Must you come to Goa at this time?

Vivek Menezes

Let’s start at the top. Why Goa? Why do all of you newly moneyed, newly adventurous and aspirational Indians head here like lemmings every New Year? Don’t you know that the Goans are in xenophobic uproar?

Haven’t you heard the Israeli announcement about the Al Qaeda threat to this slice of Konkan coastline? Isn’t Karwar supposed to be much more authentic?

And what about the cost? Everyone complains that Thailand is cheaper, and Malaysia, and even exotic Bali. Why not go there? Why would you pay Rs 30,000 per night for a hotel room that goes for a tenth of that price the rest of the year.

Why would you pay Rs 11,000 to compete for the last shrimp on a dried-up buffet on the 31st? Aren’t these prices the opposite of value for money? Seriously guys, we want to know. What is it about Goa, especially at year end, that compels you to pile up here in droves, to deplete your savings precipitously, to convert our entire state into a grotesque Bollywood-style caricature of itself?

It can’t be the booze, that doesn’t make sense at all. Goa still sports thousands of small taverns, bars and shacks, and alcohol is still marginally cheaper than in the rest of the country.

But is it worth it to come to Goa to get three rupees off the same bottle that you can drain in the comfort of your own neighborhood, better yet in your own armchair? Of course not. And you can get home delivery, you lucky urbanite. Why bother with all that walking, or driving. Why bother with that nuisance of a flight when you can pick up the phone and get a frosty case of cold ones at your door in ten minutes?

And you have such lovely air-conditioned bars, in such lovely air-conditioned malls. We have nothing to compare with that, not a single glittering shopping arcade in this whole woefully backward place. You’ll have to drink in a crummy shack, without cable television, stuck in front of those overrated magenta sunsets. Horrifying prospect, isn’t it? God forbid.

Forget Goa, you’ll get sand on your feet here, and who needs that.

Don’t tell us it’s the bikinis. There was a time that busloads would head straight across the border to Anjuna, just to ogle sunbathers from a distance. But nobody can be that repressed anymore in surging, booming, globalizing India, can they?

All those glossy magazine surveys tell us that there’s swingers aplenty in Secunderabad, and sex parties by the score in Patna. That’s the real deal, why not go there? Bihar for New Year, it’s now, it’s unalloyed. Forget Goa, people, listen to reason.

It can’t be the coastline, because our beaches have been hammered into submission by overcrowding and steady coastal erosion. That iconic Baga to Candolim stretch? A mere ribbon of sand, hemmed in by a wall of concretization on one side and angry, beach-gouging waves on the other.

Arambol? Badly polluted. Palolem? It’s like Juhu on a weekend, with inebriated Russians outnumbering individual grains of sand. Hmm. Juhu. Now there’s an unsung little jewel of a beach right on your own turf, no? Forget Goa, the beaches of Mumbai have been overlooked for far too long.

Let’s face it folks, Goa is played out. There’s nothing more for you here. We Goans feel a lot like that famous Arabian sheikh who let his camel warm a toe inside his tent, and eventually got pushed out by the animal’s entire bulk.

Tourism seemed like a good idea thirty years ago, when the first wretched five-star hotels were built, but it didn’t take very long for the deal to go sour. Ten thousand CRZ violations later, we’re left cold, alienated, huddled on the last recognizable slivers of our homeland. May our ancestors forgive us, but it has come to this point — forget Goa, there’s no place for Goans in it.

The writer is a freelancer based in Goa