Robbing Goa of its heritage

Rajiv Desai

Panjim: It is an unseasonably hot November afternoon in Goa. Sitting in a shack on Mandrem beach, we are talking about how the weather’s all mixed up: hot all day, thunderstorms at night. The waiter comes around to take our order.

My friend Jug Suraiya orders chilled coconut water. The waiter looks nonplussed. My wife, who is Goan, helpfully tells him the Konkani name for it. “We only have Coke, Fanta and Sprite,” the waiter responds. Jug is furious. “My good man, there are coconut trees all around you. Why don’t you offer coconut water?”

It is very clear that the waiter thinks we are a pain. He looks around at the Western tourists sitting in the café and the sprinkling of Indians. I could tell he was thinking it is far better to serve them than us pesky souls who ask for coconut water, shrimp curry and country rice with tor, raw mango pickled in brine.

All they want is pasta and tandoori chicken. And he does not seem to want to be reminded of his Goan roots. He speaks English, German and Russian and has no patience with my wife who speaks to him in Konkani.

That small but telling experience encapsulates a growing problem in Goa. I have written in the past about the real estate rush and the ugly developments that are scarring the face of this last paradise in India. This time I have a different take on the situation in this idyllic state.

It is true that mindless real estate developers, who have built obscene structures and the national advertising agencies, who have sullied the landscape with ugly billboards, are responsible for the pillage in Goa. But now, staring incredulously at a sign in front of a house in Siolim, I begin to understand that greedy and insensitive locals are equally responsible; like Jaichands and Quislings, they deny their rich heritage to sell it to Philistines from Mumbai and Delhi. The sign read: “House to let. Foreigners only.”

Coming back to our encounter at the Mandrem café, the waiter and his captain peremptorily told us they served no local food and drink. It seemed to me they wore it as some sort of a badge to announce they were global and shunned local. We were simply an embarrassment, a reminder of the past that they sought to escape.

But it was not the past we sought to invoke; we simply wanted to remind them of the heritage that makes Goa what it is and sets it apart from the rest of India. Incidentally, like the beach shacks, very few five-star hotels serve Goan fare. Those that do, like the famed Souza Lobo on Calangute beach, temper their culinary heritage with touristy banality. The ambience is kitschy and the food is McGoan.

It is the same with stores, whether they sell groceries or clothes or furniture. This is not to argue the chauvinist line but to point out that the only thing Goan about them is that they are physically located in the state; they could just as well be in Thailand’s Phuket or Koh Samui.

Indeed,  parts of Goa are beginning to acquire the sleazy, transient look of these places that have turned their back on their own heritage and have become bastards of mindless tourism and relentless commerce, purveying sun, sand, sex and booze. In Goa, perhaps the most obnoxious influences are those of the low-grade Western tourists, who form the bulk of arrivals, and the Indian yobs, whose idea of Goa is a perverted voyeurism and self-indulgence.

Then there are the real estate sharks that see Goa as an opportunity to make big bucks or an act of social one-upmanship: “Darling, hotels are so déclassé. That’s why you must simply have your own house in Goa.”

Many low-grade realtors and high-end stores have sprouted to cater to the demand. Just the other day, at a store in Panjim, we found ourselves overwhelmed by acquisitive young Delhi couples buying tiles and expensive knick-knacks for their newly-acquired homes. Sickened, we left the store in search of a café to have a chilled beer to cool and calm us down.

In raising these concerns, I have no wish to sound like a curmudgeon, lamenting the loss of the good old days. Actually, I mourn the trend among locals to shun their heritage in pursuit of greed or a demented version of modernity. Added to the pillage by outsiders, this local phenomenon has raised a huge question-mark about the future of my sasural.

E-mail: rdesai@comma.in