(28 Sept ’08)
All those big houses in
Dona Paula, and Brittona, and Calangute (a bit passé now, that place, what with
the South and the Interiors getting popular), were built for servants to live
in. An entire generation of caretakers and their many children abide in them,
making way for the childless or single-child owners during the vacations,
perhaps for a few days otherwise. Annually or quarterly, seldom more often than
that. Rest of the time, maids’/drivers’ brats rattle all over the property and
their parents get paid for the trouble. As for those who can’t afford servants
living on the premises, I always wonder why such expensive properties were
invested in. I know friends who have wonderful houses built in exclusive
neighbourhoods, who spend their Diwalis/Christmases dusting, mopping, wiping,
tidying, paying bills, taxes, arguing about broken walls, cracked windows, the
piling garbage. The well-meaning well-to-do owners meant to have their
offspring live in those mansions. What happens in reality is no different from
what has happened to many of the ancestral homes in Goa. Crumbling ruins. The
children…now longer in double numbers, go off to study, for work, and settle in
places from where they may or may not visit the land of their ancestors or
chosen by their parents. If at all they do, it’s post-retirement. The houses
eventually perish…well, unless occupied by servants/illegal ‘tenants’.
Our mutton-wala in
Jodhpur was a Goan catholic. He had, he told me, a lovely ancestral home
someplace in south Goa. His father had forced him to visit it a couple of times
during the summer vacations when he was in school, but he didn’t/doesn’t do the
same to his children. For all practical purposes, he was a Rajasthani…by birth,
education and so said his domicile certificate. As many like me are
Mumbaikars. His children, there’s no way
they’ll be Goan, tho’ they’ll call themselves so. My cousins, spread all over
the world, speak a bit of Konkani, yet none of their children can recognize the
language and, two decades hence, their children’s children won’t have heard of
it. Unless one of the brood takes over my maternal ancestral home, that, too
will go one day. Twenty years hence.
Whatever’s true about
Goa is true about many small towns of India. My generation has bought land to
‘settle’ in, in Alibag/ Kalshet /Dahisar /Karjat, near Mumbai, and built
wonderful bungalows on it, and then, in a couple of years, the place gets
dilapidated and sold off. Perhaps at a profit, but the idea it was built for,
to live in, doesn’t get realized. Twenty years down the line, we can see what
will happen.
Literacy has ensured
that Goans don’t marry, or don’t marry young, don’t have children young, don’t
have many children (as compared to some other states), and earn well. I wonder
what’ll happen when these pampered babies grow: what’ll they do with all that
property. Spending is an art. What we’re cultivating right now is only
investing skills. The one family that’s made headlines in recent times because
of money well-spent is the Bindra clan that helped India bring home its first
Olympic gold.
Is there anyone one in
this state who would consider a school for ‘leaders of the future’ where
children with high IQs, exceptional talents and gifted minds, blessed with good
health, can be groomed? We need well trained, thinking people at the helm, not
half-witted, quarter-baked, ill-educated minds. Foresight is important.
We need men and women
who want industry, technology, but without devouring forests. We need people
who love computers and cattle, for we can’t do without either. We need
data-entry operators and song-writers alike. We have the advantage of
education, a head start in healthcare, we’re not a poor, developing state. We
need those who can think about harvesting water, harvesting electricity, and,
importantly, we need those who can execute ideas. Goa seems to have a surplus
of thinkers and dreamers. The doers have flown, let’s woo them back. It’d be
unfair to say all Goans are non-doers, but they are seriously out-numbered,
that’s for sure, presently. Twenty years down the line, will things be
different? Not sure if I’ll be around to notice.
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