By Rajan Narayan

AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week on the very colorful jatra of Goa. For a Saturday following the week when Chief Minister Pramod Sawant claimed that the ten Congress MLAs defected to the BJP because of his personality. For a Saturday following the week when super senior citizens become the target of the banking sector. For a Saturday following the week when we discovered that the majority of premium restaurants in Goa have been started by non-Goans. For a Saturday following the week when an ongoing controversy was sparked by SN Subrahmanyan, chairman and managing director of India’s leading engineering company Larsen & Toubro Infotech.
AND a few stray thoughts on the very colourful jatra of Goa. Traditionally, January is the month of jatra in Goa. Starting with the jatras at the Shantadurga Kunkallikarin at Fatorpa. The Shantadurga jatra at Fatorpa is unique in that the Catholic converts of Cuncolim have a priority in the right of worship at the Fatorpa Shantadurga temple.
Originally the Shantadurga temple was located at Cuncolim. Some of the originally 12 villages in Cuncolim began to convert to Christianity. Even after conversion, they continued to maintain their ties with the family deity. The Catholic families of Cuncolim participate in the umbrella procession which is called “Sotreo.”
The other Shantadurga temple is located at Kavlem in Ponda district. It was originally from Cavelossim in Mormugoa and was relocated to Kavlem when the Portuguese occupied the Mormugoa taluka. The Kavlem math is considered the original temple of the Shaivites. Whereas the Shantadurga temple at Fatorpa is open to all faiths. The Kavlem Shantadurga only permits Gaud Saraswat Brahmins to participate in rituals. The highlight of the festival is the Rathotsav procession on the final day when a decorated temple charity with huge wooden wheels, carrying the deity, is pulled around the temple by the Mahajans of the temple.
The Mangueshi temple located at Priol is originally from Cortalim. It was shifted to Priol in north Goa to avoid harassment by the Portuguese in 1560. The Sonde rajas of Sawantwadi provided the land for the construction of the Mangueshi temple. The temple is consecrated to Lord Shiva as Mangueshi or “Lord of the Mountain.” Mangueshi temple and village are known to be a center of devotional music. Never mind that the music was provided by the “kalvan” — women musicians and dancers dedicated to temple deities.
In practice, the temple troupe of musicians also may be attached to rich bhatkar or landlords of the area and the women may be mistresses to some of them. The temple troupe of musicians and dancing families performed musical sessions for the temple deity and for the mahajan and worshippers. For example, take the Mangeshkar sisters whose family hailed from Manugeshi. The Mahalsa Mardol temple with its 40-foot high copper lamp tower was originally located at Verna. It was relocated to Mardol in the 17th century. The “deepastambh” holding 650 oil lamps across 21 ornate tiers is the magnificent feature of the Mahalsa temple.
There are also jatra in a tradition unique to Goa and to specific communities. There is the Lairai jatra of Shirgao when the Dhond community walks across a bed of burning coals to prove their devotion. They of course have to go through intense fasting and preparation before they do this ritual walking on live coals. The miracle is that those who walk on them barely suffer from burns – therefore, a miraculous walk to earn divine blessings.
Then there is a Bodgeshwar jatra in Mapusa. The festival centers around the giant Bodgeshwar tree. There is the Kelyanchi jatra in Calangute where the whole temple is decorated with bananas. Among the most colorful jatra are the Zambolim Gulal jatra. This is the Goan version of the Holi festival with all the pilgrims anointing and rubbing gulal at each other and much of it flies in the air turning it into pink clouds.
Panaji of course has its own jatra centred around the Maruthi temple at the top of the hill at Mala. There is a steep staircase going up to the temple from Mala. I recall walking along with the palki through the narrow streets of Mala to the sound of loud music and roads lined with traditional stalls. What is common to a church fest and Hindu jatras are the sweets like “kadio badio” (khaje] crunchies along with freshly roasted groundnuts, gram and green peas.

TEN DEFECTORS
AND a few stray thoughts on the claim of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant that the 10 Congress MLAs defected to the BJP because of his personality. We do not know what aspect of his personality attracted the Congress MLAs. The reality is that the 10 Congress MLAs defected to the BJP as they decided that the Congress in Goa would never return to power. The 10 defectors of 2022 are Michael Lobo, Delilah Lobo, Digambar Kamat, Rajesh Phaldesai, Kedar Naik, Sankalp Amonkar, Aleixo Sequeira and Rudolph Fernandes.
Congress MLAs and politicians in general cannot live without power. If they cannot make money they are like fish out of water. I understand that it was Babush Monserrate who negotiated the deal with Home Minister Amit Shah for the 10 Congress MLAs to join the BJP. Not surprisingly Monserrate has been the biggest beneficiary of the switch over to the BJP. Babush was appointed minister for revenue which gave him total control over the collector’s office in south and north Goa. He also managed to take over the Panaji and Taleigao PDA besides control of the Corporation of the City of Panaji. It was a fantastic coup for the BJP in which it managed to allegedly bribe two the big former Congress chief ministers, namely Pratapsingh Raoji Rane and Digambar Kamat to switch sides.
Except for Babush the only other defector rewarded with a kodel is Alexio Sequeira, minister for law and environmental. Alexio however has been served notice that he may be dropped for not ensuring the votes of his constituents, in the parliamentary election for the BJP candidate of south Goa Pallavi Dempo.
MLAs get re-elected only if they do the work of their voters. It is not possible to fix jobs or get conversions or provide donations to voters if they are in the Opposition. For the BJP it is a win-win situation because the bribes allegedly paid to defecting MLAs are funded by leading industrialists. It is now confirmed that Gautam Adani was responsible for splitting the Shiv Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra.

