the Centre. I know Francisco Sardinha slightly, but he is too busy fighting for dhirio and battling one fighting bull Churchill Alemao. I know Sripad Naik slightly too, but he is too gentle and anyway no one would listen to him, even though he could speak to the President in Marathi.

I did not get the Padma Shri because quite foolishly, I am not married into the Bachchan family, neither am I a beauty queen or an actress.

It may have helped if I had the sense to be an ex-militant. The ‘ex’ is important, because if I were in counter insurgency and got my old militant buddies eliminated I may have found my name in the Padma Shri list like Ghulam Mohammed Mir of Jammu and Kashmir.

Like a fool I love animals and have nothing but admiration for the endangered black buck, but obviously I keep company with the wrong kind of friends. If I had picnicked with Salman Khan and shot and killed black bucks, right now I may have been having parties thrown in my honour for being a Padma Shri.

The worst thing I did not do was I did not lobby. Lobbying is of the essence I am told. You have to go forward and put yourself out there. You have to first tell your state government that you deserve the Padma Shri and that you want it, you need it and you have-ta, have-ta have it. If they ignore you, you have to go to the media and promote yourself and lobby again with the government. Then you have to lobby with the central government.

Ah well January 26 has come and gone. I have taken stock and have decided I shall initiate a new tradition. If you can ask for an award and then protest about not getting it despite asking for it, then why not give yourself an award. It would totally cut out the middle man.

To this end I am awarding myself an award of my own. I think I shall call it the Chakram Award. It is totally exclusive. I will be the only recipient. More exclusive than the Bharat Ratna too since there were no winners this year. No point in inviting the media because anyway they won’t come since I have no colour in my life. I will present them with a fait accompli also known as the press note. Like I said. Instead of going through all the hassle of lobbying for an award, ’twould be far simpler to give one to oneself. Chakram, here I come.

Sonsoddo - Goa parallel

2010-01-30T12:04:00.001-08:00

You get those Eureka moments sometimes. Especially when you stand downwind of Sonsoddo. The ripe smell gets into your brain and circulates thoroughly. The ever growing hill of garbage is there for all to see, but everyone turns their face away, or closes their eyes in disgust. Or spits. It’s right there but we do anything we can not to look at it.

The odour is a different matter. That, we cannot escape. We cover our noses with our handkerchiefs, dupattas, some of us insert our noses into our T-shirt collars. Yet all of us have contributed our mite to the garbage that now disgusts us so much. And then the Eureka moment hits: Sonsoddo is not just typical of the Goa condition. Sonsoddo is Goa.

The garbage keeps piling up, small amounts from everyone everywhere, dumped daily, adding to the mountain. Now you will say that I am talking about the garbage situation all over Goa. You would be wrong. I’m talking of Goa and the huge problem it has become. Not just the garbage; it’s the state of the State.

Goa is exactly like Sonsoddo. Not a garbage heap as yet, but a huge problem. The problem does not go away or lessen. It just sits there, growing bigger and bigger by the day. The government shows much activity, buzzing here, buzzing there, setting up committees, ministers making grand promises to settle the problem in “tree munts time”. The High Court gets into the act, passing stern orders that no one pays any attention to. NGOs jump in and get the people to stand up and shout. More scurrying around, more promises and the problem sits there getting bigger and bigger every day.

They begin to scatter tender notices like confetti. Behind the scenes their energy and single-minded commitment to bargaining for the heftiest commission is truly admirable. Once a percentage has been agreed upon, hey presto, the contract is awarded to whoever gives all concerned parties the highest commission.

Of course the company selected just cannot do it in that amount, so they put in terms and conditions as the project crawls along. Of course the government is shocked and says nothing doing. Result: the work comes to a halt. The contract is terminated; large compensation is awarded to the company. The government and the company are happy. The problem continues to sit there and gets bigger. Nothing has happened. Only large amounts of cash have changed hands. And the exercise to “deal” with the problem begins all over again.

More scurrying, more committees, more tenders, more commissions. The bank balances of the interested parties grow in direct proportion to the growth of the problem. The tender notices scream from all the national and local publications. This has added a new avenue for making quick cash.

Imagine a tender notice published by the CCP (Corporation of the City of Panaji) asking for interested parties to submit their application for beautifying the garden. The tender notices alone cost the taxpayer Rs 2,76,000. A decent garden could have been done in half that amount, using regular shade-giving plants and grass. Instead consultants are roped in. They are paid massive sums for something as simple as designing an already existent garden.

The CCP garden has been tendered and re-tendered and has now been reduced to a pile of mud. It is the same with the River Princess. It is the same with Sonsoddo. It is the same with the Regional Plan. Money, our money which could be used to desilt rivers and lakes, to improve the infrastructure, to improve the water supply, to check wastage of power, to fix bunds and help our beaten farmers, goes straight into the pockets of our montris and their cronies. Money, our money, goes into buying them and their families the latest electronic gadgets, expensive cars, holidays abroad, five-star hotel parties for their relatives and real estate in the best locations.

Study your representative, his underlings and family closely. It will be a learning experience showing you just how generous you are.

Clothed in earnestness

2010-01-23T12:22:00.000-08:00

“People who are too earnest bug me,” wrote an acquaintance on her Facebook wall. This is one of those statements that make your brain do a double-take. Earnestness is a garment we cover ourselves with as soon as we leave our homes – without it we would be naked, is what I replied. I like being naked, she said.

It’s a fact. Everyone you meet is so overwhelmingly earnest. I am as earnest as the best of them. My daughter, a ruthless observer of my every move, tells me that when I meet people my eyebrows seem permanently stuck way up on my forehead. That’s the sign of earnestness, raised eyebrows and wide open eyes. I do it; you do it; we all do it. And once you are aware of it, it will never cease to amuse you.

I love listening in on conversations. Here, allow me point out that there is a difference between listening-in and eavesdropping. An eavesdropper seeking entertainment and hot gossip will hide and listen to two people who think they are being discreet. A listener is someone who listens openly to two or more people talking in audible voices in public places.

It never fails to entertain. Take any civil conversation between two acquaintances or strangers. Both seek to impress the other with the uprightness of their character, the breadth of each one’s mind and the purity of each one’s heart. They form a bubble of goodness fed with more and more froth as they pontificate on their personal soap boxes.

The thing is, being in the newspaper line, one hears awful stories about people. One is aware of the king-sized warts underneath that garment of earnestness. The thicker the garment of earnestness - the bigger the warts.

Goa is a very small place and everyone knows everyone else. You see someone retired from the health department who made a fortune stealing microscopes and selling them, standing up at a public meeting and denouncing the corruption of our elected reps and bureaucrats. Someone else jumped up to do his bit of denouncing and you remember that he was under investigation for embezzling funds from the bank he worked at. You see many people around the two loud upright citizens, smirking just like you, and you know that a number of other people are aware of the comedy of the moment.

I am considering shedding the earnestness. What would happen I wonder if I went out and told the people I met that I was a liar and a cheat and that given half a chance would sell my grandmother down the river? I don’t have a grandmother, but you get the general idea ...? Just think of the situation we would find ourselves in if we told the truth. It would make for truly riveting conversation. Especially since telling the truth about ourselves would be received enthusiastically by the other person.

An even more interesting situation would be this: what would happen if we told the people we met that they were liars and cheats and that given half a chance would sell their grandmothers down the river?

I tell you solemnly, there would be civil war.

Thanks to my Facebook pal who must have had it till her raised eyebrows with earnest people unburdening their souls to her, I cannot help smiling when I listen to earnestness. Especially when it comes from the biggest blackguards in the state. The smile makes the earnest one bloom and then the earnestness is cranked up to really lay it on thick. It is all one can do to stop from laughing out loud. As entertainment goes, this is ranked pretty high on a scale of one to 10.

We all have feet of clay, which is why poor old Tiger Woods has to hide in the undergrowth. His garment of earnestness that he cultivated so well for so long, hid his feet of clay and when he crashed down, it disappeared when the knives of the moral brigade came out. Like I said, we all have feet of clay and given the same circumstances, who’s to say we would not go and do the exact same thing that this ace golfer, rich beyond belief, did.

Price and Value

2010-01-16T10:59:00.001-08:00

I’ve been thinking lately that we have turned into a people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Take hockey for instance.

It is our National Game, but like our National Animal, it is in danger of immediate extinction. Hockey gave this nation some of its greatest glory days when our team would return from the Olympics waving a bunch of glittering gold medals. No one could touch the Indian Hockey team. And then the world body changed the rules of the game, introduced astro turf which the government “could not afford”, changed the rules, they even changed the shape of the sticks, some say to curtail the dribbling and dodging skills of India and Pakistan. Holland, Germany, Australia, even Spain, raised research of hockey in every aspect to a fine art form, but India continued ignoring the game, leaving our bravehearts to battle it out on bad playing fields and miserable amenities.

It hurts to compare the treatment meted out to cricket and the crumbs – sometimes not even that – to hockey. The players were promised Rs 25,000 each if they got a podium finish. They won a number of podium finishes in the last two years, but not a paisa was forthcoming, Hockey India claiming it was broke, despite getting a reported Rs 77 lakh corporate sponsorship from Sahara.

Hockey India refuses to show the players the sponsor’s contract keeping the amount and utilization of the sponsorship money a secret. Hockey India is doing its damndest to tell the world that the players are after money, but ‘promise’ the players a crore is they win a podium finish at the World Cup beginning next month. Sports officials spend ten times the amount the hockey team is asking for on their junkets around the world. And they are filching it out of our pockets. If given a choice between funding the officials or the hockey team there’s no doubt who the taxpayer would back.

I have played hockey from the age of 11, in school, college and club hockey. The game and all that is associated with it, the blood, sweat and tears, the lost fingernails, the camaraderie, blind support of teammates and coach is something the value of which you cannot even begin to quantify. Three of my closest friends go back almost forty years to the hockey field. Till today I carry my limp like a badge of honour. My shinbones are so knobby with all the whacks from hockey sticks they feel like a starving man’s backbone. It is a tough game; it is a beautiful game and coming into contact with a well struck ball can make your life flash before your eyes.

When the Indian Hockey team participates in the World Cup, they are fighting to win against strong teams from across every continent in the world and from every major country in those continents. When the Indian Cricket team plays in what they call the “World Cup” it’s just a handful of ex-British colonies. Cricket has not “taken” in the Americas, most of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Malaysia. Hockey has.

But that is neither here nor there. We as a people have aided and abetted in the humiliation of the Indian hockey team through the last twenty years. No one rejoices when they win and even worse, no one mourns when they lose, even though India ranks among the top four teams in the world. The cruelest cut of all this: our football teams have more sponsorship and more audience-spectator appreciation than hockey, even though Indian football struggles way, way down the international football rankings.

We, we the people of India have allowed this to happen to our national game. When money talks value and values walk. Luckily this standoff between Hockey India and the Hockey Team of India has shamed many corporates and individuals into digging deep into their own pockets to help the players.

Whether the players get the money is debatable, but it was heartening to read a report in a national daily, of Dr James Leitao, a Goan settled abroad, who has decided to pay Rs 10 lakh to the players to return to training. He has also promised to donate his Goa residence to the Indian players if they manage a podium finish in the World Cup. Now that’s what I call knowing the value of the national game.

The wonderful world of Ravi Naik

2010-01-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

It is settled then. The best world one can live in is Ravi Naik’s world. Just think of the fun we could all have if Ravi the eternal optimist, was not in government, holding the Home portfolio, but was instead running a private business, or a multi-national conglomerate. If his business was going down the tubes, he would say, what nonsense. Everything is fine, profits are up.

The police department he heads has been hurtling from one mess to another. They try valiantly to take a leaf from their boss’s book and attempt to put a different spin on the law and order situation in the state, which is in free fall, but they just cannot pull it off with Ravi’s élan. You see the desperation in their eyes.

It’s not that one does not like the world we live in right now. We have so much to talk about, shake our heads sorrowfully over. We have fingers, and we can point them – one away from us, three towards ourselves.

In our world we have drugs liberally used not just at Sunburn, but everywhere else. There was this funny smell in my immediate neighbourhood and a middle-aged friend from my college days, sniffed experimentally and said wisely, “Ganja”. There was no one puffing on anything for as far as the eye could see, so obviously someone was taking a trip indoors.

Go to any shack, any stretch of beach, any discotheque, any club and you will find drugs. It’s difficult for the non-user to recognize a drug dealer, but users can spot one a mile away. In our world, you can see drugs being smoked, they are inhaled at the more exclusive lah-di-dah Page Three parties, and they are smoked or inhaled in the slums. Drugs are not falling like manna from heaven and rolling into reefers, or lining up on glass tables for snorting. In our world you know they are being sold in large quantities to a large number of people. We know, because we see more and more people in more and more households turning into addicts.

But in Ravi Naik’s world and his is a good world; it is not a crowded world since it is peopled only by himself; there are no drugs sold in Goa. These people who are stoned out of their skulls at music festivals and other venues bring narcotics in from other places as part of their luggage. They bring it for their personal consumption and not for sale. In Ravi’s world, Goa is a place of great beauty, great happiness and great peace. I like his world and want to live in it.

But like my children have been telling me from the time they were in school that drugs are sold at gaddos near the better schools and colleges in the state, anyone's children, Ravi Naik’s included, would also be able to tell him that drugs are available in plenty and in great variety anywhere and everywhere. Something for every budget.

His children may be even more aware of the real world, and may even be able to tell him the names of those running the business -- the carriers, the routes, the sources, the destinations. We don’t grow the stuff here, but one wouldn’t be surprised to hear that lab drugs like crystal meth are manufactured right here in the state. I did a little reading up on Angel Dust which killed a Delhi girl at the Sunburn festival and I tell you solemnly, it is pretty scary. Its chemical name is phenylcyclohexylpiperidine or PCP. It is hallucinatory and stories of addicts of PCP would make your liver curl.

In our world we know that ever since the Hippies strayed into Goa and dug in deep, so did the narcotics trade way back in the 70’s. In our world we know that everyone’s in on it – the Russians, the Nigerians, the Israelis – and they are all eagerly helped by local Goans. That’s our world.

In Ravi Naik’s world there’s nothing of this sort. But I forget. In both worlds Ravi’s and ours, people die. Like the Delhi girl they die of drug overdose, or like an addict I knew who died in a road accident, their brains rot. Those fighting the menace are found dead in their apartments and the autopsy shows that they died of “natural causes”. Come to think of it, that autopsy is just the kind of thing you would find in Ravi’s world.

Predictions for 2010

2010-01-02T23:04:00.000-08:00

I am making a mental note. Many mental notes in fact are banging away at the back of the old brain but foremost among them is to inform those showing signs of coming for a protracted visit, that I will be spending Christmas and New Year in Yemen. Why Yemen? Why not, I say. I know no one in Yemen and the word has a nice ring to it.

The thing is, I like people. But I like them in small doses, When they decide that they will “do Goa” for Christmas and New Year, they don’t consult me. They presume since Goa is a holiday resort, everyone living in Goa is on holiday. One has to put life as we know it on hold, change appointments, cancel assignments one should not cancel and worst of all one has to keep one’s home spotless and one’s table full. That’s takes a lot of work, sweat, blood and two blisters from flying oil. Yet, I am making a prediction for 2010. I will forget about the Yemen mental note and when people I barely know tell me they will visit me at ‘Chrissmiss’, I will slip into my Goan avatar and be all warm and welcoming. And then complain again. That’s my prediction. Let’s see if I’m right.

So while we’re in Dire Prediction Mode, let’s make some for 2010. This is going to be the Year of the Tribes. They found that they could gather together vast amounts of tribals who could hold the entire state to ransom by blocking arterial roads. And all the punishment they received was a refreshing shower from a badly aimed water cannon. The tribes are going to ask for an arm and a leg from the taxpayer and one hopes the body count is not too high.

Goa Bachao Abhiyan will fragment much to the delight of our Body of Builders in the Secretariat, unless Dr Oscar Rebello shrugs off the barbs aimed at him and just concentrates on saving Goa. Let’s face it. No one has his charisma and no one can galvanize people from all walks of life the way he can. If he says enough is enough and settles down with his stethoscope and finger on the pulse of his patients rather than the pulse of the people, Goa’s got a problem on her hands.

Manohar Parrikar will find that a sort-of high up position in the Central BJP leadership is not as satisfying as being the big frog in the small pond of Goa. His style of functioning will be an anathema to the Central BJP leadership. If Parrikar flies North and Oscar sticks to doctoring, we might as well move to Yemen.

There’s going to be a lot of trouble at the picturesque island village of San Jacinto. The villagers allowed Mauvin Godinho to “develop” connectivity to their piece of paradise and now they will have to pay the price. Nothing comes for free and they will have to watch their peace eroded day by day as hotels, clubs and other resort related activities take root.

The second biggest killer in Goa will be water-borne diseases, the biggest killer – our roads. Because of this, a sewerage network will be initiated in various parts of Goa. Places like the North Goa beach belt that are already saturated with buildings, high water tables and lots of raw sewage will just have to continue living in denial.

We will win many more awards as Number 1 among the small states of India, or among the states on the West Coast. This is because the judges will be wined and dined in the best parts of Goa and those vying for the Number 1 ranking will be their tour guides.

There’s going to be a lot of noise over the Professional Tax going to be levied on all professionals in Goa, but it will stay because the Government is quite broke while the politicians and bureaucrats become billionaires.

The Government of Russia will set up a police bureau in Goa to investigate crimes against their nationals out for a good time in warm, sunny Goa. It will be one of their conditions to the Nuclear Deal agreement they will sign with India.

Digambar Kamat will resign as Chief Minister, because even he has to feel some shame at the rotten state the state is in.

And my last prediction or rather hope is that all these predictions – except the resignation of Digambar Kamat – will be wrong.

2009 – A fine vintage for black comedy

2009-12-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

As comedy goes you couldn’t have asked for more in the year that has just gone by like the wind. The beginning of 2009 saw Goa decked out like a fortress with sandbagged bunkers that would have made 26/11 terrorist Kasab giggle like a schoolgirl. Last year like Cinderella you had to stop dancing to loud music at midnight else you would turn into a jailbird.

The battle raged on between those trying to save Goa from being parceled out to builders and those determined to parcel Goa out to builders. People like Vishwajeet Rane and Anil Salgaocar came out openly against protecting forests as against cutting them down for “development” of Sattari in Rane’s case and mining in Salgaoncar’s case.

The SEZ decision was rolled back and instead of taking compensation from the SEZ developers who sank illegal borewells and cut into hill slopes, the Government of Goa bent over backwards to instead pay the developers for losses incurred. This despite many complaints of fraud with documentary evidence filed at various police stations.

The Supreme Court directed Cidade de Goa hotel to remove all structures on the Vaiguinim beach and to open it to the public, but the government of Goa rushed in to save the hotel which has offered them food and shelter when they were in the throes of toppling the previous Parrikar government. The government came out with the Land Acquisition Ordinance which saved Cidade and even the Oppostion Leader Manohar Parrikar said the Ordinance was “a small matter” compared with the land scams and the casinos. Fomento must be everyone’s “preferred trading partner”.

We learned yet again that we Goans are patsies. The petrol pumps warned of a shortage of fuel when they heard that the Centre was going to reduce the price of petrol by Rs 5 per litre and of course we all rushed to fill our tanks and then felt like fools when the price went down two days later. But our aam aadmi government raised the taxes, so while the Centre lowered the rate by Rs 5, the state government made sure the rate was lowered in Goa by Re 1. Yay, our loss was minimal. We just paid one rupee extra. Who’re the fools now, huh? Huh?

’09 was not a very good year for Mickky Pacheco with all his domestic crises with his wife Sara and his spat at a casino. His Enemy No. 1 Churchill Alemao got involved too and even called Mickky a “multigamist”. But Mickky soldiered on and ended the year celebrating his birthday proclaiming undying love for Churchill and donating two mobile refrigerated coffins to the people of Goa.

Margao Municipal Council tried to discipline its office staff into working in the office by introducing the biometric finger scan, but the staff showed their boss who was boss and said bas, no biometric-shiometric scan. They went to the CM who is an MMC house tax payer and said we don’t want it and he said awrightee then. No biometric-shiometric.

There’s the whole casino comedy being played out in the courts on the streets and now even in the football fields with casinos holding tournaments. Nothing has changed. They are still unseaworthy and still clogging the Mandovi River.

Panaji got a new lady mayor who does even less work than the previous male one. The capital city’s garden looked like it could not get more ugly and the new mayor went and did just that. Now the garden has been reduced to a pile of mud and looks like it could be used as a landfill. This while a rash of retaining walls continued all over the city and Miramar and Caranzalem got all gussied up. The garden being the main garden of the capital city has the potential to milk the taxpayer till the cows come home. The longer you wait, the higher will be the asking price and the higher will be the commission.

