Get Your Act Together Heart 2 Heart Ethel Da Costa Herald - Insight- 22 August, 2003.
I have an attitude and I know how to use it. If this sounds like an ultimatum, it is so because it's also the complete truth. The happenings of last week have left me gasping for air, a pounding in my head and a muscle strain in my back. Not to forget what's it done to my breathing patterns! Since I've long given up on yoga, I can't think of heading to the gym either because the healthiest man behind the pumping machines has succumbed to jaundice himself............. COMMENTS: Every time someone who can vent their spleens go the GMC, we get to hear horror stories. When a minister took his son on an emergency, a lot of spleen was spilled. When Rajan Narayan went to the GMC, more spleen was spilled. Now Ethel has had her chance to empty her bowels. But no one cares or bothers. The situation will get worse rather than better. Why? Simple! There is no discipline. Some friends of mine have tried to tell me that "discipline" is not the end in itself. When discipline is pussy footed around with, you get lousy hospitals, cinema tickets sold in black instead of from the ticket counters, kitchens of restaurants stink to the extent that underwears drip drip into cooking pots. One has to hold a perfumed kerchief to the nose to get into a bus at Mapusa Kadamba bus terminal, view the bare butts of soilers of the Goan golden beaches which are being aggressively marketed to the foreign tourists and there is no end to the tale of woes. I had the opportunity to meet Manohar Parrikar at the GMC once when he was a MLA. I had then pointed out to him the graffiti filled inside walls and he had smiled. Go to Hotel Sarovar in St. Inez. Its kitchen is the make-shift arrangement in the building's car parking space. The tenants of this building have been breading their heads over the nuisance caused by this restaurant to no avail. Walk into the kitchens of most of the restaurants in Mapusa. Visit the drains outside. See if you want to sit and eat the lovely croquets and patties and mutton shakutis and bhajees. Ayres Sequeira has talked about the "Delegad Saude" during the Portuguese times, in his piece "Living Filth". (NT 23 Aug, 2003). That is the discipline I have been talking about all along. We say heart attacks are cheap these days. And why not? Eat batata wadas, samosas and mirchies at the roadside gaddas or even from modest restaurants on a regular basis and you are earning a heart attack. These things are loaded with carcinogens. Has anyone bothered to check the oils these things are fried in? It is mostly the previous day's oil with a sprinkling of fresh one. Oil when once heated and allowed to cool to room temperature, becomes carcinogenated. Vats of deep frying oils at Macdonald's , Kentucky Fry's etc are kept on slow burners during shut e times, never allowing to cool down. Where is our FDA? Nothing much will happen by spilling spleens over these things. Because the pockets of the authorities are well looked after and everything is hunky-dory. It is only a matter of time before people start to fall off like flies. And still nothing will happen. Because, there will be enough votes in the vote banks to last all calamities. It can't get better when the Chief minister gives press conferences at the outbreak of this severe jaundice epidemic. Infact, we should have heard from our esteemed doctor health minister, instead. The Goa government is, after all, a one man , "jack of all trades and master of none" show. Give me a disciplinarian at the helm of Goan administrative affairs who does not pussy-foot around with vote banks and I will give you a perfectly clean, lean and ramrod state of Goa, just like it was during the erstwhile Portuguese regime. Oh Doutor Antonio Oliveira Salazar!, How we miss your whip! The Goa you robbed but kept disciplined and clean, is today, looted and plundered with impunity and allowed to rot in filth. Please come back before we Goans begin to like to roll in this filth and accept it as our new found Indian way of life. Floriano goasuraj. ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
