Most people in Goa used to consider it a good practice to eat something sweet early in the morning on the first day of the month of August. Probably the old folk did not find August to be the happiest of the months, riddled as it used to be with illnesses caused by the heavy monsoons and its dampness.

Moreover, monsoons was a rather moody period restricting everyone indoors. At that time there were few buses, fewer cars and almost no motorcycles or scooters. Neither was there television, video and internet to entertain oneself. Young and old would, however, play a local game called tablam with four small bamboo sticks, throwing which was like throwing the dice, and the coins would move on a rough board with several small squares.

Today there are cold storages and you get fish and meat throughout the year. But before Liberation there would be no fish at all except for kharem (dry fish) stocked in the month of May or para or mol. Fishermen were not allowed to go out at sea until August 15, when the Aguada sand bar would be ceremoniously opened with a grand feast. Today, who's bothered about rules, regulations, laws...? Fishing trawlers scan the waters for fish during any time of the year...to such an extent that there were cases of fishermen being drowned and trawlers capsized at the height of the this year's bounteous monsoon.

Things have changed...of course, it rained like it used to do long, long ago. The paddy crop seems to be quite satisfactory this year. With this month Goans--whether Hindu or Christian--take off with their umpteen feasts...the monsoon saints, the Harvest feast or Novidad, Nagpanchami...national feasts like the Independence Day.

While the social calendar is choc-a-bloc with happy events, the political happenings are hardly what they should have been. The Lok Sabha elections are coming and with it will come the carnival of noise, fights and unease. But, in Goa, we seem to be getting accustomed to elections and these being the parliamentary once, we are not as excited as we happen to be during the local Assembly elections.

Joel D'Souza
goanow@goatelecom.com