Now there is no need to get agitated because your child got it wrong. Obviously he doesn’t live in Bandra and hasn’t seen millions of adivasis from the above two States crawling all over Bandra in locust like formation.

It appears that over the years some dear and Rev. Sisters have found them jobs in hundreds of households as domestic help. They come in various shapes sizes and colors. But they are mostly young women and their mostly Catholic.

Opinions differ about them. They’re called rogues, scoundrels, immoral, thieves, lazy bums and dimwits. A few of them may fit these labels. After all they are uneducated village girls. Gold and cash lying around are a temptation. Holes in your expensive dress may be discovered after ironing. The dirty dog may land up in your washing machine and your wet slippers in your microwave oven.

But most of them do not deserve the labels I mentioned. They learn fast, are basically honest, extremely clean and very soon are able to produce a good masala “armlet” for breakfast” and some decent “cutlasses” for lunch

Statistics also reveal that liars, thieves, lazy and drunken bums, scoundrels and immoral characters among the sahibs and memsahibs out number the adivasi girls by 100 to 1.

Today I am writing about the time when the old girl had her kidney transplant. Her immunity was low and she was so fragile that we had to be very careful about infections and prevention of rejection of the transplanted kidney.

She was isolated in one bedroom and we had access to her with a masks on our faces and gloves on our hands.
Tina, our adivassi maid, was heaven sent. Heaven being the house of a friend of ours from where she came.

Thin, dark, strong, as clean as a pin, she worked hard, was thoroughly reliable and a splendidly quick learner. And when she laughed she tilted her head to one side as if the head was fixed on hinges

In the year of her retirement from the French Trade Commissioners Office the old girl couldn’t have asked for more.

So why does Tina want to go on a morcha? Well, that’s what she came to tell us one rainy Sunday morning.

She doesn’t know. She only knows that the Rev. Sisters have asked 1000 of them to assemble at the Azad maidan. Buses will be provided for the return journey.

Tina is scared. Will there be violence, she asks. I assure her that all will be well. I also tell her that I had once been a speaker at one such Morcha years ago. That brings a smile to her innocent face. I then explain to her all about the rights of domestic workers and the Industrial Disputes Act 1947. Her attitude to the ID act is the same as that of my German boss when I had explained it to him on his first arrival in India in 1970. Total dismay and disbelief !

But Tina doesn’t like any of the laws. The minimum wage figure would mean that her salary would be reduced. Did the phrase “job security” mean that she was not free to seek new employment at the drop of a hat or the drop a precious imported serving dish? What about tooth paste and soap, gold bangles for Christmas and sarees for New Year.?

I give her the bus fare, money for snacks and ask her to get answers to questions at the Morcha.

The old girl is angry, always a gentle anger, that I’ve shifted my Personnel Manager’s role from my office to the house. “You should not encourage the empowerment of domestic help. You never know what demands they will make” she says.

I know she’s not serious about what she’s saying. Nobody I know is more sympathetic to those who work for us as she is. Her nature is not to be demonstrative. I am over demonstrative and one such person is enough in a household of two.

Hours later Tina returns with none of her questions answered,

And regrettably, much more downtrodden than when she had left for Azad Maidan.

It seems it rained heavily and she was drenched to the skin looking as sad as a wet hen. The speeches were in Marathi. And to crown everything, a corrupt and nasty policemen had stopped the bus at Mahim Causeway and collected Rs 10 from each of the passengers before allowing them to proceed.

When they arrived in Bandra and got off the bus Tina had made a little speech as a result of which she was elected as the leader of the girls that had got off the bus,

She’s fascinated with Morchas. In fact she is planning a Morcha. Maybe more than a Morcha. One against The Rev. Sisters who wasted their holiday, and one against The Police Traffic Department

The old girl was all smiles. That’s the way to go she said.

