Question Everything!
By Ethel Da Costa
The quest for justice seems like a lost cause,
We win a few battles but we're losing all the wars
Where might is right and right is wrong
And the weak are crushed 'neath the feet of the strong
Run from pillar to post knocking on locked doors
Gotta grease a few palms, so the saying goes
But the tide is changing, the ripple's now a wave
And the mighty will bow to the power of the people.
You think you're high and mighty
You think you'll have your way
With your money and muscle
You'll have us 'neath your sway
You can't hold us down
Our backs against the wall
We're gonna fight you
We're gonna make you crawl
When tiny fingers join to form a fist
It's gonna knock you out in the blitz
Coz the tide is changing, the ripple's now a wave
And the mighty will bow to the power of the people.
(Power of the People, KISMET)
Anger is a catalyst. Few of us find release in composing a song, a poem,
working up a stage performance, putting it to work on a video, finding
release in words, a book, more songs, arguing endlessly with your favourite
best friends, even cooking, shutting the world outside and plotting your
next course of action. Anger teaches you to learn to live with silence.
Learn to live with yourself. And watch warts grow into scabs, then die out
as you're born again. Anger teaches you to breathe in a room shut off air,
but yet willing your senses to live. This and much more has happened to Goa
over the past couple of months that this column decided to find release,
break away from the rut of words. Not just evocating empty rhetoric, or
great column spaces of pulling down each other and the neighbourhood, you
know, blow hot, blow cold and then step aside once the ho-ha is over. Anger
is a catalyst that moulds change that begins with the self, first. The mind,
once you learn to tame and direct, can will your spirit to calm down and
take stock. Act. As peacefully as sipping the morning cuppa tea.
Young Scarlet Keeling's death brutally shakes us up to what we Goans have
been fighting shy facing it upfront. Years within which Goa now wears a new
face. A face of a monster that has willing creeped into our society,
community and families. A face I fail to recognize, a face that I do not
like, but like a child of your blood you cannot ignore either. A face pealed
off its mask revealing dirt, murky scars of retribution. I see it happening
in my own ward, where people no longer speak of compassion, but money. Where
friends are quick to judge even if you don't attend their silly parties. The
representative you elect to uphold law and order is the first one to break
them all, and thank you he wants your vote again. Need I go on? And in the
seedy politician-police circus that we find ourselves of our own making, a
child pays a price with her life. Have we realized that our sins are been
paid by our children, because the adults have lost their mind and humanity?
All this, while life goes on for you and me, and the blaming game starts all
over again.
The police-drug-politician nexus is as old as prostitution. Is Goa waking up
to it now? Or, are we finally getting bold enough to question this
relationship? Reams of newsprint have screamed dried ink all these years:
Drugs, guns, hit men and pimps have walked as free men in Goa, even as young
boys and girls living along Goa's once pristine coastal belt have fallen
victim to the sins of the `system,' while their parents look the other way
and continue making a fast buck. Loopholes that allow system makers to
become law offenders without a twitch of an eyelid. Nobody gives a shit. Don't
we actively encourage it, so why are we suddenly running to the confessional
box? Is it our guilt? Or, is it because Goa is finally hitting back with the
same coins that have robbed her of her purity. Our paradise gone sour? Is it
reason for us to now go paranoid? Aren't we the same people who dutifully go
to the ballot box like lame sheep, do grace and then go to sleep that we
have honored our roles as dutiful citizens? Who are we electing? What is the
quality of polity that we are demanding? If the State lacks the political
will-power to weed out this nexus, are we strong as a collective people to
demand that we need safe roads, safe neighbourhood, safe beaches, a safe
upbringing for our children? I remember a not so pleasant conversation that
turned on the heat when I told a colleague that Goa needed to be saved from
Goans first? He missed the point and took mighty offense to it. It was also
the last time we ever spoke.
When was the last time you and me took a good hard look around you? Do we
blame builders for latching on to their greed when we have willingly sold
our ancestral homes, land, fields once put together by the sweat of the brow
by our grandfathers for their grandchildren to follow? When was the last
time we took our children into the forests - or whatever that is left of
it - and told them that this belongs to their generation to be cared for and
passed over? Do we care when you take the occasional bus from Caranzalem to
Miramar and search the several faces for a Goan, to find that even the
conductor is from Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh? Matka happens openly in my
neighbourhood, under the very nose of the police who take tea casually even
as I glare. It's nobody's business, you see. Until all hell breaks loose, or
an unsuspecting body comes rolling up the road. We, and we alone, have
allowed Goa to be abused to the point of humiliation. We, a collective we,
all heads in all shapes put together, aspirant power monger, the deal maker,
kingpin, lackey, file pusher, self-inflated ego monsters that I meet so
often who hate your guts, are responsible for the death of Goa. The death of
her spirit, her passion to live life, her beauty and her people. Why are we
beating our breasts then since our sins have caught up with us now? Pick up
your brooms and let's put our noses to our backyards. Question everything.
Because you have a right to question the system. Let nobody tell you
otherwise. The rest will find its momentum. (ENDS)
The Ethel Da Costa weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=492
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The above article appeared in the March 23, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
