“Out of sheer luck and many footsteps, I made it,” is a sentence in the novel, The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak that brings to mind a foreigner who first reached Goa in 1982 and has been coming ever since.
His first stop was Himachal Pradesh, and as he recollects his first steps in India, his memory melts with his first experiences of Goa and how he has never been able to let go of them.
Goa is geographically defined as South and North but there has never been a divide between the people living in the two spheres. Yet, lifestyles are different, eating habits vary and even the mother tongue is spoken with different accents.
Tourism got baked in the North and slowly, as all of Goa was explored, attention shifted to the South but the focus remained up North. There was where the action was though the beaches were in the South.
Goa is geographically defined as South and North but there has never been a divide between the people living in the two spheres.
As the North turned congested and the demand for rooms grew, tourism started trickling to the South. Luxury resorts mushroomed, rent-back apartments and home stays came next.
In the North, along with tourism came drugs, full moon parties, the flea market – started by a tourist – and with it the first shop run by an Italian that sold the best beef sandwiches of that time in Chapora, now known as High Street.
Those were the days, when goods were carted on bullock carts, Goa was still virgin until the beauty one day just appeared to have been swallowed by greed.
If you come to Goa, it means you are going to the North. This truth still holds out, though for how long, is the question that strikes the mind for the shift to the South is becoming difficult to ignore.
Those were the days, when goods were carted on bullock carts, Goa was still virgin until the beauty one day just appeared to have been swallowed by greed.
Post the pandemic, the inflow to the South has been growing with many who started in the North now preferring to stay in the South, the main grouse being the unbearable noise across the river.
Foreigners who lived for ages in the North, Indians who built second homes there and even those coming for the first time have begun to move South because the essence of Goa can still be smelt this side of River Zuari.
Despite the shift, stakeholders in the North have no reason to worry because there are still people searching for noise and if the North is one place that provides the best, why not? However, that comes at a cost – protests by locals and publicity that does not gel with many for whom Goa is a place that sells tranquility stitched with nature.
There are many rooms available in resorts in the South along with rent back apartments capable of being home to tourists looking for short or long breaks – the more the merrier.
Despite the shift, stakeholders in the North have no reason to worry because there are still people searching for noise and if the North is one place that provides the best, why not?
Tourism in the South or North cannot be geographically defined but can best be described as serenity with soulful music and serenity induced by bass. And, the contrast, tells two different stories.
North or South, one thing is common – the issue of taxis – and this is one problem that will perhaps never settle down because it is not just about the prices but something more sinister; something that will only be smelt, but perhaps never spoken about.
The season so far, has been smiling more in the South with the occasional wry smile hiding the clutter that has driven many across the river. The South now offers peace, more spaces to discover oneself and balconies with beautiful views.
It was similar in the North before. The worry many in the South fear is, what if the worries from the North reach the South. “But there is one strange thing,” continues the sentence in The Book Thief, “the girl says I look like something else.”
As long as that something else is understood and appreciated by tourism stakeholders, the balloon could burst both ways.