Godfrey Pereira, a journalist who once worked with Sunday magazine Kolkotta and India Today wrote a “no holds barred” piece on the Goanet chastising the laid-back Goans and literally tearing them to pieces in the same fashion as the mine owners are tearing up the rich Goan soil mindless of the destruction that is caused all around.

I have a suspicion that Godfrey Pereira is not an ex-journalist. He is an “agent provocateur”. He uses language that would not only make a sailor blush but the entire Indian Navy turn red like the setting sun on the beaches of Goa.

I like what Godfrey wrote. It is a wake-up call to all of us Goans even though he gets carried away and is not in touch with the present day reality of Goa. He also exaggerates the achievements of the East Indians in the Gorai- Uttan agitation in Mumbai.

About Goa he says “the Russians have been openly running drugs in Goa. Army deserters from Israel have put up signs in Goan clubs stating “No Indians allowed”.

“What have you, paowallahs been doing?” he asks “Eating last night’s curry for breakfast? Susegad.” Later he goes on to say that beach after beach is being decimated and not a “beep” from the bloody Goan men. In a colorful metaphor, as colorful as the cashew fruit, he asks “what happened to the cashew nuts between our legs? The Goan women don’t seem to care as long as the sons send money back home.”

In a voice full of anger he says “let somebody else revolt Bleddy pass the pao, men. Make sign of the cross, do the mando. It is God’s will.”

“At least the East Indians are trying. What have you Goans been doing while your hills are being raped and your fresh water resources plundered. What? Have another feni? Talk about how Aunty Mary’s daughter is now going out with that Bleddy German bugger? Or are you all fighting your sisters for property you don’t think they deserve.”

In contrast, Godfrey praises the East Indians: “In Mumbai
thousands of people from the ten villages of the Gorai-Uttan
belt have been fighting Essel World India’s “largest
amusement park” that’s coming up near Borivali. They are
protesting against the proposed Special Entertainment Zone
(SEZ) spread over 14,183 acres in the area. They know they
stand to lose the core of their culture if this happens and
so they are fighting this encroachment disguised as tourism.
At least The East Indians there are trying.”

Whether castigating Goans or praising East Indians, Godfrey has not done his home work as well as he should have.

The reality today is that Goans have, however slowly, turned into human rights activists. There are individuals like Sebastian Rodrigues, Venita Coelho, Padma Shri Norma Alvares. Hartman de Souza, Durgadas Gaonkar and many more.

There are Organizations like the renowned Doctor Oscar Rebello’s Goa Bachao Abiyan, Floriano Lobo’s Goa Su-Raj Party, Bailancho Sad, or the very recent Community activism through “Video Volunteers” at village level.

So many heroic individuals and groups, too many to name, not to mention journalists, artists, musicians, fashion designers you name it, who have actively supported most movements to save Goa from its multi-pronged perdition.

As well-known journalist Frederick Noronha writes “these stories hardly ever emerge. The meek of the earth shall not inherit the headlines, as Indira Gandhi once famously said. Their campaigns lack immediacy, is bereft of the drama, and above all, these are simple people!”

In any case, Godfrey needs to update himself although, as many Goa watchers would agree, the movements are not sustainable and are not able to dislodge the political people in power for the same reasons Indians everywhere are not able to do so on account of massive fissures among the common people. Namely caste, sub-caste and creed.

On the other hand Godfrey has no excuse in having got the Gorai Uttan agitation wrong.

I like the East Indians. I became their adopted son when I built a cottage at the far end of the Gorai beach near the lighthouse, almost having a private cove for myself and my family on weekends.

When thugs started to excavate the sand all along the beach and especially in front of my house, when cottages for love-birds were built on Customs owned property, when the bullock-cart owner, my friendly neighbor, was killed by Mumbai thugs forcibly grabbing property, when Essel World was built ,there was not a whimper from the people of Gorai. Not a “beep” as Godfrey would say.

