To Goanet - Socorro, that's where.
In November I made a few forays into this beautiful village to photograph its church. Socorro is the home of my amigo Soter. It is also the native village of Goanet's Vivian D'Souza and his lovely wife Alda. Now - I have seen Goa's destruction first hand, north to south, east to west. And it takes a lot to shock me to tears. But watching a pristine Goan village being laid to waste in real time is always painful, and so it was every time we turned right on the Porvorim highway and came down the slope into Socorro. Raining concrete is not a metaphor here. It is a literal description of what you see. Even my nephew, 9 years old, remarked on the carnage. I did not have the heart to tell him that this is the Goa we are leaving behind for his generation. The generation of his children will not even know the difference, for they will have grown up in a Goa already consummately concretized and ghatified. The Leftist turds will then issue tracts about how "everyone" has contributed to the "cosmopolitan" Goa. Just like they glorify the toilet that is Mumbai today. You take a perfectly good thing, let it rot and be taken down by worms, and then you praise the putrid mass left behind admiring the "dynamic economy" that feeds on the decayed remains. This is the Indian way. What makes Socorro's example relevant now is the news of the looming water crisis in Porvorim. This should be a shot across the bow for the whole of Goa. Those of us who knew wooded Porvorim only 15 years ago recoil when we see the urban slum before us now. Here we cannot pin the blame on the bhailo. When our panches and sarpanches can be bought out for a song, you cannot point to the Dilliwallah for exploiting our own weaknesses. True, the Dilliwallah is an effing s-o-b, but are our own folk any better? The ex-convener of GBA Dr. Oscar Rebello recently declared that he is not against the real estate industry. I bet he is not against the mining industry either. He and people like him are a disgrace. These are the traitors to the Goan cause. When I screened The Rape of Goa in Panjim in May 2008, none of the real estate fellows showed up. Many of these are my childhood buddies or family acquaintances, but they studiously avoided coming to the show. Don't these fellows know that it is their own children who will have to walk and live through this horror they are leaving behind? A couple of fellows sent by the 'stinker' (he calls himself "thinker") builder from Margao - Naik - showed up (after all, I had photographs of the 'social work' Naik had done in Benaulim for the Johnsons and Ahluwalias by destroying an orchard). Goa will not be saved through PILs or court injunctions. The judiciary in India is rotten and corrupt to the core. When it is effective it benefits only those who have greased its wheels. When Digambar Kamat could swat aside the Supreme Court judgment to favour his chum Timblo, do you think we have any chance with DLF's Singh? Timblo is small potatoes compared to the billion dollared DLF Singh with all his political reach and influence. At the snap of Singh's finger Digu will run to Delhi to massage his bum and dispatch Ashatai to Singh's family quarters zhaadu in hand. The law is not going to work for Goa because India is fundamentally a lawless country. Goa's political class is dysfunctional. All this means is, Goa will be saved only if Goans come out on the streets and fight it out. Otherwise, as George Pinto says, Goa RIP. r
