PASSAGE TO GOA

January 2002

josé colaço

When one is involved in the private practice of medicine, it does become difficult to pick up and go anywhere for a long duration. It would, however, be insane not to take a trip every now and again.

Even so, Goa is half a world and about 24 flight hours away from The Bahamas. It does take some planning to get there. One needs to organize leave,  make the necessary arrangements for one's patients, airline bookings and the Visa to visit India. ( And that can be a nightmare by itself! That Indian Embassy in Washington is an interesting place....and that is all one needs say about that.)

To London

Ema and I traveled from Miami to London via Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina. This stopover was adequate preparation for the chilly weather expected to greet us in London; or so we thought!

Goodness Gracious! Was London cold or what.

Nothing from the three years we spent in the UK & Eire prepared us for this absolutely frosty reception.  It was bitterly cold out there. To add to the misery, the trains were on strike.

Fortunately for us, Ema's brother & sister-in-law (Tony & Tricia) insisted on driving all the way from Camberly in Surrey to Gatwick to pick us up.....and driving us the next day, back to the airport.  And they were traveling to Goa the day after.! All we can say is "Thank you Tony & Tricia".

Our flight from London to Goa was on Monarch's Airbus 330.  As per the new security requirements, we checked in 3 hours ahead of departure. To our surprise, almost three quarters of the passengers had already checked in.  Fortunately for us, we got relatively decent seats. Decent, in terms of charter flights.

You may be interested to know that there were two languages one could hear in the departure lounge - English and Sashti & Bardez Konkani!. [ Eat your heart out Uday Bhembre!! much against what you and your ilk spout,  Goans do speak Konkani; but NOT necessarily that contrived, engineered & enforced S-Konkani. ]

The Monarch flight to Goa was full....chock-a-block!.  As expected, the service was basic but the flight was very smooth and fairly comfortable.

Eight hours after departing from London's Gatwick airport,  the shore line of Bombay aka Mumbai was apparent from the left of the plane,  We were not stopping there, Thank Goodness!

A few minutes later the plane was beginning its gradual descent into Dabolim airport.... and a good touch down. There was visible glee on the faces of many of the British tourists on the flight.  Perhaps, they were happy to see the sun!(:-) Ema and I were just happy to be home.

Touch Down Goa

Wow!......it does really feel good to be home. The cool sea breeze and the red mud both smiling at the prodigal sons and daughters, saying "Come and feel rejuvenated by your Goenchen nishtem and xitt codi".

As we stepped out on to the Dabolim tarmac in the gentle December sun, we were signaled to stop by a set of rather shabbily attired policemen.  We waited patiently in order to allow an Indian Airlines Airbus to depart. Then...it was time to march on with our khattli-pottlis to clear Immigration & Customs.

The less written about the Immigration & the Baggage collection area, the better. What a shabby welcome at an airport which serves as a portal to some of the most widely advertised tourism stop in India.  Goa's Dabolim airport could easily outclass any Third World airport as the Very Worst!

About 90 minutes after arrival,  we were thrown to the elements who wait outside the arrivals "lounge".

After a couple of hours with some friends at Alto Dabolim, we proceeded home to Velim.  We peered out of the windows as we traveled south.  What a mess that area called Zuarinagar has become! ( Thank you, Mr. Bandodkar. If you remember, Bandodkar  was the first chief minister of Goa. He virtually gifted that huge area near Dabolim airport to the the Birlas in order to build that atrocious Zuari Agro-Chemical plant. Not only has this plant not provided meaningful employment to Goans, it has also polluted the water and the atmosphere in that region. Incidentally, this 'brilliant' Mr. Bandodkar was planning for Goa to host a Nuclear electricity plant.  Fortunately for Goa, the neighbouring area of Karwar won. Enjoy the radiation, Karwar. Wonder why you did not host that awful Meta-Strips plant there!)

My mind wondered ( as usual, I suppose ).  Oh India, I thought. Why have you not taken care of the Goa, you brought back into your fold? Why have you allowed it to be destroyed thus? This is certainly not how you found it in 1961. Oh! how I detest the filth, crime, corruption and chaos that you have brought unto my homeland. One supposes that this is what is meant by Integration.

Traveling through Margao brings back memories of the Discovery Channel productions "Animal Kingdom"  and "Survival".  There are a couple of zebra crossings but one wonder if anybody has noticed. There is one to the east of the once beautiful Aga Khan Gardens,  near Grace Church. Oh Lord!, is that a migration of motorized animals or what? No!, one is reminded, it is a migration of animals on motors.

One thing is for sure, you cross on that zebra crossing and you've got a pretty good chance of looking like a zebra crossing yourself!

We crossed Margao in a hurry and before long reached Navelim.  No non-tourist Goan village has been more destroyed by concrete and filth more than Navelim. From the looks of it, it is set for even further destruction.

We were happy to see the village of Chinchinim and the delightful house of the Loyola Furtados on the eastside of the road. There are some pretty old Goan architecture houses on the west too.

Finally, as they would say in the Bahamas....."we reach" !!. Velim was as we had left it two years ago. Sure, my dad was not there to greet us this time around; neither was Mum, but they were there in spirit and in our hearts.

Then.....it appears that jetlag took the better of us....for the next God alone knows, how many hours. It was almost nightfall by the time we were finally awake. Our first trip out of the house, took us past the family home of the Antao's. I remember meeting Ben Antao when I was just a little kid. That house was so full of life. Couldn't help feeling a tinge of sadness as I saw Ben's house sitting now in the dark, all by itself. We later came to realize that a number of houses in the Goan villages sit dark, deserted and shut. The families from these houses have migrated to distant parts of the world.

The Velim "tinto" and all the little shops were bustling with activity.  Kishore's  posro was still there but under stiff competition from a number of other little shops. Somani's posro which disintegrated over the past several years, after being that spotlessly clean store (pre1961), had now disappeared from sight.

In the midst of these changes, some good, some not, we came across what we thought was a mirage. What!  an e-mail facility in Velim?  Let me say this, it was No Mirage. It is very much a reality and probably one of the faster facilities in Goa. Thank you Agnelo Silva, for setting that up.

From this site we were able to resume contact with our "kiddies"  in the US, the one who was traveling to Hong Kong and Bali and our Goa based cyber-enthusiasts.

continued over leaf : page 2.  Some of the cyberGoans we met