I was advised to stop writing complaints and bringing my very senior police friends to have a look at what was happening. “Uncle” they said to me “you are here only on weekends. Your house is the furthest from the village. All they have to do one night is to burn it down”

Godfrey should know that the successful stalling of the special entertainment zone of 14,000 acres was not a movement of the East Indians alone.

In fact the whole community was splintered into two groups. One consisting of NCP politicians, East Indians of course, who wanted the SEZ. And the other group, also East Indians, who were against the SEZ.

This polarization would have cost the East Indians dearly if Medha Patkar who was fighting anti-SEZ battles along the coast had not extended it to Gorai-Uttan belt.

It became a national issue and was backed by Cardinal Oswald Gracias who issued a letter asking all parish priests and their flock to back the agitation.

The Bombay Catholic Sabha, the Christian Secular Forum, the news paper “Spotlight”, the powerful Vasai Human Rights Organization led by people like Fr Francis Britto and Marcus Dabre not to mention Abraham Mathai of the Minorities Commission all put their weight behind the agitation.

The beneficiaries are no doubt Indians in general and East Indians in particular. Do you hear me, Godfrey? In what you wrote, you did a good job either way.

 I can publicly confess that I was not being sent up by my school for my matriculation examination because my marks in mathematics never reached two digit figures.

 It took me a long while to try to understand that leaving pages blank in the answer book and drawing pictures of the girls in my class who had good figures, was not the same as dealing with figures in the question paper.

 Even today, at a ripe old age when the word figure is uttered the only thing I can think of is 36-24-36.

My mother who was a very persuasive person especially when she carried her rosary in her hand, pleaded with the headmaster, to let me take the exam.

When the results were out and a crowd had gathered around the headmaster my requests to him to give me my results were brushed aside because obviously he was keen to find out how his best students had fared.

When the list of  subject toppers was being read he announced with horror in his eyes that I had broken the Bombay University record for the compulsory English paper by scoring over 80%, a common occurrence how but a phenomenon in those days. This information automatically led to the conclusion that I must have also passed the matriculation examination.

With the budget due in a few days, I realize that I should have schooled myself in the intricacies of at least arithmetic. I now realize that my ignorance of arithmetic and simple financial matters led to my family members taking advantage of my ignorance when the time came for budget allocation of the family.

Looking back, I realize that I could never understand how there were generous allocations for children’s pocket money, expensive clothing, chocolates and fancy kitchen gadgets which left no money at all for life-saving items like whiskey, rum and blood thinners like aspirin.

In later years I realized that my ignorance and elementary mathematics on financial matters was allowing my managers to take me for a ride (not to be mistaken for free Company transport) in an Organization that certainly gave high priority to people development but never at the cost of productivity.

If I have managed to survive it is because I am not afraid to ask for help or to admit to my boss that somebody from the lower rungs of my department had prepared my Budget, which my boss, said was one of the best budgets he has seen from any department.

 Although I started to notice that this low-rung financial wizard was suddenly being promoted on a regular basis I had enough self-esteem and feelings of security to realize that his wizardry had a narrow limitation and there was no threat of my being superseded.

As a result there are many things in life that I’ve never hesitated to delegate to people who I felt could do those things better than I could.

My children have always chastised me for never reading the instruction booklets of my Computer, my T.V. my Cell phone, or even some of the life-saving kitchen gadgets that we have. It has never caused me a problem because I always know whom to ask for assistance and I can be very generous in affirming such people and praising them for their skills.

After a time, I felt that my generous and helpful neighbours had started to wonder how my visits to enquire about their health always coincided with what restaurants call the ‘Happy Hour.’

I believe that the whole of Mumbai learnt to delegate and seek assistance on Budget matters by relying on the great expertise of the late Nani Phalkivala who used to dissect the Budget and go over it with a magnifying lens and even discovering a great amount of humor in the fine print. This was his annual offering free of cost to the whole of Mumbai and especially to ‘Budget Dummies’ like me.

