Griffs in Goa

Yesterday Pete from Sweden and Silvia from Norway took the train to Bombay and will be back in Scandanavia in five days time. They were excellent company and I think the picture speaks a thousand words.
‘Cheers you old Beaver’.

Unfortunately we cannot get away from some of the crap shown on UK television. The dreadful Big Brother show has made the national headlines over here for several days with the Indians questioning the UK’s attitude to racism. Yes, we have racist bigots in the UK but so have they over here, in fact today, there has been serious headline grabbing inter-communal riots in Bangalore with Muslims being on the receiving end of attacks and arson. There is an undercurrent of racism here in Goa too and I get a feeling from talking to the locals that they do not like the Kashmiris (Muslim) and the Karnatakans (Hindu) and would like them all to go home. However, cynically the Goans don’t mind accepting rent from the Kashmiris for their shops and having the Karnatakans doing the menial cleaning and labouring jobs.

Sunday is always busy on the beach with Indian tourists far outnumbering westerners.Their antics in the water is comical, lots of screaming, shouting and hand-waving. For many, it is the first time they have seen or been in the sea.
Calangute is a dirty, tired holiday destination for package holiday makers and the town is chosen by out of town Indians who arrive there by the bus load. Indian visitors are blamed for the litter which is everywhere. They are also the victims of frequent drownings that occur on the Goan coast. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have any knowledge or respect for the sea and many venture into the sea intoxicated. Calangute and its southern Goan equivalent Colva often have fatalities. On New Years Eve students from North India drowned at Colva, to date only two bodies have been recovered.

Everywhere across Goa there are adverts presenting a different way of life to the everyday Indian, most of whom can only dream and wonder what it must be like to live the life of luxury being portrayed at every opportunity. Adverts on buses, on the walls of buildings, on lorries, every five minutes on the TV and on huge hoardings in paddy fields. 70% of rural Indian earns less than a dollar a day yet the adverts show very light skinned people drinking Smirnoff vodka or Indian whisky with grand names like Directors Choice, while on their mobile phone booking a flight for Goa to Jaipur with Kingfisher Airlines. How strange it is the poor do not rebel en-masse and say “I want that too”.
The rich guy pulls up in his big four wheel-drive car, sits at a restaurant table, puts a cigarette in his mouth and shouts to the waiter to come and light it for him when his lighter is on the table in front of him. He is saying to everyone, I’m rich and you have got to know I’m rich. This behaviour has a long intertwined history of caste, class and snobbery and it is the way that Indians accept unquestioningly this attitude that I find very difficult to understand.
Inter-faith like inter-caste marraiges are extremely rare and arranged marraiges are still the norm. A girl at the Internet cafe asked me the other day if I was in a ‘love marraige’ which she wanted but her parents forbade. I thought how sad not to be allowed that fundamental choice. This is in a way is how India functions by knowing your place which automatically denies choice, choice which the advertisers unrealistically portray that everyone has.

There has been a couple of thefts recently with bags being stolen from single women tourists. Nothing much has been done about it and consequently nobody has been apprehended. Tonight a taxi-driver had some money stolen and all hell broke loose. The taxi-drivers identified the culprits (out of state Karnatakan building labourers) and when one of them was searched he was found to have a large amount of money on him. Apparently, one was the thief who would then drop the money off in a safe place for collection by the other. There were about eight to ten taxi-drivers outside the restaurant who set about beating up the one who had the cash. A tourist from inside the restaurant shouted ‘call the police’ which infuriated the taxi drivers and they angrily shouted back that the police would just ‘put the money in their back pocket’. A lot of shouting in Konkani (Goan) then ensued when several local women got involved. I have no idea if the taxi-drivers were telling the truth about the reason for the violence and I have no idea what happened to their victims. I did find it a bit ironic that nothing was done about the crimes against the tourists but when the taxi ‘mafia’ had money stolen, it was swiftly remedied. The irony being that they rip-off unwitting tourists everyday without any comeback at all.
The Meridien is to close in a couple of months because the lease is up. I hope it opens again and that it keeps its high standard of food and service. It is consistently, the best eating place in Benaulim.