‘ESCAPING’ TO GOA

The urban Indians, especially those privileged by caste and class, are at it again. The Condé Nast Traveller India last month carried a two-part article by Revati Upadhya on “How to move to Goa”. While Upadhya’s article is ostensibly about how urban Indians, tired of the rat-race and the hamster-wheel of metropolitan India, can leave it all for the quiet and peaceful life in Goa, what is unmistakable is the trope of ‘escape’ in her article. She says, “Like us, a range of professionals from across India are escaping [emphasis mine] big city shackles only to discover that setting a life in Goa isn’t tough and finding livelihood isn’t much of a bother”.

Not so long ago, Vishvesh Kandolkar, a professor at the Goa College of Architecture, made an astute comment on the changing trends of the real estate market in Goa. He observed that “one should be aware that the large, elite, property sharks from the Indian metros, ably aided by the local real estate industry, are taking bigger bites of [Goa], and that too as a second, or a third, helping, in their insatiable lust for property ownership and leisure”. Obviously, large chunks of Goan land gobbled up by real estate sharks is a real crisis. However, it is not always a simple and clear-cut case. Also part of the problem is the manner in which Goa is viewed in metropolitan India. Thus, the key to the problem lies in identifying that the desire of elite Indians for a piece of Goan land, and lifestyle for their consumption, is an exercise of their privilege, as well as demonstrating how Goa is constructed as a veritable touristic paradise.

Upadhya must be talking of a different Goa from the one inhabited by most local Goans, for if finding livelihood in Goa is not much of a problem, then why are so many Goans migrating out? In the face of this confusion, one might ask why Goa is the most favored destination for privileged urban Indians like Upadhya. Part of the answer lies in the manner in which Goa was created and projected as a site of tourism and pleasure. A deeper understanding of the issue is provided in Paul Routledge’s essay ‘Consuming Goa: Tourist Site as Dispensable Space’ (2000). In this essay Routledge argues that as a site of tourism and pleasure Goa was created “to serve as one of world’s pleasure peripheries, a cultural space for the leisure consumption of tourists divorced from the needs and concerns of everyday life”. The trope of ‘escape’ or ‘going away’ was also important for Routledge as he quite rightly argued that tourists ‘went away’ from their own lives, their cultural and economic milieu to a “timeless, workless paradise” (p. 2652).

To be fair to Upadhya, the main thrust of her article is also about finding suitable working options from Goa, despite hiccups like bad internet connectivity. But the idea that she is ‘escaping’ from a metropolitan city into peace and serenity – to a “timeless, workless paradise” – is very much present. In her own words, “Much as I love my trips back home to Bengaluru [Bangalore], it is landing back in Goa that makes me feel at peace again. As I exit the airport and drive down the tree-lined highway back to Dona Paula, I feel my breathing slow down again. Yes, I’ve come back to slower [i]nternet speeds, nonexistent public transport and close to no home-delivery, but I’ve come home”.  

By Angela Ferrao

The argument that needs to be made here is that older ideas of Goa being a pleasure-periphery are still in circulation and combine with the contemporary privileges of urban Indians. Note, for example, Udpadhya’s unconscious echoing of the hippy construction of Goa as a location of peace. If at all Upadhya and others find Goa as an amenable destination, it is because Goa is a pleasure-periphery for India and not in spite of it. What such ‘moving-to-Goa’ views hide is the fact that for most of urban Indians a move to Goa is a way up in one’s career, a move that signals that one has arrived in life – professionally and personally.

Secondly, as many commentators like Richa Narvekar, Vishvesh Kandolkar, Jason Keith Feranandes, and this writer have noted in the not so distant past, it is precisely such a desire of Indian and global elites for a piece of Goan lifestyle which is creating conditions that are making Goan real estate unaffordable for the average Goan. Let alone the fact that land as a resource is terribly scarce in Goa.

Lest this be solely seen as an argument for Goa for Goans, a response that is often used to shut down valid questions about the exercise of elite privileges, let me hasten to add that my intention is to suggest caution in the way we engage with Goa and Goans. My intention is to highlight how privilege works in multiple ways in compounding Goa’s problems. Like Vishvesh Kandolkar, I too would like to reiterate that the problem lies with the elite, both local and external, who use Goa for their leisure-consumption, even though they might tell you how difficult their life is, whether in their respective metros, or in Goa. The cost of such leisure-consumption has to be borne by the mass of Goans for whom living in Goa is becoming increasingly difficult. Moreover to sustain the leisure lifestyle of the elites there comes along many laboring-class ‘migrants’ competing with the poorer Goans to earn their livelihood. Thus, local Goans are hit with an economic double whammy, one from the ‘elite migrants’ and subsequently by their supporting laboring-class ‘migrants’. Idealizing Goa but for its bad internet and transportation is to do disservice to Goa and the migrant labour-class who deserve better.

Idealizing Goa will not help, talking about power and privilege operating in Goa will.