When the Budget is presented in the Lok Sabha, at the time of writing this piece, I will as usual watch it on T.V. knowing fully well that I will not understand any of the figures but happy at the thought of watching the antics of other people in the Lok Sabha, who also don’t understand the Budget but make a noise all the same.

My special attention will be riveted on scamsters who are experts on the Budget and its loopholes, most of whom should have been sitting behind prison bars, instead of occupying seats in the sacrosanct premises of the august House.

I also wait with bated breath for the one thing I understand namely the allocation under the Head ‘Personal Income Tax’, as a result of which I shall become poorer than I have been in the previous year.

My written recommendation to every single Finance Minister that the allocation should find its place under the Head, ‘Highway Robbery’, has obviously fallen on deaf ears.

Yet, I am specially glued to the T.V. for those beautiful moments when the slime and dirt of politics is set aside, however temporarily, and the session is raised to an uplifting moment with an outpouring of poetry, from the verses of Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to the rare breed of politician cum poets like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and V.P. Singhji.

It is my dream that in the next Budget Session, the poetry will be accompanied with the soothing sounds of Sufi music.

Having participated in competitive sports till the age of 40, some cricket and a great deal of hockey, I carry broken fingers and damaged cartilages and ligaments as my old age baggage, and I have serious reservations about the state of these sports in my country.

More than 33 percent I can assure you.

I have reservations about the mockery called IPL.

Utterly shocked veteran cricketers and knowledgeable spectators and fanatic followers of Test cricket and even One Day cricket express their reservations about IPL’s “tamasha” by calling it “gilli danda”

I have more than 33 percentage reservations about a beautiful gentleman’s game which had courtesy and style and patiently honed skills converted into crass entertainment involving blind aggressiveness, grooming youngsters for membership of gangs specializing in hit and run techniques.

I have worse reservations about Indian Hockey. Does the body that controls hockey have a vision or even a game plan except to move downhill to the bottom position of the international hockey rankings?

I see no forwards and halves. Only defenders and they are all in the Committee not on the ground. They spend their entire first half making atrocious and biased decisions and the second half in defending them unsuccessfully scoring what is known as self goals. Or self-Gills.

M S Gill the Minister for Sports threatens but is unable to get KPS Gill the Head of the Indian Hockey federation to quit because KPS wants 100 percent reservation of the post for himself for life time.

And if we also have 100 percentage reservations about Joythikumaran Secretary of the same Federation, caught on camera taking a bribe to select a player for Team India, calculation of percentages will reveal that our reservations do not need a separate Bill but an urgent inclusion as an addenda to Pranab Mukerjee’s Finance Bill.

All said and done my greatest reservation is about the Bill for Reservation of 33 % seats for women in Parliament and Assemblies.

Fr Jerome D’Souza and other Christian members of the Constituent Assembly refused reservations of seats because they wanted Christians to retain their dignity and self esteem and participate fully and equally with other communities in the governance of a great, secular democracy.

Unlike in Pakistan where Christians have reservations but no voice or power, Christians, thank you, are doing very well in Bharat that is India.

Women in India do not need reservations. Already,the most powerful people in this country are women and thank God for it.

First, there is the very mixed pot of Sonia, Jayalalita and Mayawati. Try to dislodge them from their positions of power and the country will experience a tsunami from which it will never recover.

Look around. There are powerful women in politics, in industry, in business, in the bureaucracy, in the media, in every kind of NGO and citizen initiative.
You name it. They are giving our incompetent men a hard time.

And so we have a male plot to allow only 33% of seats in legislative bodies knowing that the writing on the wall says that many more than a measly percentage of women are ready or will be ready to govern the country and control other centres of power if we just let them be. Just let them be, for God’s sake.

They need empowerment not reservations. Deliver them from the clutches of a society that treats them as objects. Deliver them from a society that day after day, violates the sanctity of their womanhood in thousands of villages where they are in bonded slavery to their men folk requiring ptheir permission to even mensurate. Deliver them through the empowerment of education, through freedom where they can speak up and get justice and a even playing field, deliver them from outdated (for women only) cultural practices and watch them fly.