Petrol was found seeping into two wells in Bogmalo and the Goa state pollution control board was “baffled”. Illegal mining has contaminated the water at Selaulim reservoir. Their reject flows into feeder tributaries to the reservoir, increasing the silt and showing a dangerous increase in iron of 70 parts to a million parts of water. The water will become officially “toxic” when it reaches 100 parts to a million parts of water. South Goa can start a new breed of Iron Men.

Goa University stole the spotlight with the marks scandal, the sexual harassment saga, engineering students fasting unto death demanding ATKT for a fourth attempt to pass a semester and a B-grading from the NAAC. This was the cruelest cut of all since three Goan colleges got A ratings.

The police force may have disappointed us with their investigative abilities, but they did not let us down in comedy. The incidents came tumbling out almost on a daily basis from August ’09 with a cop flinging a bundle of money into a bush and fleeing in one direction while the Interceptor he was originally in fled elsewhere away from the Anti Corruption Bureau. Then the casino chase and it just got funnier after that with gaffe after gaffe, until recently a lady cop mistakenly swallowed poison and ended up in hospital getting her stomach pumped.

There was so much black comedy, this space is not enough. The serial Dupatta Murderer, The rape of The Russian and the comments made by our elected representatives have become the stuff of legends. Ravi Naik, Home Minister urged women not to wear dupattas. Digambar Kamat, Chief Minister said tourist should know how to behave and Shantaram Naik, Rajya Sabha MP said by their behaviour these girls invited trouble and that if the girl has been going around with the rapist for several days, then the cops should look at it differently. Wish we could go back to a couple of months earlier Sardinha spoke of building a bull-fighting stadium in South Goa. Or when Parrikar called L K Advani a rancid pickle.

And finally a tribal protest that caused a four-hour gridlock on both sides of the Mandovi bridge last week and protestors dancing happily in the residual spray since the cops could not control the hose.

2009. Ah. It was a fine vintage year for black comedy. Why? Because nothing can ever top the No 1 awards the state has received.

Instant Gratification

2009-12-19T11:14:00.001-08:00

The thing about striking up a conversation with a total stranger, regardless of what Goa’s Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Shantaram Naik thinks, is that you are bound to hear something interesting. So far, no conversations I have launched into have ended in rape, as Naik claims they can, and one devoutly hopes they never will. I have conversed with all sorts of characters, upright citizens, down-at-heel bravehearts, felons, at least three murderers, one of whom was a mighty moustached dacoit from Chambal who claimed to have killed thousands, a pickpocket, happy people, miserable people, rich and poor. Without exception all conversations after a tentative beginning were full of self-righteousness where both parties (me included) project themselves as Perfection personified. Everyone has a view, an opinion, but few have solutions (me included).

A recent fascinating conversation happened while killing time before a seminar at the Black Box in Kala Academy. A not-so-young woman had come for a walk to Kala Academy and was resting from her labours on one of those comfortable steel benches facing the Mandovi River. I was sipping a coffee on the same bench while she was catching her breath.

“Is that instant coffee?” she asked me. I like looking at the river in silence so I was abrupt, “Don’t know,” I said, “got it from the canteen.”

“It is the root of all evil,” she said.

This got my attention. “Coffee? Seriously?” I said, nearly spilling it on myself. “Instant,” she said. “It started with Instant and now the whole world is going to hell.” I looked at her thinking oh goody, a mental case.

“Think about it,” she said. “Everyone wants everything now, abhi, isi waqt. We say we don’t have time to brew proper coffee, so we have instant coffee. We don’t want to waste time cooking, so we have instant noodles and packaged food that we heat and eat. We have forgotten how to walk, we want to drive everywhere. We want everything right now. That’s why there is so much crime, corruption, rape, obesity. No one wants to slow down and smell the roses. Look at those barges anchored in the river.”

I looked at the barges anchored in the river, there were five of them. I looked at her flummoxed, I tell you. “What’s instant about the barges and all those other things you mentioned?” I asked.

“I have been coming to Kala Academy and this place for the last 39 years,” she said, “and barges would sail down the river with a pile of iron ore in them once in a while. Now you get one passing every five minutes. See these have to wait in a queue. Most of this is through illegal mining and this is because people want to make quick money. Instant money! If there is so much iron ore in these barges, imagine how many hills are being destroyed just because a handful of people want to make quick money.”

“Not only that, they are also silting up the river,” I said self-righteously.
“It’s everywhere, no one wants to stop and think about what they are doing. It’s all a mad rush for making more and more money. Just observe the people around you. They will sell anything, even their own mothers. You can tell the “instant” types. They will look like motorcycle pilots, they will be borderline fat or outright obese, they will have thick gold chains, fat rings on practically all their fingers and huge wrist watches on their hands. They will drive powerful cars and have beautiful wives. You will know immediately that they are either in real estate or mining.”

“They could also be fat and rich with inherited wealth and inherited ugliness from their parents,” I said.

“This is the age of Instant Gratification,” she said. She stood up swung her arms, stamped her feet and said, “It is the root. Of all. Evil. Mark my words.” She stomped off and I went to look at the boat show.

A large shiny low-slung monster of a car sighed to a halt. A heavy motorcycle-pilot-type man lumbered out, consulted his Blackberry clutched in his fat be-ringed fingers. He adjusted his gold chain, checked his huge wristwatch, ordered his driver to park the car close by and sauntered into the boat show. I followed close behind; so close that I stepped on his sandal. I apologized and asked him if he was selling boats. “No, I’m here to buy one,” he said importantly. “Oooh,” I said, “Are you into yachting? Are you a sailor” “Nah,” he laughed, “I’m into real estate; I’m a developer. My son wants me to buy a boat, so I’m here to select one.” He laughed again shaking his head, “When my son wants something, he has to get it.” I laughed too. I also shook my head.

Wanted: One electric crematorium

2009-12-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

Today I can say I am annoyed, which is, I can tell you, a rare phenomenon. It takes a lot to annoy me. They say the life of an average person is three score and ten years meaning 70 and though I have not quite reached three score, at 55 I am chugging well past the half-way mark.

When one is pragmatic one has to plan. And I had planned for the disposal of my earthly remains through cremation and the sprinkling of my ashes in the River Mandovi. Read that as my last desperate attempt to travel far and wide, without fear of crashes, terrorists or bankruptcy.

The only tripwire in this whole plan is that there is no electric crematorium in Panjim, or Goa for that matter. Given the problems with finding burial space, for the end result of road accidents, suicides, murders, gang wars and acts of God, surely the time has come for a proper crematorium in Goa. In the good ol’ days people hardly ever died; they just lived on and on until they died I suspect of boredom. In the here and now, it is different. You step out of your house and you never know whether you will step back in or be carried in on strong men’s shoulders.

It could be anything – bad driving, bad construction, bad people, bad diseases, bad doctors. The thing is, a crematorium in today’s Goa would do brisk business. Yet what does the GMC do? Decides more doctors are needed. As if we don’t have more than enough of our fair share of quacks. Those who are more interested in the size of your income, than that of your infection?

No. The GMC decided Goa needs more doctors, so they asked permission of the Centre to expand their number of students from 100 to 150. The 50 extra would be local Goans. The Centre said fine, we’ll send team in December to check if you have the required infrastructure for 150 medical students. One hears GMC immediately panicked and said, hey, hey, no need to send a team this December, send it in December 2010. We’ll set everything up and open admissions for 50 more locals in 2011.

That is all well and good. But I learned that at the same time GMC was involved in new correspondence.

The morgue which holds 60 bodies is just not enough for the large numbers of people snuffing out on and off the roads of Goa. One hears they are going to spend Rs 12 crore and build a state-of-the-art mortuary which will hold 90 bodies.

So why am I annoyed? Am I annoyed because GMC is swinging into action to accommodate dead bodies but puts on hold a chance to save some deaths and train 50 new live doctors? Am I annoyed because they cannot build infrastructure for the living but can fritter away so much for the dead? Am I annoyed because in terms of cost-benefit, it makes more business sense to focus on the dead, because of the unending supply and quick turnover, rather than spend tax payers’ money on medical students who will then proceed to fleece their patients and not issue bills for payments received?

No I am annoyed because it would make more sense to set up an electric crematorium near the morgue. Body comes in, body waits until forensics and cops are through with it and family collects. If no family comes forward, the crematorium is right there. Would it not be far simpler to just dispose of the bodies in an electric crematorium? Of course, one that I too could use in the fullness of time?

Marriage and ceremony

2009-12-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

A wedding should be a time of joy. But when you see the drawn faces of the betrothed couple and families you know it is anything but joy in the run-up to D-Day. Before you know it, you are totting up the numbers and you find that you are already paying out a couple of lakhs on things like hire of the venue, fresh flowers, decorative lighting, pretty cloth covers on the chairs with big bows, which match with the pretty centerpieces which cost a bomb and are placed on each table. Another lakh flies like the wind into decorating the church or mandap, and the clothes for family members and friends who will be holding positions of honour during the nuptials.

Yet another lakh goes flying out to a very expensive band that will provide you with live music. Then you have to get a Master of Ceremonies, wine, cake, a sumptuous dinner for 300 guests. You never know how many people you know until you draw up a guest list for a family wedding. There are the cards that have to be selected and printed. Then they have to be delivered. I would have presumed that the cards would have to be posted, but no, according to my friend Omlet one cannot post cards. They have to be delivered personally or you will upset family and friends. And you don’t want to upset anyone because then they’ll consciously or unconsciously put a hex on your wedding.

By now you have lost track of the lakhs that are flying into limbo. There’s money to be paid for the bridal couple’s wedding finery. Wines to be selected, cocktails, mocktails, the wedding cake, decorations; nothing costs less than Rs 20,000 and the number keeps increasing. At no point does it strike you that all this money is being spent on just one day. To you this is the One Day of your life when you must spend all this money. Everything, but everything has to be just right.

You have attended other weddings and have taken notes. You like certain things that they had, so you set about getting those for your own wedding. You have already taken a loan to fit in the honeymoon. You find you are running low on funds, so you ask around and take small loans from family and friends. You take an advance on your salary because this is the Most Important Day of Your Life. No expense is to be spared for the ceremony and its reception thereafter. You want a wedding to be proud of; an event that is dressed to impress.

But it seems such a colossal waste of money and effort. Your guests will ooh and aah, but once they return from another wedding yours would have faded completely from their memory. Also no matter what you do, someone somewhere will have something to complain about.

One wishes one were back in the 70s when to flaunt wealth was vulgar. To have a regular wedding with the usual components was ho-hum. 30 years ago, we chose to go completely anti-establishment. The wedding nuptials were in the morning with mandatory white gown and dark suit in church, followed by a wedding lunch for relatives. The main event – the reception - was a party for friends held in the house. Good thing it was a huge house. The dress code was jeans, kurta and sandals for bride, groom and everyone else. The food was biryani, sorportel and ice cream. There was recorded music, good wine and wild dancing which can only be done with 70’s music. A wonderful time was had by all. That was a wedding that the guests spoke about for a long, long time, decades in fact. Even now they talk of the wonderful time they had. And the cost was a fraction of the cost of a ho-hum regular wedding.

With us, the wedding was not really important, what made us extremely nervous was the marriage that was to follow after the wedding. We were convinced we’d make a mess of it and of course we did. But we blundered through somehow and 30 years later we are still blundering through. But one thing is certain. As wedding receptions go, I have yet to enjoy another one as much as I enjoyed my own.

Turn the village/ward into a joint family

2009-12-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

There’s been an idea lurking around in my mind like a half-remembered melody that just won’t go away. And Tomazinho Cardozo’s article (ELDERS AS ‘ROLE MODELS’ Sunday Times 15/11/09) about today’s youth recklessly discarding the elderly, brought it into sharp focus.

This is the idea. Joint families may have disappeared, but wards and villages can continue the functions of the joint family even while the nuclear family thrives.

Look at the kind of elected representatives, Goan society is throwing up. They are a part of us. If they are corrupt, it is because we as a society are corrupt. Clearly the time has come when we have to not merely introspect but also stem the rot that has permeated every class of people in the state.

We have turned into an instant gratification society and this has ruined us. From the slow measured pace of an agricultural economy which left enough time and energy to create a rich Konkani culture in terms of language, literature and the arts, we have become a fragmented aimless people with no purpose, no plan and no larger picture.

We have to sort ourselves out.

I am not suggesting that we turn back the hand of Time, but that we can build on the slow measured pace of our culture and adapt it to the needs of today. To this end the joint family has to come back, re-invented, to expand and include the entire ward or village. The community – that is all residents of the ward or village, of all ages gather together and pool their mental and professional resources to support and strengthen each other.

This has special reference to our youth who are in dire need of help. This community becomes the mother of gram sabhas with every man, woman and child of the village pulling their weight equally. Everyone regardless of age, has a lot to learn and a lot to teach.

It is not just the elderly who have the wisdom and wealth of experience who can contribute. The youth, middleaged professionals, labourers, children, even toddlers with their wide-eyed innocence and willingness to learn, have something to offer to the community. It takes just five steps, but all hinges on the success of Step One.

Step One: Coming out of your houses into the open spaces of your village or ward, gathering around, getting acquainted with each other, regardless of age, gender, class, caste and creed. If enmity between two neighbours hampers progress, give the warring parties their space, but fill that space with neutral neighbours who can implement ideas and, who knows, even remove the enmity in the fullness of time.

Step Two: Discuss the strengths and needs of various members of the community. This includes both original inhabitants and settlers. For instance, if there are first generation learners; students who need extra teaching; those who can teach them must come forward to guide, coach and mentor. No money will exchange hands, but rewards will be huge when the youth in turn can help their mentors with indoor or outdoor chores. Cheerful interaction alone will work wonders with both youth and elderly. You will find seeds of respect and pride sown for both age groups. More importantly, respect will grow for the land and traditions of the village.

Step Three:If the village can be developed in terms of maybe setting up small businesses, so that entrepreneurship is encouraged. The community can decide the who, what, where and when. For this a plan has to be made. A Community Plan that factors in the existing facilities in the area. Community farming that had made Goa one of the strongest societies on the west coast must be revived once again. The elderly play a vital part here in guiding the new generation to protect fields and waterways, to solve modern problems with ancient solutions that worked so well and are still relevant today.

Step Four: Rope in the representatives, panchayat, assembly and Parliamentary to clearly explain and outline various schemes and plans that can be utilized by the community for the betterment of the village and its people.

Step Five: Focus on reviving the culture and better traditions of the village in terms of sports, feasts, fairs, drama, music and literature.

This is not some Utopian flight of fancy. Something similar has been used in a village in Maharashtra called Hivre Bazar (please Google it), where a village looking at starvation, alcoholism and complete degradation, came together under one man who was their sarpanch for 15 years and turned themselves around.

The village now plays host to study teams from the UN, from Japan, China, Africa and even Afghanistan. It was the focus and integrity of the sarpanch who passed his IAS exams, but was prevailed upon by the villagers to chuck the IAS and help them instead of accepting his posting.

They re-built the broken down primary school first, shut down all the country liquor bars except one, they discarded water guzzling crops and planted cash crops that did not need too much watering. Tube wells were dug for domestic use only, while the river water was used for agriculture. A law was passed that no land would be sold to an outsider. The average income of a farmer in the village was Rs 6 lakh, 8 years ago.

We can do it here in Goa. Why? Because it’s in our tradition. We used to have a planned society that was happy and contented. Ours was the sussegado life, not lazy, mind you, but slow, steady and solid. No one went hungry. Ours was a way of life that was the envy of all. No need to point out to you, that it is fast disappearing. No need to tell you too, that we can restore it for ourselves and our descendants.

All it takes is a Community Plan. Not the government, not the panchayat. Just the people. Turn the village people and the ward stakeholders into a joint family.

Why, it will even take care of the law and order problem, because a caring society becomes an alert, protective society. Our police force can go back to doing bandobast duty to make the MLAs look important.

(This article has been printed in The Times of India Goa Edition of 02 December 2009”Ties that bind”)

Best place in the world

2009-11-29T12:04:00.000-08:00

I spent two good days attending a three-day South Asia Media Summit that is organized every year by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung India at the International Centre, Donapaula and I came away pleased that India is the best country in all of South Asia. And after seeing a documentary on the horrors of caste oppression in India, that Goa is the best place in all of India. Ergo, Goa is the best place in all of South Asia. So I made a beeline for my old friend Cryalot to give him the good news, “I know for a fact that Goa is the best place to live and work in all of South Asia.”
He said, “What nonsense you talk. Don’t you see what is happening around you?”
“Well see for yourself,” I said, “The delegates from the other countries were saying terrible things about their countries.”
“And Indian delegates were praising our country and you believed them,” he said.
“Au contraire,” I said even though I had met no French speaking people, “Our Indian media persons were criticizing India like nobody’s business.”
“And so they should, so why are you not convinced that we live in a hell on earth?” he asked.
“Because even with all our problems, it was clear that we are better off than the other countries,” I said.
“Pakistan is bullying us and we are letting them bully us,” he said.
“But they have public beatings and one Pakistani delegate said it is no country to bring children into the world. He said he had two daughters and was afraid to let them even cycle outside the house,” I said, because I know we can cycle anywhere we like, We have Joseph Rodrigues and his cycling group that sets out early on Sunday mornings. It’s mixed company and no one has to be covered from hairline to toenail.
“Those people are being bombed to kingdom come and you are talking about cycling,” he said.
“Those journalists are threatened almost everyday, but they soldier on regardless,” I said, “but here we rarely get death threats and if we do we get one entire policeman for protection.”
“Look at the crime we have here, such a huge law and order problem – serial killers, robberies, white collared crime, bomb blasts and you say this is the best place to be?” he sneered.
“But they get caught some of the time, so most of us are happy and then the judge lets them off, so most of them are happy. We are a happy society,” I said.
“Last time you were foolishly impressed with Bhutan. What happened this time,” he asked.
“I still like Bhutan, but one of the delegates said that they are a small country and not very well educated and that the judges often beat up defendants,” I said. “Here people throw chappals at judges. That’s so much better than the judge giving you the boot.”
“Our judiciary is a joke,” he says.
“Not according to the delegate from the Maldives,” I pointed out. “She told us that the Maldives is only one kilometer broad and courtrooms are very small. The judge asks the witness did you see this man killing the dead man and all witnesses turn hostile because they are too scared that they will join the dead man.”
“Don’t talk of judges,” he said, “Look at all the reports coming out about judges being involved in embezzlement of provident fund of their staff; of judges having assets way beyond their means, of judges dismissing cases and they use contempt of court to stifle dissent.”
“Yes, but one of our delegates said they become High Court Chief Justices and even end up in the Supreme Court and one even made it to the Rajya Sabha when he dismissed cases during the Sikh slaughter in the 1984 riots,” I said. “That’s upward mobility which you won’t see in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan or Bangladesh.”
“Nothing you say makes me believe India or Goa for that matter is the best place to be right now,” he said.
“We are free to write what we want, for one,” I said. “Women can do what they want and no one can stop them. And best of all we can throw out our rulers at least once in four years and the army does not come marchin’ in,” I said.
“Who said you are free to write what you want?” he said. “A cartoonist was banned from cartooning by the Supreme Court. You can be hauled up before Speaker for ridiculing the MLAs.”
“Ah, but even then, there are ways and means to keep them on their toes. We have a powerful weapon which our neighbouring countries do not have,” I said.
“Which is?” he asked.
“The freedom to ridicule,” I said.

