Hey, it’s Goa day! What fun! Yes yes, complex political history and battles and so on, but today is the day it was freed and joined India, so let us celebrate in song!
And then a more recent one, with the female side of that wild Goa adventure, having an ill-advised fling with a hot bar singer. “Tu Hi Hai” from Dear Zindagi.
A lot of movies use Goa as the fun getaway location, but some of them set the whole story there. Josh, for instance, used Goan history as an elaborate backdrop for its period drama.
Dilwale wasn’t nearly as deep into Goan history, but it did capture the sunny free fresh feel of a vacation town filled with new residents and constant changes.
Hey Jude took a similar tactic, Goa is a place for rebirth and new beginnings, finding yourself in a place where everyone is struggling to find themselves.
And of course there is that ancient Goan tradition, getting high and going to a rave. Picked at random from all the many songs representing this, “Slowly Slowly” from Go Goa Gone.
And to end, one of my favorite songs ever, Goa or otherwise. Sunny, happy, carefree. “Te Amo”
dontcallitbollywood 
Being a Goan is like being a Hawaiian. Everyone else has these strange exciting life changing experiences in your home state, but for you it’s just where you go to visit relatives and have tea and good home cooked food. Things I have never done in Goa- drugs, raves or discos, had fenni/vindaloo/sorpitel, gambled, visited a resort, the Sunburn festival, “vacationed” in my home state. I’ve been to a Goan beach, but only because I’m from a beach town, the rest of my time is spent in the interiors of goa visiting relatives. The oddest thing about being a Goan is that you are usually the only Goan on your flight to Goa, and oftentimes the only Indian on that flight, maybe even the only PoC!
The Ajay Devgan /Tabu version of the movie Dhrishyam is the most honestly Goan movie I’ve seen, in terms of how ordinary Goans live and what they see around them. I even recognize some of the venues, restaurants, signage, and locations.
On the other end of the spectrum, the movie Angry Indian Goddesses might be the most accurate in terms of the Goa tourist experience, especially that of a bunch of free spirited Indian women vacationing together in a beach house in Goa.
The Te Amo video touches on a festival unique to South Goa. It’s called Shingmo, it’s basically a Mardi Gras parade with the oversized heads, and it’s held on Marti Gras / Fat Tuesday night, but the oversized heads are of Hindu mythological figures instead of Christian figures.
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I agree with you! I studied in Goa for 4 years for my Undergrad, so I have a sort of hybrid experience, of an outsider who lived in Goa for a long time. When returning for my semester in Jan I would be the only person going to Goa to ‘study’.
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Hilarious!
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How interesting! When you are home doing home things, do you ever intersect with tourists? Or is it a completely different world, you don’t go into the tourist zones and the tourists never stumble into the “real people” places?
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Absolutely. The touristy zones and the regular zones are completely distinct. The non Indian tourists mostly hang out in a few of the beach towns of North Goa, alongside the other non Indian tourists. They are mostly white people from Europe, but also from Canada, Africa, Australia, South America, and Israel. If it’s an American, they’ve usually come with a euro friend who told them about Goa. I could tell on my plane flights because those were the few American accents besides my own, in a sea of euro accents. The Grateful Dead used to play Goa, so in their heyday, a white American who had heard of or been to Goa was usually a Dead Head.
The Indian tourists visiting Goa go to wherever the other Indian tourists from their region, city, or wealth class go, since, just like the whites, they want to go to Goa but hang out with other people who look, talk and act like themselves. They span out over more Goan beaches, but they don’t venture inland or into non tourist towns.
I’m from south Goa, but if I were from a north Goan beach town, I imagine I would have more interaction with tourists.
As a south Goan though, unless I hang out at a resort, the only non Goans I even see are laborers that work in construction.
If you want to see Goans enjoying the beach, go after sunset. Only Whites and Indians are foolish enough to subject themselves to the scorching heat & humidity of the beach sun during daylight hours. Every Goan I know fInds this either hilarious or idiotic or both.
Goan tourism is probably most similar to Cancun. The Island of Cancun is a manufactured town where all the tourists go, and the City of Cancun is an organic city where all the Mexicans reside.
And in this way it’s very dissimilar to Kerala. Kerala looks like what Goa used to look like before it became overrun by tourism, so frankly for that reason I love it more than Goa. And per my post in another thread, white euro tourists fan out throughout Kerala and explore it, not in hive mind style ala Goa but as intrepid travelers seeking a natural peaceful getaway, like the kind of people who go for a relaxing holiday in Hawaii by trekking the interiors and smaller towns (not the ones who go parasailing or drinking/dancing or on tour buses to volcano tops at sunrise and then cycle down lol).
Local Goans of a certain wealth class do utilize the most famous tourist restaurants, hotels, and venues for their own celebrations, like going to Bitto’s (seafood restaurant) for your birthday, or holding your wedding reception at Cidade de Goa in the Dona Paula region of Panaji/Panjim. Otherwise there is very little overlap unless you actually work in tourism or in the service sector in a beach town.
One final thing… For Indians, Goa is both Hawaii and Vegas. Indians adopt a “what happens in Goa stays in Goa” mentality when vacationing in Goa. Even the meekest most mild mannered Indian man will try his hand at being a playboy at least once while in Goa, attempting something inappropriate with a Goan woman, even during his Goan honeymoon, because he thinks Goan women are what he sees on the Bollywood screen ala Bobby or Shaukeen. Theyse men have such a bad reputation in Goa that my Goan cousins say they’ll marry a Goan or maybe a Foreigner but would not be caught dead with an Indian man. Meanwhile the whites are blamed for bringing drugs to Goa and making them accessible to the locals. So for these reasons, the Goans themselves prefer it that all the tourists keep to themselves.
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This just confirms that I really want to go to Kerala. Although I’m worried that I would end up contributing to turning it into Goa as yet another white tourist tipping the scales.
It sounds like even the tourism trade doesn’t make that much of a difference? It isn’t like everyone is living off of tourist dollars? So there is truly no reason you need them to be there?
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 5:33 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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To your point, Goa had the highest per capita income of any state in India, and among the highest literacy rates, even before tourism started making its mark in the ’80s. Of course tourism boosts real estate prices, so that helps all Goans that already own a piece of the rock. And indirectly tourism creates demand for architects, farmers, ranchers, truckers, infrastructure, etc, anyone that supplies to the tourism industry indirectly.
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Not sure where to put these so just dropping them here. Saw some zero interviews. Most of them were the same old thing; nothing new. However, these 3 are good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxVtilNrflw
The last one is the most fun and silly one and also the most off-script one. SRK spends half of it blushing because the female interviewer is clearly a little too into him. At one point, she just stops in the middle of asking questions and says she’s trying hard to be a journalist but kuch kuch hota hai. She asks SRK if he understands what she’s saying and he says “yeah yeah, I only look stupid. I’m not actually stupid” and then starts blushing hard. Haha.
We also learn that Katrina wants a National Award. Okaaaaay. Well it’s good to have dreams.
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You can always put these things on the Wednesday Watching or Monday Questions posts, that’s what they are there for. If I can figure out how, I’ll move this comment over to Wednesday Watching that just went up.
And thank you! I know we all love SRK interviews.
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