Many thanks to Angela Ferrao for permitting me to use her illustration.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 14 October, 2015)

THE SHAME OF SPEAKING KONKANI – III

Pride and shame, it appears, are two sides of the same coin. Invariably, pride seems to be a logical solution when an individual recognizes that s/he is being shamed by political institutions and establishments. In the past few weeks we have had occasions to discuss the operation of shame and humiliation within Konkani language politics. The discussion initially focused on a song by Alfred Rose and made some observations about the type of politics in which the man and his work were entrenched.

Since Alfred Rose did not invent the type of politics that he often propagated, the question is: who did? I believe that issues related to the shaming and humiliation within Konkani language politics will become clearer once we scrutinize the life and writings of Vaman Raghunath Varde Valaulikar. If there was one individual on whose shoulders Konkani activists, until fairly recently, placed the burden of single-handedly rescuing the Konkani language from untold miseries, it has to be Valaulikar. No person, we have been made to believe, worked as hard as Valaulikar for the cause of Konkani language and thus the Goan identity. The attempts to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Valaulikar as ‘Konkani asmitai year’ in 2002, exemplify this.

                                                                                                              

Valaulikar’s written output was (or is) considered to be seminal in Konkani literature. This he did, we are told, by not only producing Konkani literature of high standard but also by stepping up to the challenge posed by Marathi-supporters; in fact demolishing their every argument. What is important for our purpose is to focus on the manner in which Valaulikar tackled the issue of shame felt by the Catholic and Hindu communities in colonial Bombay, thanks to the accusation of Marathi-supporters that Konkani was a form of ‘impure Marathi’.

In his text, Konknni Bhaxechem Zoit or The Triumph of Konkani, Vaulikar tells us that Konkani was derogatorily referred to as ‘impure Marathi’ by Marathi-speakers and -supporters (p.47). ‘Impure’ obviously because, unlike Marathi at that time, Konkani language had not yet incorporated Sanskrit inflections, prior to Valaulikar’s project. While Valaulikar may have felt shamed and humiliated because of his ‘impure Marathi’, it becomes quite a different story when one considers that persons using the Roman-scripted Konkani had to bear a greater brunt of such shaming – with repeated call for standardized orthography – because the language that they used was not a Sanskrit-inflected one, like the ‘proper’ Marathi. Not surprisingly, Valaulikar’s response did not reveal the underlying aspiration of his caste politics in which the brahmin groups like his were trying to gain power and privilege in colonial Bombay. On the contrary he suggested that Konkani-speakers needed to work for the development of the language to give it world recognition (see Konkani Bhaxechem Zoit, Ed. K. S. Nayak, Bombay, 1930). In other words, one had to take-on to the challenge of Marathi-supporters by feeling pride in a Sanskritized Konkani by speaking and writing in the Antruzi variant, rather than ask why Konkani was referred to as ‘impure Marathi’. Or indeed ask why Hindus and Catholics in Bombay felt ashamed of their own types of Konkanis.

That he wrote in and championed the cause of the Nagri lipi and the Antruzi boli was not a problem for Valaulikar. Neither was it a problem for him that the Konkani in which he wrote his books was a new fabrication. As one of Valaulikar’s interlocutors Balkrishna Waman Sawardekar quite rightly and cheekily noted, “Shanai Goebab has, in his books, clothed Konkani in sacred robes and as such it has assumed a very beautiful and chaste form. His is a completely Konkani diction (sic) no doubt but this is what has made it very unintelligible” (p. 19). Sawardekar further asserted that this has resulted in Valaulikar producing a “fossilized Konkani” (p. 22) (see The Language of Goa, Panaji, 1971; originally published in the Portuguese in 1939).

Though Valaulikar’s project responded to the derogatory attitude of the Marathi-supporters and the Marathi language establishment in Bombay, it was a project of consolidating Saraswat caste identity against the backdrop of many other brahmin groups in colonial Bombay. The misguided ideas that Konkani is the natural mother-tongue of Goans and that it is in the blood of Goans emerged and consolidated with this project of Valaulikar.

While there is no doubt that persons like Valaulikar and likes may have faced a few instances of shame and humiliation of speaking Konkani, the non-upper caste and working class groups of Goans must have felt unimaginably more. With the rise of Nagri script (and by extension the Antruzi boli) as the sole official script of Konkani in Goa in recent times this shame and humiliation for persons who do not embody the ways and manners of being of the Nagri/Antruzi Konkani can only be said to have increased manifold. Thus, the project initiated by Valaulikar and carried forward by his ardent bhakts of creating and imposing a singular Konkani language of high literary merit has been a miserable failure for the bahujans and Catholics.

