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A Goa state of mind Rajiv Desai Tuesday, November 08, 2005 20:57 IST Panaji: Once you're out of the chaotic Dabholim airport, Goa bursts upon you with sweeping vistas of the Arabian Sea and the mighty Zuari River as the car winds its way up and down the hilly highway with the blue-green Western Ghats looming like sentinels in the distance. In the past 15 years, I must have travelled up and down the road at least a hundred times but nature's tableau has never failed to amaze me. I switch off the music in the car, put away my magazine and gape at the beauty of the Goan countryside. What adds to the visual experience is the promise of a week or more or less, amid the serene green of Goa; long drawn out days in which the major deci-sions you are called on to make is whether to have prawns or fish for a meal; beer or some other aperitif, perhaps even a slug of Goa's lethal cashew feni, which can stay in your system for days. The Goans call it sussegad; a state of mind in which each morsel of fish and every sip of beer is an eternity. Time seemingly stands still but those of us, who don't live there, know it's a mirage; time actually moves on and soon enough, it's time to leave. There is impermanence about sussegad that makes it an altered state of consciousness in which time is stretched to make every nanosecond count. Things changed for us somewhat when we got our own place in Goa. We began to see another, more complex, hidden dimension not always evident to visitors, who stay in hotels. Suddenly, Goa is more than palms and sand; now there are bazaars and repairmen; rambling drives through quaint villages and glimpses of impressive white churches that dot the landscape. The concept of sussegad also changed; from an eternity on shacks on the beach, it became an unhurried pace of life in which things must get done without demanding schedules and dictatorial appointment books. If the electrician says he will come at 11 am and shows up at 2 pm, it is okay because the faulty switches will get meticulously repaired even if it takes till 8 pm and at a reasonable charge. Or the cable guy, who tells you he will charge only a fraction of the annual cost because you only spend a few weeks in a year at your home in Goa. Or the carpenter, who you send word to by telling the guy at a corner shop in the village and who, after two days, when you are close to losing hope, miraculously appears and your job gets done fast because he has to get back to his village in time to watch a football game. Or the stereo repairman, who comes to fix a glitch in the music system and disappears without taking any payment and then shows up weeks later on your next trip, smiling and asking if the system works. Or the driver, who helps you score coconuts from your trees; or the foreman of the property management company, who sits with you at the dining table to have a cup of tea. The thing that strikes me about Goa in the unconscious egalitarian ethic that is evident in abundance. Sure there's a bit of the feudal culture still around as when people call you patrao (patron…as in patronage). By and large, however, everything's on a casual, first-name basis. Or it can be extremely courtly and formal, especially among the older generations. Last year, when my firm was short-listed to pitch for some government busi-ness in Panjim, then chief minister Manohar Parrikar told me he was not at all happy about the his tourism department pitching Goa's sussegad as a magnet for tourists: "I want infotech and biotech investors to come to Goa and set up units here. This sussegad business can be a major obstacle to such investment." When I told him how I reformulated the concept to mean doing things in an unhurried manner, he nodded and began to think. Parrikar was the moving spirit behind the hugely successful international film festival that was first staged in Goa last year and will happen again this year. In a few months, he got the city of Panjim spruced up, not just in cosmetic terms but put in infrastructure such as a new multiplex and a jetty, re-furbished the exquisite cultural centre in downtown Panjim and built new roads and resurfaced old ones. That he managed this in the face of all-round skepticism about the Goan work ethic is, of course, a major personal achievement. Most important, the gussying up of Goa for the film festival revealed a work ethic that was largely unknown in this land palms and beaches. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Cheers, Gabe Menezes. London, England
