Very good reading Leo. Enjoyed the whole article. I am sending it to all my friends. I am sure they will enjoy it as much as I did.
I have traveled in all the types of transport mentioned; the bullock cart, and the gaddo. My grandmother had to go for a feast from Parra to Aldona and we hired a gaddo to take us there . We started early as we had to reach the church for the feast Mass at 10 or 12 am I dont know how long we traveled but the gaddo took 4 hours to reach there. I was vey small then and told them in the vehicle that it is faster to walk or run. My grandmother explained that it was too far to run and I would get tired. Of course the whole journey passed talking and me sleeping on my grandmothers lap and maybe some aunt's lap. In fact, we never heard a car pass by for days on end and if one car came to the village those days everyone wanted to know whose house the guest had come. In a matter of minutes word passed from on house to the other in the vaddos and everyone knew in minutes who had come and for what occasion. We all used the bike those days for travel and the bikes were hired from some one who had started a business to hire bikes or the bikes were taken from neighbours or friends. But one fine day when I went I suddenly found that there were no bikes available and everyone had motor bikes exactly as mentioned. Goa started changing then and from then onwards it has not been the same. This generation will never know the simple pleasures of Goa that we enjoyed. Those days are gone forever. Peter Subject: *** Goanet Reader -- Looking back at the simple, slow-moving Goa LOOKING BACK AT THE SIMPLE, SLOW-MOVING GOA THAT ANOTHER GENERATION KNEW Domnic Fernandes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Life in Goa in the 1940s and 1950s was not a piece of cake. Those of us who were born during this period have witnessed tremendous changes including the changing of the guard -- from the Portuguese regime to a democratically- elected government. I look upon the past with nostalgia because I have experienced many things, the most important of all being the transition period from almost the Stone Age to the modern world and the determination with which we forged our lives and came out victorious.
