‘Quiet’ in Portuguese is ‘sossegado’. In the recent election, Manohar Parrikar of the BJP, Sudin Dhavalikar of MGP, Vijai Sardesai of Goa Forward, Rohan Khaunte and Govind Gawde, independent MLAs, and their teams displayed their mastery over sossegado, quietly negotiating, making deals, adventure politicking, managing crisis, engineering unprecedented party and vote bank equations, pioneering and plunging their way through the depths of the polity; making total rubbish of a Wikipedia contributor’s description of Goa as “steeped in a tropical lassitude and wedded to the sea”!
As an outsider recently settled in Goa, I’m amused by my friends in other parts of the world, describing Goa as laid back, their perspective and opinion derived from beach shacks, cold beer on the hot sand and gentrification of coastal villages. When they land in Goa, they are already in beach hats and bandannas (even if it’s a night flight). I must keep reminding everyone that I’m not semi retired, getting massages on the sand, nor am I dancing every night until dawn (though I did fantasize about it once).
It’s interesting to observe tourists who ride scooters and motorcycles to crisscross Goa. One can see their utter bewilderment and consternation in riding through urban Goa (clad for the beach), hemmed in by traffic jams, debris from road and bridge construction, noise, loudspeakers, dust, firecrackers, cows, dogs and other urban chaos and litter – everything they were trying to escape from by coming to Goa. And then to see their relief to step into the shadows and cool of their manicured hotels, salsa classes, bread making workshops, yoga classes, wine tastings, designer stores and laid back shacks. Aah, back to susegad (contentment), but not yet sussegado (quiet).
So where did our sussegado go?
Across Goa, loudspeakers and firecrackers rent the air for attention. Are worshippers afraid of being drowned out by the Others’ din? Will their songs and prayer be buried in the screaming reverse alarms of ignorant car owners who don’t know their purpose (for handicapped drivers’ use only) and two wheeler noisemaker tailpipes? Will road traffic noise and private music overwhelm traditions? And therefore the volumes get turned up even higher, each competing for the people’s attention, but none succeeding to enthrall, entertain, worship, not even distract.
The art of ‘public relations’ and marketing has not spared the house of God; the timings for loudspeaker worship and firecrackers are tweaked for maximum impact, best consumed at night between 8pm and 2am and between 1 and 4 in the afternoon; so right over the moonlit or sunlit coconut trees and fields, dance the crackling of microphone and snatches of a disc jockey priest’s Almighty tryst. No sussegado for the wicked.
Thus Goa is in continuous election mode or un-susegad (discontentment) My Candidate, My Party, My Religion, My Worship, My Language, My People, My Village, My Water, Them and Me, I will show Them, – My Loudspeaker, My Firecrackers, My Reverse Alarm, My Voice, Me. I’m angry, I cannot sleep, cannot rest, headaches, rage, bile, irritable bowel, pain, dry eyes, cannot work, no praise or encouragement, I’m unemployed, underemployed, unemployable.
Jobs.
Aah, the dream catcher, the catcher in the rye. Will the famous five, – Manohar Parrikar, Sudin Dhavalikar, Vijai Sardesai, Rohan Khaunte and Govind Gawde crack this case? They shall, with a little bit of help from us, their fellow Citizens, fellow travellers, story tellers, artists, teachers, nation builders, all.
Curing the us versus them epidemic
The common thread at every town hall meeting is the clear line that demarcates ‘tourist infrastructure’ and facilities for locals; this is so insidious a problem, that in some parts, tourists enjoy piped water supply and villagers must buy tanker water; an absurd statement, when the State receives rain enough for twenty five years of cultivation and consumption in just one monsoon.
This manufactured disparity in water distribution is almost unique to Goa, as decades ago, these villages (sans tourism) were self sufficient and self sustaining, out of the way of government, requiring a new infrastructure to be built just for tourists. Unfortunately, in the gold rush for naked skin, the villages were cut off from the Potable Water Gods and thus began the Great War of The Us Versus Them.
Water.
The cure, of course, is Jobs and Water and the solution even more obvious – Inclusive Shared Infrastructure – the common agenda throughout the developed First World. Let’s re-imagine Chimbel if you will: Shared Infrastructure with the proposed information technology park would create sixteen categories of jobs, from digital literacy and conversion, to educators, teachers and trainers, to primary health care and telemedicine, to spoke-and-hub public transport, all the way to forestry. An astounding achievement for Chimbel’s three thousand homes. The return of Sussegado.
- MALLAN KURIAN
