WHEN I first arrived in Goa I discovered there were no credible maps. The current tourist map correctly marked the route of the Konkan railway completed in 2002, but showed the main Bombay highway passing through the northern towns of Mapsa and Pernem. Some fifty years ago Mapsa was bye-passed and no highway has ever come within miles of Pernem. Few villages are marked, and those that are, invariably inaccurately. There are no minor roads and rivers die early in their course. The Portuguese maps of early last century were fallible and out of date. The British aerial survey of India (now housed in Texas) tersely marks Goa as ‘This area not covered’. The maps of the 17th and 18th century mark towns and villages in profusion, but few roads. As a lifelong map addict and amateur cartographer, I found this situation profoundly unsatisfactory. There was only one thing to do – make a map myself.

My wife and I live in a remote village near the border with Maharashtra. I set about my task with modest ambition – to make a rough sketch-map of the through-roads around us in the hinterland of North Goa. And so began a series of exploratory trips which brought me face to face with rural Goa and its people. I would drive out each day, sketch pad on my knee, every journey a delight. We would drive alongside a great river with its fleet of longboats scooping sand from the river, through the dark forests of Valpoi, over the rugged laterite plateaus surrounding Bicholim, down cashew-strewn hillsides and every now and again we would come upon an oasis, a little miracle of shining green where there was water for the rice paddies, vegetables and groundnuts.

We also traversed those areas where iron ore mining has transformed the natural face of the land, a development deplored by conservationists, but not by me, for I find the newly made mountains, the sudden gaping ravines and the jagged sky-lines made by mining, an exciting contrast in an otherwise placid landscape.

Then there were the countless villages, the surprise of an encounter with a huge laterite quarry, a solitary stone-crushing plant sending up a large plume of dust. And the temples, some standing alone in isolated grandeur, incongruously gaudy in the brown Goan landscape, others within, or just without, a village. There is one village near Asinora of perhaps two or three hundred inhabitants which has no less than eight temples of varying sizes, all of them apparently in use.

 

In the more remote villages the women were bemused but never unfriendly. Many may never have seen a European before. Some children stared at us wide-eyed like frightened animals, others were in complete charge of the situation, as noisy and as cheeky as you please. And none of them asked for pencils.

I also encountered the recent surge in temple building and have seen upwards of twenty new temples spring up in North Goa in the last five years, none of them, regrettably, of architectural merit. But not a single new Christian church, and never a mosque.

My driver and I took every road as it came, the main roads soon becoming familiar, as we pursued each side road to the death. Tar would give way to impacted earth, then to a rugged track. Luckily my driver Shyam shares my pioneering spirit and would only give up when we had reached an impasse.

And then come the waterways. In our village there is an ancient dock of solid laterite construction. Overgrown with shrubs and creepers, it has not been used in living memory. The dock gives onto a stretch of water which runs along the edge of the village paddy fields and then disappears into a tangle of woodland. It struck me that given a dock there must also be a channel leading to the outside world. After a few days of cutting and hacking we forced a passage through to a branch of the Mapsa river.

One day, after carefully calculating time and tide, for our dock is only navigable for two hours on each side of high water, we embarked from Baga and proceeded past Aguada, up the Mandovi estuary past Panjim, turned left up the Mapsa river past Pomburra and Aldona and disembarked at our dock a short stroll from our front door.

This encouraged me to explore the waterways of the Zuari and Mandovi which are extensive, varied, and quite fascinating. For most of the time you are alone on these waters, encountering only the stately parade of iron ore barges when you meet the main thoroughfares.

There is great potential for tourism here. Kerala has brilliantly exploited its backwaters; Goa has done nothing. If a sprinkling of jetties and rest houses were constructed at key points (toilet facilities are at present a real problem) tourist boats could ply from the coast far up into the interior and offer a sighting of dolphins and crocodiles as a bonus. There is no more agreeable way of passing a day than by gliding along Goa’s rivers and canals.

