The view from Goa

Writers, entrepreneurs, senior citizens, yoga teachers, billionaires and designers - all are thronging to Goa, looking for their cottages in the sun

I am in Goa as I write this, so the prevalence of rose-tinted glasses has to be factored in. The thing about Goa is that it's ceased to be a location or a destination and turned into a state of mind, an aspiration - an idea whose time has come.

Over 40 years ago, a few enlightened souls, like the actors Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor and London-based graphic artist Shireen Modi, realised that life was easier all round while sitting on a beach with a glass of feni in one's hand.

They happened to be the front-runners of an Indian urban elite whose yearning for roots led them to a place full of churches, rice fields and fishing villages.

Three decades ago when I spoke to Modi about her move to Goa, even then I realised that she was on to a very big thing. "A rupee an oyster, unlimited sun, sand and sea, a cottage for less than what it would cost for a five-star meal in Mumbai - was there even a doubt that this was going to be the start of an explosion?"

But well-heeled, enlightened professionals from Mumbai were not the only ones who were on to the Goa phenomenon.

Their counterparts from the West had beaten them to it. The counter-culture movement of the '60s had given rise to a generation of young men and women who were searching for an alternative to the materialistic structures of their lives: packing up their beat up VW vans, they drove overland through Europe, Afghanistan Nepal and Rishikesh and made their homes on Goa's Anjuna beach, bringing with them their quest for spiritual practices, unfettered lifestyle and exotic drugs.

"The boundaries between Anjuna and Candolim were unchallenged," says Vijay Patil, a trendy London fashion maven who was part of the first wave that made Goa its home in the early days. "We pretty much stuck to our own haunts, rarely ever venturing beyond Anjuna, except for dental appointments or bank matters," he says.

But all this was to change with the coming of the game changer: the Taj Aguada.

When Camellia Panjabi, recently back from Cambridge, made a trip down to Goa to scout for property, the only hotel worth its name was the Mandovi in Panjim - as slow and stately as the famous river it overlooked.

The planting of the Taj flag in Sinquerim in the mid-'60s was the first indication that Goa was ready for the influx of big money and international standards.

With the creative genius of Ajit Kerkar's wife Elizabeth, who did the interiors, the advertising skills of Frank Simoes, a Goan who'd lived all his life in Mumbai's Byculla yearning for home, and Frank's wife, the graphic artist Gita, the Taj created a hotel that would be a precursor for many a future fusion.

In 1980, on a visit to the Taj, I found myself unable to resist Goa's allure: seafood, untrammeled beaches and rustic interiors with mod cons - who could ask for more?

Today, of course, almost four decades since its first settlers, Goa is witnessing a lifestyle boom like never before.

Writers, IT entrepreneurs, senior citizens, yoga teachers, billionaires and designers are thronging to it, looking for their cottages in the sun.

But this time the borders have all broken down. It's the Europeans and the Indians who are here together, living side by side in a happy melting pot of quiche and vindaloo.

So, from the sun-kissed state, a happy New Year to all! As they say here: Sussegade!

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer
malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com