TARGET SENIORS
AND a few stray thoughts on how super senior citizens are becoming the target of the banking sector. The IDBI and the Bank of Baroda had taken the lead in increasing the fixed deposit rate for super senior citizens.
The expression refers to senior citizens above the age of 80. The banks have been seeing a huge drop in deposits. This is because fixed deposits had failed to be an attractive source of investment. The interest rate on fixed deposits is from 15% at the peak to less than 7% at present.
Desperate to attract deposits the public sector banks are now offering 8.05% for fixed deposits by people over 80 years of age for 555-day tenure. The interest rate is 8% for 444 days. The scheme comes into effect on January 13, 2025. The Bank of Baroda has come out with the liquid FD scheme so that the customer can withdraw in units of Rs1,000 on an initial deposit of Rs5,000. Retail deposits are defined as deposits below Rs3 crore.

PREMIUM RESTAURANTS
AND a few stray thoughts on our discovery that the majority of the premium restaurants in Goa have been started by non-Goans. It would appear that the most successful national restaurant chain is Thalassa with claims of being a Greek cuisine restaurant. It has branches in Siolim, Morjim, Vagator and the Mopa airport. Its specialty is traditional Greek starters and salads. The Times of India has learned the art of securing advertising revenue from all the high-flying restaurants in Goa. The strategy is simple. Every year The Times of India has the food and nightlife award function. The restaurants listed in its supplement on January 14, 2025 are all extremely expensive high-end restaurants. Amongst these are Prime Rose in Sangolda, the Aur Jalsa which is part of the Rio Resort, Las Olas which is the nightclub attached to the Bollywood Beach resort and even a restaurant called Angry Sardar in Anjuna.
The restaurants in five-star hotels like Miri, Oliveto, and Riverside at the St Regis Goa Resort are also constantly being marketed. St Regis is a Marriott group hotel which is taken over by the old Leela hotel at Cavelossim. Not surprisingly none of the popular middle-class hotels like Copperleaf find any mention in the high profile list of fancy restaurants Goa.

LARSEN & TOUBRO
AND a last stray thought on the ongoing controversy sparked by SN Subrahmanyan, chairman and managing director of leading engineering company Larsen & Toubro Infotech. L&T was started by the two German engineers, Larsen and Toubro. It is now an Indian company that has a presence not only in engineering but also in information technology and construction. The chairman of L&T is being heard in a leaked video expressing his desire to make his 55,000 employees work even on Sunday. Earlier the founder chairman of Infosys Narayan Murthy had shocked everyone in the country by suggesting a 70-day week as against the traditional 48-day week or eight hours a day for employees.
SN Subrahmanyan has gone one step further and suggested that employees should work 90 days a week, including Sunday. His argument is that you cannot spend the whole of Sunday staring at your wife. Clearly, Subrahmanyan is unhappily married and has no communication with his wife. Perhaps those who do not stare at their wife prefer to stare at their girlfriends or neighbour’s wife and daughters.
Subrahmanyan is rewarded very handsomely for working 920 days or more in a week. His annual salary is reported to be Rs55 crore. The highest annual salary among CEOs is drawn by the chairman of the Tata group, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who gets a salary of Rs350 crore a year.
None of the employees in L&T and TCS get even Rs10 crore a year. The majority of the workforce probably gets less than Rs1 crore a year. Top executives get incentives for working long hours. Employees do not get any significant extra money for selling their lives to the company.
In Western countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, they have switched to a five-day week. They work very hard for five days and relax very hard over during weekends. In Germany which has very hard-working employees, they are adopting a four-day week.
All the top executives like Narayan Murthy and SN Subrahmanyan should learn from Goans how to strike the right balance between life and work. Even the top industrialists in Goa do not work beyond 6 pm and on holidays because they work to enjoy life. Goa is probably one of the few places in the country where even the shopkeepers shut down in the afternoon for a well-earned siesta. The only business which is open between 1 pm and 4 pm are the bars.