Keep the 33 % reservations for men and there will be fewer fisticuffs, microphone flinging, less walk-outs and more dignity in places where dignified behaviour is constitutionally mandatory.

It took me 80 long years to really experience being operated upon. I have been inside a hospital lots of times. As a Management consultant, to conduct training progammes , to donate blood which is no different from Management consultancy with a little difference. In the case of Blood donation you know or hope some one will benefit.

In the case of Management Consultancy for hospitals I will really never know if any one has benefited from the painful donation of my report or whether it has been consigned to the dustbin or the dark recesses of a cockroach infested file. As a first time patient I had anticipations and anxieties.

Could employees have read my report and be waiting to retaliate? Would it happen to me like it happened to friend of mine who had criticised the watery soup he was being served every evening.?

“Our Chef is very proud of our soup” said the Catering Assistant. It is his mother’s recipe and no one has the temerity to refuse it. My friend did and realized that the soup was served to him via a scalding enema.

As it turned out no doctor or nurse or Ward boy had heard of me and my Management report. Praise the Lord. It was a frank, honest and somewhat critical report.

All went well the only mystery being that after 80 years of good health I had to have 3 surgical interventions.

First some of the unused stones meant for street fighting, mainly North Indian bashing seem to have found their way into my innocent gall bladder.A simple enough operation that would have been over and done with considering the skills of our surgeons . Unfortunately one of the stones who must have felt left out of the fraternity of stones slipped away and lodged itself in the bile duct and had to be removed via an endoscopy and the bile duct blocked with a stent.

All is well I thought to myself except on being discharged it was discovered that I needed a prostrate surgery.

“Continue your chopping” I said to the surgeons. Not so soon they said. We send you home with a catheter and operate after a month.

I was getting used to getting by body being butchered, but a catheter for a month was a new experience. How does one hide a plastic urine bag from the gaze of the rude and scoffing multitude?

A family conclave came up with many ideas. My grand daughters suggested that they would paint the bag….surrealistic art, bright, permanent colours and I could hang the bag round my neck. Brilliant I thought’ till I found that the weight of the urine was cutting into the back of my neck and no amount of deodorant spray could take away the “sulabh” public toilet effect.

We finally settled on my daughter-in-law’s idea of tucking it cozily into one of those long strapped cloth bags, carried over the shoulder by priests, nuns, social workers and poverty stricken artists who were expensive “Kholapuri chappals”

It worked wonders allowing me to lead a normal life including attending a party where I danced with females whose perfumed bodies did not give my urine bag even a momentary chance of recognition. Hurrah I said almost tripping on my partner’s floor length gown.

Happy to announce that with initial regrets there is always a flood of joy.

The other good news is from the devoted wife of an actor who swears that women are equally capable of rape as men are.

I tend to agree. Some years ago in a moment of misplaced charity I gave a lift to young woman waving frantically from the pavement. When the time came for her to get off she asked for five hundreds and told me bluntly that if I refused to pay a she would started screaming “Rape….Rape !!”

I opened the door of the car in front of a crowed bus top, gave her a fifty rupee note that I had, and told her my age. I am no Charlie Chaplin.

I therefore have no rational explanation for almost rarely watching television. I prefer good old reading, walking at the Joggers Park conveniently located near my residence, swimming or actually fooling around the pool watching mothers of different shapes and sizes teaching their kids to swim. I am not so sure which.

The old girl watches the IPL matches and thinks I am mad not to join her.

I have been a professional cricketer and hate the way cricket has been desecrated, commercialized and milked dry of every joy it had to offer.

But wait a minute. Suddenly and without warning I have started watching television a great deal. Ever since the Elections were announced and all the political parties realized that they had nothing to offer the voters except some great entertainment.

