Goapocalypse

THE mortal remains of an arterial road skims my home on its way to downtown Anjuna, once a quiet beach village 'discovered' by the hippies, explored by backpackers, only to be jackbooted by mass tourism and finally consumed by real estate sharks.

- 

You could call it a road until more than a year ago, before it was indiscriminately dug up for widening in anticipation of a new wave of luxury villas and gated communities springing up in downtown Anjuna and the neo-elite-infected village of Assagao alongside. And there are aplenty coming up. One rarely builds a home now. One only invests in villas.

Each vehicle that passes lifts a plume of dust that takes minutes to settle. But in tourism-plagued coastal villages in Goa, where time was once rumoured to come to a standstill, nothing really settles now.

At night especially, the dust makes everything disappear; sometimes even the darkness.

Like it is in 2025, everything is on sale in Goa by 2075. Only there is no one left to raise an eyebrow 50 years hence.