Pandu lampioa wrote:
The 'greening' of Goa has reached a point of no return and what you
said in your post is right there for all to see. Nothing against any
community but a mass influx is unhealthy.
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Dear Pandu,
If it comes as a surprise that fairly liberal people like you and me, turn
violently conservative and anti-migrant, it is because we have to live in that
hell-hole, wholesale brothel otherwise known as Vascu. By the time you reach St
Andrews Church the last vestige of its former glory standing against the
onslaught of mindless insanity, those of us who grew up in Salcete, fall on us
knees and pray to St. Andrews that such a horrific plague of destruction never
visits Salcete. Alas, Margao is already beset with a similar plague.
My mother-in-law who arrived in Vascu about forty-five years ago
remembers Vascu in its days of glory. The gaunkars had built their charming
homes on Mangor hill so that they may leave the windows open and let in the
fresh air blowing upwards. Today they've learnt to padlock those same windows
even during the daytime to keep safe what is left of their gold crucifixes and
their flailing dignity. Vascu, mind you was the first township in Goa to have
proper sewage and the design of the town itself, what one can still decipher
amidst the cones popping up everywhere for endless traffic diversions and the
gaddos sprouting in every conceivable place, is so well planned it would put a
small European city to same. The sewers however have long past their capacity
to keep filth underground and the green that oozes out on good days is now so
commonplace Vascukars have grown heavy lids and hairy nostrils which they can
now automatically close like some better
adapted mammals to deal with it.
And all the while Mangor breathes heavy under the weight of expanding slums
which now spread from one side of the airport road right down into the port
city itself. On the other side of airport road are penthouses which sell for
over 1 crore built without rhyme or reason and more specifically without proper
planning, roads, drainage, sewage or garbage disposal.
If anyone wants a look into Goa's future, I advise them like Pandu says, to
take a bus to Vascu and stare it squarely into its face. Incidentally, I don't
see any hope for the slumification of Goa being reversed. That door was sealed
the day Goa became part of India. We can only hope now that someone will make a
film of Goa's slums 50 years from now and we'll have Goans writing paeans in
the New Yorker telling us how wonderful and productive life actually is in a
slum like Goa-Darawi. If there is one thing Indians are extraordinarily good at
it is slummifying every city, town or living area they set foot in. For proof,
visit cities in London which are Indian strongholds.
Best,
selma
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