Livin' La Vida Goa

Has The Sunshine State Still Got It?

- Rehana Munir

In May 2016, I was looking to escape Mumbai. A deep personal crisis warranted a relocation, and where better than Goa? It had beckoned for years with the promise of languid seaside days and gently inebriated nights. Maybe I’d even start work on that elusive novel everyone said I had in me. Best of all, I could foist myself on old friends who’d recently made the move to a lush locality about 20 minutes from Calangute. 

For generations now, 30-somethings like myself have turned to Goa, looking for relaxation, contentment and creative satisfaction. Living there, I found that Goa was not a universal panacea, but rather a shape-shifting entity that responded to the life situations and state of mind of its inhabitants.

Aditi and Deepak, both in their late 30s, had been married for eight years when they left the Mumbai grind for Goa. Two years later, both have made major career changes, formed strong new friendships and settled into a cleaner, community-based lifestyle, which involves growing their own veggies and spending rainy afternoons with friends swimming in a secret pond. “Goa,” Aditi tells me, “still is truly beautiful and green. The cost of living is low, which helped me set up my own social enterprise consultancy, Unlock Impact, after I moved here.” Their two-storey Porvorim home, built in the midcentury modern aesthetic of inviting the outdoors in, opens out onto a thicket in a valley. The rent they pay here would get them a soulless 1BHK in Mumbai’s Andheri, sagging under the weight of unplanned growth.