I call these shows “the great laughter crusade”

Let us start with the most hilarious of the lot. Here we have a young man who is actor, producer and director and audience rolled in one. I have spent hours watching his antics. There is so much authenticity in his role as actor. He screams that he will cut off the hands and legs of members of a community that he dislikes completely.

That dislike is flexible and deniable whenever the Chief Minister of the State in which he is contesting threatens to dismember him secretly in a local jail. The real laugh is when we discover is that this macho foul mouthed hero is nothing but Mama’s boy.

And Mama, mind you, won’t allow us, normally compassionate citizens, to harm an animal, bird or bee. Not even swat a fly.

Realising that he destroying his Mama’s lifetime agenda he switches to his late father’s magnificent obsession. Reducing or may be controlling India’s population that is neutralizing every gain we make. So he becomes over night the champion and ardent promoter of sterilisation.

What next? The TV programme tells me he will be soon a Member of Parliament. I start to weep until he announces that his 500 and odd colleagues would be the first to be sterilized. Pure entertainment. I fall off the chair laughing.

We also have a great deal of Bollywood type of entertainment. Several shady characters secretly visiting several fat women at separate times and different places asking them to reveal their Fronts. Which of course they don’t, leaving the shady characters salivating.

Although there is none of the usual chasing the woman around a tree till you get giddy nor the dip into a river to come out wet and “just about” revealing behind 12 yard saris that fat women wear, the suspense is unbearable since the vote counting has not yet started and Front cannot be revealed.

As I write this the counting is over, the results declared, the fronts discovered to be “falsies” big size no doubt. The entertainment is over with the common Indian voter having the last laugh.

One such “aam admi” told me a story that I need to share with you.

At a conference of surgeons the participants started to share their surgical experiences.

“I love to operate on accountants” he said, “you open them up and everything is numbered”

“My choice” said the second “are electricians. You open them up and every thing is colour-coded”

“My favourite patient is the librarian” said the third surgeon “you open them up and everything is in alphabetical order”

“Hold on” said the last one “you have forgotten the politician, especially in these election times”.

“They are the easiest to operate upon. You open them up and you discover that they have no guts, no heart, no spine and no brain. What is more they have only two moving parts. The mouth and the arseole. And mind you, they are both interchangeable!”

Let us hope that the U PA with a massive mandate will include in its programme a good deal of transplant surgery so that we start getting political leaders with a heart, more spine and guts and always with integrity and sonographic transparency.

From months of not being able to sleep by 11 p.m, as I’ve been used to for almost a lifetime, I suddenly find that I can sleep at any time at all. And, in fact, I feel sleepy right through the day.

Not that I’m unhappy about it, but it is kind of discomforting for a type-A person who has to be doing something all of the time.

Wanting to sleep during the day is not the only problem.

I would have welcomed it.  Three months to my eightieth birthday, most people have forgotten that I exist. And, to add to that,  getting my writings published today is more demeaning than personally selling pirated copies off my old books at a traffic signal.

Therefore, just sleeping in the armchair with my legs up with the latest newspaper carrying Barrack Obama’s picture on it covering my face, is not a bad existence after all.

But then I suddenly realize that like a warning on a carton of medication “there may be side effects.”

For example, hallucination.

That’s bad. You mean to say I’m not really watching my quiet, slow and unheralded going away? That’s unfair.  I’ve been preparing for it for a long time.

Twenty years ago a friend of mine in Chembur had made excellent preparations for his own demise.  He had tailored a nice dark suit, decided on the type of coffin and the undertaker, the flower arrangements, the choir and put everything down neatly on a sheet of paper which he kept in his cupboard accessible to the family.

Charitably, he had sent a large donation to the Seminary on condition that at least 100 seminarians would attend the funeral.  And he had had a grave freshly dug in our cemetery which he visited every day to ensure it had not been encroached upon and illegally occupied.

Always a perfectionist, my friend visits the cemetery and climbs down into the grave he has reserved for himself to check the appropriateness of its size.

