Book Excerpt: Goa < 2075

Words, then sentences and gradually paragraphs in a large, red font pop up on the wall before him, as quickly as his fingers tap on the bare, metal work desk. The desk is screwed to the hard cement floor lined with magnetic strips that fringe the room, a foot from each of the four walls.  

Over the last few years, his fingertips had familiarised themselves with the infrared keyboard. He lifts and drags the light plastic chair back a few inches and leans on its backrest, reading the red letters which cling to the bare, white prison walls.

He looks satisfied with what he has written, as he rocks the chair precariously on its two back legs, while humming a small tune in loop. He reads the words aloud to himself.

Chapter 1

“There comes a time when mere passage of time ceases to heal anymore. And you need to grab the hands of the clock, wrench them out of the time machine and hurl them at the heart of adversities inflicting an era.

Goa 2075 is a story of five friends who did just that”.

Suddenly, a buzzer goes off and a red light at the top of the front wall starts blinking, rhythmically camouflaging some of the words with its glow off and on.

“It’s time,” he reminds himself.

He walks to the wall behind him and places his hands in a rectangular cavity and a metal handcuff snaps around his wrists. He steps back, turns and stands well within the magnetic strip. The door opens silently to a soft whirring sound. Within seconds, a drone with a food parcel hanging from it, emerges in the doorway.

“Inmate 42145…stand three feet away…Inmate 42145…stand three feet away,” a mechanical voice rasps from a tiny speaker outfitted to the drone. Inmate 42145 does as instructed. The drone slowly descends towards the floor and with a snap drops the food packet to the floor. It hovers for a few seconds, as if trying to gauge the inmate’s intention, and then glides out of the doorway, before the door automatically shuts. The blinking red light and the buzzer monotonous whir stops.

Inmate 42145 unwraps the parcel. It’s a thick sandwich. A tissue paper falls to the floor. The sea breeze coming in from the room’s only window blows the flimsy square a couple of feet away. He lifts it up and holds it under the light of the lone LED bulb in the room, which had blinked red a few seconds ago. In one corner of the white napkin is a custom printed message. “Have a great meal… courtesy Serene & Secure Detention Centre, Goa-aah ”.

“How prisons have changed?” he mutters to himself, as he bites into the sandwich.

The creaking gate announces the arrival of guests at the wake. Dressed in black, men and women walked across the compound and trooped into the only traditional house left standing in Anjuna.

Most of the visitors left ‘Loja Anjuna’ after a round of snacks and offering commiserations to 75-year-old Malcom Rodrigues. Aided by his walking stick Rodrigues walked out each of his guests, until he returned to find just five guests in the house. He had laid eyes on all of them together for the first time in years.

He slumps into his well worn rocking chair and lifts his stick to point to the bar.

“Tanaji…”

The man in his early forties, wearing a pair of denim pants and a chequered shirt, peels away from a large bookshelf stretching across the entire length of the wall. He is in the middle of thumbing the pages of an ageing book ‘The Forgotten Martyrs: Goa Revolt 1787’ by Celsa Pinto.

“There, behind the Cutty Sark, is a bottle of Labrodog. Bring it over and pour us all a stiff one,” Malcolm says.

Tanaji Raul fetches the bottle as instructed, examining the bottle of 12-year blended Scotch. The lean woman, Karvi Khan, who was rearranging the chairs after the departure of the guests, walks to the kitchen and returns with six glasses. She places them on the table. “Nathan brought this bottle home sometime during Christmas last year. He would love it if his best friends could have a go at it,” Malcolm says.

Karvi pours the Scotch in each glass, as Tanaji places the book on the table and grabs hold of his drink.

The fattest person in the group, Michael Crespo, rises from the sofa with obvious effort. On his broad, bulky frame, the multi-pocket vest looks like the last bit of skin that he is about to shed. Much like the remnants of a shredding patch of crusty old skin which lines a snake’s head at the fag end of the shedding cycle.

“Wait… where’s Neil?”

“He’s still settling affairs at the cemetery in Joida. It’s a long drive from there,” Malcolm replies.

There is a reason why Malcolm could not bury his dead son and wife at the cemetery of the 462 year old St. Michael’s Church in Anjuna.

