Some stray thoughts after a visit to Goa
A 20-days stay in Goa gave me enough ammunition to tear apart the immaculate veneer of The Great Kerala Myth, assiduously fed into the general psyche of this tiny state, as a progressive place with European standards. My journalist friend Shanuj who's leading a quiet life of solitude and anonymity in Taliegao is at his eloquent best when he tells why he decided to settle down in Goa. Though visits by gatecrashers like me disturb the comfort cocoon of his cozy life, he tells me he loves such breaks.
Geographically Goa is an almost ditto of Kerala with paddy fields, jackfruit trees and mango trees dotting the tiny state. Small, beautiful tile-roofed houses still dot the interiors of Goa, in perfect harmony with the tropical weather conditions. This is in sharp contrast to Kerala, endowed with the same geography and weather, where unfortunately it is a shame to own a tiled-roof house today. The money flow from the middle east countries, while contributing in great measure in Kerala's development, has proved to be a bane in Kerala, making it a place of concrete junkyard. Nowhere else in the world perhaps one finds houses built in utter disregard for the climate and geographic conditions.
Laid-back, easy and almost non-interfering, traits attributable in some extent to years of Portuguese rule, give Goa an aura of distinctiveness. The best part in Goa is that everyone is at peace and ease with himself or herself. I still recall vividly how a ring in my mobile phone helped start a conversation with an old lady who was sitting next to me in a bus from Taleigao to Panaji city. Listening to the western classical number ringtone, she asked me instantly: "Oh you love music.!?" When I said yes, she told me about a musical programme to be held at a Church that evening. She made it a point that I shouldn't miss because the show was free. She was so friendly. I thought it for a while later; in Kerala, women folks hardly sit next to you in bus, let alone strikes a conversation!
Small van-like buses move as if they are part of a caravan accompanying a VIP's dead body! Sometimes, you'll find them frustratingly slow; always ready to apply brakes the moment they spot men and women standing sideways. A far cry from the maddening murderous machines in Kerala where, almost every other day human beings are mowed down under their heavy wheels. In fact, there's an air of compassion about the way the bus staff treat the prisoners of education unlike in Kerala where they are pushed back and forth by unruly private bus conductors.
There aren't separate seats for women unlike in Kerala whose society thinks its pseudo morality will shred into pieces if two sexes sit together. It's an apartheid no one talks about. So in Kerala you’ll find the weird situation where even when seats are vacant meant for the ‘other’ the opposite sex wouldn’t have the temerity to sit. Here's one lab experiment for Kerala: Take the pervert in your neighborhood and get him sit along with a woman passenger for a few days, and will he still suffer from an orgasm?
This separation creates an `other’ feeling in both the sexes. So men tend to look at every female as a sexual object, a Temptress Eve, a potent seduction machine in cahoots with Satan. This separation permeates to almost all spheres of Kerala society and explains the lack of healthy man-woman relationships in a state where infants to 70-year olds are raped.
This gender-egalitarian seat arrangement of Goa reminded me of a tragic incident that happened a few years back in Kozhikode. There was this working couple of whom the husband was blind. Every day, the wife would take the blind husband to the office. She’d take him to the bus stand, help him get into the bus so that he reached the office safely.
One morning, after helping him get into the bus through a private bus’s back door, she hurriedly rushed to the front door meant for women passengers. No longer could she touch her feet into the bus footboard, the door checker gave the signal to the driver to proceed and she was crushed under the wheels. After reading about this tragic incident in the newspaper, I was numb for a moment, trying to imagine the state of that desolate, heart-broken man. His wife was his eyes. Literally. And he lost them all because some weird and illogical system in place.
The tragedy wouldn’t have occurred if she had got into the bus through the `men-only’ back door along with her hubby. But sadly, the Kerala society has so bloody made up its mind that a woman IS NOT SUPPOSED to get into a private bus through the back door. It's a cardinal sin. A sacrilegious act.
Now, will someone please stand up and say: It is the constipated, sick and hypocritical Kerala society which is responsible for the death of this lady, orphaning a hapless man. How many tragic deaths like this have to happen for these simple thoughts of common sense to sink into Kerala's consciousness?
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
