A wake up call to all to live in Goa, visit Goa and love anything Goan!!
by Godfrey Pereira (ex SUNDAY Magazine (Kolkata) and INDIA TODAY journalist) Godfrey Pereira doesn’t pull his punches …
Recently I journeyed back to Goa. In the twenty five years that I had been gone, there had been changes for the worse. I could see that. Calangute, poster beach for tourism had tacky bhel puri stalls and loud Bollywood music; and dirt — and dog feces, similar to the old Chowpatty Beach in Bombay before the state government cleared the lepers colony.
Baga beach was filled with cheap Russians swilling Kingfisher Beer. And, while Russian Grannies sunbathed topless, oil massage beggars pandered to their drooping breasts. Anjuna was loaded with Buddhist trinkets and thrash. And what have you, the bloody Goans been doing while all these changes have been going on?
The Russians have been openly running drugs in Goa? Army deserters from Israel have put up signs in Goa clubs stating, ‘No Indians Allowed?’ What have you paowallahs been doing?
Eating last night’s curry for breakfast? Complaining? Sushegad?
Beach after beach is being decimated and not a peep from The Goans. You bleddy Goan men! What has happened to the cashew nuts between your legs? And the Goan women don’t seem to care. Their sons are in The Gulf or Canada, sending money back home. Let somebody else revolt. It is none of your business. Bleddy, pass pao men. Make sign of the cross. Do the mando. Bleddy, never mind men, if husband is nutless! It is God’s will!
In Mumbai thousands of people from the ten villages of the Gorai-Uttan belt have been fighting Essel World. They are protesting against the proposed Special Entertainment Zone (SEZ) spread over 14,183 acres in the area. They know they stand to lose the core of their culture if this happens and so they are fighting this encroachment disguised as tourism.
At least The East Indians there are trying. What have you Goans been doing as mining companies rape your hills and plunder your fresh water resources? What? Have another Cashew Feni? Talk about how Aunty Mary’s daughter is now going out with that bleddy German bugger? Or, are you’ll fighting your sisters, for property that you don’t think they deserve?
What has happened to you bloody Goans? For the sake of the good lord, please wake up; the politicians are stealing your nuts from under you. The mining companies are copulating with
the politicians. Don’t you hear their grunts? They penetrate so deep, scouring for ore that they have destroyed many a water table. And when the ore has been gouged out, they leave
the land, raped and bleeding red. Goa with her thighs spread, an ugly red gash that was once green!
Have you not seen this happening? If you have not, then perhaps you should convert to East Indianism. Ha! Sushegad. What say you stupid? Soon there will be not enough water to
nourish the cashew trees on farms across Goa. Now you know what I mean about stealing your nuts, you stupid Goans. One Lone Snap Shot. Quepem town in south Goa, the villages of Maina and Kawrem,
Cheryl D’Souza, her nine-year old daughter Aki, her mother Dora, aged eighty-four, are fighting the miners who have destroyed their dignity and who now want to destroy Paikeachi Zor {Paik’s Spring} a fountain head for the villagers. They want to buy her land, Sanfranscisco Estate and turn it into a graveyard.
Cheryl D’Souza knows the deathly silence of graveyards well, her husband’s ashes are scattered over her farm. When the miners wanted to rape her little daughter and take away her very existence, Cheryl turned She Wolf, feral and snarling, to thwart the beasts who are literally panting at her doorstep.
She wants to keep them away. They want to rape and then eat her daughter alive. She has pleaded, begged of the Goans to help her fight this juggernaut that is pounding Goa but the
Goans have stayed silent. Let her fight, let her go to jail, let her young daughter and old mother be incarnated, raped; we will continue to dip our paos in last night’s stale curry, looking into our cracked plates so that we do not have to see or know. What a shame! What a bleddy shame, you paowallahs!
The miners made her a monetary offer that they thought she could not refuse. She did. They threatened her. She fought back. They humiliated her. She snarled in protest. They thought they had won the battle.
One bright morning she declared war and tried to stop the ore trucks that were carting away the life blood of her Goa. They arrested her and her daughter and her old mother. And the Goans stayed silent watching her being gang raped by the politicians and the miners. What kind of people have you bloody Goans become?