Life’s a gamble for cops

2009-11-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

I was walking past a bush at the venue of a fashion show when the bush said “Hsst” to me. I stopped of course, because a talking bush can always be counted on to break the monotony. “Why are you hssting me?” I asked politely because I felt one should never give attitude to a talking bush. “It’s me,” said the bush wriggling madly, “SP Sachcha Phul.”
“Why Sachcha Phul!” I said, “Why are you hiding behind that bush? You don’t have an invitation for the fashion show?”
“I do so have an invitation,” he said with injured dignity, “But you never can tell what people will make of it, especially the media. Some of my colleagues are jumping at their own shadows.”
“Ah,” I said, “That’s why you are sitting behind that bush.”
“Not really,” he said. “But the media has ruined the reputation of the police force. What they think? We don’t have lives of our own to live?”
“You are talking about your colleagues who were playing Catching Cook with the media on a casino boat?” I said.
“To you people it is all a big joke,” he said bitterly. “They forget we have to do bandobast duty, attend inaugurations of new police stations, solve serial murders, and apprehend terrorists. Are we not allowed to let down our hair once in a while?”
“Of course you can,” I said, “but it does look odd if cops or any other pillars of society, who are on the public payroll, are found in places like casinos.”
“Do you know how much money we have to pay to join the police force? It goes into lakhs and lakhs,” he said.
“I know,” I said sympathetically, “And you have to earn that money back as fast as you can. That is why your colleagues went to the casino? To reduce their deficit?”
“Not everyone gets that point,” he said, “They just jump to conclusions and it is very upsetting.”
“Well naturally, it is a way of making money. Far better than demanding bribes. But casinos are frowned upon as dens of vice. That is why the uproar,” I said.
“How come there is no uproar when we bet on matka numbers?” he said. “I don’t see why matka has to be pampered so much by the public. This is bound to give the casinos an inferiority complex.”
“It is unfair that while goons and corporate kings and politicians and women of easy virtue can climb unquestioned on board a casino, everyone gets all upset when cops do the same,” I said.
“It’s as if we are second class citizens,” he said.
“I agree,” I said. “It’s not as if anyone thinks cops are pure as the driven snow. On the contrary. Everyone knows you are corrupt and have ill-gotten wealth. So why get so upset over cops found in a casino?”
“I don’t know why people expect miracles from us,” he said. “We are like everyone else. We joined the police force to make money, nothing else. All of you take up jobs and professions to make money, so why get your knickers in a twist over us doing the same?”
“Well you are expected to protect the people of Goa,” I said.
“Of course we protect the people of Goa. What you think, huh? We protect people of Tamilnadu?” he said. “We protect those we are told to protect. From the rest we take hafta, and any fool would tell you that is protection of the best kind.”
“What about the poor and the marginalized?” I asked. “What happens when they are injured or killed?”
“What you talking about? They get compensation,” he said. “It’s not as if they don’t benefit. It’s all tied up nicely. We have nothing to hide. But with us cops, every day is a gamble.”
“So why are you hiding behind this bush? You should be sitting in your allotted seat and enjoying the fashion show,” I said.
“Because I’m waiting to catch Wendell Rodricks,” he said.
“You want to arrest Wendell?” I asked, “What’s he done?”
“He hasn’t done anything. I don’t want to arrest him,” he said getting annoyed. “I want him to design special chor pockets in our uniforms, so we can keep packs of cards, dice and casino chips.”
“Makes sense, especially now since the DGP said going to a casino is like going to a church or a temple, or going fishing. Perfectly legal,” I said.

Groceries – best gifts

2009-11-14T11:01:00.000-08:00

So my friend Mr Moneybags was getting his son married off to a girl from another wealthy family. He sent me a summons to come to his aid immediately. I rushed to his aid. Not just because he’s rich, but because it would be interesting to see what kind of trouble he had gotten into from which he could not buy himself out.

I went past the double security gates, the velvet lawns, the gelatine detector, the metal detector, the RDX detector, the eyeball scan, the fingerprint scan, two sniffer dogs sniffed me, I crossed lots of fluffy white carpet, skidded across a polished parquet floor, was led to Mr M’s study lined with leather covered books all the way to the ceiling. It looked like an exclusive English club with leather sofas and the aroma of perfectly bended Cuban cigars. Mr M was struggling with a list.

“Help me,” he said. “I need to make a list of items that invitees to my son’s wedding can buy as wedding gifts.”
“I don’t think the concept of a bridal registry has caught on in Goa,” I said, “And anyway these days everyone says they don’t want presents, just the invitee’s presence is all that is required.”
“Now that is silly, and maybe be okay for people like you,” he said, “but I am a pragmatic man and a wedding like anything else is all about income and expenditure.”
“Well anyway,” I said, “We don’t have any bridal registry that I know of where the couple can list the things they want with a chosen store.”
“What is the use of that?” he asked.
“Well the gift registry is updated and it has a system to prevent duplicate gifts. And the couple gets whatever they have selected.”
“No, I’m not interested in that,” he said. “I have already given them a penthouse apartment in Mumbai, a farm and farmhouse in Goa and a holiday home in the Bahamas. All are fully furnished and staffed.”
“Then just go with the ‘No Presents Please’ theme,” I said.
“What you think, money grows on trees?” he demanded. “Don’t you know how expensive living has become?”
“I know how expensive living has become. I finish all my earnings on groceries only. If I need anything else, I will have to shoplift,” I said.
“That’s the thing,” he said, “So I am making a list and I need your help. I need about 300 kg of sugar, 300 kg of tur dal, 500 kg of channa dal, 400 kg of moong dal, 700 bags of potatoes. 1000 sacks of Basmati rice, 1000 sacks of flour. You think flour makes sense? Weevils and things?”
“Isn’t that too much for the wedding banquet?” I asked, “Is the caterer not handling that?”
“Of course the caterers are handling that. I have 17 caterers handling all sorts of cuisines. This is the list of gifts I want the invitees to bring to the wedding,” he said.
“I don’t see guests dripping with silk and diamonds, staggering in with sacks of rice,” I said.
“I don’t know why I called you; you are no help at all,” he said. “Just give me some more items to put on the list and I will send a list with each invite.”
“You can ask for anything, garlic has shot up, onions, potatoes, carrots, oil, capsicum, brinjals too,” I said.
“No. No brinjals,” he said, “I hear they are growing BT brinjals in Goa without telling anyone; I want to live to see my great grandchildren.”
“Well then, dairy products, poultry, meats, fish! Oh my goodness, fish,” I said, “fish has become as valuable as gold today, but where will you store it at the wedding venue?”
“I will have reefer containers at the venue, so all perishables will be properly stored,” he said. “I will have a food inspector to check everything too. You know how some guests always try to palm off rubbish on the happy couple?”
“I know what you mean” I said. “We are still trying to get rid of the 99-rupee store stuff some people gifted to our family wedding.”
“I am not interested in your family wedding, I have my own problems,” he said.
“So you who are the richest person I know are also feeling the pinch of rising prices,” I said. “You will use this for cooking for your family and retainers?”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I will hoard all this merchandise and when the price is right, I will sell it all.”

So Not On Sanstha

2009-11-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

Strange are the plans of mice and men. If there is life after death, then Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik, must be having a hard time with the other after-lifers laughing their auras off. That is of course if the Sanatan Sanstha (SS) and the two deceased did put the bomb in the scooter in the first place. The cops were cagey about pointing the finger directly at the organization.

After two SS men have been picked up for questioning, the finger pointing at the Sanatan Sanstha is getting steadier. Vinay Talakar, 30, from Karwar did an MBA course in Goa University. Vinayak Patil, 27, from Karnataka worked as a driver at the Park Hyatt hotel in South Goa. You could say it was a Vin-Vin situation for the investigating officers since Vinay and Vinayak both broke down under questioning and spilled the beans.

“So what is this Sanatan Sanstha all about?” I asked my friend So-Not-On Shaitan who has been an admirer of the Sanstha for quite a while.
“It is known as the Sanatan Bharatiya Sanskruti Santha but to Western oriented types like you it is called Sanatan Society for Scientific Spirituality,” he said.
“Obviously their science was weak if the bomb they made blew up beforehand and turned both rider and pillion rider into spirits,” I said.
“There is no proof that the Sanatan Sanstha made the bomb,” he said.
Of course not, I said, why would you make a bomb and then blow your own people up? It would make sense if they were fundamentalists, because fundamentalists are fundamentally stupid.
“I’ll have you know that it is spiritually committed bodies like the Sanstha and Bajrang Dal that protect the Hindu community when it is endangered. We created awareness about the large scale desecration of deities in Goan temples,” he said.
“Creating awareness is a good thing. Creating terror by exploding scooters and Sanstha disciples is not a good thing,” I said.
“There is no proof that the Sanatan Sanstha made the bomb,” he said.
Of course, I said, they must have been going fishing and killing fish with dynamite is illegal, so that is why they were embarrassed about admitting it. Also they were too busy trying to pick up their own bits and pieces.
“You are completely ignoring the work we do for the welfare of society,” he said. “We run several publications and teach Hinduism and the Right Path to people and especially youth,” he said.
“But once bombs and terror are added to religious teaching, you become nothing better than a West Coast Taliban,” I said.
“There is no proof that the Sanatan Sanstha made the bomb,” he said. “Only the Home Minister Ravi Naik is pointing fingers at us. The police are not.”
Of course, I said. Obviously their enemies must have rigged the scooter with a bomb, knowing that the Sanstha workers would be using the two-wheeler. Then they must have tried to plant a bomb on the Narkasura truck too. So simple.
“We have already approached the courts to stop everyone accusing us and ruining our reputation,” he said.
“Your organization is just 19 years old, but only in the last two years people have been asking for you to be shut down,” I said.
“We have just two centres in India, one here in Goa and the other at Panvel,” he said, “but we have centres in Melbourne, Brisbane, Toronto, Dubai, Britain and the USA.”
“This is supposed to be a scientific age, yet religious groups across the board are all doing brisk business,” I said.
“We are just spreading scientific spirituality to seekers,” he said.
“Then do us all a favour and don’t use explosives as your teaching tools,” I said. “Spreading terror is so not on.”
“There is no proof that the Sanatan Sanstha made the bomb,” he said.
“Would you categorically state that the SS does not, never has and never will make bombs?” I asked.
“How many times do I have to tell you; there is no proof that the Sanatan Sanstha made the bomb,” he said.

People we love to hate

2009-11-02T02:29:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest myths in Goa is that Goans are warm and friendly. As long as I can remember Goans have always treated with suspicion if not outright hatred those they felt threatened by. First it was the Mangaloreans, Damanese and "Diuchars". Mangaloreans were originally from Goa and had fled southwards during the Inquisition. They were goodlooking and so intelligent, they bordered on the cunning. This the less calculating Goan did not like or trust. The Damanese were beautiful, but this was looked down upon by the supercilious Goans of Goa.

Later the Hippies fell foul of the picky Goan. He did not like their lack of either clothing or inhibitions. A foreigner was immediately labeled an “eeepie”. If you came in from anywhere in India regardless of city or state, you were a “Bomoicar”.

After that it was the turn of the Keralite to become the Goan’s favourite whipping-boy. Goans were too fond of the phrase: If you see a Mallu and a snake, kill the Mallu. Let the snake live. Keralites came flocking to Goa after Liberation to take up jobs as clerks, engineers, etc in government service. Snakes helped the Goan stay fat and healthy since they killed rats that would eat the paddy and other foodstuffs, but Keralites were taking local jobs; and lording it over bewildered locals.

The resentment and distrust was heaped in equally largesse on the Kannadigas, Tamilians and Andhraites. The reason was the same. Jobs were going to them. Goans were getting nothing.

Now it is the turn of the North Indians. They are pouring in, riding roughshod over all objections. Equally hated are the builders, miners and industrialists, perceived as taking away precious land from the natives. Never mind that the same natives are selling off their land to the highest bidder.

But there was one demographic which has been the bane of the original resident Goan for a very long time. The returned NRG or Non-Resident Goan. They manage to pull out your last nerve and jump on it with hobnailed boots. They lose no opportunity to speak in glowing accents of how wonderful it is “back home” in their country of adoption. How modern, how clean, how beautiful, the country they had made their home. They are supercilious towards all things Goan, the food, the culture, the place the people.

They speak of the high standards of living they are now used to and throw money around like there was no tomorrow. Wastage becomes something to aspire to. One young mother’s favourite past time would be to talk of the frequent power cuts and how she had to throw out two kilos of tiger prawns, because she felt they may have gone bad after an electrical outage of 2 hours.

One legal luminary who was first employed as a bagger of groceries when she migrated, walked around the city with her spouse, their faces wrinkled in distaste. Quote he memorably, “We are not used to such squalor. If you want us to return to Goa we have to be offered a better standard of living.”

They come here to celebrate events as inane as a matriarch’s birthday and instead of just having a party to celebrate the day, they import a white-man celebration with fake musings from family members and even a line-dance like they do “back home”. Prominent is the video camera team filming every dreary moment of it.

But by far the most telling comment was made by someone who was amused over receiving an invitation to attend a friend’s daughter’s wedding in the United States. She would never in this lifetime afford a trip to the USA. She told her friend that coming to the US was out of the question. Why, persisted the friend. Give yourself a treat, come! I can’t afford it, said the Goan. What nonsense, said the NRI.

Then the Goan had a brainwave. “Why don’t you call X since he lives in Canada and he can easily come to the US for your daughter’s wedding.”

“Oh no,” said the NRI, “See, it’s like this, my daughter’s marrying an Italian and his family has carefully calculated the number of people who will be attending. I cannot call X and his family, since it will upset the numbers and my daughter’s in-laws. They’re Italian you know….?

“So why bother to send me an invitation when you know I cannot come?” demanded the Goan.

“So that you could pray for the good health and happiness of the happy couple,” said the NRI.

Bleeding Hearts for Goa Inc

2009-11-02T02:24:00.000-08:00

I was wondering the other day, what would happen if all these bleeding hearts that come to Goa offering deals and opportunities for Goa and Goans actually told the truth. The flavour of the season is for every Tom, Dick and Harry coming to Goa to set up some business, institute or establishment, to talk of the benefit for Goans and Goa. It is getting predictable and tiresome. Just the other day a seminar for making Goa the Education Hub of the West Coast was held in Panjim. Two of the speakers had come in from outside and all puffed up with the great deeds they were planning for the state and “improving” the lot of its people.

Their plan is to turn the entire state into an educational hub, with clusters of educational institutions in every taluka. Why? Because the culture and climate and type of people in Goa are perfectly suited for providing the right ambience for the setting up of educational institutions. Because Indians spend $10 billion on foreign education and if those institutions were set up in Goa, all that money will stay in the country. Really? Would those educational institutions be doing this all for charity?

Another speaker described how he used to come to Goa for a holiday every year. He now comes here on business every month. This brilliant analogy he says is proof of how far Goa has progressed. The education hub would help Goa and Goans immensely he said, because the “parents of the students would come to visit them and your travel and tourism industry would get a boost”.

Everyone wants to do everything “for Goa and Goans”. Even the Sanatan Saunstha. Their aim is to make the people of Goa aware of the “special responsibility” they shoulder. They want to re-establish the divine kingdom. This they will do through kshatradharma which “spiritual” practice will protect seekers and destroy evil doers. By this logic they should recognize their own seekers Malgunda Patil and Yogesh Naik as evil doers, because the bomb they were carrying exploded inside their scooter, comprehensively destroying them. This surely must be Divine Retribution.

By the same logic the 40 young people in the truck carrying the Narkasuras were protected by the alertness of the truck driver who found a bomb planted in the cab of his truck and threw it away. He saved the lives of all 40.

Take anyone, liquor barons, casino operators, beer manufacturers, five star hotels, motorsports, construction companies, mining companies. Each and everyone of them holds a press conference telling Goans that they have come here, because they want to “do something” for Goa. They want to “put Goa on the map”, like as if all these centuries, Goa has been hiding like some insect under the map.

And we get carried away and believe them. We sell them our land, our children, our birthright to this one small place we can call our own. They put down roots, bring in armies of labour from all over and push us into a corner.

So I was wondering. What would happen if they actually told the truth. If they said straight out: Friends, locals, yokels, lend me your ears. I come to make money, not to give it. If I own huge tracts of your land and you have nowhere to live, tough cheese, you and your elected reps allowed me to own it. Yeah, verily I say unto you, I will fill this land with concrete buildings and cover the earth with paved pathways and flowerpots. No problem if you have no sewerage to speak of. We will buy bottled water. You can have the sewage cocktail we will liberally contribute ingredients to. I will give you jobs, yes to tend my homes and gardens, anything further up the professional ladder will go to my country cousins from back home. You locals can tend to their homes and gardens too. That’s the kind of job opportunities I have in mind for you. Yes 80 percent of those jobs will go to you locals. And when I am tired of Goa, when it is nowhere near the Paradise it is touted to be, I will sell off everything and move somewhere else. And when you struggle with the new owners, you will remember how I was the better option.

Would it make any difference?

Thieves At Canacona

2009-10-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

So. I went to Canacona to volunteer my services. Properly equipped with snacks, water, tough comfortable shoes, I was ready for work, but there was no work to be done except building houses which exercise has not yet begun. The next best thing was to accompany my guides to hamlets around the Galgibaga and Talpona rivers to see the damage done.

NSS volunteers, locals and the affected people themselves along with the hot sun had brought those areas to a semblance of normalcy. When one is not faced with the roar of a swollen river gone berserk, frightened people, dying drowning animals and the awful sound of houses collapsing on themselves, one can look dispassionately at the larger picture. Until one met the fragile Shali Chintu Pagi. But more of her later.

It was clear that the rivers were badly silted up. As a result human habitation has crept closer to the water’s edge and right in harm’s way. Ex-MLA (NCP)and ex-Chairperson of Goa Tourism Development Corporation, Fatima D’Sa’s house has become something of a tourist attraction, because she was just a prayer away from swinging on a coconut tree when the raging river rose to cover her storeyed house leaving her stranded and shouting for help on her terrace. The river flows along two sides of her house which in itself must be breaking all sorts of CRZ rules. If there are no rules for riverine construction, there should be. Human life is precious and one really shouldn’t disrespect rivers. Especially not heavily silted ones.

One learned that one should not make sweeping assumptions about people in general, calling them warm and good. As I did in last week’s column on the people of Canacona. I learned that there are a number of seriously dishonest people in Canacona.

I learned about how people who had suffered no flood damage at all, were the first to line up to each collect a cheque of Rs10,000 and cash of Rs 2000 since the flood hit on Gandhi Jayanti, the first day of a long weekend of bank holidays.

I heard about a group of five fisherwomen excitedly leaving the relief centre with cheques and cash clutched in their hot little hands. And how they were followed by a municipal councilor pounding after them equally excited, reminding them that he allowed them to get relief money even though they suffered no damage from the flood, and that since he did their work for them, they had to do his work for him during elections.

I heard about 40 thieves from a hamlet near Chaudi, who collected Rs 12,000 when the flood waters had not even touched the steps of their homes.

These stories have come to the ear of the Mamlatdar of Canacona, who is highly respected as a straight and upright bureaucrat. He has promised to do a cross-checking exercise of all the recipients, and hopefully, will take the money back from those who had suffered no flood damage.

Some pragmatic Canconkars hope he won’t do that because if he does, he’ll be transferred out so quickly, he’ll be a mere blur. This is because workers of political parties across the board are alleged to be in on the scam, helping their near and ear.

I heard that the villagers around Cotigao heard strange noises coming from beneath the ground before the hill itself split open. They feel the water came from there too, not just the cloudburst. Those close to the beach say they saw birds flying in from the sea on the morning of the flood. Not dozens, not hundreds, but birds in their thousands flying in from the sea.

I met a family of pigling siblings that had survived the flood while their mother perished. And I noticed that only in post-flood Canacona will you see refrigerators out in the gardens of houses and around the ruins.

But by far the most heartrending sight was Shali Chintu Pagi of Gallim village, who stood sentinel over a pile of rubble that was once her home. Shali lives alone after her parents died. They say she is ‘simple-minded’. She has lost everything and has no source of income. When the Talpona river burst its banks Shali along with her neighbours ran to their bhatkar’s two-storeyed house and waited on the terrace. She watched her house collapse on itself with all her meager belongings. Everyone we met listed all items of wealth that were lost – gold jewellery, electronic equipment, music systems, fridges, etc. We asked Shali if she had lost gold and other valuables and Shali her eyes large with remembered horror said simply, “I did not have any gold or fridge or TV, but I had lots of cooking vessels and a few clothes which are all underneath this rubble.”

We told her not to worry, her house would be rebuilt with bricks this time and she shook her head sadly, “Who will build it for me? I am alone. I have no one to help me.”

Canacona – a sign of times to come

2009-10-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

Canacona shows us the writing on the wall for Goa. For a few years now, people of this beleaguered taluka have been warning anyone who would listen, that the three major rivers of Canacona were a disaster waiting to happen. They said that the ecological imbalances in the region had led to the narrowing of the three rivers at Saleri, Galgibaga and Talpona. They asked the authorities to listen. No one did.

Like most problems facing Goa today, which anger one half of the population and have the other half on the defensive, the cause is tourism or mining, or both. In the lovely, sleepy taluka of Canacona with its forested hills, gentle rivers and beautiful beaches, the horror that unfolded with a killer flood of two-and-a-half metres height was as unexpected as the sight of a dead buffalo hanging upright with its forelegs through the middle branches of a tree.

