Goa-n crazy

Now life is bouncing between the walls of two adjoining calendars and metropolitan party animals, package tourists and prime ministers have...

Now life is bouncing between the walls of two adjoining calendars and metropolitan party animals, package tourists and prime ministers have headed towards the land of 8216;susegad8217; to listen to the palms whisper 8216;Felice Navidad8217;. Tonight, on the stunning Goan coastline where Alfonso de Albuquerque docked four hundred years ago, the ghosts of the past will be banished, Old Man 2002 will burn and New Year pilgrims will dance to the rhythms of re-birth. Although the RSS is feeling decidely un-festive about A.P.J. Abdul Kalam8217;s plan to inaugurate a Jesuit conference, Vajpayee himself is eating prawns in Salcette, in the heart of catholic Goa, as if to imply that Christianity is apparently only acceptable as a pretty backdrop to a New Year holiday.

How unfair are the stereotypes of Goa! A decade ago when Air-India published a calendar of weddings showing a 8216;typical8217; Goan bridal couple dressed in gown and suit, locals protested that such representations made a mockery of Goan Catholics who, they argued, look as desi as any other community. Indeed, under the mask of the five-star hotels, the hippie hang-outs and the drug-and-rap beach shack parties, Goa is a deeply conservative and pious society, where Hindus rather than Catholics form the majority. Behind the shuttered windows of the great mansions like the Silva house in Margao and the Figueredo mansion in Loutolim, life is lived with 8216;delicadeza8217; delicacy and 8216;decencia8217; decency, in stark contrast to the pornography-seeking flesh pots gyrating mindlessly on Anjuna beach. The Saraswat brahmins of Goa, for example, are teetotallers, deeply attached to their kuladevathas, or family deities. And every village community of Goa with its parish priest, taverna and the old families form part of a syncretic religosity that historian D.D. Kosambi once said would make any Marxist turn to faith. That India8217;s greatest nightingales, from Lata Mangeshkar to Kishori Amonkar, come from Goa reveals that there is far more to Alburquerque8217;s lost empire than 8216;fish, feni and football8217;. So as revellers wend their way to the next boozy bash, perhaps they might stop off at one of the wayside shrines of Goa where diyas and marigolds sit gently under a crucifix to remind themselves that the gods of Goa are even older than Bacchus.