Slow and steady was the snare but few read through it because sunburns never harm badly or the pain does not last for long. After being welcomed in Vagator ten years back, the intent of the organisers of Sunburn to brush aside the needs of the locals is slowly turning clear.
The first thing Sunburn did when it decided to come to Vagator in 2013 was to book, at exorbitant prices, all rooms rented out by locals to foreigners. By doing so they learnt just how gullible the people were.
Prior to Sunburn, most homestays in Vagator and Anjuna were booked by foreigners who, after celebrating Christmas and New Year, would travel to Gokarna before returning and ultimately flying back.
The organisers of the festival, according to local folklore, paid exorbitant tariff, in advance, for all the rooms available thus leaving the foreigners with no other alternative but to find rooms in Gokarna and move down south. This was the first elbow nudge, few felt it.
In the next year, the organisers booked a ground, built tents and sold them out to party revelers in the hope of creating the spirit of the festival. In the end, they must have realised that aping is not the best sequence to success and the concept was stopped.
Through the remaining years, bookings were stopped and the locals were left to fend for themselves and with online booking becoming a norm, occupancy was not bad but the cake was served without cream as most foreigners had begun to move to other places.
Simultaneously, travelling to Goa or rather flying to Goa in December is normally expensive but flying to Goa around the Sunburn dates is exorbitant as flight prices are known to soar to Rs 50,000 one way or even climb higher.
Christmas is a time in Goa where families like to come together. It is family time that is now becoming unaffordable to many who would return to Goa, because of the skyrocketing prices and even unavailability of tickets.
When the lollipop of high prices for rooms was offered, all in the village fell for it. Now, that families cannot get together during the festive season because of the cost of travelling, they are beginning to look back and retrace the first mistaken steps.
The third seen evil is the chaos on the roads. As it is, roads in residential areas are narrow. But, with thousands descending to celebrate and a majority of them being inebriated, it is not just chaos but the probability of meeting with an accident, that sets off an alarm when the occasion is supposed to be joyous.
So, all roads end up as one ways and all shops on the roads run by the locals end up as mere bystanders with business dwindling, when it should have been soaring – they start looking for paise, when they should have been counting rupees.
What started as a two-day festival in Candolim became a three-day festival in Vagator and is now slated to be a four-day festival that will culminate on the last day of the year. What a bummer!
So, all roads end up as one ways and all shops on the roads run by the locals end up as mere bystanders with business dwindling, when it should have been soaring.
Tickets for all four days are being sold and yet people in the government are purring that the festival will not be held on December 31 because the locals are opposed.
People have been opposed to many things, and especially to the manner in which the organisers have been bribing, instead of just paying what is expected from them, even when what is expected is less than what organisers are paying through bribes.
And the show goes on and will go on this year too but, as usual, with a few hurdles as the Comunidade of Anjuna, winged by the High Court of Bombay at Goa, is not ready to be made monkeys of.
No organiser of any mega event would announce dates and start selling tickets without the approval of the government – and the same rule applies to Sunburn. It’s just that they have to find a way out of the shame and that they have already started doing so with tacit lies.
After establishing December 31 as another day of the sunburn calendar, the organisers, sometime not too far away, will sell Sunburn. Sorry, not sell brand Goa, because by then goodness will only be visible in the minority or perhaps gone completely.