With the rivers narrowed and silted up, the water made nonsense of the rivers. The flash flood broke banks, bundhs and nullahs taking houses, plantations, animals and people along with it. Sheer luck, presence of mind and the bravery of the Canconkars themselves who risked their own lives to save others, kept the human death toll at two. Animals were not so lucky.

Could it have been avoided? Locals say that age-old farming practices have been abandoned without a thought to the gradual death of the rivers. Traditional farmers used to remove the silt which accumulated during the monsoons from the riverbanks and used it in their orchards. Now they use artificial fertilizer and let the silt accumulate. Weeds grow on the silt and narrow the width of the river. Worse, with tourism, farming has been abandoned by most families. Instead land has been sold and developed. Khazan lands have been filled up and river banks now have constructions instead of plantations.

I have a special fondness for Canacona because I used to travel with a team of my colleagues to get stories from there. And what stories! How an entire village was sold decades ago to a hotel owner in North Goa and how they are still fighting a losing battle in court. We met Querobina who was 102 years young with sparse salt ‘n pepper hair, and all her teeth intact. She told us wryly that she drank beer, ate pork, and smoked cheroots that had her youngest son in his late 60s gagging. She died two years later.

We met a Dhangar freedom fighter who was educated in jail by another Brahmin freedom fighter Vishwanath Lawande, who shared his cell. The Dhangar settlement was neatly laid out with cool thatched houses, goats grazing and an unending supply of tender coconuts. Our freedom fighter claimed to be older than Querobina but had no written proof of it. He also told us he shot and killed over 300 tigers. It was kill or be killed because he used to carry letters hidden in tins of nashni, from Goa’s freedom fighters over the hills through the dense jungle to a designated tree trunk in Karnataka where compatriots in Karnataka would collect the letters and bring some of their own.

As far back as 2001 locals said it was almost impossible to identify the existence of the river Saleri, as heavy weed infestation had taken over major portions of the river.

We met some wonderful people there. Canakonkars. They are different from us fast changing urban Goans of the rest of Goa. One could say the locals of Canacona are the original Goans, gentle, warm, resourceful. They have been blessed with a beautiful land with no less than three rivers. They have a rich culture steeped in centuries of tradition. Yet they have been cursed with a baffling kidney disease that attacks sometimes entire families or at least one family member.

I learned all this almost 10 years ago. I plan to go this week to Canacona, not to get stories this time but to lend a hand. I can cook, I can clean, I can sew, I can make people laugh and I can write. I can definitely help to remove stones from paddy fields. Maybe some of these qualities can come in handy. Clearing up the fields and getting them ready for planting again is going to be a long process. I wish Querobina was still around, but then again, it’s a good thing she left before she could see the horror unfold.

Bad heir days for India

2009-10-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

Like hair they occupy pride of place at the top of the body politick. Like bad hair on a bad hair day, heirs to political dynasties are the first thing one sees when looking at the whole picture of India. In a land with overflowing rivers, mountains and plains, in a land peopled by great minds in science and engineering, the arts and culture, in an ancient land which should have had an ancient wisdom coming down the ages, a bad heir would be the last thing one would expect. But then you see the grinding poverty and poor infrastructure, simple evidence of a people living in the dark ages and you know the bad heirs who have inherited this land are not good for us.

And yet there they are, strutting their stuff while those who apply the election glue to the seat of their pants bow and scrape before them. Look anywhere and you see them, political families taking the place of the royal families that once owned the land and the people who lived on the land. Here in Goa we have the Ranes, the Alemaos, the Madkaikars, the Dhavlikars, the Monserrates and many more.

The Nehru-Gandhi family has been ruling the roost since Motilal Nehru in the late 19th century and still batting at the crease more than 200 years later. Look down South and you have the Karunanidhi clan which even held up the formation of the current cabinet in the UPA-2 government because Karuna wanted posts for his children and members of his extended family.

Nowhere in the world is the heir affliction as pronounced as it is in India. You have the Meira Kumars, the Deoras, the Yadavs, the Scindias, Pawars, Gowdas, Pilots, Dutts, Thackerays. So many sons and daughters have taken over chief minister status from their fathers. Naveen Patnaik succeeded Biju Patnaik, Omar Abdullah succeeded his father Farookh who succeeded his father Sheikh Abdullah; there’s Mehbooba Mufti and many more.

Political dynasties are scattered all over the country and this is not a good development in a modern democracy. When the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 removed the rule of lineal primogeniture where the eldest male member of the eldest line was successor to the throne, in politics crown princes and princesses are installed on the throne by their parents who ruled before.

It’s their right and those before them have made politics their family business. As in royalty their subjects make certain transfer of kingship through kinship is smooth. The more money they make the more certain the fact that their children will inherit the throne. The families also have such a hold on the parties they represent that the parties willingly put up names of the children for candidature. There is no democracy within the parties. Politics is an extremely profitable business. The patronage between the political parties and the political dynasties favour each other at the cost of the common man. Bad heir days are clearly dangerous for India.

Our only hope is that there will be increasing revolt in the ranks of party cadres never mind that it is greed that makes them fight against the heirs taking a larger slice of the pie. Now Rajendra Shekhawat son of Mrs Pratibha Patil, President of India, has been put up for candidature by the Congress Party in the fast approaching Maharashtra elections. The Congress MLA Sunil Deshmukh who has been winning that seat for the last ten years, has been told to shove off and give the seat to “Raosaheb”.

So what’s the solution? As with chronically bad hair, the best thing to do is to condition the heirs, trim them to size, keep a careful eye on them, smooth them, stroke them, discipline them and if the bad heirs persist, cut them, sweep them into a dustpan and dump them in the dustbin of history.

Open letter for visitors to Goa

2009-09-27T02:21:00.000-07:00

A little common sense and courtesy is all we ask for. Oh yes, our tiny state is blessed with all that is fine and good, hills, dales, forests, rivers, fields, beautiful beaches, lovely people, PCOs and broadband. Okay, if you insist, it’s a gift from God. Kerala claims to be God’s own abode, but everyone knows when God needs a holiday He comes to Goa.

We understand that there are other beautiful places with similar features all over the Konkan coast; all over the country; all over the world. We understand that Goa is cheap, gives you great value for money and that you can get your eyes, teeth and several other body parts fixed for a fraction of the amount it would cost you in your place of origin. We understand that you have looked forward to this holiday for a long time, that you have planned it down to the last detail. That you will be talking about this perfect holiday till the cows come home. We understand all that, but we need you to remember certain things.

We need you first to respect this beauty that you come to revel in, so when you buy overpriced bottles of mineral water, canned juices, wafers, ice creams and snacks, remember to carry a bag to stow away all your empty containers. The beach, roads, gutters are not the place for it. Put it all in a bag and deposit it in the bin at your hotel.

When you buy paan from any of the vendors, remember our money has gone into the painting of our lovely heritage buildings all over the state and spitting red paan saliva on them does not merely distress us, it makes us mad as hell. If you must eat paan, then carry a small tin or container or portable spittoon, spit into that and empty it out in your hotel bathroom.

When you come here all shiny-eyed and bushy tailed ready for the holiday of your life, it’s okay to let your hair hang down, but don’t let all your body parts hang out also. It does not only embarrass us, it puts our girls in danger when the creepy crawlies who cannot lay their hands on you decide to get their jollies by molesting our girls. Again, bras and badly fitting shorts crawling into every crevice and fold of fat, exhibiting angry red, wrinkled, freckled skin is enough to put a normal person off their feed for a week. Do yourself a favour; look at yourself in a full length mirror before setting off, wearing beachwear in the city. When you visit our churches and temples, a little decorum to clothing and behaviour is of the essence.

When you come here from other parts of India, especially the landlocked areas, remember the sea is deceptive. It contains all sorts of threats that can snuff out your life in the most implacable way possible. The rip tide slides in from anywhere in any depth of water and will drag you far out to sea and drown you. When the lifeguards tell you not to swim in certain areas, listen to them. They are curt with you when they come out with their second and third warnings because they know that when you are being sucked down into a watery grave, they will have to risk their lives and limbs to come out to save you. And their lives are not worthless as you may think. They have families depending on them returning home whole after their day’s work is done.

There’s so much booze available in Goa and you sip and stagger like there’s no tomorrow. Do that by all means, but don’t harm others, or put yourself in harm’s way. If you cannot hold your liquor, cease and desist, have a mocktail instead. It costs a little less and looks more impressive. And for heaven’s sake, do not drink alcohol and swim, it’s as dangerous as drinking and driving.

We know our people are naïve, warm and welcoming. That our girls have a serene Polynesian kind of beauty, but like you they are just trying to get on with their lives. They are not prostitutes either professional or free-lance. Don’t ogle them; don’t fondle them; they don’t like it. Neither do the common folk. Also leave our little children alone.

When Goans get angry they will punish you.

Enjoy your holiday and return to your home state or country. Don’t visit real estate agents and try to buy land here. We have very little of it and we need it for ourselves. Also, there’s no guarantee that you won’t lose your life’s savings. Come back again and again. Goa will welcome you in her warm embrace every time. Just don’t abuse that welcome. We have a way of life here, we are desperately trying to save. It is this way of life that makes Goa so special. Help us to protect it. And Goa.

Death is proof that life is too short

2009-09-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

You know you are getting on in years when you find yourself attending more funerals than weddings. You also see that phrase sitting mockingly across the entrance to the cemetery which tells you, Ais Makha Faleam Tukam. Every death brings home the fact that you are living on borrowed time. It tells you that you must seize the day. That you must chase after those impossible dreams before death comes calling. If for nothing else but the thrill of the chase…

You listen to the mourners talking about the deceased after the last clod of mud has been flung, or the embers of the pyre turning to ashes and you hear all sorts of things, generally bad, about all the mistakes the deceased had made in his or her life. You learn that while everyone wants to go to Heaven, no one really wants to die.

I generally avoid funerals if I can. Not because the church gets hot and overcrowded. Not because there’s usually a lot of caterwauling going on from people who hardly knew the deceased. But because I dislike slinging mud over a coffin. It’s especially gruesome in the monsoons. I have left instructions with my next of kin that I wish to be cremated in an electric crematorium. My ashes are to be dropped into the River Mandovi because I love this gentle river and I love ocean travel. I don’t want a fancy urn – a brown paper bag will do. But said ashes must be deposited in said river. At best I could reach Antartica, at worst I could reach Dubai, or even better Petra in Jordan where my ancestors are believed to have come from. One hopes by the time I kick the bucket, the Corporation of the City of Panaji will have installed an electric crematorium. But I digress, the disposal of my mortal remains was not the purpose of this piece.

Two people died recently. One I liked but did not know very well and one I knew very well but did not like very much. Both had one thing in common – implacable misunderstandings with their siblings arising from sharing ancestral wealth and property. It a phenomenon peculiar to Goan families. The sunshine years of childhood are completely forgotten as you turn against your own blood over inheritance. Yet, in the final analysis, your blood is your inheritance.

We come into this life wrinkled and naked and the first thing we own is a cradle built of wood which can hold us comfortably. We leave this world wrinkled and naked, and the last thing we own is a coffin of wood which can hold us. Comfort hardly matters at this time, but I have lain in a coffin we borrowed from the local undertaker for a Chamber of Horrors at our school fête and I can vouch that it was very comfortable.

Birth and death. Life is the journey in between. And Life is too short to carry all this unwieldy baggage of resentment, jealousy and hate, over stupid things like jewellery, shares and inheritance. As the 70-year-old sister of one of the deceased told me, you can’t take them with you to the grave. Yet the corrosive pain of family feuding hangs over the entire family and with the death of one came memories of truly happy times before the fighting began. “We were all one big family, laughing, talking, arguing; and then this happened and we fought and stopped speaking to each other,” she said. And that is a common refrain.

I asked one of the surviving siblings now in his eighties who still feels he was the wronged one, what was the point of all that rage and anger. He said shortly, “You don’t know what it was like.” I told him I knew, it had happened to my mother and her brothers but I was hanged if I would let it happen to myself and my siblings. “How do you stop it,” he asked. I told him one has to stop it at Stage One when the first divisive word is said. It’s not difficult. You’ve just got to be alert. Plug the hole before the dam bursts. The other thing to do is expect nothing, so you are never disappointed.

“All I wanted her to do was come to my house and say she was sorry for what she did,” he said. “And all she wanted was for you to come to her house and say you were sorry for what you said,” I told him.

His shoulders slumped. Not surprising really. Rage, anger, hatred and bitterness towards someone whose blood runs in your veins – that’s a heavy load to carry. And so unnecessary. Whether you are 9 or 90, life is too short for this. Death is proof of it. It comes so suddenly.

Mining and construction good for us

2009-09-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

When you write as much self-righteous stuff as I have, you tend to get very high in the in-step and then if you are lucky, someone pulls you down to earth. As did happen just the other day… I met the friendly neighbourhood MLA who did not look too friendly.
“You do not look too friendly,” I observed.
“Friendly? Why should I look friendly? Why should I look friendlily at you of all people when you write such libel about me and my colleagues,” he said.
“It isn’t against you per se,” I said carefully since he used a hi-funda word like friendlily, “I write against the entire government.”
“As I am part of the government it is against me,” he said.
“Very well, you’re right,” I said, “it is against you too. So what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I have come to teach you some things,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll just get a crash helmet and some body armour,” I said.
“Not that kind of lesson, though it is an idea,” he said. “I have to educate you. I may have a poor academic record, but I am a politician and you are a mere hack.”
“That is true. I am learning more everyday and I do have a lot to learn,” I said.
“First you complain about illegal mining,” he said. “Do you know it is only a signature and rubber stamp on a silly paper that makes the mining legal or illegal? Is not all mining destroying forests and agricultural land? Why pick on poor illegal miners then? Don’t they have to eat?”
“I ____,” I began but he cut me off rudely.
“Just shut your mouth and let me speak,” he said, “You talk of prices going through the roof. How are the middlemen going to earn a living? They have no land to grow anything, at least the farmer can plant enough food for himself and his family, what does the middle man have? Nothing. Of course he will hike up the prices,” he said.
“And give you and your jolly boys a cut of the profits?” I said, though interjected would be a better word.
“How are we to live? You think we have come into politics to do good deeds for people who couldn’t care less whether we live or die? No,” he thundered, “We have to look out for ourselves. What kind of a salary do we MLAs get? Peanuts! Then you go and call us monkeys. Of course we are monkeys if we work for peanuts.”
“You are earning a fat salary and you are guaranteed a fat pension too for just a few years of self-service in politics,” I interjected.
“We make the wheels move,” he said. “We build lots of infrastructure, roads, bridges, subways and all. Of course we do it for the kickbacks and commissions, but just think if there were no kickbacks would you have two bridges over the Mandovi and three Patto bridges in Panjim and a bunch of bridges all over the place? See the bus stand at Cuncolim. It even won an award for Best Recreational Design in New Delhi in 2007.”
“Yes but it is not being used,” I said, “So how can it even be recreational?”
“That is the beauty,” he said, “It can be used for anything even a theatre, or community hall, or cultural centre. We benefit from the commissions, yes, but the people benefit for at least 20 years, when the structures are expected to fall down. We ARE doing service for the people!”
“And drowning villages in mega projects, how do those end up with service for the people after you get the kickbacks?” I asked.
“How truly foolish you are,” he marvelled. “Don’t you know these are the rich and famous people who want to have property in Goa? How could it not be advantageous for naive Goans to have these kind great people around them? Goans can learn so much, copy their lifestyle. They can get jobs with them to clean their houses and work in their offices. And is this not one country, one world? Why should we stop other Indians and foreigners from coming here? What you think, your name is written on Goa?”
“Actually yes,” I said. “I am a Goan, therefore, of Goa.”
“Pah,” he said. “Then SEZs and big industries. We need them. All our children are running outside for jobs. Now they need not. We will bring industries here. Yes salaries are much lower here, but then you don’t have to rent or buy a house since you will be living with your own family.”
“But then you are using up all the land for building fancy houses for the wealthy and slums for poor migrants,” I said, “Where will our underpaid children live?”
“Aarey that is why we are here nah?” he said. “We will build low cost housing for them in different parts of Goa and then put in good roads and good transport for them to commute to work easily. More kickbacks for us and more development for locals. I don’t know why you people worry for nothing. We will have mining and mega projects and SEZs and houses for the rich and also place for poor locals to work and live. It’s all planned. Only you trouble makers must learn the truth.”
“What truth?” I asked.
“That mining and construction are the best things for Goa. Not just for us MLAs,” he said. “Now finally do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, “come to my house for a meal.”
“What’s on the menu,” he asked.
“I’ll go futuristic today,” I said. “Main dish, mining reject, removed with a side dish of garbage and concrete, washed down with a liqueur of mineral water laced with sewage from a gated community. It’s a special for you. This is what your grandchildren will be dining on.”

Why I like Parrikar

2009-09-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

The problem with working in a magazine is, every idea you get should translate into more copies sold. There were many ideas floated, some workable others not. The goal was to produce an interesting publication and get more readers. In another magazine in another time, we decided to invite the Chief Minister of the time to write a column, to explain his actions to the people of Goa. Francisco Sardinha was the CM then and he was very excited about being a guest columnist and explaining his actions in print.

Sardinha would dictate his column over the telephone. It was more of a chat in a stream of consciouslnes style where one thought would melt into another. My job was to make sense of it, format it and read it back to him to check that he was not misquoted.

Sardinha was toppled and Manohar Parrikar became CM. He too saw the potential but it was an uphill task getting him to actually write a weekly column. He just did not have the time. He refused to dictate the column, saying that he felt he wrote quite well and wanted to write the column himself. Actually, he did write quite well. I would sit in his office answering agony aunt letters and he would write his column, carefully explaining his actions of the current week. We stopped the column finally, simply because we could not spare the time required to chase him and pin him down.

But in those months of nagging Parrikar to write his column, one could not help observing his style of functioning and comparing it with his predecessors. He never seemed to rest, or need rest. I once saw him nibbling on an apple for lunch. Files would come to his ultra neat desk and he would read each one of them, scribble notes, give instructions to his team. He never encouraged idle chatter, and the queues of people to his office moved fairly quickly as he listened to each problem, offered advice and sent them on their way. When things could not be done, he was disarmingly honest. No one lounged around his office. People walked briskly in, said what they had to say and walked briskly out. While they spoke Parrikar gave them his entire attention with his wide-open eyes fixed on them intently. It was amusing to see some of his more shifty-eyed visitors highly disconcerted by that open intent gaze.

Then I met a young woman who told me how she met Parrikar during one of his strolls around Panjim. She was adopted into a family and was general factotum, doing all the cooking, cleaning and running errands. There was a First Holy Communion being celebrated in her family’s house and she stopped Parrikar and invited him to come and share in the feast. Parrikar whipped out his PDA and carefully noted the date, time and address. To her delight and shock of her family, the Chief Minister who is a staunch RSS man and BJP leader showed up at her door on the day of the First Holy Communion. He sat down as the adopted girl’s guest and partook in the festivities. He made her day, and no one treated her indifferently after that.

There were many other incidents one heard about, like how Parrikar picked up a girl lying bleeding by the side of the Mapusa road after being knocked off her scooter by a reckless driver. He put her into his official car with the white toweling covers, took her to Asilo hospital and sent someone off to inform her family before leaving for a function he was invited to as chief guest.

The much maligned IFFI 2004 showed Parrikar in a different light. It was an impossible deadline and he was there at all sorts of odd hours even at midnight, chatting with the supervisors and labourers getting them to work with a will. After the rape of a foreign national at the last IFFI in Delhi, he drove around all the nooks and corners at Campal see which areas should be lit up. When the crowds poured in at the start and closing days of the festival he stood at the gates of Kala Academy, helping move the curious crowds that stopped to look at the VVIPs. He directed traffic, scolded, laughed and waved people on. He was a huge hit with the national and international Press. There was a massive crowd queued up for Anupam Kher’s monologue at the Kala open air auditorium. Parrikar of course was standing on the seat around a tree directing the mass of humanity. He was actually the guest of honour at an action film that was premiering at INOX. I asked him why he was at Anupam Kher’s stage performance instead of the film and he said sheepishly, “Well, I was watching the film, but once the girls started taking off their clothes I came here.”

Recently I suggested that he start a network of remedial classes for weak students all over the state and volunteered my help. He said he liked the idea and he’d talk to me about it after he returned from abroad. But if his destiny lies in Delhi the remedial classes network will be a non-starter. If Parrikar leaves Goa to lead the BJP in Delhi, I for one will miss him.

