al perceptions of the dharma bum
generation that made its way from the West, in a slow
and tortuous ganja-laden, booze-sodden crawl, through
the tolerant places of the 'Third World'. The
difference was, and is, that the dharma bums smoked and
drank and blissfully fornicated under the moonlight
that bathed the silvery beaches of 'aparanta' and
dreamt of equality and human emancipation (to be fair
to many of them).

The news editors and feature editors and
editors-in-chief and numberless marketing imbeciles who
chose to imagine Goa, within the narrow and noisome
worlds that defined their own existences in the
megapolis of their choosing, had on the other hand no
such overarching humaneness, despite generous
applications of all that is narcotic and alcoholic.
'Aparanta', I found, may welcome all comers, but it
also encourages those processes that sift out the unbelievers.

How, I asked myself, is one to distinguish? What is the
Goan-ness that one is seeking to understand and, if
possible, to give substance to in a 1,200-word report
(under the illiterate regimes that run newsrooms these
days, that is a torrent of words)? Can one encapsulate
all that seeks to be distilled by this multitude of
experiences, of personal encounters, by listening to
the narratives of the histories of Goa? And when one
does become an ideological sympathiser of the dharma
that is 'aparanta', how can one convey it to the
hard-eyed stewards who rule over the column centimetres
in Bombay or Delhi?

It was a question that had no simple answer. My own
method was to attempt to blend in with the rhythms of
the village in which I lived, Betim, which lies across
the river Mandovi, opposite Panaji. The river is like a
slow-moving artery that expresses Goa -- the rusting,
elderly ferries of the River Navigation Department chug
across the gap with a ponderous regularity, and in
doing so determine the schedules of legions of Goans
who live within a short bus ride of the water --
'aparanta' tends not to respect time-pieces worn on
one's wrist.

In this I was marginally successful. Mahadeo was one of
my neighbours -- a generously-bellied Betim elder who
with surprising agility climbed into his canoe and laid
his meagre nets along the river shallows. Mahadeo was
also adept at catching river crabs, and when one
morning I found a pair -- neatly trussed and no more
than two hours old -- squirming outside my front door I
realised with a thrill that I wa