When a man does not care about his very nuts being endangered there must be something fundamentally wrong with that man. And the Goan women, so many of who depend on the land for
their existence watch the men and do nothing. They watch. It’s not their problem. Pass Pao Men. Say Rosary! Go Church!
At least the East Indians in Gorai have the spunk to protest. You stupid sushegad Goans are watching your state being turned around on its face and brutally buggered. Three women fighting a beast. You watch from afar. Is this entertainment?
My old friend Bal Thackeray once told me, “Sometimes it is better to throw a few stones.” It is a pity that the Tiger cannot fight with the She Wolf; maybe; just maybe, it would turn the mining beast around.
And all you despicable Goans, who will not fight to save your nuts, go ahead have another feni. Or maybe, maybe, you will start to throw a few stones. Never mind what the Bible says. You can go to church in the morning, go to confession, say three Hail Mary’s, but please do something, before your Goa is Gone. I say to you gutless Goans. The East Indians have bigger nuts and their sorpotel is better. Bleddy, What Say You Men? If you still have nuts, go on, throw the first bleddy stone!
I was browsing about the superhighway, in search for some tips to increase my rentals for my 
While in the midst of things, its often easy to forget what role a good advertising campaign plays in your business, and sure it has helped me a lot and marketing & advertising expense should be directly proportional to your sales! In this case number of rooms sold in a months/years time. For e.g. If I had some fliers printed and distributed to at the least 50 local tours and travels, sure I did get atleast 5 – 10 calls back, these guys would then market or advertise on my behalf! Simultaneously there are a million ways to advertise online, some are free, but most cost almost nothing as compared to the costs that you have incurred in building a place for visitors, like your home stay.
In the morning, at least before noon, the trick starts. Stick the long pole in the ground, upright. The ground around the pole needs to be horizontal. Now, you can place one of the little sticks in the ground exactly where the shadow of the pole ends, like on the figure. Then tie the string to the base of the pole, and tie the little, sharp stick, to the other end, so that when the string is stretched it reaches exactly the little stick standing there in the soil. Then, scratch half a circle in the soil with your sharp little stick, and wait… Wait. Wait until the evening. During the day, the shadow will get shorter and shorter, until noon, when it gets longer again. At noon, when the shadow is at its shortest, you may want to mark the point. The shadow is now pointing north (if you are north of 23.5 ° north). It is however not very easy to see exactly when this is, but it is useful anyway. Finally, the shadow reaches your circle again, and when it does, place your other little stick at the spot where the shadow ends. If you haven’t got a string, you could use a pole that has the right length, or try to come up with some other improvised solution. Just make sure what you draw is a circle.
Now, the line from the first stick to the second is west-east, like on the figure. Actually, you may want to mark points regurlarly, because any two points that have exactly the same distance from the base of the pole will give the West-East line. If it is partly cloudy, this may be a good idea.
In the northern hemisphere, there is a star that is almost exactly in the north at all times, the Polaris. It is pretty easy to find, if you know the “Big Dipper”. (Everybody knows the Big Dipper (or the Plough)?) Take the two stars at the end of the “Big Dipper”, and make an imaginary line “upwards”, and extend it five times the distance between the two stars. There you have it – Polaris. That way is always north. The figure is courtesy of 
If you have an analog wrist watch, you can use the time to find north. Hold your watch up in front of you, and let the short hand, red on the figure, that indicates hours point at the sun. While holding it like this, cut the angle between the red arrow and 12 o’clock in two, (noonwards if the time is before 6am or after 6pm), that way is south. (The reason you need to cut it in two, is because the clock takes two rotations while the sun takes one around the earth, it is of course the other way around, but never mind.)
Want to make your own compass? Sure. You need a needle and a glass of water. A needle can in fact float on the water, or that is, on the surface tension forces if put carefully on the surface. Just put it carefully down on the surface of the water. This demands a lot of patience though. There are three tricks that makes it go easier. One: Put the needle on a piece of paper. If the paper floats too, there is no problem, and if the paper sinks, it’ll probably leave the needle. If you put some grease on the needle that isn’t water-based, it’ll go easier, or if you put it carefully down with a fork or something. Once it has got there, it stays there pretty good.
Trust me, you don’t want to be romanced by these guys.