The truth hurts. And, when it hurts, it is best to remain silent. So, is silence golden or is it the ancient language of defeat? Whatever one may deduce, gag orders always burst the silence, and the truth follows.
Since a part of the media has been told to lie low, the truth has been told to remain silent. The question that floats silently now is: will hiding the truth enable lies to surface and survive?
The simple truth is that Goa has, for many years, allowed festivals to float within its entertainment itinerary because many thought that the tourism industry would appear healthier with the few extra earnings.
So, for many years the people who used to come to spend Christmas and New Year here, almost as a tradition, stopped coming because the shift did not suit them, and in years, it started itching the locals, too.
The simple truth is that Goa has, for many years, allowed festivals to float within its entertainment itinerary because many thought that the tourism industry would appear healthier with the few extra earnings.
The Christmas season is the time of the year when families meet, lunches and dinners are held and neighbours celebrate a bond. In the past, this was a time of the year when families had fun together as their business tills kept jingling all along.
Festivals are bad if they rob the locals of their locality and peace, and this probably is the reason that led to the itch against festivals that were initially accepted wholeheartedly.
The locality question in one particular instance has been the land belonging to the Comunidade of the village in which the festival was held.
The Comunidade has its own system of governance, where corruption or bribery find no part, and since the organisers of the festival could not soak in something as simple as this, therein lay the crux of the problem.
Comunidade mathematics is, and always was, very simple – pay the price that will be shared equally by all. Instead, the festival went for a freefall where a few were made happy, leaving the majority unhappy.
The Comunidade has its own system of governance, where corruption or bribery find no part, and since the organisers of the festival could not soak in something as simple as this, therein lay the crux of the problem.
Unfortunately, as the festival grew older, so did its ego – and wrongly too, because as is evident, gags cannot turn goats into geese. Feed the goat the right grass and it will grow strong and healthy.
After the news of the gag spread, it reached Google and a friend shared an interesting fact: “A High Court’s jurisdiction is limited to the State(s) it serves. However, the Supreme Court can order the transfer of a case from one High Court to another or from one civil court to another in different states. A High Court’s decisions are binding on subordinate courts, authorities, and tribunals within its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court has observed that a High Court may pass an order that affects employees of the State within its jurisdiction, but not an order that has pan-India repercussions.”
The Bombay High Court has a bench in Goa, and with that, let us resume our gag story.
The weak, it is believed, tend to gag the strong or the weakest because the act of gagging is not one of the survival of the fittest or for that matter, the wisest. Sometimes, hunger or greed is a self-induced gag.
The locality question in one particular instance has been the land belonging to the Comunidade of the village in which the festival was held.
The year 2024 is set to come to an end soon, or rather the festival season or the New Year season is set to start soon, and this particular festival seems to be floating in a bubble of uncertainty.
The hilarious side of it all is that, at one end of the gag are the people that the government is supposed to be the custodian of, and on the other hand, is the festival that decides to which beat the government needs to dance.
And, both ends are kept together with the belief that ‘the show must go on’.