Goa has its usual attractions, plus a variety of year-end festivals to draw in visitors.
For a quick break, Indians head for Goa. It has the basic essentials — sun, sea, sand, breeze, food and drink, other holidaymakers — but it also benefits from being in a different time zone. In Goa, it always feels like take-it-easy time. Closing in on the new year, however, Goa offers more than just these necessities to draw in visitors, from India and elsewhere.
Just short of the new year, Candolim beach in north Goa hosted three days of electronic dance music, at the by now well-known and highly regarded Sunburn Music Festival (December 27-29). The audience, according to the organisers, was 18,000-plus on site — and another 150,000 worldwide, courtesy streaming video on the Internet.
This was the third edition of the festival, at which Indian and international DJs play their music for the crowds. This year’s lineup included, among others, Paul van Dyk, BT, Albin Myers, Nadia Ali, Ferry Corsten, B.R.E.E.D, Sanjay Dutta and, most popular of all, Axwell, a Swede who plays house music. All 300 “early bird” passes, according to the organisers — Percept and former MTV VJ Nikhil Chinapa, the festival director — sold out in 22 minutes on November 5; and the 500 pre-booking passes went in 12 hours.
Last year Sunburn attracted criticism after a young woman from Delhi died reportedly of a drug overdose. Goa’s leader of the opposition told a press conference, “I’m not against celebration, but I’m not for drugs either. This party should have been closed down, seriously.” As a result, this time the Sunburn site featured CCTVs and police and security staff including drug-sniffing police dogs.
Even so, “I LOVE DIS PLACE!!!!”, commented one attendee on Facebook, at 3 am on December 31, while the festival staff were “still recovering” from three days of exertion. “I am sunburnt!!!!” wrote another. DJ Axwell was the biggest hit: “if trance is religion...axwell is god” wrote a third, before being corrected by a fourth, “Axwell didn’t play TRANCE. He played HOUSE :D”.
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In mid-December, the first Goa Arts + Literary Festival was held at International Centre Goa, in Dona Paula (December 12-14). It was a good time to make the most of Goa’s growing tribe of writers and creative personalities, some of whom are known around the world. Indeed, the festival was supported by Sahitya Akademi, Goa Writers Group, the Konkani and Marathi academies of Goa, Alliance Francaise and more, with the Goa tourism department as the principal sponsor.
Three days of discussions, live demonstrations (one session was on “hypnotism in India”), conversations, concerts (one by Heritage Jazz), art and photography shows, readings, book releases and presentations followed. It was mostly Goa-related, but still the net was cast wide. Two sessions, for instance, were on north-east India, with Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Manikuntala Bhattacharya.
At the end of November was the 41st International Film Festival of India (November 22-December 2). This time films from 50 countries were screened (Mexico, Sri Lanka, Georgia were in focus), and the highlights included retrospectives of Indian-American Mira Nair, Pole Jan Jakub Kolski, Cypriot Michael Cacoyannis (director of Zorba the Greek) and American Jan Jarmusch. Amol Palekar’s Dhoosar was premiered, and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, featuring Freida Pinto, was screened. Goutam Ghose’s Moner Manush won the Golden Peacock for best film, and the prize of Rs 40 lakh.
Alongside the film fest was the first International Heritage Jazz Festival at Kala Academy (November 28), run by the Goa-based organisation Heritage Jazz. The K 3 band from Austria played their genre-breaking jazz, and Ranajit Sengupta played jazz-influenced sarod. Also at the Academy was a “master class” by Spanish director Jaime Chavarri on the relevance of dance in cinema.
Film and literary festivals attract a passionate but quieter crowd; Sunburn drew excitable music fans. People attend for the events, but they also come because it’s Goa. Together, it’s an enviable year-end package.