The story goes that one evening a lonely widow was visiting the cemetery to lay some flowers on her late husband’s grave. Suddenly, she saw a man emerging from an open grave. With a shriek, that still echoes throughout that surburb, she turned and she ran. She is still running, I am told, since nobody has been able to trace her ever since.

On the other hand my friend is still in good health and, poor guy, had to revise the list in his cupboard several times due to the untimely deaths of people whom he had assigned some funeral chores.

I am not making such elaborate preparations.  I just want to watch myself going quietly, as I’m doing at the moment.

However, I must confess that in a moment of misplaced vanity and curiosity, I allowed a vague announcement of my death to be inserted in the Times of India.  Just name, time and place of burial.

 At the appropriate time, wearing a large hat that hid my face, I stood at the far end of the cemetery to check on the attendance. I wept. I was the only one weeping out of a crowd of exactly three people. One a money lender, the other a woman I had jilted and had come to make sure I was really dead and gone, and the third a policeman who was wondering at the absence of a priest, undertaker and a dead body.

Hallucination be damned. The reality is that I am “going”. Take body weight for instance..

I am losing weight. Slowly but surely. People envy me. Specially people struggling desperately to lose weight. They don’t know my problems. I am forced to take my trousers and shorts to a Bandra “alteration genius” called Bob.

When the frequency of the alterations and the costs started to bother me I bought a pair of stylish suspenders. When the suspenders started to slip off my frail shoulders I finally resorted to the common Goan “badkar” solution. I used an old tie. Easy to knot and un-knot.

The other signs of my being ready to go away are equally powerful.

 I wait till the old girl picks up the phone. I am reluctant to respond to the ringing of the doorbell. I haven’t sent any Christmas cards this year and did not go to Goa for the great big, fat family get-together at Christmas and the New Year.

I have always had a problem listening. Now I have a problem hearing. I have accepted invitations to parties on the rare occasions that I pick up the phone and, much to the old girl’s embarrassment, have landed on the wrong day or the wrong place.

I used to really enjoy socializing. Right now I leave a party early after quickly downing a couple of glasses of wine and a disgusting display of  snack-gorging.

As the great singer Harry Belafonte said in one of his immortal songs, “it is clear as

mud” that time is running out for me.

And the final sign.

When I no longer cry bitterly watching scenes of genocide whether in Gujarat or in Palestine or Orissa; when I do not have fits of anger seeing mandate-less self appointed regional leaders take over and ransack my city and even experience indifference when not one goon is convicted; when I feel that walking in morchas and lighting candle for the victims of terrorism is an exercise in futility and when my blood pressure remains stable at the corporate anointment of a modern day Nazi as our future Prime Minister  I think its time for me to go.

See you at the graveside. Oops, sorry, YOU see me at the graveside if you are not too busy watching “Slumdog Millionaire”

And even if you are, thank you and all the hundreds of friends and loved ones, thank you for the time you gave me all these years. More priceless than your presence now.

There is too much happening in “amchem” Goa. And the happenings are of such exciting proportions that it will attract thousands of Indians and foreigners whose boredom levels have touched bottom, pun intended, like the Dow Jones and the Sensex.

Courts and Police stations have specially cleared enormous spaces for tourist attendance.

One such court is hearing a case against a well built, good looking guy
who has been found wandering in the city and Goa’s northern beaches with out wearing his trousers. Not even a “khashti”, mind you, said the prosecuting officer.

“Are you married?” the judge asks the accused

“Yes your honour” says the accused. “Five times. One recently”

“And do you have any children?”

“Yes your honour” says the accused “Fifteen of them. Some black, some white and two khaki. And one is on the way”

The Honorable Judge thinks for a minute, scratches his moth eaten wig, bangs his gavel on the table and says quietly “Case dismissed. The accused obviously has no time to put on his pants”

From what we read in the newspapers and watch on television there appear to be a whole lot of men who have no time to put on their pants in Goa.

