Goa - The Ride From Heaven To Hell

Seven weeks after her body was discovered on Anjuna beach in Goa, the story of Scarlett Keeling continues to haunt the press. Her pretty face, displaced from the front page now smiles at you from one of the inside sheets even as her mother Fiona MacKeown’s gaunt visage accompanies you through the continuing drama. Enough has been written about the actual happenings so I’m not going to go into that now. For me the whole story is one more sign of how easily and how quickly paradise can disintegrate into hell in the absence of watchfulness.

When I first visited Calangute almost thirty years ago with my parents and brother, the beach was an open, endless expanse of sand, unblemished by the small and big shacks which have turned it into a noisy funfair today. There was just one rather ramshackle bar along the shore where we would head at midday to quench our thirst with a couple of bottles of beer. Except for a long haired unkempt hippy whom one came across now and then, shuffling along the beach, in search of his next chemical high, the land was peace personified.

Eleven years ago when I landed in Bogmalo for the first time Goa could still be described as paradise. The beach was like a little handkerchief in comparison with some of the other longer stretches like Colva in the south or like Anjuna up north but within a short while Bogmalo began to feel like home. My cousin, working for a water treatment company which had its office in Verna, had rented the upper storey of a bungalow which looked like a homely version of a Portuguese villa, with a rose coloured façade and a garden full of trees, bushes and flowering plants and a backyard which was home to a community of chickens, cats, a couple of dogs and half a dozen grunting pigs.

The beach was relatively free of tourists in those days and it was a pleasure to splash around in the shocking blue sea at high tide. By and by things changed. Imperceptibly the beach started to get more garish. Huge spotlights were installed on the beachfront which bathed the entire stretch of sand in view and with which the moon had to compete for attention. Then came the population explosion. First one busload a day of tourists then two and then several, mostly from Karnataka, spilled out hundreds of individuals, mostly snickering men, who seemed to have arrived there only to view the semi naked flesh on display. Imperceptibly, our daily swims dwindled, at least I felt less and less like getting into the water in view of a bunch of staring giggling men from the repressed interiors of the land.

Tourists started to pour in from other parts of the world as well. Fat red-necked British and American shippies and businessmen along with their chunky wives who for the most part sat around the beach side shacks downing beer or pina coladas. (Not that I’m complaining about that - it’s what I tend to do in Goa a lot of the time myself!) They were followed by the Russians, the Germans and the Israelis. Today the most popular restaurant in Bogmalo, which people from all over Goa used to visit for its prawn curry and rice and other spectacular native fare, no longer serves Goan food, having switched over to spaghetti, borsch, and other dishes that cater to the European (let’s say to the Russian) palette.

The vast open isolated beach at Agonda which was another favourite hideout of ours seems neither so vast nor isolated any more. A good bit of the area is dotted with huts on stilts or with restaurants with blinking multicoloured lights. Our refuge of the last ten years, a place called Sea View Restaurant where the owner, Max, had put up three large huts on the beach and two rooms in his backyard, away from the beach has suddenly turned into a two star slum. Max, probably under growing pressure to educate his children and tempted by the luscious offers coming his way decided this last season to rent out his property to a mixture of Indian and German entrepreneurs who between them managed to convert a paradaisical piece of land into a slummy disco party. When we landed there, we discovered to our dismay that the three large huts on the beach had been converted into a dozen smaller huts which made the whole place look like a tenement colony in Bombay. Meanwhile the peace and quiet of the backyard which we had experienced only last year was blown to bits by coloured lights strung out along a fence and elevator music jingling from a couple of loudspeakers propped up on the bar counter. Even a TV set had been introduced into the open air retreat for guests to watch their favourite soaps as they chilled out with a lemonade or beer under a mango tree. A slimy blond German who called himself "The Yoga Master" slithered around us, explaining his reasons for starting a movie club on the hallowed land. For Christ's sake, if this isn’t hell, I ask you what exactly is?!

The enthusiasm about mixing with an “International crowd” in Goa had already begun to wane at some stage. Most of the foreigners evinced little interest in mixing with the Indians, and kept to their own kind. Even that would have been acceptable. The trouble started with reports about women being molested at night. Admittedly, the molesters for the most part were Indians – Indians gone astray and a little barmy with an overdose of so-called western culture which they obviously couldn’t handle. And again, it is not westernization I am complaining about considering I belong to the variety known as the westernized Indian myself. It is the lack of vigilance, the lack of any kind of plan on the part of the local government, the turning of a blind eye to the despoiling of Goa’s beaches and countryside, now littered not only with tourists but literally ravaged with plastic bags and discarded mineral water bottles and a lot of other junk.

Long before Scarlett Keeling was doped and murdered at Anjuna two friends of mine, both women, were accosted on two separate occasions, not that late at night. It was in Palolem, it was after dark and each one happened to be returning home from the beach when she found herself struggling unexpectedly against a couple of ruffians. Luckily both women managed to fend off their aggressors and to make for the hotel where they were staying, suffering only from shock and a few minor bruises.

This being the first time we had heard of such a blatant attack in a well populated neighbourhood, we were really shocked. But even the shock effect wears out and in time you begin to say things like, “Oh well, one shouldn’t be wandering around in Goa after dark,”, not realizing how your freedom to move around is gradually eroded. When I first came to stay in Bogmalo we would leave the door to the apartment open the whole day, sometimes even when we were all out at the beach, confident that our privacy would not be invaded. These days I am not sure that is such a sensible thing to do.

I am not sure what is to be done about all this but some questions do arise. For example, How does one cope with the clash of cultures which inevitably arises in the wake of tourism? How does one deal with the negligence and trash arising from unmindful tourism? Is it at all possible to discourage a particular type of tourism, which is harmful to the environment and replace it with something which actually benefits the area? Does tourism necessarily have to end in litter, rape and murder? Isn’t it possible for the local government to create a kind of environment in Goa which will attract visitors, but for the right reasons? The right reasons being not only to relax but also to partake of the local culture with a view to understanding the history of the place, a kind of tourism which is more of a cultural exchange rather than a form of environmental exploitation. Maybe this is no longer a question to be answered by the government or by leaders who are used to making decisions (and invariably end up making the wrong ones) but rather one that all of us who want to protect the last few unspoilt locations in our country need to think about and to respond to.