The Untouchables of Porvorim

2009-08-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

Much like the mafia gangs in Chicago, who were a law unto themselves, our gang of 40 seem to be heading along the same route, following the same behavioural patterns. Arrogance, utter contempt for the law, taking unilateral decisions which affect the lives and futures of all and no one can touch them. The mafia families were known as the Untouchables. The only difference is that our guys are adept at pulling so many red herrings with statements and retractions and counter statements out of their collective hat; one does not know what the actual truth is. Until we take off our blinkers and see the stark reality.

The mafia built its empire on liquor and gambling. Here in Goa, the number of bars, pubs and liquor shops way outnumber the churches, temples, mosques and roadside shrines put together. Robberies take place over and over again, each heist getting larger and more impudent. And the cops shrug it off while our elected reps don’t even bother to discuss it any more.

They give with one hand and take away with the other. Thirteen mines are facing closure because they lie in the vicinity of the wildlife sanctuaries. Yet the Goa government’s Draft Mineral Policy allows mining near the state’s wildlife sanctuaries.

You have current news stories hitting the headlines around the world, that Man’s ravaging of Nature is the sole cause of Nature striking back. When we abuse our mountains, our hills, our forests and our rivers, Nature hits back in greater measure.

More worrying, the Mineral Draft Policy does not permit mining within wildlife sanctuaries and national parks “for the time being”. This is the language of the current 40 representatives of the people of Goa. “For the time being” and “in its present form” are phrases that strike a chill into my very bones. It is their solution to all problems. Like themselves the solutions are temporary. Only the problems remain permanent.

What’s facing Goa’s next few generations is too horrible to put into words. In a few short decades these 40 representatives we have selected to manage our inheritance for ourselves and for our descendants have managed to destroy this State.

The argument is that we get the government we deserve. We elect them from among ourselves. I beg to differ. If they are representative of us, then one has to conclude that we Goans as a people are liars and cheats, shrot-sighted, greedy, avaricious, stupid and demented.

Samir Kelekar who criticized some state representatives in his column in this newspaper has received a notice to appear before them. The Speaker has pronounced that he has the power to imprison citizens like Kelekar. Never mind that he is sitting in his chair thanks to the angootha chaap of citizens like Kelekar. This smacks of the workings of a banana republic. A banana republic is what you get when you elect monkeys.

One wishes there was a consumer redressal forum we could drag these characters to. We have installed them in the seat of power, to deliver a service to the people of this state. They are not doing their job, providing sub-standard services that are not only inconvenience us, but show every sign of destroying a way of life that was the envy of all.

Not only are they trying to destroy the environment, they are doing all in their power to destroy the people too. What other reason could there be for 19 casinos in the state? The Mandovi river is full of floating hulks which cater to the rich and aimless. The newspapers are full of red herrings thrown by the elected representatives of the people of Goa, confusing and confounding us into thinking that the mess we see is just a mirage.

It is time for us to redress our rights as consumers. We are paying good money from our earnings for it. The funny thing is those consumers like Samir Kelekar who raise their voices from a public forum are threatened with imprisonment. That does not happen in a consumer court. But we have to join our voices with his. If it means going to prison, so be it. The freedom fighters did it with the Portuguese. Time we got off our balcaos and stood up to be counted. Or the joke will be on us.

Teaching should be a breeze

2009-08-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

Brace yourselves, one feels a philosophical mood coming on and I lay the blame squarely on a priest’s sermon at the Chicalim church on the 15th of August. But one must have method and a Plan when getting one’s point across. One cannot just jump in, in the middle and expect the reader to figure out what one means. Let me begin at the beginning.

Teaching and Learning – and I say this with complete conviction – are two sides of a coin whose denomination is Communication. The process begins even before birth. Why else would my elder daughter love music of the 70s when she grew up with the likes of Eminem rap, boy bands and hip-hop? That was because I used to play 70s music when I was expecting her.

My point is this: learning and teaching are an ongoing process. You cannot have one without the other. Your teacher could be a man, a woman, a child, a book, an incident and of course, Life itself. Lessons are being taught every second of every day. Learning takes place every second of every day. Choices are made and when the realization dawns that they were good choices or bad choices, then that’s learning with a capital L.

So why do they say that teaching is a vocation? That not everyone can be a teacher? It is in our core to teach as it is in our core to learn. Like formal religion, formal education seems to have destroyed its very essence; which is why our education systems are disintegrating with frightening speed. It is becoming more and more apparent that students cannot learn because their teachers cannot teach.

The Supreme Court (SC) recently allowed students to sue their educational institution for poor education. The SC has ordered the educational institution to pay each student Rs 2 lakh.

Why does formal teaching become so difficult? Especially when informal but vital teaching is imparted by all of us to our juniors, our peers and our seniors so effortlessly? If we need to get a message across, we make sure that message gets across. You don’t give up until you get that message across. What is it then, that hinders those who are paid to get a message to their students?

Which brings me to the priest in question. The parish priest of St Francis Xavier Church at Chicalim. He had something to communicate. Something that he had learned earlier that morning and needed to share with his congregation. The bright spark who dragged me all the way from Panjim to Chicalim was not a great fan of his, but merely wanted me to be a good Catholic and attend Mass on the day of the Assumption.

I went reluctantly, but I was blown away by the simple sermon and the teaching tool used by Fr Leonardo D’Souza.

He stood at the altar, a thin serious-looking priest with calm eyes and voice. He unfolded the most unlikely of all objects to be found on the altar of a Catholic church on the Feast of the Holy Assumption. It was a daily newspaper (not this one unfortunately). He told the congregation that if we were unhappy with the way things were going, we should be the change we wanted to see. He picked up the newspaper and began reading a few reports from it. He spoke of people who effect change by actually doing things to make a difference in the world. He read aloud about a student from Singapore who had taken on the task of planting 30,000 trees in Rajasthan with a small group of volunteers. He read about a group that calls itself “Random Acts of Kindness” whose members see where something is lacking and smoothly move in to help. Among their members in India, he informed us, is a man who gifts sandals to those who have no footwear.

The packed church was silent, not a cough, no fidgeting and no, I do not believe the congregation was fast asleep. Not like the Legislative Assembly. One could feel the people listening and absorbing. I listened. I absorbed.

In my book, that’s teaching of the best kind.

Of true independence and tiatr

2009-08-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Independence Day. The common man spent Independence Day sitting in a corner counting his cowries and wondering how he’s going to make it through the year. He cannot believe that dal the poor man’s food is more expensive than chicken, the rich man’s food. August 15 was celebrated with gusto by those who have genuine cause to celebrate – elected representatives and bureaucrats. They were blowing their trumpets and thumping their chests congratulating themselves on being a part of this great nation in its 63rd year of independence.

Of course they have reason to celebrate. They are the only truly independent people in the land. They make the laws. They break the laws. They make new laws to legalize the laws that they broke. They have unlimited funds to stash away for generations of their descendents. Loose change they scatter before their chamchas who spend it like there is no tomorrow.

They are truly free. Answerable to nothing and no one. They feed on the misery of common folk and grow fat on it. Swine Flu is like a beacon of shining hope for them. There’s a lot of money to be made with new infrastructure, expensive testing equipment, medication, awareness programmes. Swine Flu has turned into an industry with the government holding the monopoly.

Then there’s the drought that they are salivating over. Not for nothing did P Sainath write his disturbing book Everybody Loves a Good Drought. But I forget. Elected representatives have fat bank accounts but thin skins when it suits them. They cannot be held accountable so they will not brook criticism or ridicule.

Which is why I was not really surprised to see a dejected Combo de Coimbra one of the greatest tiatrists the world has ever seen, wiping a tear from his eye.

“Why are you wiping a tear from your eye?” I asked Combo.
“My life’s work has come to nothing and it is all the fault of writers like Samir Kelekar,” he said.
“They have written nothing about you,” I said.
“Of course they have! They and you too keep comparing those MLAs and what they do in the Assembly to tiatr,” he said.
“That was just an observation to ridicule them, because they play to the gallery, literally,” I said.
“Tiatr is a noble and pure form of art which has come down through the centuries. How can you make a comparison like that? It’s very upsetting,” he said.
“There’s no need to be upset. We only say that because it looks like they are performing on stage. There are the main actors who ask the questions and the one who answers them, and there are all the other minor actors who have to react to the lines that are said,” I said.
“Tiatr has form and content,” he wailed.
“So too does the Assembly Session,” I said.
“We have music and a live band,” he said.
“Well they have a handful of bandmasters, who play the tune and the others dance to it,” I said.
“We have acts and scenes,” he said.
“They have Question Hour and Zero Hour,” I said.
“We have props and place settings,” he said.
“So do they. They have walkouts too,” I said.
“We have comic interludes,” he said.
“As do they,” I said.
“We have great tiatrists who have come from generations of tiatrists whose children are on stage today,” he said.
“Well they too have players who have come from families of politicians whose children call the shots today,” I said.
“We carry a social message in our tiatr and we spread awareness to our audiences,” he said.
“Ah there you are definitely different,” I said, “They do their best to ruin society and don’t tell the public anything.”
“Also, there’s that other difference,” he said. “No one falls asleep during a genuine tiatr.”
“Ah,” I said, “But you will have competition if the likes of Samir Kelekar are hauled up before the Assembly. There will be fireworks so no one will fall asleep. And awareness will spread like it has never been spread before.”

Politics and parenting

2009-08-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

Parenting is difficult. But it must be very difficult for a politician or bureaucrat to be a parent, especially when ethically, one is as crooked as a corkscrew. Children observe you all the time, learning, making mental notes and finally imitating. It can’t be easy for a politician to teach his children to be frugal for instance. His life is lavish, more cars than he knows what to do with, lots of money just pouring into his coffers from those wanting him to bend the law for them.

It can’t be easy for him to teach his children to be respectful of others. He is arrogant and treats those around him like dirt. He instills fear in his subordinates and takes pleasure in asking them to perform impossible tasks.

It can’t be easy for him to teach his children to have self-respect, or carry themselves with dignity, when he practically prostrates himself before his superiors, subservient, fawning and ready to kiss the ground they walk on.

How can he possibly teach his children about honesty in financial transactions? When his every waking moment is spent in finding ways and means of looting the people of the country? Nothing is beyond limits for him. He will steal anything, from paise to crores.

How will his children learn to be law-abiding citizens of a civilized society, when they see him interfering with the workings of the police? When they see him ordering the police to let thieves, murderers, rapists and paedophiles walk free?

How can they ever learn to live in harmony among people of different caste and creed? It’s not possible when they see their politician parents actively planning and plotting actions that will lead to communal riots.

Instilling in their children the need for hard work to get a job done properly would be so difficult, when it is clear as a summer day that the politician parent does no work at all. His children will see that their parent cannot even walk from Point A to Point B. He rides in a fleet of fancy cars. He cannot even drive himself. He delegates work to his army of lackeys and expects the job to be done.

How can he teach them moderation and self-restraint when he frequents casinos and other unsavoury establishments and even gets into highly publicized fights with the management?

How can he teach his children courage by example, when he is always in a blue funk about losing the election, or being forced to resign. When he lives in mortal fear of the Income Tax authorities, the Vigilance department or a nosy Press?

How can he teach them caution, when he does not stop to think that his actions can destroy lives and the future of generations of people?

How can he teach them balance and judgement when he will listen to only that which is convenient to him? How can he teach them to be defiant to uphold that which is right and reject that which will harm others? Especially when he takes the line of least resistance? How can he teach them generosity of spirit, or gratitude, or humility, when he shows none?

Where will he find the tools to teach them gentleness, impartiality or kindness? What about sincerity? When all he knows is deceit? And then there’s loyalty not just to each other, but to those who went before us and those who will come after us. How can he teach loyalty when all he knows is how to pull down those above him and kick those below him?

It’s a difficult job. Not politics, but parenting. No wonder than that we see the next generation of politicians’ children walking in their parents’ footsteps, following in letter and spirit all that their parents did. And more.

Upwardly mobile dance of Mumbai

2009-08-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

It’s happening in the UK; it’s happening in Goa and it’s happening in Mumbai. The natives are being wiped out. In Mumbai, you will hear Marathi being spoken in a few pockets in the ladies compartments in the trains, in municipal offices and fast shrinking areas in the suburbs. The irony is after Bombay was re-named Mumbai, the demography changed even faster. Every day, trains and buses deposit entire families with all their worldly belongings tied in bundles along with pots, pans and bedding. They come prepared to take up residence on pavements, in railway stations until they can move to a slum, a tenement and then join in the upwardly mobile dance that is Mumbai. The goal is wealth; the route is making money.

So they wake up early, finish part of their household chores, rush out to bus, rickshaw or taxi, get to the trains, rush out to bus rickshaw or taxi, or hurry on foot, land up at their place of work, sign the muster, get to the desk and work, work, work, till lunchtime. Eat at a stall, or canteen or the packed lunch in a tiffin carrier that miraculously makes it way from their home to their desk at the dot of lunchtime. Then it’s work, work, work, till end of office hours for some lucky ones.

The rest work beyond office hours to meet deadlines and targets set by their bosses. Rush home via walkathon/bus/ rickshaw/taxi to the trains. Buy some veggies and groceries. Rush home via walkathon/bus/ rickshaw/taxi. Finish the remaining chores at home, set the alarm clock and crash into bed. Off days are spent resting or relaxing or shopping for the following week. And that’s their life by and large. Work, work, work, until pay-day. Year after year until promotion. Changing jobs for better prospects and working harder than ever. Finding the energy somehow to get through the day with a little dignity and a whole mind.

They have an unwritten survival guide to Mumbai. If you don’t have the time to spend an average of 23 minutes in a queue at the railway station booking office, you can invest in a booklet of coupons which you can get stamped at a machine. Or you can buy a pass. Once in the station you can get a fast or a slow train depending on your destination. The trains roll in and out carrying unbelievable quantities of people speaking every language under the sun.

There are rules of behaviour in the train and any breakage of those rules results in physical retribution that is immediate and painful. When you get into the train behind wildly writhing bodies, your goal may have been reached, but you cannot stand still and gloat. Travelling the trains of Mumbai is Life and Life never stops, neither can you when you enter the compartment. You have to keep trotting with tiny steps moving forward to allow those behind you to get in.

You may stand near the door if you are getting off at the next station. If you are not, you will be damaged. You plaster yourself to the side of the passage to let those inside gallop out and those out to gallop in. Protect your person. The word “sorry” is never uttered, so do not expect it. Better still do not utter it, just do not make eye contact.

If you are afraid of picking up eye infections, colds or hair lice don’t stand or sit downwind. If you cannot bear the noise carry an I-pod and stuff your ears with earphones.

Auto-rickshaws travel has become an art form too. You get in and make sure the meter is down. Mumbai rickshaws were the most convenient form of quick travel in the suburbs, but now technology has set in and meters can be fixed to run like the blazes so you end up paying three times the regular amount. If you feel the meter is running too fast you stop the rickshaw in mid-journey, tell him he is a dirty cheat and pay him his fare. If he makes a scene tell him you are willing to finish it at the nearest police station.

You cannot show weakness in Mumbai. The goal is wealth. Everyone needs money. Yours is as good as any. From beggars to billionaires, you will find that everyone is able and willing to separate you from it. Mumbai teaches you the trick of anticipation. Scent trouble before it touches you.

The Magic Box

2009-07-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

There is this one cartoon that amuses me vastly. A very excited Martian holding a television set in his arms, rushes back to his home planet, and tells his leader: “I didn’t bother with the Earthlings. Instead I stole their God!” About time someone raised the status of the Idiot Box to something better.

A friend of mine was writing an article on what precious item people would take if their house was on fire, all loved ones were safe and they had just enough time to grab one item and run. The choice of item would tell a lot about the individual’s personality.

The choices people made ranged from family photo albums, to marriage certificates, to share portfolios, to bank books, jewellery, works of art, silver cutlery, books. I came home and asked my children who were then 14 and 9 what they would take. One loved books, art and sports. The other loved books, music and dogs.

Without pausing for even a second the 14 year-old said, “The TV.” The 9-year-old said, “The remote”.

I looked at them horrified. They had turned into The Modern Child. The couch potato. The brain dead worshipper of the idiot box. Just like their mother. And mine.

With people like us, anyway you look at it the television set is a magic box. As inventions go this one has my vote as being up there among the best ever invented. We did not have television when I was a child, which was why sports and imagination filled the hours of the day. But black and white television came into my life along with adolescence and the full glory of Doordarshan unfolded before us. We saw the news yes, with lots of Rajiv Gandhi doing lots of things mostly running up and down steps of planes and wearing a variety of headgear wherever he went. We watched an agricultural programme for farmers called “Amchi Mati, Amchi Manas”. We watched some wonderful Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam, Oriya, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi films. There were English films too and delightful serials like I Love Lucy.

Then came colour and cricket. My mother was an excellent home-maker, but when cricket matches were being telecast it was every man for himself. No meals were cooked, we had to manage on our own, because if she left the room, one of her “boys” would get out and India would lose the match. It was in the national interest that she had to stay put for the day. Toilet breaks were during the commercials.

Then came cable and we were ecstatic. They referred to a group of channels as a “bouquet” and what an apt term it was. Everyone had their favourite programme and generally everyone else willingly sat and watched. Commercial breaks were used for passionate debates over what was seen before.

Like most family traits I carried this on to my family too. We watched football and cricket, tennis and the Olympics, motorcycle rallies and Formula 1. We watched crime investigation serials and learned the intricacies of forensics. We learned that Lumenol can show up bloodstains years after a murder has been committed and the scene of the crime washed clean. We watched great feats of engineering and science. We observed the lifestyles of animals in the wild and the lifestyles of the fat cats of Page Three. We saw world events unfold and even learned to make accurate predictions because history always repeats itself. Television brought the whole world and all its goings-on into our drawing room.

I know six elderly women. In their time, two had been successful career women active, one had a large family and was always busy keeping her large household ticking over like clockwork. The other three were homemakers with large families. They were vibrant, well adjusted, with busy schedules. The first three felt watching television was a waste of time. The three homemakers found television to be high entertainment and a break from the routine of home-making and the silence of an empty house during office and school hours. Theirs was not a passive watching of anything on the box. They had their favourite programmes and followed every twist and turn carefully.

The first three women are today stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease. The last three tv addicts are still full of joie de vivre or joy in living. At least two of them. The third, my mother Maria Felicia, died seven years ago at 86, but she was sharp as a pin till the end. While I suspect an excess of television kept their faculties sharp, it definitely did not harm them. Therefore I am formally promoting television from the Idiot Box to the Magic Box.

This thing called friendship

2009-07-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

Friendship is a funny thing. It starts in the most casual of all encounters – eye contact, a shared smile, maybe a chance meeting, even a fight which ends before it can begin. Then it grows like a living thing, warm, beautiful, eccentric, demanding around a solid core of respect, commitment and love.

This thing called friendship needs more than one to grow. Sometimes it is born out of a group of three, maybe four, maybe more. It crosses all man-made boundaries of caste, colour, creed, time and geography. It is strong. It is permanent. It survives through years of separation. It leapfrogs across continents. Which is why when friends meet after years, even decades, threads are picked up smoothly just as if they had last seen each other only minutes before.

I’m gregarious. Always have been and hope always will be. I like people and generally people like me. I can strike up a conversation with anyone from any walk of life, which quality comes in handy in my line of work. Yet, despite the hundreds of acquaintances whose lives I have touched over the years, I can count only a small handful as my friends. Three of them go back more than 37 years. All three were from different colleges and we met randomly. The only thing we had in common was a love for playing hockey. What bound us was an irreverence for almost everything, including each other.

Each contributed his and her friends and relatives to the core group of four and we built up a sizeable crowd of 18 strong which guaranteed interesting extracurricular activities and a network that is now scattered all over the world. They annoy their children with stories of the fun times we had, which their children obviously do not.

The four of us were not some group of like minded soul-mates who were always on the same page. No indeed. There were fights, practical jokes that went awry, there were misunderstandings, days where all diplomatic ties were severed, but somehow all rage melted away and we were back together planning another caper.

Of the core group of four, one of us rose to great heights in an international airline, one opened an advertising agency and made a killing with her hobby of currency trading, the third and most impressive, steadfastly refused all opportunities for promotion in banking because if he were promoted he would be transferred out of Bombay and there would be no one to look after his mother. As for me, I still don’t know what I am doing, but at 55, I feel my best years lie ahead of me.

We keep in touch sporadically on birthdays and festivals, through telephone and email. When we speak to each other, time and distance dissolve into nothing. All worries and tensions that dog our everyday disappear and we are back in that time of crystal clarity when one felt no fear, when the world was our playground and we were invincible. That’s what this thing called friendship does. It melts away the irrelevant.

Who said we are not privileged?

