*Tourism and the Goan nemesis* Humanity in all forms will descend into Goa during the season, says *ANTHONY SIMOES* It is that time of the year again. The monsoons are receding rather reluctantly. The mosquito menace is a permanent feature of our lives. Thanks to the garbage and sewage lying around, we have plenty of maggots and flies to keep the mosquitoes company. Thank God for the million crows and 20,000 stray dogs who have made Goa their home. These scavengers do a better job than our municipalities.
The newspapers keep us well informed about the latest excuses for the all pervasive stench in Goa. Editorials tell us why we need the Mopa airport, sports cities, sea links, six-lane super highways, monorail (or is it the skybus?) and 18-hole golf courses for high spending tourists. Unfortunately, we get tourists who are always high but seldom spending. It is probably the ‘high’ on liquor or drugs or disco/trance. The end of the rains also heralds the start of the tourism season. Soon Goa will be invaded by hordes of tourists arriving in buses, trains, cars, planes and by sea. Three lakh foreign tourists and 30 lakh Indian tourists will descend on us like locusts to drain our meagre resources of power, water, fish and food. They will leave us with more sewerage and garbage. Not to mention traffic jams and crowded public-transport. Buses and ferries will be overloaded. Along with the tourists come the paedophiles looking for little boys and girls. We will also get pimps, lesbians, prostitutes, homosexuals, gigolos, masochists, sadists, catamites, sodomites, junkies, pushers, peddlers, drunks, derelicts, winos, alcoholics, bludgers, thieves, pick pockets, dacoits, cat burglars and other dregs of humanity. They will all be welcomed by our tourism department officials and 10,000 female bar dancers who have lost their jobs in Maharashtra. Our tourism department officials will stoop to the lowest of levels to get the highest number of tourists. We will get the SUV-loads of male tourists from Kolhapur, Bijapur, Sangli, Satara, Haveri, Karad and Baramati, looking for half-naked white women. They will cook and live outdoors, using their own gas cylinder and stove. In the morning, they will urinate and defecate in some open space before sunrise. After a cup of tea, they will go sight seeing whilst the locals smell their calling cards left behind along with the morning tea, chapati and their copy of the ‘Herald’. Then there is the tourist who comes on a tight budget, even as he looks for loose women. He goes to the beach after a drink-too-much and wants to be photographed with a semi-nude white woman. He then goes, fully dressed sometimes, into the sea to create work for the lifeguard and sometimes for the coast guard. The beaches are covered with 300 legal and 400 illegal shacks, 2,000 beds and 4,000 umbrellas. The sand is covered with sun bathing tourists and pariah dogs. In between the gaps are wandering body massagers, ear cleaners, barbers, pedicurists, manicurists, fortune tellers and other service providers. These services have all been outsourced to Telegus, Oriyas, Tamilians… And why not? We have carpenters from UP, labourers from Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Bangladesh. Our plumbers and electricians are from Kerala while our casinos and hair-styling centres are in the hands of Nepalese and, more recently, Manipuris. The shack owners are busy cooking food or some crooked deal for the pleasure of their clients. Taxi drivers are busy planning their own little scams or gambling among themselves to pass the time. The tourist police are busy squeezing local vendors, peddlers and other illegal entrepreneurs for their pound of flesh and ounce of blood. The regular police and RTO are out harassing tourists for real or imaginary traffic violations. All this loot slowly percolates upwards to PSIs, PIs, SHOs, DySPs, SPs, DIGs, MLAs and ministers. Talk about reverse osmosis. The trickle-down effect which our PM talks about with respect to economic growth is made to stand on its head. Sounds like another joke on the people of Bharat. Then there are the raving mad maniacs of the lunatic fringe. For them, our government organises rave parties. Every year, crores of rupees change hands as dozens of politicians, panchayat members, bureaucrats and technocrats are on the take. The Goa Trance shows are now internationally recognised events. There are websites which give all the details regarding venues, programming and timings. Check it out. The Mafias of half-a-dozen countries are active in the coastal belt. They are into rackets like prostitution, protection, gambling and land sharking. There is plenty of extortion, drug peddling, petty crime and moonlight parties. But, according to Home Minister Ravi Naik, there are no drugs in Goa. Atala is a media creation and bogeyman to frighten the parents of Goan teenagers. Lucky Farmhouse is a fortune teller and palm reader who was arrested at Calangute Beach by the Tourism Police and handed over to the Crime Branch. She asked for bail, so they escorted her to the bhel-wallahs at Miramar beach. She wandered onto the beach and rode a surfboard out to sea. She waved out to a passing Goan fishing trawler to rescue her. Instead, a Swedish naval submarine surfaced and took her back to Sweden. Roy Naik sold this story to a local hack who published it in a regional-language newspaper. It has now become the script for the latest Telegu ‘James Bond’ type of movie. Talk about innovation, initiative and ingenuity, thanks to tourism-related incentives. That’s how we got rid of Lucky Farmhouse, druglord Atala and the entire ‘Gotala’. At last, the MV River Princess is going, or rather, being taken away by the original owners. ‘What an idea, Sirji!’ Forty thousand tonnes of steel @ 100 per cent Fe. Mix this with 40,000 tonnes of mud having 0 per cent Fe. That gives you 80,000 tonnes @ 55 per cent Fe. At $150 per tonne, that’s a cool $12 million! Since the Princess will cease to exist, there will be no royalty. After our Anil-bab has devastated the beach, our government will re-designate it as a ship breaking yard. CRZ laws will no longer apply, and hotels will have a ball. Claude and Norma can retire. What is it about the name ‘Anil’? So many of those who don’t particularly care much for nature seem to have that name – Salgaocar, Counto, Ambani, Agarwal… Earlier, in medieval times, those that did not care for India too much and regularly destroyed its cities and looted it wealth were invariably called Mohammad – of Ghazni, Ghor, the Lame… They only called him Tamerlane because his ancestors were lion-tamers. Is Goa on its way to become India’s answer to Sodom and Gomorrah? Thanks to the greed and hubris of Goans, tourism has become our nemesis.