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WHEN IS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH? And here’s your chance to vote in a new CCP… If you’re interested!
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WHEN IS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH? And here’s your chance to vote in a new CCP… If you’re interested!

Feb 28-Mar 06, 2026, Life & Living, ON MY OWN February 27, 2026 , by

SINCE I live in Goa in so called smart city capital, still more like lovely town of old going to terrible seed…I guess I do care. No matter how much I want to pretend I don’t care and one of these days I’m going away, etcetera. Also, in the media one has to be extra caring, especially if you’re affected by the changing face of media, print, electronic and digital. From what I can nobody gives a damn for media people, especially those who try not to stay alive fed on government carrots (or so to speak). Life is like that only, takes away more than it gives you by way of manna for the mind and body, heart and soul.
 We forget the cardinal rule of media or the 4th Estate and that is it may never sleep with the government of the day, past, present or future…but on principle be anti-establishment always. At least that’s what one male senior editor tries to drill into my light-headed mind time and time again, “This is black and white, black and white, don’t drag me into your grey zones of lies and half-lies…” Etcetera. He’s the last of his tribe and I snap back at times, torn between retaining my sanity, sense of humor and in the midst of making ends meet with ground level realities staring me in the face.
To move on, it’s been a more than usually interesting, even entertaining week, exciting even, with the Goan Revolutionary party’s MLA Viresh Borkar (youngest MLA in the Goa assembly at 32 years) taking it into his head that it’s time to take on the government heads on. After being cruelly dragged by Panjim police down the stony stairway of the Town & Country Planning Department at Patto on Saturday, Feb 21 – reference the devastating land conversions courtesy Section 29A of Goa’s much used and abused TCP Act), he decided to take a leaf out of Justice Ferdino Rebello’s advice and take to a declared fast unto death if need be…to protest along with a whole lot of other niz Goenkar, including villagers who don’t want their villages turning into vertical high rise slums a la Mumbai. So there were young, not so young, men, women, children, extended family and friends — at the historic place to protest against government sins of omission and commission, the Azad maidan of course, down town Panjim, where the freedom fighter’s memorial has witnessed many historical battles in the past.
It was an eye-opening six going on seven days of fasting on water alone, before the two fasting men and mentors decided to take Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s personal visit on Wednesday day 5, seriously. The CM came with assurances of looking into the whole matter and appealed to them to stop their fast (reminiscent and not reminiscent of the late “father of the nation” Mahatma Gandhi).Well, they broke their fast Thursday evening, taking the CM, secretary Ankit and others in the corridors of power, profit and control, at their word and an official letter.
One may always give up a battle or two to live for another day to win the war in hopefully less painful ways.TCP minister Vishwajit Rane has come in for some bitter reviling in song after song the women sang their lungs out for (“Foo bai foo, fugadi foo…” Marathi traditional song I think) but that’s nothing new now as we have seen for some time. I won’t say anything more here except that TCP minister can do with some growing up vis-à-vis his imperial manners (see how he talks to media people, worse than Donald Trump, it’s not like all Goa is his fiefdom even if he thinks his home constituency Sattari is, he started it all by saying he can conjure up 45,000 people from Sattari to protect him against all confrontations of the violent kind!