Hence the fear of a dip in tourism is unfounded. If fact after the high attendance at the Police Stations and courts, where touts are charging entrance fees, tourists mix with locals at “tavernas” and bars to get the real story.

Says the father of one such pant-less progeny. “It is all a political conspiracy. My enemies have formed small political parties and are using all the pants they can get as the Party flags. Our sons have no pants to wear. One Party has even made a pact with the BSP and adopted a slogan that says “Caste-less and khashti-less Party”

Tourists are also flocking to the Tourism Department’s “All Goa Treasure Hunt” to find a very precious and precocious Goan youngster who has disappeared when he was badly wanted. “Baba come home, no?”

This is bigger than the “Bigg Boss” or even “Big Brother” and the prize for finding the missing gem is any one’s guess. Millions, I am told, considering that the lolly is coming from the tax payer’s pockets.

Switch to the village of Moira. Tourist buses packed to capacity are wending their way to the colorful and once quiet village of Moira, famous for its special bananas, now a show case for a Banana Republic.

The hand out says that Goa’s famous “cock fight” or less vulgarly “rooster fight” is being staged at the Gram Sabha (Village Council) office of Moira.

The place is crowded with goons preventing genuine members of the Sabha from entering the meeting place. Venita Coelho who calls herself an accidental activist and who wrote a moving and scathing article in the local newspaper is not allowed to speak. She is threatened and intimidated.

I quote her own words.

“I was threatened with ‘We’ll see how you step out of your house. We’ll see how you live in this village.’ I was surrounded by a ring of
shouting gesticulating men threatening me with the worst.

And what did the police do? They swung resplendently into action — by grabbing me, pulling me forcibly out of my chair and dragging
me to the police jeep. I was driven straight to the police station and held for three hours. The police repeatedly assured me I am not arrested — but I cannot leave till the PI (police inspector) comes”.

As you can imagine the tourists are asking for more. The famous bull fights called “dhirio”, for example.

Goa obliges. They are taken on a journey to every Gram Sabha where there is a total suspension of the rule of law. Blood flows like feni. The tourists are lapping it all up. The blood more than the feni.

Obviously it is better to run a Moira Banana Republic that attracts tourists than a constitutionally functioning democracy committed to the rule of law that attracts no one.

The next attraction is a re-hash of our famous Carnival with floats moving down the Mandovi River.

One float is made up to look like a Court room or may be like a hospital Ward. From a distance the tourists can’t tell the difference. Standing defiant, you see the courageous advocate Aires Rodrigues whose fingers have been chopped by hired assassins. Next to him is Prajal who was in the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong day.

Serve the advocate right say the Middle Eastern tourists. How dare he represent a foreign mother whose daughter was allegedly sex-abused by Goan sons of the soil? Back home his whole hand would have been officially cut off in public.

Other floats are made to look like garbage dumps disguised as Gram Sabha offices. You see a montage of the faces of a generation of Goan born-again angry citizen activists bruised, battered, neglected, humiliated and betrayed by their own people. Betrayed by friends, neighbours, relatives, people who baptized them and who will one day bury them.

There is Senior Citizen Sebastian Rodrigues who was beaten up several times for opposing the Mining lobby. Not to mention Cheryl, her 84 year old mother and her 9 year old daughter who spent a night in jail for the same reason

The float they are sitting on is colourful and majestic. A background of sayings from various scriptures blended into each other.

One of them says “If Mohamed does not come to the mountain the mountain will come to down to Mohamed” Another jokingly from the Bible reads “ And the mountains will be laid low and the valleys will be filled with buildings made of iron ore, to line the pockets of the “chor”

The tourists are enjoying every minute of this show. But they will soon be gone and Goa will be left to us Goans.

Venita Coelho asks a frightening question. “Are you responsible for what happened to me?” And the frightening answer can only be “Yes we are”