Will the Goa of our dreams, the Goa of our ancestors, our grandparents, parents, and this generation of the setting sun, be here in the near future? Will this generation hand over a nightmare to our children? And, will they forgive us?
At the speed mindless development is succeeding, will the beautiful Goan houses set in lush surroundings exist only in the paintings of Akeru, the Japanese painter? The greed of the miners of Goa, among others, have devastated our hills and changed the landscape of Goa forever, destroying the natural beauty of some places in our state, an ugly scar for the whole world to stare at and cry! How could we have done this to ourselves and our children? And, is there more to come? The villagers of Cansaulim have decided to take their future into their own hands. I'm sure the panchas will support them wholeheartedly. As someone who is from the village of Cansaulim and who returns every year, I must go on record and say I admire their love for their village. If only all Goans were the same! I hope other people from other villages will also fight single-mindedly to preserve the greenery, the pure joy of living in a house surrounded by nature, banana, papaya, and other fruit trees which is a way to calm the mind. Goans, unfortunately, who live in Calangute and Candolim have sold their souls and future for quick money. They have thrown away the baby with the bathwater. They could have made money, even more money, and enjoyed a much higher quality of air, water, and beautiful surroundings. Instead, they chose to invite everyone from whom they could make fast money, making these two villages the model of how a village should develop in the wrong direction, a hell hole in spite of a few five-star hotels in the villages. These villages are shopping malls and housing projects for people from all over India. What a nightmare to even drive through it. Anything is okay as long as there is money in it. My tears cannot wash away the ugliness of this mindless anti-village development in these two formerly beautiful villages. I suspect the easy availability of drugs makes these villages look beautiful! Development is no magic mantra, and if it is, it will only lull us to sleep until we wake up to a reality of another Calangute, a case of not being able to put the genie back into the bottle. We need to differentiate between pro-village and anti-village development. We, the villagers, have a choice to make: save our villages now or they are gone forever! The soul of Goa lives in the villages, and every development has to be viewed in the light of pro or anti development of our villages. What does a human being gain if he loses his soul and gains the whole world asked a famous man in history. How many times do we need to be reminded that a man does not live by pao alone? The villagers of Cansaulim are against five star hotels, and for a good reason. They do not keep to the rules and regulations to the detriment of the villages and villagers, the location of their five star hotels! The hotels don't bother about where the sewage goes or proper access to the beaches so long as they make money. This sort of anti-village mindless development which has been going on all over Goa for far too long has to come to an end. The people of Cansaulim have voted: enough is enough. With our limited resources, what can the ordinary man and woman do to foster development and not destroy the village, the soul of our Goan lifestyle? The answer is, strangely, a simple one. Save enough money to build only one extra room in your house with an attached toilet. Allow this single room to power the engine of development of your family and village. In the world of tourism in Goa today, a single room is equal to a job. And income from the single room can make a dream come true, a single room which is well designed using simple traditional materials, can build you a few more rooms, making you some day the proud owner of a guest house. Open home stay websites, and don't tell the government your idea as they are committed to supporting big hotels for obvious reasons, and the average Goan does not fit into their plans at all. What they want are five star hotels and golf courses. We need to act now while our villages are still villages or it will be too late. If we don't then we will have to settle for the virtual reality of Goan houses amid lush greenery which can be seen abundantly in my wife's paintings. Virtual reality, however beautiful, is not life!
