HEART 2 HEART - APRIL 17 (Herald) BY ETHEL DA COSTA
Who needs high society!
This is not a Saturday night hangover. This is not about getting out an axe and chopping off a few heads (after years of knowing the Page 3, I certify there is no cerebral activity in the upper compartment to engage even a meaningful conversation). This is not because I don't like some of them. This is a piece of advise to all those glamour-struck kids who call me saying they envy my shoulder-brushing with the chatterati and wish to get into journalism because of this (I grit my teeth here. Don't these guys have real priorities?) And, it is certainly not to flatter the Page 3 existence on this Earth for making our lives a little glamorous for their `inspirational' presence. You know, "Paris Hilton bought these deliriously snazzy Victoria Secret, G-string off Bond Street, London, so I asked Rohit Bal to design me a De Beer diamond garter on a see-through mini skirt."
The Page 3 do discuss socio-economic concerns that you and I lay people deal with on a day-to-day level. Like blowing a lakh on a shopping spree at a mall to fight depression after a squabble with a model boyfriend, and then finding a solution to the population explosion of the country by accidentally running over a deprived homeless soul, seeking shelter on a pavement, with their hot-shot wheels! In Bombay, I even bought a magazine called `Page 3' dedicated to -- you guessed right -- the antics of the Page 3 types. Even crass finds advertising space. So, welcome to the real world.
Let's get back home, shall we? The high society in Goa, is always on a high. On booze and gossip. I won't get into the sleazy details, because this is not a class in moral science. And on my doctor's advice I realize health is wealth (helps to keep acidity levels in control). Rather, I wish to give their lives and free time (after the cocktail do's and dinners degenerate into empty cigar banter on who's keeping score on the neighbour's peccadilloes) some fodder in building their social consciousness. Simply because there is much they can do with their monies, fat wallets, time and contacts.
I know a delightfully refreshing, well placed and intelligent English lady residing in Goa actively doing her bit for the artist community of Goa. I said refreshing, because her concerns and interest are genuine and backed with action. She makes no bone for small talk with social climbers. Blunt, to the point, and with little patience for hypocrisy, she promotes exhibitions to expose artistic Goan talent abroad to provide better platforms. She has a Goan agenda, I like her.
Same with the Consul of Portugal (finally an active man gets into the hot-seat to promote cross cultural ties between these cousins) who has been meeting Goan artists regularly to foster a cultural bonds and provide international platforms. Intelligent conversation and focused goals, mean that cocktail do's become a source for networking to push his creative agenda. Now if only more out-of-town-and- now-residents of Goa could take an example from good deeds. I'm often told he or she is doing their bit for garbage collection, sponsoring football matches, donating to the temple cause, sending left-over food and clothes to an orphanage, or, like I hear often `Darling, I donate the small money I earn from freelancing to a charity." Humph!
Less said the better of the vicious circle of banter -- some hallucinatory - that I often hear from this lot. Some of our Std III pass politicos could use them as speech writers to intersperse boring save-the-nation meaningless lectures, with a little spice and slang. Better still, source their input for State development, construction, real estates, tourism, land grabbing and conversion, and film festivals because they have an opinion on everything and everybody. If the politician was smart, he would constitute these prime heads into a committee as Goa's power brokers to bring in the big monies to help the further development of Goa's vital and basic infrastructure and upliftment of her rural areas.
These power-brokers could then be taken for a get-real tour of our villages, see how hospitals are run without staff, medicines and unhygienic toilets, how women and children don't get proper medical attention, how school children put up with mining pollution, suffer respiratory diseases, how taps run dry for days together, how wife beating continues even in respectable homes, how the human and psychiatric hospital in Goa is the devil's workhouse in shoddy patient treatment...I could go on. I like conversations about dog rescue, but I'm not interested on who he's planning to mate with! I also have nothing against Page 3. And I have no malice in my bones. Did I say my acidic levels are doing a flip-flop?
====