Two decades ago, sometime in the 2050s, the Democratic Corporation of Goa-aah had officially redesignated the purpose of existing cemeteries attached to the iconic, heritage churches located within the original geographical expanse of Goa. The cemeteries were classified as places of tourist, heritage interest and beautified to cater to visiting tourists. The Corporation’s Tourism Division had handed over charge of the cemeteries to heritage groups for upkeep and to conduct boutique tours about village history. The smaller, cosier cemeteries were given licences for setting up of cafeterias, while the larger burial grounds were turned into multipurpose open spaces housing open air theatres and auditoriums.

Burying of the dead was banned by a corporate decree in such cemeteries a few years later, because the activity was deemed unproductive by the Corporation. The dead, they said, collectively occupy too much acreage. A few years later, the decree was extended to the entire surface area of Goa-aah banning both cremation and burials, to curb wastage of land and bespoiling of the state’s visual aura.

But the Democratic Corporation of Goa-aah had made alternative arrangements for the dead. The Corporation purchased the adjoining territories of Joida and Halyal from the neighbouring state of Karnataka to facilitate burials and cremation of dead souls from Goa-aah’s overworld and to eventually relocate the state’s subterraneans.

You could still bury and cremate the Goa-aahan dead in the two deluxe facilities in North and South Goa-aah, which were reserved for members and former members of the Corporation and for the names that featured on the scheduled roster of important personalities. But that privilege required pre-booking, a hefty fee and an endorsement from the Chief Director of the Corporation on the certificate of death.

Malcolm, of course, would never have agreed to either of the terms. Even more so because he believed that the Corporation and one of its Directors, was responsible for the murder of his son and daughter-in-law.

Malcolm gulps down the peg briskly. His gaze has a steely edge now, as he almost slams the glass on the table, jarring the concentration of the two figures playing scrabble on the table at the far end. Both sat on chairs facing the wall. They wore similar white tops and black trousers. Had it now been the longish hair on one of them, you could swear they were a mirror reflection of each other. The twins turn around as if to investigate the sound. Malcolm invites them over for a drink.

Without speaking a word, Karvi refills his glass. She pushes the two untouched glasses filled with scotch in the direction of the twins. Nihal Bennett, the male twin, the one with the long hair, ties his hair in a bun, as he raises his glass waiting for Malcolm to raise a toast. So does his sister Conchita.

Malcolm looks like he is about to say a few words. He holds his glass in the air for a few seconds, but whatever words he had been trying to string together as a toast, appear to have entangled themselves in his ageing gums. With his words stuck, tears start rolling down his cheeks. The twins place their glasses on the table and hug the old man. “You Bennetts don’t believe me. You don’t believe me when I say that Vikram Desai killed them,” Malcolm wailed. What happened was shocking beyond wits. But it’s not that we don’t want to believe you Malcolm, but there really is no concrete evidence which suggests that,” Nihal says, while gently dislodging the glass from Malcolm’s hands.

“Do they know the whole story?” Crespo butts into the conversation, licking the last of the serradura from a cup he had fished from one of his jacket pockets. Crespo calls out to Tanaji and Karvi and they take a seat at the foot of Malcolm’s easy chair.

“Go on Malcolm, everyone needs to hear this,” says Crespo, reassuringly touching the old man’s knee.

“Pass me that drink.” Nihal puts the glass back in his hands. He sips on the drink, and stares at the glass’ edge. “The Pintos have lived in this house for several centuries now. It belongs to Nathan’s mother. It was her desire to not surrender the house to the Corporation’s ‘Beautification and Upgradation Drive.’”

The ‘Beautification and Upgradation Drive’ was one of the earliest directives by the Corporation aimed at altering the visual characteristics of Goa-aah, to transform the state’s landscape to picture-postcard beauty. Postcards of course were an extinct form of communication by then, but the phrase seemed to have lingered on. The sum and substance of the drive was to make additional acreage available to real estate companies to construct planned residential colonies across the state, most of which were marketed globally as stylish addresses in the most beautiful states in India. As part of the drive, all existing structures which did not conform to modern standards were demolished across the state. Only those homeowners, who were able to purchase annual surface rights from the Corporation’s Revenue division–estimated at 10 per cent of the land value–were allowed to live in the new construction. The rest of the population was given sizeable monetary compensation for their land, but they were also driven into large caverns, which had been dug into the earth some years earlier as a refuge for the population from an unprecedented locust epidemic. Of course, we’ll come to that later.

(This excerpt is from Goa < 2075, a live multimedia novel by Mayabhushan Nagvenkar)