Valaulikar’s career and the history of the nagri-scripted Konkani suggests that shaming has been present in Konkani language politics for well over a century, if not more. In such a grim scenario it is quite logical that Goans – who cherish their respective forms of Konkanis – also make a demand for English. Though the possibility of him being sarcastic is eminently plausible, Valaulikar advised his antagonists – the Marathi-supporters – that rather than their obsession with Marathi, they should “at least select a language which will give them the maximum gains… [and they should] assiduously and diligently study the powerful English language” (p. 35) (see Triumph of Konkani: A Translation of Shenoy Goembab’s Konkani Bhasechem Zoit, Tran. Sebastian M. Borges, Margao, 2003). Sarcasm or not, access to the “powerful English” is no doubt a sensible strategy out of the sorry mess that is the linguistic politics of Goa.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 30 September, 2015)

THE SHAME OF SPEAKING KONKANI – II

The writing of a second installment to my article ‘The Shame of Speaking Konkani’ (published a fortnight ago), is partly for emphasizing the problem at hand and partly fortuitous.  I say fortuitous because, in response to my article, Damodar K Kamat Ghanekar wrote a letter to the editor (4 September, 2015) and had a rather interesting anecdote to narrate in the same. The manner in which the abovementioned anecdote is narrated further allows us to see how shame and humiliation operates within Konkani language politics.

Recounting an incident which happened some 40 years ago, Ghanekar mentions how he came across Alfred Rose and his wife conversing in English in Panjim. When Ghanekar inquired whether it was really Alfred Rose, he indicates that Alfred Rose became painfully uncomfortable so much so that one could “well imagine the contortions of embarrassment [emphasis mine] on his face [Alfred Rose] which I [Ghanekar] still remember”.

There is something deeply unsettling about recounting a person’s embarrassment in a public place with such gleeful abundance. In Ghanekar’s telling, Alfred Rose not only appears to be a deeply shamed person but also a hypocrite. However, there is nothing hypocritical in what Alfred Rose did. In fact, as I have pointed out time and again it is quite normal for persons to use two or more languages to negotiate through their daily life. So why did Alfred Rose feel so embarrassed by the encounter with Ghanekar?

Unfortunately, I do not have an exact answer to this. This is because as students of history well know, we are confronted with only one side of the story. And, as we are aware, it is often the victor who recounts the story. Further, rather than being embarrassed about speaking in Konkani, Alfred Rose was allegedly embarrassed for speaking in English. It is highly unlikely that Alfred Rose’s English skills were the source of his embarrassment; surely his English was as good as his Konkani!

Presumably, Ghanekar approached Alfred Rose in Konkani, for if it was in English than we would not have had any problem. My suggestion here is that Ghanekar was using an Antruzi variant of Konkani and this, I believe, is the key to the source of the embarrassment. The problem is that the Antruzi boli, located within an upper caste location and politics, is the source of much shaming and humiliation to anyone who fails to adequately reproduce the speech and ways of being of this dialect. The failure to live up to the Antruzi dialect does not simply cause embarrassment, but also causes much pain and anguish – resulting in the silence of many in Goa.

Such a situation has been noted by some other writers as well. For instance, an anecdote recounted by Jason Keith Fernandes in his doctoral thesis seems to be apt in understanding the embarrassment (or silence) that Alfred Rose experienced. Fernandes recounts, “In the course of our conversations [with a priest] around Konkani, this priest indicated a strong friendship he enjoyed with a Hindu gentleman. At one point however, the priest recounted that he was reproached by his friend: ‘Why is it that you never speak to me in Konkani’ the friend asked. To this question the priest responded that he felt ashamed, since his friend’s Konkani was so perfect, so pure, whereas his own was the ‘impure’ version that the Catholics speak”. At the risk of stretching the anecdote that Ghanekar provides ad absurdum, I would like to suggest that Alfred Rose was doubly trapped as the language politics that Alfred Rose subscribed to privileged only Konkani, and being called out for speaking in English by a person speaking Antruzi Konkani meant that there was no hope for redemption!

And what are we to make of the abundant glee with which Ghanekar recounts a 40-year-old anecdote of sarcastically indicating to Alfred Rose that he should do as he preaches? The clever way in which Ghanekar slipped a line from Alfred Rose’s song in the conversation – “Tika [Konkani] shellant heddun menn diunk zai” – is another way in which the shame of speaking Konkani is perpetuated. While Ghanekar’s encounter with Alfred Rose had resulted in “contortions of embarrassment” 40 years ago, the recounting of the same in the columns of a newspaper without any sensitivity or understanding has surely contorted many a Goan face with embarrassment today.

It is not surprising that in trying to prove the hypocrisy of Alfred Rose, Ghanekar reinforces a similar diktat that Alfred Rose does in his song Anv Konkani Zannam – to restore the pride in Konkani. Though Alfred Rose actively propagated some key tenets of the Nagri/Antruzi politics, he seems to have not escaped the shaming due to Konkani. After all, didn’t he say that we should feel proud about Konkani?

To reiterate, I strongly believe that Alfred Rose was not being hypocritical. On the contrary he was a product of his times as well as a victim of it. But to think that Alfred Rose was merely embarrassed for being ‘caught’ speaking in English is to not recognize the pain and suffering behind the “contortions of embarrassment”. By denying the real pain and suffering we perpetuate the shame and humiliation. As a linguist/lexicographer of Nagri Konkani, Ghanekar at least ought to have known this. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 16 September, 2015)