2009-07-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

Lately I’ve been thinking that we have pockets of privileged classes everywhere. Among the strong and also the weak. Technology has made the strong weak and the weak strong.

The men and women, who toil in the fields, grow the food that ends up on our tables. Men and women build the homes, offices, bridges and roads that we use. They are the strong ones who have the physical strength to work long hours in the sun with not much to sustain them.

Then there are the rich folks living in their high-rises and villas. Put them to work in a field or a construction site for half a day and they will collapse. Yet the strong labourer is weak in the real world. It’s the wealthy weaklings who have the power.

You would think that those with no power are crushed under the heel of those who have. You would be wrong, because the poorest of the poor enjoy the same privileges as the richest of the rich. They can build houses anywhere and illegal is made legal. All they have to do is get an audience with a powerful minister or member of parliament, touch his feet and weep on his shoulder.

We won’t talk about the wealthy because it goes without saying that their wealth buys them the privileges that the poor get with misery and a potential vote bank. The politician is the most privileged because he extorts from the rich to donate to the poor, so that he can be voted to power. Then he can rob the rich, the poor and the middle class.

Chimbel’s Indiranagar slum colony is a living example of a privileged class. If I want a ration card and have no proper documents of domicile I would wear out at least five pairs of shoes before I got my ration card. A resident of Indiranagar told me that she had no birth certificate and that her son’s name on his birth certificate needed to be changed. She did not even know which day she was born, so she selected a day, a month a year and within days she received a birth certificate and a ration card. They told her there would be a bit of a problem with changing the name on her son’s birth cert. Instead they issued her son a new one with his name duly changed.

I thought it was only the rich and the poor that are belong to the privileged class. I thought wrong.

There is a whole new class of people in between who can make the impossible possible. Largely found in the middle class groupings of society, this is the class of people who know people in the right places. All it takes is one telephone call to get one’s work done, or someone else’s work undone. They are the class of people with Contacts.

What about those who are not wealthy, not poor and not influential? They have right on their side. Also the judiciary and the entire system that can be made to work to right wrongs. It takes a while longer, cost more in terms of time and money, and it’s these who actually determine the direction the country will progress.

As it happened in the case of a householder in Mapusa who approached the Additional Sessions Court to: a) prevent a group of illegal gadda owners from dumping their construction material and garbage into a nullah and b) to order them to remove the debris and waste from the nullah. The gadda owners were incensed with the nerve of the householder dragging them to court when the nullah and road were public property and therefore none of his business. But the householder brought out a precedent set by the Supreme Court where any individual could act against persons and institutions that were causing damage to public property. The litigant here was not using influence to right a wrong. He was using the system to beat the system. Now that’s a privilege.

In A Pig’s Eye!

2009-06-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

A pig I am on nodding terms with stopped me in the field the other day waving last week’s column at me. “I have a bone to pick with you,” he said.
“Pigs can’t pick bones,” I said.
“Don’t try to talk semantics,” he said, “You have some nerve pointing fingers at Australians! What about the racism against us pigs?”
“You are not a race, you are a species,” I said.
“Again with the semantics,” he said. “We – and by we, I speak for all pigs – are sick, tired and fed up with this open discrimination against us by humans all over the world.”
“If you are sick and tired, you could be going in for Swine Flu,” I said, “so you better get lost.”
“This is the last straw! You talk so easily of Swine Flu – and by the way, we do not like being referred to as “swine” after it became a curse word. But you tell me, how many pigs do you know suffer from any kind of flu?”
“Well I don’t know many pigs,” I said.
“Precisely,” he said. “And yet you have the gall, the GALL I say, to lay a disease on us. If we had Swine Flu, would we not have given it to our owners? At this rate all pig farmers would be dead by now and all pigs too.”
“No, actually, it’s the rich and famous who are getting it and importing it into the country,” I said.
“So do they fool around with sick pigs in their penthouses and five-star hotels – and I am being heavily sarcastic here, mind you,” he sneered.
“Well a sick pig could have infected a farmer, whose son works in a five star hotel who may have sneezed near the victim who felt so ill that he decided to fly back home, infected everyone in the hotel lobby, the taxi driver, the plane when he returned home,” I said. “They call it Six Degrees of Separation.”
“Well we pigs are going to do something about this nonsense. From the beginning of Time mankind has been talking badly about us. In the Bible demons were exorcised from people and dispatched into pigs. All because they said we had cloven hooves. Let me tell you we have four toes. I shudder to think what those poor pigs with demons cast into them must have been going through,” he said.
“It may be just a myth,” I said. “The pigs I have seen are very happy peace-loving creatures.”
“Look at the phrases and idioms you people use,” he said. “Fat as a pig: Pigs are grotesquely fat only when their owners fatten them up deliberately for the market. Look at wild boars in the jungle – they are lean and mean. And what’s this nonsense of “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” That has to be the silliest thing I have ever heard. It’s really awful the things you people come up with – make a “pig of oneself”. Do we eat any differently from you? You make as much noise and you don’t have to manoeuvre with a snout. Then they talk of buying a “pig in a poke” which means getting cheated in a purchase. What does that have to do with a pig? And some are so wrong scientifically, “sweat like a pig”. We don’t sweat. We don’t possess sweat glands like you disgusting humans. Have you ever seen a sweating pig?”
“No, that I have not,” I said.
“Then why do you come out with such rabid racial slurs?” he asked.
“I guess we’re just mean and thoughtless,” I said.
“We were thinking of migrating to the Middle East en masse, but then we heard the Egyptian government had started destroyed all pigs in the country, and it might become a fashion in the Middle-East,” he said. “We would be safe in the Middle East because no one eats pork there and at least our lives would be spared.”
“Well no one is going to kill you here,” I said. “At least not because of Swine Flu. They also said it is no longer called Swine Flu, it is now known as the H1N1 virus.”
“That may be, but everyone still refers to it as Swine Flu,” he said.
“Well I heard it was a huge pharmaceutical scam to sell flu drugs, but if you take Tamiflu as a preventive, it won’t work if you actually get H1N1,” I said.
“So buying Tamiflu would be like buying a pig in a poke, eh?” he chuckled.
“I guess,” I said, “but see the silver lining. Many people have stopped eating pork and chances are you will live to a ripe old age.”
“People stop eating pork? Cocktail sausages? Choris? Bacon? Sorpotel? Fried pork ribs? In a pig’s eye, they’ll stop eating pork! My owner will be coming after me any day now. He has that measuring look in his eye,” he said.
“Easy to avoid it,” I said. “Just stop eating like a pig and start sneezing.”

Talibanaussies

2009-06-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Fascism abhors a vacuum. When the Jews toughened up, and turned into fighting machines called Israelis, they left an empty space. The world has moved Indians into this space. When Indians travel abroad we are looked upon with suspicion, resentment or outright hatred. A friend who traveled abroad for the first time returned crestfallen over the lack of courtesy shown to Indians. If Shakespeare started his writing career today, he would have used the name Shyamsunder instead of Shylock.

The Indian-Jew parallels are eerily similar. Both races were immigrants to different parts of the world. They worked hard and not always honestly. They were ruthless in their business dealings and preserved their ethnicity zealously. They grew wealthy. Wealthier even than their hosts. In Nazi Germany, much before Adolf Hitler came on the scene, Jews were being attacked on the streets. Much like Indians in modern Melbourne.

The intensity of hatred for Indians is surprising, and we won’t go into the clichés of “a few hoodlums are picking on Indians” and “all Australians are not like that”, It looks like the Taliban have a hotline to Australian hotheads and are giving them tutorials on how to terrorize soft targets.

Women are to the Taliban what Indians are to the Aussies which is why I use the word ‘Talibanaussies’. The Taliban do not tolerate women being seen in public places. The Talibanaussies do not tolerate Indians being seen in public places. The Taliban use their rifles to beat the women and have killed couples they felt were not related to each other by blood or marriage. None dared protest. The Talibanaussies use screw drivers, cardboard cutters, fists and feet to make their point. None of the Australians present protested.

The Taliban will not tolerate women speaking in loud voices in public. The women are silenced with rifle-butt whippings, fists and kicks. None dare to protest. Talibanaussies cannot tolerate Indians speaking “Asian” among themselves. The Indians are silenced with physical attacks and abuse.

The Taliban chop off the fingertips of women who wear nail polish. The Talibanaussies stab Indians carrying cell phones and i-pods.

The Taliban will not allow women the right to education. They blow up schools and beat up schoolgirls. The Talibanaussies do not want Indians to have the right to education in Australia, even though they are paying through the nose for it.

The silence and fear of the rest of the Afghans and Pakistanis spur the Taliban on to greater shows of sadism. The excuses that the Australian police mouth, “Indian students should not speak loudly in their native language” and “Indian students are soft targets because they carry expensive gadgets”, spur the Talibanaussies to continue wreaking mayhem on those who cannot afford to fight back because their future is at stake.

The Taliban are a bunch of criminals. 22 percent of today’s white Australians are descendants of convicts who were banished from Britain to Australia for petty crimes.

There are 90,000 Indian students in Australia. Only 5,000 turned up for a peace rally. Indians have to unite to protect themselves or force the Australian authorities to return their fees and pay for their passage home. The Australian economy is already weak. If Indians boycott Australia, the Aussie economy will literally go down under.

Making builders and miners work for Goa

2009-06-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

There’s something about flowing water that makes the thoughts move in an orderly manner. It worked with Archimedes who sprang out of his bathtub stark naked and ran around screaming “Eureka”, while his spectators just said “euuuu”. I had a eureka moment the other day watching the barges sail with their small hills of iron ore pressing them low in the gently flowing Mandovi. There was one practically every seven minutes. They came back empty and I thought what a waste of fuel. It is the same with the trucks that carry ore from the mines to the barges ¬– they go back empty. Waste of fuel again. Then came the e-moment.

With all this building activity all over the coastal areas and the abandoned mining pits in the hills why not use builders and miners to undo the damage they are causing. Set up designated collection points for building rubble, broken glass, and anything that will not pollute ground water. Load the material onto the barges. The barges take the rubble to the loading point where machinery to lift the material into empty trucks is installed. The trucks carry the rubble to an abandoned pit within the mining lease property and dump it in. The barges would use a little more fuel than they would while plying empty as would the trucks. The setting up of collection points and automatic loading machinery would be expensive. But considering the crores that went down the drain with the drama at Sosoddo where Hyquip was paid so much taxpayer’s money for doing nothing. I am embarrassed to even put the figure down in print. The expense can be equally shared by the builders, the miners and the taxpayer.

Research on the Internet showed that the United States of America had rejuvenated and planted trees over abandoned mines, by first laying down a floor of approximately 5 metres of concrete and then dumping mixed waste into the pit. They layered it with mining reject soil added more waste, then capped the top with 2-3 metres of soil and greened vast swathes of land destroyed by the open cast mines.

I called up Digambar Kamat who besides being the chief minister also holds the Mining & Industries portfolio and he listened to my spiel first in a why-do-I-get-the-mad-women-calling-me manner then began listening carefully. He said after a brief silence, “Well, it’s not a bad idea. I will talk to people about this.”

Full of self-righteousness I shared my idea with the Man of the House who snorted and said, “Don’t be stupid. Building rubble is best dumped at the side of highways, so that it can be used to broaden them instead of cutting down hills to get mud and rocks. And you can’t drop plastic and batteries down abandoned mines because they go down below sea-level and ground water over five times the area will be contaminated.” I told him that the Americans laid a 5-metre thick concrete floor on their abandoned mines and got another snort, “You think our educated illiterates will do that?” But it can be done, I said. Got a snort for that too. “There is that woman professor from Nagpur who coverts all types of plastic waste into fuel with zero emission and sells to Indian Oil Corporation,” he said. “If our people were serious about getting rid of plastic they would have approached her company long ago.”

The plastic into fuel professor was Alka Zadgaonkar of Nagpur. I spoke to her husband who said it was a zero emission process and yes the fuel was bought by IOC among others and that they had sold the patent to one Shah based in Mumbai. Why did they sell it? Because we are R&D people and not entrepreneurs. Did their process have Central Pollution Control Board certification? They had Maharastra Pollution Control Board certification.

The next person to talk to was Claude Alvares of Goa Foundation who has received bouquets and brickbats in his fight for saving Goa’s Environment. He said my idea of using the barges and trucks was a workable one, but expensive in the long run because the mining industrialists are not interested in spending money only in making it. Also they refuse to close the abandoned mines because now there is a market for third-grade ore and they can mine those pits again. They will not allow waste to be dumped into their pits. Unless the government comes in hard and heavy and enforces existing laws and that won’t happen because our ministers and MLAs are part of the mining lobby.

But will it work, I asked. It could, he said, but I doubt it will happen.

Rising Prices

2009-05-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

Scene: The boss’s plush air-conditioned office on the 8th floor with a large picture window.

[Boss glaring angrily at his employee who has asked him for a salary raise]

BOSS: Do you know or do you not know that we are in the middle of an economic crisis?

EMPLOYEE: Sir it is getting really difficult to make ends meet.

BOSS: So you think I am some sort of mint? I can print extra cash for you? We all have problems and we all have to tighten our belts.

EMPLOYEE: Sir, if I tighten my belt anymore my backbone will wear out my belly button.

BOSS: This is all nonsense. You have to learn to economize. Live within your means. Look at me. I have cut down on my holidays to Switzerland; now I just go to Dubai and spend time at the Ski Dubai. Instead of eating out at cordon bleu restaurants four times a week, we eat out only once a week. See today I have ordered a pizza and I will eat it here. Then I don’t have to pay service charge or a big tip. I don’t have to waste precious petrol driving to the restaurant.

EMPLOYEE: That is very admirable sir, but I cannot afford to go for a holiday anywhere and forget about eating out, we cannot eat in. Prices have shot up. Who would have thought that French beans would be Rs. 56 a kilo? Vegetables prices have risen four-fold. Rice has doubled, dal is touching Rs 60 per kilo, we eat one meal in the day and snacks the rest of the time.

BOSS: There’s your problem then, snacks are a waste of money. Avoid snacking. It’s bad for health. My doctor says so. You should eat fruit when you feel hungry.

EMPLOYEE: Fruit is way beyond my means sir. Even locally grown chickoos, papayas and pineapples are a distant dream for me.

BOSS: The price of mangoes has come down. Now it is only Rs 250 per dozen.

EMPLOYEE: Sir, the aam aadmi cannot even think about mangoes. I have to pay my house tax, the electricity bill, the gas bill, bus fares have increased. I used to take three buses to come to work. Now I walk the first and third trips and take the middle trip by bus.

BOSS: That’s very good exercise. My doctor told me I should walk at least for one hour a day for good health, so I have installed a walking track in my garden.

EMPLOYEE: Sir, it wears out my shoes and shoes are very expensive. Also we have a formal dress code in the office and it is very difficult to keep looking crisp and formal.

BOSS: Yes. Appearance is everything. People have to know we are a professional outfit when they enter our doors.

EMPLOYEE: But it costs a lot to keep up appearances, sir. My wife works very hard to stretch my salary, but we have to borrow from friends and relatives by the third week of the month.

BOSS: Fiscal responsibility is the name of the game my good man. You have to plan your expenditure. [The intercom buzzes.] Yes? Oh the pizza’s arrived? Send him in. Send him in.

[The pizza delivery boy comes in hands over a box and a bill]

BOSS: Ah I love these deep dish pizzas! Thank you, thank you. [He takes the box and waves the pizza delivery boy towards the employee] Pay the man my good fellow. It’s Rs 275 and make sure you give him a 20-buck tip. No, no, don’t give it to me. Give it to the delivery guy. Why are you coming at me like that? Help! He’s picking me up. Help! He’s throwing me out of my own window. Help! It’s eight floors down!

[Lights out. Curtains]

Gossip an art form

2009-05-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

We Goans have raised gossip to an art form. Put a group of Goans together and eavesdrop. First they complain about various issues, the ineptitude of the government of course and sooner or later they will start gossiping about mutual friends, relatives and also people they don’t know.

I would blame the balcao for this. Not for nothing did Goan houses have a mandatory porch or verandah for watching the world go by. It came in handy for hailing an acquaintance passing by and sharing a cool drink and hot gossip.

Just the other day I was sitting in a public place and had the pleasure of listening to a group of six or seven middle-aged men and women. Some would say eavesdropping is as bad a habit as gossiping. I would disagree. Putting a listening device into someone’s room and listening is a no-no, but when six people are sitting near you in a public place and insist on discussing the private lives of others in loud carrying tones, you would be an ass not to listen. The only downside is that you cannot butt into the conversation and give them your take on the situation.

As it happened at the aforementioned public place I found myself in this week. The raconteur, a nondescript woman in her early sixties, with curly hair and spectacles, was holding forth to her spellbound party of six other middle-aged nondescript men and women. As I entered she was talking loudly, about how some female they all knew borrowed money from her and seemed to have no intention of returning the loan. There were many oohs and aahs and a chorus of “Did you not ask her for it?” She said she did buttonhole the borrower, who then got all dramatic and said she forgot and she would surely, surely write a cheque.

I wanted to tell her that in my experience you lend money only when you know you can give it away. When you lend, presume you will never get it back, is what I say. But someone else at their table pointed out triumphantly, “It says in the Bible: ‘Never a borrower or lender be!’

The raconteur was not done. She went on smoothly to talk about how the borrower used to break her toys when she was a child. Then without pausing for breath, she went on to the marital problems of a couple they all knew. She used their names. She spoke of how bitterly the couple fought and how the child of the couple had to grow up with that. She spoke of someone else who was entrusted with keeping a relative’s gold and how that worthy used the gold as security against a loan for herself. She spoke of how she begged a couple to go for marriage counseling and a few of her listeners agreed earnestly with her that both should go for counseling not just one spouse. And then she told her audience that one should always be humble and accept that one is not perfect. That is the first step, she said.

I wanted to ask her if her personal imperfection was her loose wagging tongue, but felt that it may be taken in the spirit it was offered. She grew tired of talking eventually and they all rose to leave and made plans to return in the evening.

I love listening and exchanging juicy tidbits which makes me a gossip too. In my book talking polite nothings is a total waste of time. But I avoid being sanctimonious when I gossip, because given their circs and temperament, I would do the exact same thing. I sat in the peaceful silence following their departure, mulling over our love for gossip.

And I thought if we could take our Goan love for gossip and turn it to our advantage we could be the most advanced people on the planet. Instead of writing reports in newspapers which most people don’t read anyway, we should use the art of gossip to get vital information out. Take something as simple as garbage disposal. Spread the gossip of how certain high-in-the-instep aristocrats (names must be used here) were actually pigs because they generated so much garbage, when all they had to do was reduce, reuse, recycle and this was how smart people did it.

I’m currently toying with the idea of starting a new movement called SPREAD (Society of People Ready for Education and Awareness Distribution). It could work like the old Pyramid system of investment. One person spreads the information to five other people, who each spreads it to five other people and so on. Information will spread to every corner of the state like wildfire. It will cut across, caste, creed, generation and language divides. You can talk to your neighbour, your boss, your auto driver, your maid, your child. And the best of all? It will cost nothing.

Not the worst in the land

2009-05-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

After an entire month of watching the most powerful people in the country whose decisions affect the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich, one feels a sense of relief. That Goa’s politicians are bad, but not as bad as many blackguards in the rest of the country. That our guys are comical, but not as comical as many others too.

We have Karunanidhi’s Between Meals Fast that made eyebrows fly higher than when he acknowledged LTTE supremo Prabhakaran as his bosom pal. His Between Meals Fast defied logic. The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu woke up one fine morning had a hearty breakfast. Then he decided to lie down on a mattress in full public view announcing that he was going on a fast. His doctors were horrified – it must be very lucrative keeping an old model politician like him going at public cost. He cannot walk properly, cannot see properly, cannot talk properly. Before lunch the fasting CM rolls over on his side and allows himself to be helped up onto his chair and announces that he has called off his hunger strike, because the Sri Lankan government has announced a ceasefire. The Sri Lankan government did no such thing. And the CM went on to get outside a hearty lunch.

Jayalalithaa AIADMK ex-CM of TN was always against the LTTE and their demand for a separate Tamil Eelam state in Sri Lanka. As recently as October 2008 she demanded that all pro-LTTE protesters be arrested. Before the 2009 elections she demands a separate Tamil Eelam state in Sri Lanka. When she is called anti-national she says, what nonsense, I am not asking for a separate Tamil Eelam in India; I am asking for it in Sri Lanka inferring – why are you getting your knickers in a twist. Both she and Karunanidhi have managed to spike the guns of the vitriolic Vaiko whose only agenda was a pro-LTTE agenda and left him without a plank to stand on.

