The Enigma that Goa has become. Now. More complex, more intriguing, incomprehensible from day to day. Even if once upon a time as a place Goa was considered by others, and curiously even by Goans themselves residing in British India and the Africas, Portuguese and British East Africa, as backward, primitive, lacklustre, dull, nevertheless Goans as persons and community were held as qualitatively distinguished and they impacted wherever they were in the rest of India or abroad, in humble occupations or high professions, for their intelligence, honesty, loyalty, dedication, comportment and accommodating nature to earn for themselves esteem endearment and good name. At home, Goa, they always did things in conformity with general custom and social norms, predetermining any action of general interest by a look around and remarking: what will people say_ Xi-bab lok kitem muntholo_ O que e que a gente ha-de dizer_ The opinion of others on one’s actions was highly valued and thus mandatory, binding.

And precisely this current “care-a damn”, “to-hell-with you” attitude of our governments to the opinions of the public, testified to by the divulgence in the recent session of the Goa assembly that between November 1999 and May 2000 the fourteen Ministers of the Government had cost the Exchequer a total of 1.15 crores of rupees by way of official foreign trips which apparently were nothing but bouts of recreation, (Franciso Sardinha’s half a dozen trips including one to Kathmandu, Nepal, with his wife and son; Tourist Minister Victoria Fernandes’s to Berlin costing Rs 97,775 and to Kathmandu Rs 27,696; Arecio D’Souza’s 14.55. lacs and Mauvin Godinho and Dayanand Narvekar Rs 13 lacs each) makes the enigma not only more enigmatic but disastrous to Goa.

For a person like me, now on the other side of eighty, this sinister subversion of standard values so closely hugged, the changing spectrum from luminosity to obscurity is saddening, frustrating. When in the twenties and thirties I was a carefree student, and thereafter as a working man in Bombay I would come down to Goa like the thousands of other dispersed Goans drawn by an irresistible force, unmindful of testing transport hassles, Goa was Home, a placid love-full, care-bound anchorage surrounded by warm-hearted and affectionate neighbours anxiously awaiting to welcome you and who undisputedly shared your view that a spade was a spade, whether it was from Bombay or from Goa, or anywhere else, grateful and supportive when you decided to construct a building for a Library, but not generating a controversy that the reading room may also attract some OBC outcasts from the neighbouring villages so as to pollute the clean and respectable village atmosphere, or mar the view of the souls in the nearby cemetery.

The working Goans in dihtmlora, Bombay in particular where there would be at least a lakh of them, would apply for their annual leave in April-May to coincide with the vacation in the schools and colleges of their children so as to plan their rewarding pilgrimage to Goa. A holiday in any hill station or any other watering place in any other part of India (abroad was unthinkable) did not ever feature in their schemes. And thus Goa, otherwise lethargic and sleepy, would come alive in these two months, bringing a smile on the face of the tradespeople all over Goa with some shutdown houses in the villages opened-up and spruced and the hard-earned money of the beloved visitors freely flowing, especially in the enjoyment of Portuguese sardines, Dutch cheeses, foreign wines and whiskies and brandies and other luxury items. The beach of Calangute and, to a lesser degree that of Colva in Salcete, otherwise deserted, would be crowded with the visitors as well as the locals from Bradez whilst the only restaurant in Calangute, the “Bancal” whipping much excitement by a weekly public dance with a live Band that would attract revellers even from Panjim and Salcete. Mothers in Bombay, Poona with nubile daughters would especially converge on Calangute beach with their wards in the hope of netting some well-heeled, well-connected eligible young men that might have arrived even from Portuguese or British Africa for the mudanca (change of air). Goans married only Goans in those days, inter Christian community or inter-religion and even inter-caste was disfavoured and thus not known.

Not at all the landscape of Goa but the prevalent affection, friendliness, fraternisation among all people, be they of any strata or creed, was the magnet that knitted all Goans wherever they were found. The merchants, shop-keepers, Hindus mostly in the villages, would never think of exploiting their customers, satisfied as they were with negligible profit, because, unlike today, greed, profiteering, money-making by crooked means, corrupt methods were unknown, conscience being the core of life.

Goans of those days were transparent. No guile, cunning in them to cheat one another. Or to ammass fortunes as is witnessed in some Government Ministers of today. Or even in others. Simplicity in living and in their social functions or public divertimento, amusement, the Carnaval of the Christian community being the most popular and widespread amongst them, was fundamental. Christian wedding receptions were homely, fraternal, held in the homes of the concerned in the shamianas (mattou) in front of their houses for dancing, two functions indeed, one in the home of the bridegroom after the nuptials, and another, on the following day, at the home of the bride. With marriages in those days, mostly arranged, the opportunity for dancing at these functions was gratifying, and eagerly anticipated.

