In Fantasy Land

The six-legged dragon is spewing dark fire black as night, chilling your bones contrary to the heat you would expect to be seared with. As it flies across the hills of mist, light seems to fill the underdog and even his silhouette as he lifts his eyes towards the sky to see the dragon better and say a silent prayer. But is that simply a prayer or did he raise a wand in the air and say something more potent, one wonders as the dragon is shot down from the sky, hit by an invisible arrow. The Black Creature's hound's shrill cries envelop the air as he hits the ground along with the dead dragon. The dragon was vile but even viler was this hell's child for whom the beast was not just means of transport but something he had always used to spread terror, rooting fear deep into the minds of hapless humans.

Haven't we all read something like this at some point in our lives? Haven't we all lost ourselves in vivid imagery of this sort while watching some movie or the other? Haven't we all wondered? It may not have been...well this fantastic all the time. It could have simply been a story of boy meeting girl in a setup that you can only dream of and that of the events that follow, stuff that even nightmares are not made of...finally resulting in a climax that is so far fetched as to make you visibly cringe.  

Be what it may, fantasies often end up giving you that escape route you have always been looking for. The madness in this world notwithstanding, there is enough and more that goes on in our own minds for us to need some mechanism to forget everything. Driven into a different world, we laugh and cry with its inhabitants, barely managing to hold our sides at jokes that would otherwise have been outrageously bad, being free with that lump in the throat at events in their lives that seem equally preposterous. We forget our own worries somehow and even the most insurmountable of odds for us look like child's play for the characters that come alive in this fantasy world.

The characters are all etched so clearly, in black and in white with hardly any scope for the grey in between. There are silent characters and those who are hilariously loud...people too good and those who can't be any more of devil incarnates. Life goes on however, despite the extremes and you are swept along on the journey to fantasy land not wanting to come back...ever. Alice managed to lose herself, didn't she? And wasn't there a platform Nine and Three Quarters for Harry and his friends to escape to Hogwarts? Didn't the kids meet Aslan more than once on their journeys to Narnia? Didn't Peter Pan start living in Neverland?

And then you are back...back to the skulduggery that reality is. All the filth hits you as the unscrupulous ways of life take you away from the sweet and tangy fantasy, as you get mixed in the greys, not being able to decide the good and bad of it. How you wish things were as simple here, being able to call a spade a spade, being able to have no pain that can't be healed, no problem that can't be solved! 

As the mind wanders those lands today trying its best to break free of the monotony, I thank all those books and movies that have taken me to my own Narnia, my own Hogwarts, my own Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, my own Age of Legends where I am the Dragon Reborn, my own Gotham and Metropolis and Star City and Central City where I know all the superheroes on a first name basis.

GoA - Go Away?

Goa has always been one of those vacation destinations that endear themselves to you not just for what the place has to offer in terms of visual treats but also for the overall experience. Experience, which each one of us looks at as per our own idiosyncrasies, may be composed of myriad facets, some emotional and some circumstantial. However, of all these facets, the local ecosystem plays a big role - the kind of food you can find, the character that the destination's cafes and restaurants hold, the kind of hospitality its hotels offer, and most importantly, the vibe that you get from the locals.

In numerous visits to Goa that most of us have had in the past, I am reasonably certain that its score card has always had a big tick mark on this one...but not any more perhaps? Over the last two years, I have been to this place some 5-6 times and have never had to think twice about the Goa experience - something that has always been taken for granted when it comes to this place. The sea has been the same and the nature still at its beauteous best but there are some things that seem to be changing, though and certainly not for the better.

Over the last two occasions that I have been to Goa, there clearly seems to be a certain negativity in the air. It seems as if Goa is tired of the people that keep coming to its shores, month after month and day after day, season or off-season. With travel having become affordable and something that is part of the middle class budget now, there are all sorts who do travel. At the cost of sounding snobbish and somewhat elitist, there are norms that you need to respect when you travel and which are often not preserved by the amateur traveler.

It is no wonder therefore, to see the discomfort and in some cases, even angst that the locals feel towards such tourists who are careless with how they treat Goa...those who throw garbage in the open, those who bring their road rage infested traffic sense to the place, those who get aggressive at the slightest provocation, those who do not believe in sharing Goa with its actual natives, thinking they own all the beaches and the greens because they have paid for it.

Moreover, if you actually look at the Goa landscape today and compare it with what it was a few years ago, you will also realize that the mainstay of the hospitality industry here, the foreign tourist is slowly doing the vanishing act. From finding foreigners lounging at sun-decks on the Baga beach 4-5 years ago to now seeing them only at off-course beaches either in extreme south (Palolem) or extreme north (Arambol), things have changed and so have the earning capacities of locals who used to cater to this segment of the tourist population and make big margins out of it.

While the locals do understand that such margins can not be made of the not-so-gullible Indian tourist, the grudge they have is not this alone. Once again at the cost of sounding elitist (this time on behalf of the locals), perhaps the Indian tourists are blamed by the Goans for exodus of their foreign counterparts. With cases of hooliganism coming to the fore once too often and things far worse such as lootings, murders, and even rapes forming the news headlines, Goa has not had it easy recently.

Many tourists (Indians and more so, foreigners) have, if not sworn off Goa, been easier with other destinations like the South of India (Kerala and even Sri Lanka) when they make their travel plans. As is true in cases like these, the cause and effect get lost somewhere over time and things that Goans believe have led to this downfall are the ones that they are indulging in themselves now. Out and about to teach a lesson to the boorish Indian tourists who have allegedly brought bad name to Goa, the locals are not sparing anything to use diamonds to cut diamonds.

For a state that depends on tourism for a major portion of its economy, it is an unfortunate set of circumstances, seeing things come to such a head. As the clouds gathered during the Goa Monsoon bring out the violent shades of the sea to the fore, one can only remember the blue and green waters when the weather was calmer. While this cycle will complete its course and once the Monsoon is over, Goa's beaches will again have the hues to calm and soothe rather than those to excite and awe, one wonders if the Goa experience will follow some cycle as well.