In Andhra Pradesh SMSes were sent out to people telling them that the Chief Minister’s son Jagan Mohan Reddy was in cahoots with Satyam's Ramalinga Raju and why was the CM's son not put in jail. To counter that the CM sent his SMSes to students in Andhra telling them that they don’t need to worry about their tuition fees.

In Bihar Nitish Kumar one of India’s most successful Chief Ministers is being wooed by everyone. In his typical style he leads everyone up the garden path, makes statements about how he is against communalism and will not share a platform with Narendra Modi. And then he gets on a platform with Modi, hugs him, holds his hand and just stops short of dancing around the stage with him. He also tells the nation that when the Kosi flooding practically decimated Bihar the Manmohan Singh promised Rs1000 crore aid. When the PM went back to the dry land of Delhi the Centre informed Nitish Kumar that Bihar would get only Rs 110 crore. Kumar says not one “phooti cowrie”reached Bihar but his office received a FAX from the Centre asking for the return of Rs 1000 crore.
Prakash Karat of the CPI(M) has been doing so many flipflops saying he will not enter an alliance with the Congress Party and then saying he may. Uttar Pradesh has been the strangest of the lot with Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) running its very own soap opera. He takes ex-BJP Kalyan Singh into the SP fold saying “Muslims embrace him for it”. Azam Khan Muslim founder of the SP is mad as a wet hen and his supporters clash with other SP supporters of Amar Singh. In a parallel comic plot film actress Jayapradha accuses Khan of soiling her reputation by circulating morphed nude pictures of her along with some salacious CDs and Amar Singh tells the electorate that if Jayaprada loses she will commit suicide. The media ask Jaya to clarify and she says yes, she will commit suicide if she loses.

And then there’s Mayawati of the Bahujan Samajwadi Party, who amasses huge wealth from the “donations” of her fans, and builds huge statues of herself all over the state, but does nothing about the grinding poverty of her people. All she wants is to be made Prime Minister is what she says. Mulayam Singh Yadav says that he will form an alliance with anyone who will dismiss Mayawati as Chief Minister of UP.

There are many more comical stories from the rest of the country, but space and time constraints will not permit all. These elections started a new trend of shoe flinging in India. One believes this is the only reason why the militants from the north and the Maoists and Naxals from the east have not been more active in putting a spoke in the electoral process. They have been too distracted. Let us be grateful that as politicians go, ours in Goa are not as bad as the rest of them in the country.

Of sadistic dentists and doctors

2009-05-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

I brush my teeth twice a day, and floss after every meal. The flossing began about eight years ago after what we used to call a “SABENA! Situation” at the dentist’s. SABENA! was an anagram we used at school for Such A Bloody Experience ¬– Never Again!

My wisdom tooth wanted out and the dentist had a field day. He yanked and sweated and pumped the pliers up and down for nearly 20 minutes, then told me with a satisfied smile, that on a scale of 1 to 10 my tooth extraction was an 8. I had a purple bruise at the corner of my mouth for a fortnight. The pain inside my mouth spread to my brain and settled there for four days. SABENA! you would agree. And the irony was that I went to him because my editor (may his nerve endings twang forever) told me that my previous dentist, who I was mortally afraid of, was a known sadist. He urged me to go to the pliers plyer.

I do yoga breathing exercises and clean my house myself to keep fit. I scour the Internet for herbal remedies and foods that prevent nightmare health situations. The garlic in my house would scare any self-respecting vampire into retirement. All this because added to my fear of dentists, I have an aversion to doctors. They have this detached look while they poke and prod and when you are screaming for mercy, they ask you ah, does it hurt when I do this? And then they go and do it again, while your voice reaches a two-octave rise you didn’t know you had.

As with most people with time on their hands, I sit and mull over the whys and wherefores of Life. I look for answers. I look for reasons. And the news gives it to me. Look at the people who get into dental and medical colleges. The newspapers are full of stories of ragging which are hair-raising in the extreme. These are the ones that got caught because: a) the ragged victim would not take it any more or b) the ragged victim died. What about the thousands of medical college bullies who were not caught? The physician down the road could have been one of them. The dentist definitely was.

They say ragging is a harmless tradition, silly antics which are really fun and games. It’s a friendly initiation of freshers into an institution. Fun? Yes it can be for the ragger. Those who died or committed suicide were not around to share the fun experience with the rest of us.

All cruelty springs from weakness. I am not saying this, Seneca the Roman philosopher said it. And we have too many weak people around otherwise known as bullies. It’s a human production defect. Others call it the natural order of things where the strong prey on the weak. Older siblings bully their juniors, parents bully their children, seniors bully new entrants into the institution, whether it is academic, professional or prison, there’s spousal bullying with the stronger keeping the weaker in a constant state of nervous tension.

In the workplace too ¬ – every workplace has an embedded bully. Tim Fields author of Bully in Sight discusses how to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying and overcoming the silence and denial by which abuse thrives. He says: “Most organizations have a serial bully. It never ceases to amaze me how one person’s divisive, disordered, dysfunctional behaviour can permeate the entire organization like a cancer.”

If you just take the time to stand back and observe dispassionately, they are everywhere. I did some reading up on this and learned certain things about the serial bully who is innocent and charming in front of witnesses, only the target of his/her aggression sees both sides. Yet to the trained eye all bullies exhibit tell-tale signs. And it’s not just men, women are bullies too.

The bully shows a deep-seated contempt for most people. They need to be in control of their victims’ thoughts, words and actions. They have a compulsive need to criticize while at the same time refusing to value, praise or acknowledge others achievements. They cannot hold a proper conversation flitting from topic to topic to enforce their point of view. They are spiritually dead even though they follow rituals of religious belief and affiliation. They are unbelievably petty.

There is a lot more but this is enough to give me the willies when it comes to putting my teeth and body into the hands of those who have come out of institutions known for inflicting unnecessary pain on the vulnerable. Until I’m dragged kicking and screaming to one of these, flossing, yoga and herbal remedies are good enough for me thank you.

Three really tough R’s

2009-05-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

Reducing, re-using and re-cycling, is hard, time-consuming work. And it can generate a lot of heat, since all the hot air generated by the shouting and screaming is adding to the glaciers melting at the poles. Which raises the levels of the oceans, changes regular currents, adds to the eddies around the River Princess and knocks off large areas of Candolim’s once-lovely beach. That’s what I tell the Man Of The House hereinafter referred to as MOTH when he yells at me, the Sweet Lady Of The House hereinafter referred to as SLOTH.

Much before Panjim’s Chaka-Chak campaign the MOTH was ruthlessly supervising the segregation of waste at source. Designer plastic bags were kept under a mattress for when the kids wanted to look high-maintenance while carrying assignments etc to school. Plain plastic bags were washed properly, dried and stored for re-use. Milk packets were washed, dried and returned to the milk booth to get a half-litre of milk free for a hundred bags. Large plastic bags containing rice, sugar, flour, etc were returned to the grocer who first looked puzzled and then pleased.

Bottles were washed, dried and kept for the Lamani woman who was stabbed in the belly by her drunken husband and lived to tell the tale and show off her scars. Newspapers were also sold to her. Old clothes and shoes that were outgrown but in good condition were dropped off at the Missionaries of Charity at St Inez. Those clothes that one was embarrassed to give away because they were too shabby were turned into dusters. Once the dusters turned into rags they were used as oil cloths for cleaning the vehicle and then burned. All this before the segregation at source in Panjim.

Food waste like vegetable trimmings, fruit peels etc went into the public bin before the CCP removed it and had door-to-door collection. Meat trimmings went to the stray dogs outside and fish waste should have gone to the stray cats, but the MOTH hates cats and issued a diktat that we had to use the fish waste for fertilizer. The fertilizer idea was not a good one. The children were convinced we were trying to kill them with the smell. The SLOTH hit on the bright idea of boiling the waste and grinding it in the mixer then adding it to the plants. It acted like steroids on a weightlifter, the roses looked like dahlias and then like steroids, it killed all our plants. So the fish waste went into the public bin.

Now with the door-to-door collection, we have a tiny amount of biodegradable waste collected every day and a small amount of non-biodegradable waste picked up on Mondays and Thursdays. That should be that for our contribution to keeping the planet safe, but no, there’s more.

Since CCP has no landfill site we have not retiled our sad cement mosaic floor in our otherwise beautiful flat. The MOTH does not want to add to the piles of construction rubble all over the highway. Ants had eaten away at the masonry of our almost 50-year-old bridge-type staircase leading to our front door, we had to re-plaster and tile the bridge. So we used mosaic made out of broken coloured glazed tiles. To the MOTH it was re-cycling and a clever, artistic use of waste, to the SLOTH who wanted a terracotta look, it looked gaudy. To a fancy relative of ours who lives in The Foreign, it looked like the work of Gaudi. I thought she said ‘gaudy’ with an accent but she meant Antoni Gaudi the Catalan architect. The only problem with the mosaic bridge is that the stray dogs still pad up and down to be fed and as such the bridge which has a lot of cream coloured tiles has to be washed regularly. So the MOTH will not waste water and uses the soapy water from the semi-automatic washing machine to wash the bridge, then the clean rinse water to wash the soap off. We wash clothes twice a week and the bridge gets a soap and water treatment likewise.

As the SLOTH I would find it so much easier to use a hose and tap water to wash the bridge. In the blink of an eye I would throw all the plastic bags and containers away. It would be child’s play to throw the trimming away instead of cooking it for the stray dogs who now consider us part of their family. But the MOTH keeps me in line. Reducing, reusing, recycling. These three R’s are tough. This planet owes us big.

World religions and women

2009-04-18T13:19:00.001-07:00

Horoscopes and predictions make interesting reading. When George Bush Jr took over the USA, Nostradamus was widely quoted on his predictions that a world war would happen during Bush Jr's tenure. The war would be fought on religious lines and one religion Nostradamus predicted, would be wiped out from the face of the earth.

This got everyone wondering, would it be Christianity being swallowed by Islam? Would the Christian armies rise up against Islam like the Crusaders not so long ago that contained Islam and spread Christianity all over the civilized world? Some believed the religion slated for the aforesaid wiping out, could be Hinduism that is older than both Christianity and Islam put together.

Hinduism dates back as far as 3300BC during the beginning of the Indus Valley Civilization in the Bronze Age. The Jews believe Year 1 of the world is 3760 BC the year when Adam and Eve were created. But they believe Judaism as a formal religion began in 2000 BC. Christianity began in the Year of Christ 2000 years ago, and Islam 600 years later in the 7th Century. And now most of the wars have been fought to either defend or impose one religion on others.

The way we are headed it looks like there will be no place for more than one religion in the world. Scratch under the secular veneer and a fundamentalist lurks under most skins –ordinary people who will fight to the death to preserve their religion and belief system. The few who are genuinely secular qualify because they don’t care one way or another since they don’t believe in gods or heavens or hells.

The funny thing is three of the main religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were all born in the Middle East and bear marked similarities in their sacred books, especially regarding their attitude to women. The Jews were scattered all over the world. Christianity spread and in 700AD Islam made a serious effort to overpower the Christian world.

The Moors crossed the Strait of Gibraltar invaded Christian Spain ruled then by the Visigoths who were a barbarian race. The Moors ruled for a little more than 800 years and introduced art, architecture and mathematics to Spain, before the Christians under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella routed them out and proceeded to spread Christianity to South America.

The ebb and flow of nations and cultures is deeply bound to the religions of the conquerors. Look at Goa. India too has always grappled alternately with Islam and Hinduism. Now savants argue that evidence points to Islam looking for world domination again. Almost the entire continent of Africa follows Islam, the Middle East, Central Asia, and large swathes of the Far East.

My grouse with all these Middle East religions is that women are treated with contempt. They are “one-third the value of men”. Iron clad rules are created for them. Women in the Christian world earn less than men for the same work. As recently as the beginning of this month the Israeli newspaper Yated Neeman which caters to an ultra-Orthodox Israeli readership doctored the photographs of Israel’s new Cabinet by removing the two female ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver and replacing them with male ministers. The newspaper considered it immodest to print images of women. And now the Taliban with its legendary contempt for women, is practically on India’s doorstep aided most ably by the likes of the Pink Panty man and his pals under the garb of Hinduism.

Hinduism is one of the few religions that started out worshipping the mother goddess until the Ram Sene began making and enforcing their own rules and regulations. Religion and women? Mankind depends on women to keep the human race going. Yet across the board, all religions of the world go out of their way to shun menstruating women as unclean. They are banned from offering prayers at places of worship, the Old Testament told men they would have to bathe outside the city and then enter if they so much as looked at a menstruating woman. Till today menstruating Hindu women cannot offer puja and believe that if they make pickles during this time the pickle would spoil. It’s all tied to iron clad religious diktat that does not realize menstruation is like an oil-change for your car. Any way you look at it – women are screwed.

Shoes as missiles of change

2009-04-12T02:37:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a media person about the Shoe Incident Day, when an angry Sikh reporter chucked his shoe at Home Minister P Chidambaram.
“This flinging of shoes at politicians has to stop,” she said. “First that Iraqi reporter chucked his shoes at George Bush, now this Indian copycat flings his shoe at PC. The Iraqi should have patented his action. We Indians always copy.”
“First a small correction,” I said. “The Iraqi actually flung his shoes at Bush. He put a lot of shoulder action into it and he flung both his shoes. Jarnail Singh merely lobbed one soft trainer shoe in PC’s direction. He was angry but the shoe throwing was symbolic. And it worked because the Congress is re-thinking fielding Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. They’re calling this form of activist journalism “Jarnailism”.”
“Far as I’m concerned, he copied the Iraqi,” she said.
“Jarnail Singh knew that a boot in hand works better than flinging two at the Bush,” I said.
“These Delhi journos must be earning huge salaries,” she said enviously. “You know how expensive shoes are and to just go around flinging them at people is the height of extravagance.”
“These men were angry about grave injustice done to their people and that was why they threw shoes,” I said.
“I will never throw shoes,” she said. “Do you know how difficult it is to get shoes of my size? Whenever I am lucky enough to find a good pair that fits me, I buy two pairs.” There seemed nothing more to say to that so we walked on in silence. But she was not finished. “Then there’s the other thing,” she said.
“What other thing,” I asked.
“Now they will have shoe detectors along with metal detectors and we will all have to leave our shoes outside the press conference and walk around barefoot,” she said.
“That would be nice,” I said. “I like walking barefoot.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, “We’ll have to have pedicures regularly and I just can’t fit that into the salary I earn. I could give myself a pedicure, but nail polish too is so expensive. This Jarnail Singh is really going to cost us media-persons dearly.”
“Making journalists take off their shoes for press conferences won’t solve anything,” I said. “Anger will find its release any way, anywhere. They can throw anything. Politicians will just have to wear bullet proof jackets and crash helmets.”
“Throwing a heavy book would have been better,” she said.
“Shoes don’t hurt so much,” I said, “And anyway Jarnail Singh’s shoe was a soft trainer shoe. It would have been like throwing a small pillow at the Union Home Minister.”
“That’s the thing,” she said. “He did it in such a half-baked fashion and now we all have to suffer for it by going around barefoot like M F Hussain. Have you seen how terrible Hussain’s feet look?”
“If Singh really wanted to make an impact, he could have thrown a hob-nailed boot, or an army boot, even a lady’s stiletto heel,” I said.
“What I say is if you are planning to do something; you should do it properly,” she said, “especially when you know that lots of your colleagues will suffer. Now we have to go through all this indignity of being told to take off our shoes, when all he did was lob a soft shoe in Chidambaram’s general direction. And he threw his shoe like a girl.”
“I think you are being too hard on Singh,” I said, “He asked Chidambaram a question about the Sikh riot accused and Chidambaram was quite sharp with him and refused to answer.”
“I am afraid politicians may not want to take any more risks and will make the media wear government-issue overalls at press conferences. All clothes, belts, shoes, watches, cellphones, laptops, handbags and briefcases, will be kept in a holding area. Can you imagine how silly we will look on TV?” she said.
“If someone wants to throw something they will,” I said. “They offer samosas and tea at press conferences. A hot flying samosa with its three sharp corners can do a great deal of damage.”
“Chidambaram should have worn Jarnail Singh’s shoe and taken the other one too. Then all our problems would be over,” she said.
“How would that help?” I asked.
“Because according to Mahatma Gandhi: Three quarters of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understand their points of view. All Bush and Chidambaram had to do was wear those shoes. The shoes would be missiles for change. Gandhiji would have liked that,” she said.

Job Security for All

2009-04-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

There are some people who are easily impressed. When times are bad they find silver linings. They are silly and setting themselves up for a fall. I dislike these types because I am one of them.

I was so impressed with a presentation on Poetry Films. But there were many in the hall who watched the short films flash on the screen with growing indignation. At discussion time they flatly said they didn’t understand any of it and there was no future in poetry films.

To me it was like looking at abstract art. The trick is in not trying to figure out what the monkey was thinking when he flung paint at the canvas, but what conclusions I could draw from that work of art. Ditto with poetry films. And then I heard the chief guest Vishnu Wagh Spokesperson for the Congress Party in Goa, speaking bracingly about a good future for the genre in Goa. I was so impressed.

The very next day Wagh gave a press conference with the employees of the Maharaja casino breathing down his neck, saying that the Congress was for casinos and that if they were shut down or swept out to sea, 3000 young Goans would lose their jobs. And I was filled with wonder and awe. Ah, a messiah had spoken.

As the official spokesman for the Congress the large and equally large-hearted Wagh brought into his fold the unwanted and the miserable. Civil society frowns heavily on gambling but Wagh in essence, said come to me all ye who are slotted by the slot machines, and poked by the poker chips while the government plays Russian Roulette with their immediate futures.

And I thought here is solace for the other pariahs of civil society. Sex workers – at least 40 per cent are Goans and they are being pushed out of business. Their Russian counterparts take the high end tourists and the Lamanis get the low-end tourist. They have families dependent on their earnings.

Builders – they behave exactly like bosses of prostitutes (and one hears a number of them do own brothels), because they organize the rape of Goa and sell her off over and over again. Now they have families and employees and labourers heavily dependent on them. They need the construction business to continue unhampered. A lot is being done to help them, but there are some who complain.

Drug peddlers – it’s such a huge network as the Narcotics Cell will tell you. There are groups and sub-groups, pushers and carriers, those that get young people hooked onto their products, and then hound them for cash, or recruit them into the business of drug dealing. If they are stopped, hundreds and thousands will be affected, yes, Goan families too.

Matka bookies and agents – they are all over, under the policemen’s noses, in markets, at bus stops, the network is more amazing and marvelous than the tiffin carriers of Mumbai. I know one small time agent in Chimbel who has now retired, but who supported not just his wife and two children on his earnings as a matka agent, but his mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her son, his son’s wife and children, and his daughter’s husband and children. The interest he earns from his fixed deposits keeps his family and extended family fed and clothed even in these strange times of zero inflation with the price of food going through the roof. Can you imagine the misery this agent and all the thousands like him all affiliated to the head offices at Kalyan and Mulund in Mumbai, will suffer if matka is closed down?

Congress continues the good work of saving all these illegitimate livelihoods. Now maybe they could spare a thought for all those Goans who are jobless because their employers shut down their legitimate operations in Goa? Maybe, just maybe, they will stop hanging themselves from ceiling fans, rafters and trees?

Primary school antics in Goa Assembly

2009-03-29T03:22:00.000-07:00

Sitting in front of the television screen watching the goings-on in the Goa Assembly is far more interesting than being present at the session, fighting sleep in the gallery. There are too many distractions, not the least is overhearing comments from others occupying seats next to you.

It should be made mandatory for all schools, colleges, people in the workplace and homemakers too, to watch the Assembly proceedings live; or recorded and watched at a later time in the day. Not just because it is huge entertainment, but because it has elements of everything, including spine-chilling horror that these 40 people with the mentality of eight-year-olds hold our lives and future in their well-greased hands.

It’s exactly like a primary school class. Noisy, restless, everyone looking like they wish they were playing elsewhere. Some sitting properly; some sprawled untidily. Maybe if Churchill Alemao made a habit of sitting erect with his spine straight and his legs together he would look less like a beached whale. Some passed notes. Vishwajeet Rane bent over Alexio Sequeira with a paper in his hand which made Alexio giggle like a school girl; this while Victoria Fernandes was waving her arms and addressing the House. Some like Babu Azgaonkar were belligerent, trying to pick a fight with anyone; some like Philip Neri Rodrigues sat staring vacantly; others like Jose Phillip D’Souza gave viewers a ringside view of his tonsils as he yawned the mother of all yawns. And still others like the overworked Miccky Pacheco slept the sleep of the innocent in his kodel.