With great faith in God and in unquestioned acceptance of one’s lot as a divine dispensation the poor and the rich, the mundkar and the bhatcar lived in perfect amity and well-being. And in peace. Those who remained in Goa to work in the fields or in Government service or in trade were happy with what they earned, a rupee held with regard and respect because it fetched quite a few things. The wives of the majority of Goans working in British India, or on ships, or in Africa, who remained in Goa (rarely were wives taken away by them) to keep the hearths and homes warm, depended on the remittances of their husbands or sons to bolster what was then known as Money Order Economy of the Portuguese State on India. It must be emphasised however that the Portuguese Rule that became intolerable in the late forties and fifties was hardly felt by the people in the villages in the earlier decades.

If what is stated so far by me, focused as it has been on Christian life in Goa, it is because in those days the administration, entertainment, tiatros, in Konkani or Portuguese, huge fairs near the Churches and in Old Goa, were all Christian oriented, even the population of Goa being felt as being mostly Christian. The post-Liberation Census placing the Hindu population being sixty-five per cent came to Christians, and must have come to Portugal as well, as a great surprise and disbelief.

The enigma that Goa has now become is not, mind you, due to the liberation of Goa as such as or for the eradication of the Portuguese Rule, but to the misconstruing and misinterpretation of the democratic process and of the beneficial principles and provisions introduced after the liberation. Before politics became a dirty game in Goa and morality in the political thought so prized and preached by Mahatma Gandhi became a victim in the entire country, it was the introduction of the Trade Union Movement in Goa by the Goan People’s Party, one of the five political parties in the Goa Freedom Movement in Bombay, regrettably instructing the labour force of their rights not of their duties and responsibilities, and fomenting strikes, more often than not illegal, that for the first time in Goa the workers in the factories became abusive and disrespectful of authority. This disrespect and animosity today runs in all sectors of society. Of the have-nots for the haves, as though the latter have deprived the former of their right or ability to have, of the illiterate to the educated, of the employee to the employer etc. etc.

It is the fallacious thinking and unsound approach to life by the people in general that are the causes of the ills of Goa. The gift of the adult suffrage that the Constitution of India has endowed people has been so unwisely used, not for the first time or the second time to be excused, but progressively every time to foist on the territory incompetent or basically crooked persons as MLAs, some of them the same from one election to the other despite their patent record of self-indulgence, or some new persons who on arrival are honest but soon after rubbing shoulders with the dishonest and selfish become like them. The rot that starts from the top in the Ministers soon spreads to the other MLAs, then to the members of Municipal bodies, then to the Panchayats and finally to the people at large. The urge for the lower middle class people and even the fisherfolk who have made money to build marble floor mansions in the villages and to have motor cars for themselves and motorcycles and scooters for their school or college going children is a sweep of the rot at the elected top. The construction impulse by the builders, ever-increasing, to divest every open space and field of trees and cultivation to enrich themselves and the erroneous concept of the Tourism Ministers and Tourism Directorate that the tourism industry is the salvation of Goa, both of these, the Builders forum and the Tourism trade being responsible for the influx of people, the former on the one hand for the mass of the artisans and labourers from the other States of India and the latter for the thousands of tourists from rest of the country and abroad contributing to disturb the pattern and tenor of Goan life. Progress does not mean the eradication of the Goanness of Goa. Amusingly there appear persons from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Mangalore claiming their ancestors to be from Goa and thus wanting to purchase land and build houses for residence in Goa. Added to this are some of the rich from Bombay and Delhi, film actors included, who want to make Goa their home, and those who are already here considering themselves as the new elite of Goa with their exaggerated self-esteem and presumed superiority of intellect and culture. Regrettably this is accepted by some Goans fraternising with them.

Liberation for me primarily meant shaping of Goa’s destiny by Goans themselves. A better life, amenities, a few industries to provide employment to those seeking it, higher education avenues so as to eliminate the need of Goan students of going out of Goa for it, peace and quiet and amity in the population. It did not strike me then that with the Goa gates open to the rest of India and, as now a part of it, any sort of apartheid or isolation could not be expected. But with a conscious government determined to keep old Goan identity intact or perhaps with a few constitutional compromises, I think it could have been achieved. Whatever, the enigma that Goa has become today is viewed by me against the backdop of what Goa was in the old days and thus in another twenty years or so when my generation disappears, the people then may not find anything wrong with the conditions of life in Goa, the hurly-burly existence a part and parcel of the trend in the other States of the rest of India.