Opinion Vikram Patel writes: Once Upon a Time in Goa with Charles Sobhraj

I wondered how our police might have dealt with such a dilemma in more recent times. Modernity has changed how things are done in India because we have become so much more sophisticated. The modern solution to preventing an escape isn’t sitting on the prisoner, but eliminating him in an encounter! Sobhraj would apparently try to steal a pistol from his captors and start running and shooting simultaneously, and our courageous police would gun him down. Matter closed, no need for the frivolities of the judicial system and, of course, no chance he would ever be released from prison alive. Summary justice and, with the exception of the urban Naxals lurking in dark street corners, everyone would be pleased. Good riddance to an awful man.

I was reminded of the many such encounters that occur freely across our land, over 600 in the past five years and counting, some with the most utterly incredulous accounts such as the killing of four undertrials in December 2019 by the Telangana police who alleged they had to open fire in self-defence as the four men began pelting them with stones, or the killing of eight undertrials who apparently escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail and were subsequently all shot dead, many in the head or back, by the police in October 2016. That the former group were charged with rape and the latter group was associated with a banned Islamic group, was enough evidence of their criminality for sections of our country to celebrate the police’s actions.

At the risk of being called an out-of-touch romantic, I admit I miss the likes of Zende, improvising as best as he could, without resorting to an eye-for-an-eye form of justice, to strictly follow the law of the land. I am left wondering if Zende was living in an age that we might want to hold onto, at least for a bit longer. An age of innocence, when many of us believed in old-fashioned things like the right of every individual to justice, even if they were accused of heinous crimes. Perhaps I am simply being nostalgic, as I do also miss so many other things that have changed since that fateful year.

Back then, there was only one bridge over the Mandovi but now there are three, presumably to serve as insurance against the collapse of two bridges, which isn’t surprising as the first bridge fell down after just 15 years. The merging of three bridges on either side of the river has created the most chaotic intersection in the world, making quite literal the concept of a spaghetti junction. Back then, the Goa Medical College was housed in an elegant colonial-era building on the banks of the Mandovi in the heart of the city of Panjim, but it is now housed in a tasteless industrial complex several miles from the capital. Back then, O Coqueiro was the most renowned eatery in north Goa, famed for its blend of Portuguese and Goan cuisine in the leafy neighbourhood of Porvorim, which is now engulfed in construction which has rendered much of the place, like many others in Goa, unrecognisable and ugly beyond description. Back then, “development” meant planning for the people who lived in the villages and towns of the state, with a focus on low-impact tourism, fishing and agriculture. Now, large parts of Goa have been gouged raw by miners, tourism has metastasised into monstrous casino ships blighting the view from the Panjim promenade, and villages are being depopulated as the natives seize their opportunity to become Portuguese citizens and are replaced by hordes of the wealthy from across the country (mostly, I am told, from New Delhi) who want a slice of Goa, at whatever ludicrous price, as one more item to tick off on their list of must-have things to keep up with the Ambanis.

Sorry if I come across as a sourpuss or a dreamer complaining about “progress”, but the loss of innocence, in Goa at least, cannot be denied. How else can one explain one of our former chief ministers (we have had many, some who have ruled for as little as six days), a well known “frog” (back in 1986, a favoured dish during the monsoon) for being a prolific “party-hopper” who, despite having taken a solemn oath before the last elections to the gods of three religions, decided to hop anyway because, in his words, “I went back to God, I told God, these are the circumstances and asked what I should do. God said you take whatever decision you want, I am behind you”. I guess some might argue that this is a remarkable example of innocence, but a harder look will get you to see what is hiding in plain sight: Modernity in India has become synonymous with greed and dishonesty.

This poisonous brand of modernity seems to have ruptured my beautiful Goa, once famous for its aromatic syncretic cuisine, its evocative domestic architecture, the small-time crooks who were almost comical in their naïveté, the glistening paddy fields and pristine villages bordering mangrove-fringed backwaters and thickly forested hills teeming with waterfalls, backpacking tourists who lived in village homes and frequented beach shacks, and diverse communities who, despite their differences, lived together in harmony. Goa’s age of innocence is forever gone. Whether what has replaced it is better, only time will tell. For me, though, having someone sit on my back to stop me from escaping will always be preferable to being shot in the back.

The writer is The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health at Harvard Medical School