Rane Senior the Speaker sitting at a higher level, doled out platitudes and rebukes like any primary school teacher. His treatment of Laxmikant Parsekar was hilarious in the extreme. First Rane said whatever Parsekar had to say would not be recorded. Parsekar continued to speak. Then Rane told Parsekar he should stop speaking and sit down and that he, Rane didn’t care if anyone went to the Press. Parsekar continued to speak. Then Rane realized that the Assembly proceedings were being telecast live to Goan households and establishments all over the state and he ordered the cameras to be shut down. Parsekar continued speaking. This could be heard because while the video was switched off, the audio continued for a few vital minutes before the screen when blank. And one could hear Rane telling Parrikar that they could walk out if they wanted and Parrikar tranquilly replying, no, we are not going.

The Voice Vote too is a mystery, there were some where the Nays were louder than the Ayes, but the Speaker ruled “The Ayes have it. The Ayes have it.” The only time no nays were heard was when Reginaldo Lourenco with Sardinha in his crosshairs, proposed and got the Assembly to pass the Bull Bill legalizing dhirio much to the delight of thousands of gamblers who bet vast sums on bullfights and the relief of the cops who don’t have the headache of arresting bullowners that run faster than they do, and bulls that are difficult to take into custody. Reginaldo Lourenco has dealt another body blow to Francisco Sardinha showing clearly in this political dhirio he is the victor. The rest of the House of course thought nothing of tampering with the Cruelty to Animals act and the High Court ruling banning dhirio and with the exception of the Speaker who vaguely said you cannot change the law of Cruelty to Animals and then lost interest in the proceedings as only he can, allowed it to be put to vote.

As they struggled to their feet as a mark of respect to the National Anthem, one is left wondering how easy it is for the ruling combine to take existing good laws and turn them on their heads. Like all primary school children they play the game and change the rules as they go along.

My thanks for the 27 emails I received last week suggesting solutions to rein in the men and woman who run/ruin our state. More on that later, but one priceless one received on Sunday night, read like this: “I’m willing to bet anything that cash, bicycles, booze and sewing machines will win the day in tomorrow’s Taleigaon panchayat election results. If we want good people to be elected, we should find them first, and then give cash, bicycles, booze and sewing machines to the electorate to vote for them. That is the currency of our democracy.”

Justice? It’s just ice after all

2009-03-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

They call it justice, cold, hard and heavy, but Digambar and his friends have proved that if enough heat is applied, it melts away. Justice = just ice. This is the paraphrase of a quote I borrowed from an email from Satish Sonak who asks us to get up in large numbers and stop this Land Acquisition (Goa Amendment) Ordinance 2009. It spells doom for civil society more than anything this government has thought of. If they can shut the Judiciary out in one blatant illegality, they can do it for tens of thousands more. And if they can do it for tens of thousands more, you and I are up the creek without a paddle, because it will take away our right to fight for justice.

Even if Cidade de Goa did the decent thing and demolished their structures on Vaiguinim beach and returned the beach to its rightful owners: the people of Goa, the Ordinance still has to go.

Consider the horrors this government has unleashed on Goa in the few years they have been in power. This is my opinion and quite possibly no one else’s, but this government including the Opposition, is the most feral of all governments Goa has been afflicted with. I include the Opposition because they were struck with the Three Monkeys Disease of being blind, deaf and dumb, when Goa needed them most.

I have been speaking to people of different degrees of awareness and their reaction to the infamous Land Acquisition Ordinance has varied from a sideways wag of the head and “This gummint, no? Like that only dey is…” to “We should stand up and stop this!”

What made the hair on my head stand straight up, was a weary, “There’s so much to fight and so few of us. Which fight do we choose? SEZ land scams? Casinos? Casinos in the Mandovi? CRZ violations? Destruction by mining? Sewage in our drinking water? Plastic blocking drains? Landfill sites we do not have? Gated communities? Law and order? Corruption from top to bottom in government and civil society? What can we do? It is too much to handle. Everything is geared to destroy this place and this people.”

So what can we do? Not voting these particular clowns will not work, because once anyone comes into power, the grey matter in their brains turns into greed matter. We have to find some way to exert control over them. Media exposure does not help because maybe just 10 percent of the population read the part of the news that matters. Only one news channel carries news analysis with vim and vigour, the rest are quite uninteresting. Tiatr and natak help to bring some awareness, but they too have self-imposed restrictions when it comes to the forty-one monkeys playing with the future of the state. Yes I said 41. Think about the 41st, because his signature can cause havoc.

After awareness of the danger we as a people face, comes the difficult part. We have to get up and act. How do we act and what do we do? Do we gherao the monkeys? Do we gherao the Supreme Court and tell it to act as fast as it did in the AIIMS director case? Do we boycott all public functions of not only the monkeys, but also their handlers and assistants? Do we ostracise their families? Do we do a Dilkush and fling bags of dung at them? And the toughest of them all ¬– do we first give up corruption ourselves?

We have to exert some kind of control because they are elected to protect us and help us achieve health and happiness. To those readers who most kindly send me emails praising this column, let’s hear your solution for reining in our public representatives. And more urgently, a way to stop the Land Acquisition (Goa Amendment) Ordinance 2009.

Missing the madness

2009-03-17T03:51:00.000-07:00

Speaking for myself, I feel wistful when I am away from Goa. More so when I am in Mumbai. Why, you ask? Because Mumbai is so sensible, practical, and it works. People make an effort to walk the talk. The government is not visible, not like in Goa, especially Panjim where the city is crawling with politicos of every hue indulging in masterly inactivity. But in Mumbai, you see Herculean efforts to not let the nightmare of running a city become a reality. It’s an on-going exercise.

They have just introduced a law which involves fining anyone carrying a plastic bag of less than 50 microns. The fine is Rs 5000. The onus is not merely on shopkeepers and establishments, the consumer will also have to take responsibility for littering the city and increasing the risk of flooding along with loss of life and property. The thin plastic bag is Mumbai’s nemesis.

Small scale industrialists are being wooed to set up their manufacturing units in jail premises. The industrialist will provide the training, the raw material and the machines. The jail will provide the labour which will be paid for their work. The convicts will receive their payment when they complete their term. They will have skills, so they can stand on their own feet when they become free citizens again. It’s a win-win situation, and it’s just one of the things that are happening in this booming megapolis.

But I am wistful, because I miss the insanity that is Goa. How we survive is a mystery. We build huge residential complexes with no proper sanitation. We talk of water harvesting with the ground water already mostly raw sewage.

We have the infrastructure for a great educational system, but we have a B grade university and a 7th class pass Education Minister. And this poor quality education shows in the way we treat our land. We have natural bounty of hills and rivers but we cut our hills and fill our rivers with ships and boats and floating casinos. We have half a dozen off-shore casinos that would have been permanently anchored in the river if people like AAAAG would turn a Digamber Eye.

We have the Supreme Court ordering a portion of the built up area of a five-star hotel to be demolished and the state government producing a rabbit from a hat in the shape of an ordinance that saves the hotel and puts the Supreme Court in its place.

We pay for Goa’s MLAs, ministers and bureaucrats going on study-tours all over the world to study waste management. And we smile indulgently as we are slowly buried under a mountain of garbage, because it is common knowledge that the MLAs & Co are educationally challenged and cannot learn anything.

The rest of the country and indeed the world is tightening internal security, but when our police do the same, they are reprimanded and humiliated and I won’t even talk about the middle-aged flower-seller raped and murdered outside an unmanned bunker on the beach.

We cannot afford to buy decent housing for ourselves, but we sell off the little land we have to the rich and aimless. Forgetting that the few lakhs we get so effortlessly by selling our children’s birthright will have no value less than ten years down the line. We’ve bought a ticket for a boat ride and we are boring holes under our seats, because we’ve paid for our seats. Yet we stay afloat and are happy. Any way you look at it, this is certifiable insanity. And this is what I miss when I am away from Goa.

In search of Goan food in Goa

2009-03-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

The peculiar thing about guests, who descend on one in Goa, is that they presume you too are on holiday. Their logic one would suppose is: in this beautiful place of turquoise seas, sands of pale gold, green fields and bright sunshine, how can you not be on holiday. They don’t believe you when you tell them you have work to do. One cousin who goes completely insane when he touches Goan shores informed me that in Goa people just pretend to have work. Half the time, they do nothing and the other half they are sleeping. Really? I said. Really, he said, and that seemed to be that.

But the best part about guests is that they demand to be taken to the best beaches and the best restaurants and the best places to sightsee. They hear of Tito’s and Britto’s and some other places Goan residents have never heard of, nor seen advertisements of, but they have heard word of these wonderful places and you have to take them there. And you end up thanking your guests for showing you another treasure.

Being resident in Goa one tends to muddle around in one’s own comfort zone of home and office with brief forays into an annual picnic maybe, and some visits to friends’ and relatives’ homes and events. After a while, all homes look alike and all weddings are variations of the same thing. But when these brisk, energetic guests from outside the state and outside the country waltz into your life determined to enjoy themselves and take you along on their joyride, you get a chance to renew your vows of love with Goa.

The Caranzalem beach is filthy with tarballs and one would not willingly walk barefoot on it, but Utorda, ah, Utorda has this pale gold sand and it is clean as clean can be, the water is clear and the lifeguards watchful. You can get tossed by a wave and not feel revulsion when you swallow a substantial amount of the Arabian Sea. And then hunger pangs set in and you head for the shack on the beach, salivating over the thought of making choices between choriso, cafreal, amotik with islands of shark chunks in its rich dark red goodness, sorpotel, prawn curry rice, kismur, beef chilly fry, guisad, xacuti, mackerel or pomfret stuffed with reichado masala, and other lesser known but heavenly fare. You look around at the cheery décor, feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your skin and you experience that perfect slice of life, which brings so many from so far to revel in the Goan Experience.

You look around at the rest of the guests in the shack. There are more foreigners than Indians and more Indians than Goans. You admire the nerve of the foreign men and women wearing swimwear in that merciless sunshine that magnifies every liver spot, every wrinkle, every repulsive roll of fat. You wonder at the arrogance of the Indian tourists who want everything served yesterday. Platters of lovely looking food are borne like rare treasure by waiters wearing Hawaiian shirts and you wait for your order to come.

When it comes and you take your first mouthful, the sun loses its sheen, the breeze is just a hot wind and you feel shortchanged. The food is anything but Goan. It is Goan-Guest Cuisine. The amotik reeks of tomato sauce, and the shark pieces taste like flavoured rubber. The prawn curry carries no punch, the beef chilly fry is stringy and redolent of soya sauce, and the huge slice of red snapper could have been served to you anywhere in the world and you would never recognize it as “fried the Goan way”.

Even parties in Goan homes are given to outside caterers who rely heavily on soup cubes and tomato sauce to carry the day. It is only when you are lucky to sit down to a family meal with a Goan family generally in rural Goa, that your tastebuds come alive. A rural family’s dining table and some of the dirtier bars and restaurants in the larger towns. If you want to catch a mouthful of real Goan food, drop into the more crowded bar ’n’ restaurants in South Goa. These are the places that don’t have a menu. They cook the catch of the day and serve it to you. That’s Goan cuisine. Not Goan-Guest cuisine.

Making garbage and casinos work for us

2009-03-01T11:07:00.001-08:00

“Ideas are what run this world,” said the man with the purple nose and red eyes in the corner of the taverna.
“Ideas can be good and ideas can be bad,” I said.
“True, I have had some bad ideas and I have had some good ideas,” he said.
“Have you got any right now?” I asked.
“Of course,” he burped, “why do you think I spend most of my time here?”
“Does the feni activate the idea-creating part of your brain,” I asked.
“Could be,” he said, “which is why I had this idea to take a patent on feni as a product of Goa. This is the elixir of life I tell you and you only get it in Goa.”
“But cashews grow in Karnataka, Maharashtra, even Kerala, so feni can be made anywhere; what’s so special about Goa feni?” I asked.
“It’s the process my friend,” he said. “There’s the good red earth of Goa on the feet of the men who crush the fruit and that adds to the flavour.”
“Never mind the feni; do you have any good ideas right now?”
“Garbage and casinos,” he said. “I have the best solution for both”
“Then you would be the greatest man in the state. They will erect your statues everywhere, give you national awards and a plot of land,” I said.
“Well it is workable, but it would need money and engineering,” he said.
“We have money and we have lots of engineers looking for jobs,” I said.
“It’s like this,” he said taking a deep draught. “Casinos and garbage are two things that no village, town or city wants in their backyard.”
“Or front yard,” I said.
“So I have a simple solution which would get rid of both and also get both to continue making money for the exchequer,” he said.
“That would be good,” I said.
“Goa has a small land mass, but we have the ocean at our feet,” he said.
“That cannot be a good idea,” I said. “Throwing garbage into the ocean makes no sense, the ocean throws it back at us. And anyway I doubt those casino ships can sail. They will break up and sink and everyone on them will drown and the ocean will throw all that back on the shore. Even NGOs will refuse to clean that up.”
“No, no,” he said, “Let me finish. We need to build an island in the ocean a few nautical miles away from the coast. Take all the debris that is being dumped on highways and mangroves and use that to build the island. They’ve done it Dubai, so it can be done here too.”
“But the water levels will rise and all our low lying areas will be drowned,” I said.
“No it won’t; because we will also use the sand and rocks from the ocean floor to build the island and then nothing will be drowned,” he said.
“Then what,” I asked.
“Then build a proper landfill site so that the leachate does not flow into the ocean and kill all the fish and swimmers,” he said.
“That is quite naïve of you, of course a proper landfill will not be built,” I said.
“A jail will also be built on the island, to house the engineers and consultants and politicians and bureaucrats who were guilty of allowing substandard construction’” he said.
“So how does all this deal with the casinos,” I asked.
“See, if you drink feni like I do, you would have asked another question, which would be: How will you get the running costs to manage the landfill site, since waste will have to be ferried up and down?” he said.
“So what’s the answer,” I said.
“The casinos will be anchored around the island and will pay their five or seven crore annually to the Government of Goa for maintaining the island. Also every panchayat and Municipality in Goa will pay a small waste management tax too. It’s a win-win situation,” he said.
“I don’t think it will work,” I said.
“Drink some feni,” he said, “and it will all become crystal clear.”

Viva Carnaval!

2009-02-22T12:04:00.001-08:00

I was in the market looking for a carnival costume. It annoyed me that though this festival is advertised all over the holidaying world, not a single shop sells or rents carnival costumes. They said we have to wear proper carnival costume. Now I don’t like to shop, but when one has to get up and do a thing, I get up and do that thing.
“I want a Carnival costume,” I said firmly to one salesman.
“We don’t sell costumes,” he said dismissively, “as you can see, we sell decorations, tinsel, shiny-shiny and streamers.”
“Why don’t you sell Carnival costumes,” I asked not ready to give up so easily because, you see, when I have to do a thing, I do that thing.
“Please modom, if you do not want to buy tinsel, shiny-shiny or streamers, let other customers come in,” he was looking irritated now and added, “my shop is small,” meaning I was not and I was blocking other customers. I let other customers get in.

I went to another shop with toys and costumes of Spiderman in the window. Ah I will get something here, I thought. Happy, because I do not enjoy shopping.
“I want a Carnival costume,” I said to the disinterested salesgirl. I think salespersons have a built-in antenna when it comes to recognizing shopping infidels.
“We do not have that,” she said, refusing to make eye contact but looking scornfully at my ancient kurta.
“If you have a Spiderman costume, you could be having a carnival costume,” I said imperiously.
“Madam,” she said slowly, now making eye contact. “These are costumes for small-small childrens.”
“Children,” I said.
“Childrens,” she said.

Next stop, a large department store that catered to NRIs and foreigners. Now here the salesmen have a different rule. They take shopping infidels under their wing and exhaust their credit cards. I think here it is a mission with them to sell anything to anyone.
“Yes, and what is Madame looking for?” he said bowing smiling and giving the general impression that if he could, he would even cook lunch for me.
“A Carnival costume,” I said.
“Ah,” he said after a pregnant pause.
“You don’t have any?” I asked.
“Well it depends on what kind of costume you are looking for,” he said.
“Feathers, plumes, sequins, sequined mask, lots of shiny jewellery, and tight fitting, gown or trousers and tops,” I said.
“We have all that,” he said. “It just has to be put together.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to put anything together. I want it all ready to wear. Carnival is already on us. And everyone is supposed to dress up for the Carnival in order for it to be a success.”
“Madame will be on a float?” he asked.
“Madame will be in the crowd,” I said.
“Ah,” he said after another pregnant pause.
“Madame not to worry. I will get everything ready for you,” he said.
He brought gowns of brocade and georgette. Even a velvet one. He brought tights and tunics and even a swim suit. He threw a plain mask over the pile.
“Now our tailor can fix sequins and stones exactly to your design,” he said, gently touching the pile like it was King Tut’s treasure. “We don’t have readymade plumes, but we have feather dusters and even peacock feathers and they can be fashioned into headgear for you. We have silk saris and saris of the finest georgettes. We have stiff brocades, we can make cloaks and stoles and ah how could I have forgotten!” He hit his head and ran off, returning with jeweled sandals, “Footwear! Exactly like what they have in Rio.”
“How much will the outfit cost,” I asked. He pulled a calculator forwards and punched in numbers.
“Should not come to more than Rs 42,000…,” he said.
As I exited the shop with the speed of light, I heard him tell the other salespersons, “That one should not be entertained again.”
Which is why you saw me at the Carnival Parade, sitting on the pavement with coloured powder on my face, a paper hat on my head and blowing a toy whistle.

Bells and pink chaddis

2009-02-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

There is an ad that sets my teeth on edge. It tells you to ring the doorbell if you hear a woman being beaten or abused. Yes it will work for a couple of minutes, but the man will go back to beating his wife, because she is still frightened and tearful. I personally know of too many women who are beaten or brow-beaten by their husbands. Beating is physical violence, brow-beating is mental violence, but both have one aim in mind – to destroy the woman’s belief in herself.

I know a maidservant whose husband would put his fist into a steel tumbler and punch her in the eye. Why didn’t she leave him, I asked. Then who will do the kanyadan for my daughters when they marry? He died a year later of cirrhosis of the liver and a few years later she got all her daughters married.

I know a middle-class woman who caught her husband in flagrante delicto with their maidservant. She sacked the maid and he began beating her regularly. Why did she take the beatings when she was a solidly built woman and could give him a proper thrashing? I don’t know; I just cannot raise my hand to him, she said.

I know an aristocrat who is pushed around and brow-beaten by her husband who is a respected member of society and has the morals of an alley-cat. Why don’t you throw him out? I can’t, she said, I love him.

An abuser is often extremely charming to outsiders, making it difficult for a woman to complain about emotional abuse. An old friend far from having a happy marriage was being brow-beaten by her husband, continuously and methodically so that now she is a nervous wreck with no family and nowhere to turn if he should throw her out of her marital home. An abuser first isolates his partner from her friends, family and colleagues, then sets out to destroy her sense of self-worth in her own eyes. Finally her self-esteem becomes so eroded that she diminishes what is happening to her. She becomes so psychologically battered and socially isolated that she believes whatever her husband tells her about herself.

Research has it that men who bully their wives are emasculated and see the terrified battered woman as an antidote to that emasculation. The mystery is why does a woman allow this treatment? There are solutions. One wife told me that after he hit her the first and only time, she told her husband with a chilling smile that the kitchen is an armoury by itself, equipped as it is with cleavers, scissors, knives, grinding stones, poisons, boiling oil, boiling water, boiling custards (which one hears inflicts the worst kind of burn because it sticks to the skin and continues cooking) and gas. She told him that he had to eat and he had to sleep, so he would do well to think many times before hitting her again.

The solution is to stop it the first time it happens. If it happens a second time, walk away and start your own life. The trouble with most women is that they feel the power of their love will change the man. Or if they don’t fight back the beating and brow-beating will end. Sadly this does not happen. And when they finally realize it, it is just too late; the pattern has set.

Goa’s police too, including the Women’s Cell, tend to treat wife-beating as a minor domestic spat. It is only when Chief Counsellor of the All India Women’s Conference, Goa Unit, Madhuri Rao’s name is used that they are galvanized into action.

Yet the times they are a-changing for the better. If an internet campaign against the Sri Ram Sene can get 7000 women and men of all ages to join not only in cyberspace but also in the flesh to send a message in the form of cartons full of pink chaddis to the head of this group; chances are the day is not far when battered women will find shelter and support in their immediate neighbourhood. Until then, don’t just ring the bell. Give him hell.