The Goa that I explored on these journeys is the Goa I know and love. But it is a far cry from the bustle of Panjim, the bazaars of Calangute or the beaches of Baga, which together represent the Goa of popular imagination.

 

I went on to make my road maps of urbanized Goa with equal diligence but less enthusiasm. The coastline of North Goa has pretty well been handed over to the tourists. Some thirty years ago the great stretches of beach between Aguada and the Baga river were empty – nothing but the sea and sand fringed with palm trees, with a few black fishing boats drawn up above the tide mark and perhaps a group of fishermen mending their nets. Today they are dotted from end to end with clusters of loungers and beach umbrellas and behind them there is one continuous tourist town. Only three years ago the beaches of Morgem and Manderem were unspoilt. But when a bridge was built across the Chapora river at Siolim the tourists surged across and where once there were one or two shacks on each beach there are now twenty. And as the years roll on, behind them will spring up bars, restaurants, residences and rows of identical shops selling jewellery and cheap clothing.

 

Behind the southern beaches lies urban and suburban Goa, bounded on the north by Mapsa and to the south by Donna Paula. This is modern Goa, the Goa of factories, businesses, tourism, shops, bazaars and the centre of government. It is an area of rapid and uncontrolled development. This is where the incomers from Bombay, Delhi and Europe mostly settle. The countryside is mildly agreeable, with the open dry paddies and undulating woodland dotted with villages, each with its dominant white church planted by the early Portuguese at a nodal point around which a village could grow. No village is compact. Many struggle for some two to three kilometres on each side of the centre. Some villages have no centre. But nearly all have a rich quota of old Portuguese houses, Goa’s precious legacy from its colonial past.

These are the prizes sought by the incomers from Bombay and Europe and they are being snapped up rapidly. Recently when looking for a house for a friend, I was told on a Friday there were four houses for sale in a nearby village. I went to see them on Monday morning and found that three had already been snapped up. Goa is now all the rage for second and, for a few, permanent homes.

The incomers add spice to Goan society, which is cosmopolitan, sophisticated and argumentative. Parties are mostly made up in roughly equal parts by Goans, Indians from Bombay and elsewhere, and Europeans. With such a variety of backgrounds, it is hardly surprising that opinions vary and discussions shade into arguments. Dinner parties in Goa are seldom dull.

But to return to the face of Goa, Panjim itself is now a handsome town. Recently, the fine old Portuguese buildings by the port were rejuvenated, gardens have sprung-up where once there was waste land, and the drive down the riverside is now a delight. But go only one kilometre outside the city and it is all over.

 

Unbridled development has resulted in a no man’s land stretching along the highway in both directions. Huge apartment blocks stand stark in open fields, tatty little concrete houses crunch together in a huddle, a factory where no factory should be; miscellaneous buildings of all sizes alongside the roadside. And there are hoardings all the way. The village of Povirim must be the supreme example of what can happen when development is left to the developers. Candolim, Calangute and Baga have all grown like Topsy and now form a continuous urban strip of bazaars, residences and restaurants housed in a jumble of buildings, some tatty, some pretentious, but none with any architectural merit.

No recent government in Goa has shown any inclination to put a stop to this vandalism. Worse, the Goan governments are corrupt, dilatory and bipartisan. The major parties are so evenly split that the defection of two or three members from one party to another changes the balance of power overnight. This can put a brake on firm action, or indeed any action at all. Big money rules Goa. But public opinion may no longer tolerate the rape of their country and recent events have demonstrated that the conservationists have muscle and are not afraid to use it.

Goa has other problems. It is short of water. The north east corner of Goa is intersected by huge canals, all empty, some for decades. They are awaiting water from the Tillari dam, just across the Maharashtra border, whose completion has been delayed, delayed, and delayed. Today, as I write, water was due to flow but the stop press news is – further delays.

