I visited
Goa this December, five years since I’d last been there. Lot of development,
lots of new things, improvements in infrastructure but one thing had remained
the same; its charm.
How many
ever times I visit Goa, it never is boring and even though I’ve visited a lot
of places in numerous vacations, no place has ever given the feeling of being
at peace like Goa has. Goa today is a tourist hub like none other and one can
see people not only from the various states of India, but also from around the
world flocking to this former Portuguese colony to marvel at the amalgamation
of the West and the East. And then there are Gujaratis, they just go to Goa to
drink… with alcohol being prohibited in the land of Gandhi’s birthplace and
all.
So, with this
entire hullabaloo *hic* and crowd *hic* and everything else *hic*, how can Goa
afford me with the peace and quiet that I need?
I go to the
villages.
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| Divar island. |
Every time
I go to see my relatives spread out throughout the state and some of them live
in villages but this time it was different. I went to an isolated little island
called ‘Divar’. I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of this place. It
is a small island with a population of around 300 families, 3 churches, 0
hospitals, 0 bridges and 0 tourism… Beautiful!
Zero
Hospitals! Unbelievable? Believe it. They just have a small healthcare centre
on the island and they have to make do in that. With three churches on the
other hand, I guess they just pray that nobody falls seriously ill at night.
Well, they can be taken to the mainland if that happens right? Wrong! If you’ll
kindly refer above, you’ll notice they have zero bridges connecting them to
mainland Goa. The ferries that operate on the river Mandovi and the open sea do
so only till 11:00 pm. After that, they’re on their own and if you’re stuck
there as a tourist, too bad because there aren’t any hotels as far as I was
informed.
Considering
that the name of these people’s island is ‘Divar’ which means ‘wall’ in Hindi,
I guess they really are on the other side on the (Berlin) Wall.
But it’s
not like the government of Goa hasn’t done its part for this island. Locals
told me that the state government did propose a bridge but the people voted
against it in a referendum that the government agreed to honour. One would
wonder why these people would be against development of their own area but for
the people, the equation is pretty simple.
Bridges =
Hotels
Hotels =
Tourism
Tourism =
Nuisance
Hence, No
Bridges.
The people
see how the rest of Goa is intoxicated with tourism and in fact a lot of people
on the island are also employed by the tourism industry but they want their
island to remain pristine, quiet and peaceful in order to continue living there
as they have for centuries now. And the government seems to understand that.
So, Divar
was, is and hopefully will remain the El Dorado with more green than gold in
its streets.
Oh, and by the way, they have this huge crib making competition every year for Christmas. To how you the scale of the crib, here it is with a human for comparison.
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| A Crib on Divar island. |
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