Home Staging of Goa

My last essay hit a nerve with a Scottish reader, who argued that after living in Goa for five years, he should be considered a Goan. This is despite the fact that he doesn’t socialize with Goans; he claimed that this is irrelevant. I responded that being viewed as a Goan is not a question of time spent in Goa but of engagement with the place. Engagement is a critical topic, as Goa is treated like a reward for those with money, who have fuelled the demand for investment property or who have chosen to abandon the rat race for a quiet life here. Add to this the numerous domestic and international tourists, who occupy different spaces that tend not to include Goans. As I have already argued (see above-cited essay), this is how hospitable Goa is—you can pretend there are no Goans here.

A travel blog called Inditales.com is an example of both the lack of engagement with Goa and the erasure of Goans that I observe whenever I’m here. The author of the blog, Anuradha Goyal, has written pieces on the North Goan villages of Aldona and Assagao that read less like the insights of a traveller and more like advertorials—that is, paid ads masquerading as opinion pieces (sticking with the theme of selling off Goa, here is an example from 2007). Goyal states on her blog that she has lived in Goa for more than three years, and yet she writes about Goa as if she has just visited for the first time, with no prior knowledge of it. The descriptions portray a surface-level interaction, with no probing to learn about these villages or the people who inhabit them. Even more striking are the photographs. The only people in the few images that contain human figures are far in the distance, faceless and nameless. And yet in this absence of signs of life are photographs of well-preserved churches and homes. So, while their existence might be overlooked, these villages evidently have inhabitants.

(House in Aldona; Source: realestateIndia.com)

This reminds me of a day last fall, when I was taking a walk around downtown Hamilton. As I made my way through the MacNab Street bus terminal, I passed by a large tour group whose professionally dressed participants were sporting name tags and holding clipboards. Not wanting to stare, I glanced briefly and made out the word “Toronto.” Interesting, I thought. I heard the tour guide inform them about the history of the buildings towering over them. Later on, I ran into this same group again on James Street North. Now more curious about what they were up to, I slowed my pace and detected a turn in the tour guide’s script. Instead of highlighting the history of the neighbourhood, the subject was the neighbourhood’s potential. It hit me: this was a group of developers looking to acquire property in this already gentrified neighbourhood. The gentrification of my hometown is a topic on which I’ve written before. This particular street was already reinvented as an artists’ hub, and now it is undergoing a transformation into a downtown-Torontoesque neighbourhood of restaurants and condominiums. The advertorials selling Hamilton to investors have been churning out of Toronto’s newspapers for years. A city that was once known for its affordable detached homes and green spaces is being increasingly concretized to allow developers to make money. As I eavesdropped on this tour guide’s sales pitch, I wondered if these people noticed or cared that the space they were coveting is already inhabited.

This brings me back to Inditales. The images of the houses in the blog posts remind me of real estate advertisements. Realtors in Canada advocate home staging to enhance the likelihood of selling one’s house. The basic rules of home staging are that the premises must be pristine and lacking in personal touches, to make it easier for potential buyers to envision themselves filling that space. Thus, instead of providing information to would-be vacationers, these posts on Inditales exhibit the home staging of Goa. The blog is guilty of subtly conveying the idea of Goa as a vacant plot through its envisioning of the state as a land of quaint, almost empty villages.

(Like Inditales, selling an empty Assagao on a real estate website)

Of course, the erasure of Goans from the Goan landscape is nothing new. I remarked once in a comment on a Facebook post (Sept. 7, 2016) about the habit of referring to houses of a particular style as Portuguese, as if they were never—and are still not—inhabited by Goans. It had occurred to me that this terminology reinforces the idea that when the Portuguese withdrew from Goa, it was deserted. No wonder, then, that acquiring one of Goa’s old “Portuguese” houses offers so much prestige. In fact, I was told once by a local that there is a saying: “You’re not a proper Delhiite until you own a house in Assagao.”

(Home in Assagao marketed as a Portuguese house; Property Management Group – Goa) 

In tandem with the promotion of the construction and sale of second homes in Goa, the tourism industry plays its part in catering to the desire to acquire a piece of Goa. Look at the following ad.

The third line, “At your very own Goa,” begs the following question: To whom does Goa belong? Not only does the ad invite tourists to visit Goa; it suggests an entitlement to claiming it for themselves. In Goa, where does tourism end and colonization begin? Furthermore, the ad promotes Goa on the basis of its Catholic identity, in stark contrast to the larger vision of India as a Hindu nation.

Vishvesh Kandolkar recently wrote a poignant opinion piece in The Goan (Feb. 9, 2017) on engagement with monuments. In it, Kandolkar argues that while the local Goan Catholics continue to use these monuments, to the average tourist, they appear to be relics from a bygone era. This argument serves as a microcosm for the greater issue of engagement with Goa. The colonial history of Goa is primarily acknowledged for its sales appeal through promoting stays in “Portuguese houses” and visits to old Catholic churches, with an emphasis on their Iberian character. However, any further mention of the imprint of Portuguese colonialism is discouraged. After all, as the Goa Tourism Development Corporation ad tells us, all of this belongs to the Indian consumer. Although tourism and consumption go hand in hand, this promotion of possessing the territory in question is something I haven’t encountered anywhere else.

(Source: lonelyplanet.in, Photographer: Jeremiah Christanand Rao)

The question of how we consume Goa is one that I have been pondering for a while now. I use the pronoun “we” because I recognize that I am not exempt from this. I am but a visitor to this beautiful land, and though my relationship with Goa is a long one, and I have been writing on local issues for some time, it occurred to me that I have been guilty occasionally of romanticizing Goa and of wishing for what I remember from “the good ol’ days” to be preserved for my own benefit. However, over years of personal and intellectual growth, I have come to understand that there is no such thing as “the good ol’ days”; one person’s comfort and pleasure always come at the expense of someone else’s. For that reason, nostalgia is harmful. It can blind you to the problems that others face. And willful blindness to others’ problems and to the capitalist system that creates them is as bad as actively promoting the consumption of Goa for short-term gain or pleasure. Those who recognize the erasure of their identity should seek ways to forge solidarity and assert their presence by demanding that we—the insiders and outsiders—all engage with Goa.