Go Goa 
and celebrate life to the hilt
Ervell E. Menezes

The Carnival in Goa has become, over the last three decades, quite a tourist attraction and many roads lead to Goa in expectation of fun and frolic. We in Goa know that Goa isn’t the Carnival but try telling the outsiders or visitors that. The Rio-pattern Carnival began in 1974 when the Tourism Department took the initiative and drew crowds to Goa for four days of enjoyment (February 4 to 7 this year). The Goans too let their hair down because it is before the austere season of Lent which ends with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. Three days later, Easter Sunday marks his Resurrection. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a time of prayer and penance. It is also a time of fast and abstinence. "Carni" and "vale" means "farewell to meat." Four days before Lent meant that the people were allowed to indulge in their favourite gluttony before the sombre period of Lent. Imported to Goa by the Portuguese in a barbaric form, it was marked by coarse and vulgar forms of merry-making such as emptying chamber pots on unsuspecting revellers, the Carnival gradually assumed a more refined pattern under the Indo-Goan traditions.

I remember pre-Liberation days when groups of revellers went visiting houses in the village disguised in fancy dress costumes which concealed their identity. They threw "cockots" or powder packets at one another the way it is done during Holi. All houses were open to these revellers who were entertained with food and drink. There was a greater involvement in this version of the Carnival and it reached far and wide and not a few towns like the current one.

But this Rio-type Carnival encouraged sponsorships and different companies set up floats. Then the Hindi-film image of Christians being ones of easy virtue also gave it a further impetus. The North Indians thought that the girls in Goa were easily available and made passes at them, only to be put in their places by the local boys who were spoiling for fights. Over the years, the Carnival has had its ups and downs.
In 1993 it was almost a non-starter as the Catholic Church put a spoke in the wheel by charging that girls were being drugged but it proved to be a case of over-reacting, the controversy died down and the Carnival continued.

The Carnival is too deeply embedded in the Goan psyche to be throttled to death that easily. Later, there was a check on the nature of floats and once the late Protima Bedi raised a flutter by being skimpily attired but on the whole the carnival has attracted more folks than it has repulsed. Some people love it, others hate, but the fact remains that it just cannot be ignored.

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