Navigating a Changing GOA with the boy Who Never Left
Two days back on this soil, and time already bends in that peculiar, sun-drenched way only Goa knows.
I came back to sit with my mother, to hold hands that carried my entire childhood, knowing full well how fragile and precious these quiet hours are as the years gather on her shoulders. Beside her are my two of six anchors in this world, my sister Connie, whose humour and warmth has always been my safe harbor, and Eugene, a man whose heart is cast in pure, generous gold. Watching them move through the house, giving without measuring, caring without pausing, grounds me in a way the boardroom never could.
Standing out by the coast, the roar of the Arabian Sea crashing against the shoreline doesn’t feel chaotic at all; it reaches my ears like a divine whisper, an intimate blessing sent down from the heavens. Across the road, the rice fields sway in the afternoon breeze, performing that timeless, seductive dance like a village damsel caught mid-step under the sun.
And yet, reality casts its shadow. The slick, relentless modernization creeps into every corner, jutting out like a sore thumb against the landscape I etched into memory decades ago. Concrete encroaching on greenery, hurried noise pushing past slow afternoon siestas, it stings. You feel the ache of a place you love being reshaped before your eyes.
But then evening falls. The unmistakable aroma of slow-simmered Goan cuisine fills the kitchen, laughter echoes off old tiled floors, and that pure, unpretentious warmth washes the resentment away. The outside world can pave its roads and build its glass towers, but it cannot touch
the soul of what lives under this roof.
I may have crossed oceans, built a life in distant cities, and charted courses far from these shores, but sitting here with my family, drowning in nostalgia, the truth settles deep and unshakable: I am, and always will be, that Goan boy who sold his feni, forever tied to the heartbeat of home.
