Some of us may have to live to the end of Goa. We worry that Goa’s expiry date is approaching. But it may be more accurate to say that Goa is going through a living death. Some of us may have to live to see the disappearance of Goa and tell the story of Goa and Goans. Or maybe Goa is already dead, and we are living with its afterlife but are tragically ignorant of it. There is an aporia that afflicts us Goans. We are acutely aware that Goa is dying and we are responsible for this fate. But this acute awareness is not certain whether Goa is dying or is already dead. In this sense we may have to ask the heart rending Nietzschean question: are we the last Goans? To this I ask: is Goa dying a living death?
Goa is polysemic and, as such, is an empty signifier. It is we who bring meaning to it. It does not have one core meaning but gets its meaning through what Goans and others infuse into it. It Goanizes Goa and the Goans and produces Goan-ness. It evokes home, hope, happiness, well being, sacred, unscattered, immune, intact, safe, sound, unharmed, whole, original. What we mean by it gives us a sense of confidence and abundance. This is why even if Goa is dead or if we have passed a death sentence on it, it will still refuse to die. We will have to deal with its spectres. In this sense, it may be true that we are living after the end of Goa. We are haunted by its coming death. Maybe it is the spectre of Goa that is haunting us. It is not only that Goa is living its death; Goans too are living their death. Goans seem to be on the verge of extinction. This means both Goa and Goans are dying alive. We experience the phantasms, phantoms and traces of the death of Goa and Goans. This reflection tries to bring a mourning gaze on Goa and Goans, a gaze that does not look away.
The going of Goa is not unannounced. We can all feel its fading impulse. We can hear the funeral bells ringing in every village where a hill is flattened, where a khazan is filled, where a field is left fallow waiting for conversion. All things Goan are reminding us that Goa is going. The Goan order of things, the Goan cosmos, the world that held churches and temples, creek and field, fish and coconut in one lived whole, is in the coffin. Yet this death of Goa can sublate itself in us. It can overcome itself in us, Goans. We carry Goa in us because we are born Goans and are Goanized all our life. Language Goanizes us. Food Goanizes us. Monsoon Goanizes us. Even those who leave remain Goanized. This is why we Goans cannot self destruct fully. We feel the imperative to let Goa survive, live and flourish even when we participate in its undoing. It is emerging from the inversion that declares: one who knows to die knows to live. Hence, the heightened awareness of the death of Goa produces an imperative to work for the survival of Goa. Montaigne famously told us that to learn to live, we have to learn to die. Goans cannot allow a Goa-cide. That word must be spoken. Goa-cide is not hyperbole. It is the slow, legal, economic, political, and administrative killing of a way of being that made Goa whole.
Goans did enjoy their death drive in the Freudian sense. They did ride the death drive that led to approaching death of Goa. Wholesale land sale to the highest bidder and the surrender of Indian passports for greener pastures in Europe may be regarded as a joy ride of Goan death drive. But even this is not a death drive for the sake of death. It is detour to enjoy life and live. Both sale of Goa and abandonment of Goa are drawn by economics, by need, by anxiety, by desire for dignity that present Goa no longer guarantees. A father sells land to educate child. A youth surrenders passport to secure future for parents. Economics defers. It delays. It is exigency of life that makes death drive appear as survival drive. Hence, Goa is never really dead in hearts of Goans. Even seller mourns. Even one who leaves lights candle for feast. That mourning is proof that Goa lives as trace, as spectre, as call.
The awareness of dying Goa confers definite meaning on present and future and, hence, the dying Goa as Other of Goans calls them to responsibility in Levinasian sense. For Levinas, the Other calls me before I choose. Dying Goa is Other. It looks at Goans from its coffin and says: you shall not let me die. Being aware of coming future of Goa, Goans understand that future as presently imagined is no future, and are resolutely called to live for dying Goa. Therefore, there will be no dead silence to approaching death of Goa. Silence would be complicity. Goans have crossed lines and have put their survival and that of Goa in trouble. They have crossed ecological lines, cultural lines, ethical lines. Hence, challenge is to learn from death and come back to live. Side of death is side of life if death is regarded as a teacher. It is for Goans to choose this side of life. This requires us to take the side of Goa. Choosing Goa-side will save from Goa-cide.
Goa-side is not nativism. It is not blood. It is not certificate. Goa-side is fidelity to that empty signifier that holds abundance, wholeness, safety, sacredness, home. It is decision to count Goa as one in Badiouan sense, to count all that makes Goa without leaving its essentials in void. Goa-side means counting khazan, hill, forest, fish, coconut, tiatr, chapel feast, temple, zatra, Konkani, migrant worker who has made Goa home, diaspora that carries Goa, future child not yet born, as parts of Badiouan one. Goa-cide is count that leaves these in void, that counts only plot price and vote bank and calls that Goa. Between these two counts lies ethical choice.
Choosing Goa-side can bring about Hegelian Aufhebung, or sublation, that will infuse life in dying Goa as well as Goans. Sublation does not simply negate death. It preserves what was true in old Goa, negates what killed it, and lifts it to higher stage. It preserves susegad but negates susegad as excuse. It preserves hospitality and amizade but negates hospitality as sale. It preserves migration as skill but negates migration as forced exodus. It preserves faith but negates faith as division. Such sublation is not automatic. It needs work, what Badiou calls fidelity to the event. Event here is awareness itself: we know Goa is dying. That knowledge is event. Fidelity is to remain true to that knowledge against all inducements to forget to sell, to leave, to say nothing can be done.
Rising of Goans will result in rising of Goa. Goa can indeed have new birth, anastasis. Anastasis in Greek means standing up again, resurrection. But resurrection here is not return to past. Past cannot return. Old coconut economy cannot return as it was. Old fishing cannot return as it was. What returns is Goan-ness as confidence and abundance in new conditions. That is hyposubject resurrection. Not master over land but humble participant who plays, cares, adapts, feels hurts and laughs inside hyperobjects that now define planet. That is new Goa-side.
Between Goa-side and Goa-cide there is only one step, but that step is everything. It is step from mourning gaze that weeps to mourning gaze that works. Freud distinguished mourning that gets stuck in melancholia from mourning that does work of letting dead live differently inside us. Goans must do work of mourning. Let dead Goa live inside us not as nostalgia for sale to the highest bidder , but as imperative that says do not let the next hill go, do not let next field go, do not let next youth go without choice.
Are we the last Goans? Possibly. But last can be first if last decides to take side. If last Goans decide to take Goa-side, they become first Goans of new Goa. That is dialectic of end and beginning. Death teaches life. Living death can become living again.
Choice is before us, stark and simple. Goa-side or Goa-cide.