 

The rice paddies are shrinking rapidly because it is now cheaper to buy rice in the supermarket than to grow it. When they go, as go they will, Goa will lose one of its greatest scenic assets. Where now the neat geometrical patches of brilliant green delight the eye, all we will have is a wilderness of brown grass and reeds.

Goa has no viable garbage disposal system. The result of this can be seen everywhere. In towns it causes hardship; in villages pollution on a grand scale. There is a village near Bicholim which I think of as the dirtiest village in Goa. The houses and their forecourts are brushed out every day. The temple is as neat as a new pin. But ten metres away is a sea of plastic, knee-deep, mixed with a rich variety of household waste. Shame on the panchayat, shame on the state government. But none of these problems, although serious enough, match up to the threat from the steady march of developers.

The developers have not yet reached our village. Every morning for an hour and a half just after sunrise I sit on our verandah watching birds. Over the past twelve years, from this viewpoint I have seen one hundred and fifteen different species. This may sound impressive but less so perhaps when you reflect there are three hundred and seventy known species in Goa. Each morning I keep a note of what I have seen. These include sightings of the great pied hornbill, the greater adjutant stork and the verditer flycatcher, rare events.

The view from the verandah covers an expanse of paddy fields and wetlands, also some orchard and forest lands. Each year the pattern of birdlife varies, depending mainly on the level of water left by the monsoon. Five years ago there were never less a score of egrets to be seen on any morning. This year only two or three. But the changes in the pattern of bird life cannot all be so easily explained. Why have the baya weaver birds all disappeared? Why do we suddenly this year have munias in great flocks? Where have the Indian robins gone? I do not know and when I ask the question of serious bird men I find that they do not know either.

 

My pleasure in bird watching is not derived solely from an appreciation of their beauty, although a good sighting of any of the stars – the paradise flycatcher, the blossom-headed parakeet, the flame-backed woodpecker – is always a delight, but also from a study of their habits and characteristics, which leads one to form a moral and social opinion of each species. Thus babblers become football hooligans, moving around in noisy gangs, shouting and generally making themselves objectionable; the kingfishers are society beauties, aloof in their perfection; the koel the policeman of bird society; the crow a hobo; the red-whiskered bulbul a prima donna. Such anthropomorphic fantasies are, of course, anathema to serious bird men whose currency is science and who measure a bird’s median-wing covert in millimetres.

So what of the Goans themselves? Twelve years ago we were graciously accepted into our village. Our neighbours are considerate, friendly and universally helpful. Many of the young men are working in the Gulf. The young women who walk down the road past my verandah each morning to catch the bus to Mapsa are beautifully dressed, many with flowers in their hair. They are certainly more elegant in appearance than the young women who used to pass by my office window in Manchester. The men it is true, are scruffs, only donning the official white shirt and black trousers for special occasions.

Our village is predominantly Christian, with a substantial Hindu minority, but there is no whiff of religious animosity. The Goans have a reputation for taking life easy and for a lack of ambition. Apart from the intransigence of plumbers, carpenters and other craftsmen all our work has been done speedily and diligently. And plumbers are probably no easier to pin down in New York.

The Goan people have spirit. Some years ago when the BJP was in power, the chief minister commissioned a violently anti-Christian film and ordered it to be shown in all schools. The schools refused to show it. The film was withdrawn. Last month there was a popular demonstration against the 2011 Regional Plan, a charter for developers to take over and destroy large parts of central Goa. The demonstration was massive and effective. The Regional Plan was withdrawn. In these ways Goans perhaps have a message for the rest of India.

Goa is rapidly destroying its natural charms. The once lovely beaches are lovely no more, the banks of the great estuaries once clothed in unbroken forest are now defaced by a rash of ugly buildings and the government is even handing over tracts of forest and agricultural land to commerce and industry. Goa may continue to be a popular tourist resort but only in the hinterland will its beauty and charm survive.