A pity he just didn’t do the right thing which at least Chief Minister Pramod had the grace to do. Never mind that both of them are on the war path for chief ministership of Goa, imagine Vishwajit as the chief minister! It will be the last cut for Goankers or so to speak…the man’s insane. So much ire about what protestors may do and may not do is filling up video after video coverage so that one may get a ringside understanding of the entire and I will say gutsy protest given its context.
When aam aadmi driven to the wall what do you expect – they will take to the streets for a confrontation with those in power and it is no joking matter; mercifully nowadays not many say off with his or pulls a trigger at anyone’s head on a whim – not yet in India anyway. It is happening with mindboggling speed say in the US of A (witness the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein evil shenanigans unrolling and which we lap up on social media). Out in the west they have a more tough-skinned media I dare say, equally balanced or tilted real crooked sometimes…
But in Goa I will say MLA Viresh Borkar’s protest is an important, more than timely protest, for hey this is future scenarios unrolling in Goa which mercifully to date is still more or less a livable happy paradise …and perhaps that’s why its politicians want to sell it in mindless bits and pieces in secretive and yes, illegal ways and then brazen it out to see who can touch them! No kings in Goa or India, please.
TO MOVE ON here I had this educative morning out at the Office of the Deputy Collector & Sub-Divisional Officer down town Panjim. February 23 was the last day for candidates to file their nomination papers for the forthcoming municipal or CCP elections in March and my dear friend Neena Naik called me something midnight to say, “I want you to come and sign as witness for one of our Ami Panjekar candidates, she Uma Volvoikar, she is competing from your Ward No2 against Caroline Po, you will like Uma, will you come? WhatsApp your Aadhar or election card picture to me and I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning 10am, be ready, we have to go to the deputy collector’s office…” What fun, I said, although the hubby had other things to say!
Funny, or not funny. But there I was in more or less a mofussil grim atmosphere with government folk seated at a row of tables marking all the 30 wards of CCP, grimly scrutinizing every one of the initial 80-strong candidates’ nomination forms, which the sub-registrar would have to sign finally. It was a dull affair with small talk limited to hello, sign here, this information is not here, where is the picture, from is not complete, etcetera.
Why aren’t the name tags of all the government staff on duty not on their tables, I enquired with former mayor Surendra Furtado (he’s contesting, not wife Ruth however) who was there along with all the Ami Panjekar candidates, but his response, “Tara, don’t ask me all that! I don’t want to make any enemies here!” Well.
So I said hello to familiar and not so familiar candidates for the forthcoming CCP elections, signed where I was required to sign for Uma Volvoikar who’s campaigning in Ward 2 where I reside…and mercifully, since they are using the old roll-call names, my name is still there, I’ve shifted home a dozen odd times in 25 years but I’ve always voted, yes, also at one time for Babush Monserrate and family.
But the idea this time is to make a clean sweep of the Monserrate family of father, wife Jennifer and son Rohit who is the sitting mayor. The late chief minister Manohar Parrikar’s eldest son Utpal Parrikar is throwing in his hat again, lost last time but I hope he makes it this time with no foul play (which is inevitable for in Goa voting patterns require small vote banks and while the migrant settlers are happy with Babush Monseratte’s gifts, the middle-class niz Goenkar will make a noise if their names are not there on the voting list and complaint galore, but won’t condescend to step out and vote for the more honest or less diabolical candidate! Something like that, Neena, whose with this elections for years educates me further. (Sigh) You think I don’t know that increasingly in this trampled over democratic system the people on the street are increasingly fighting a losing battle and forced to vote between the lesser and greater evil? One of this days I tell myself we’ll be choosing happily between lesser and greater good for a better Goa, India and world!
 On that note enjoy my pics here and it’s avjo here because I’m a Guju, and selamat datang, poite verem, au revoir, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now. Come March 11, 2026…please go out and cast your vote to make a difference and don’t let anybody talk you out of it! If nothing changes for the better it only means democracy is dead and autocracy or a homegrown imperialism of the foreign colonial kind rules us, to turn us into unhappy slaves….no? Remember that line from some film song, “Marne se pehle jeena sikhle.” The film is ‘Munna Bhai MBBS’.

— By Tara Narayan

UTPAL PARRIKAR: Panjim deserves thoughtful and accountable governance…

WHO will I vote for this municipal election? This time I am putting my evergreen faith in the hands of Utpal Parrikar’s panel, namely Uma Volvoikar of St Inez, who’s competing for votes with Caroline Po. Caroline Po has been around for donkey’s years and now it’s time for a change to see what happens in Ward No2. The motherly Uma Volvoikar, 61 years, asked me what my “farmaish” for Ward 2 is and promptly said, all the wells in this ward must cleaned up and restored, ditto for the old Caranzalen children’s playground which needs a new lease of life, along with other playgrounds, and yes, can you please get the pavements cleared of encroachments, repaired properly to be safer and more public-friendly? Uma said, if she wins she will see to all that. But first, will I go campaigning with her for votes from home to home in Ward 2? The ward has 1,111 something voters and she wants at least half the votes to win…I told her I would love to go campaigning for her just for writing about the experience, but will think about it!

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