Canacona

Canacona was for centuries a frontier district, lying between Goa and the Kannada-speaking country to the south, ruled at different times from Vijayanagara and by the Soonda chiefs, whose lands passed to the Portuguese in the 1760s as they sought protection from Haidar Ali of Mysore. Because it came under Lisbon so late — as part of the Novas Conquistas, the New Conquests — Canacona escaped the forced conversions and the destruction of temples that transformed the older Portuguese territories nearer Panaji. Its Hindu temples and village institutions survived, and Catholic and Hindu communities live side by side in the same villages today.

The economy was farming, fishing and forest produce: rice in the valleys, coconuts and cashews on the slopes, and fish from the bays. The Portuguese presence was light, and the district remained remote, reached along poor roads through the Ghats. Goa was taken into India in 1961, and Canacona became a taluka of the new union territory, later of the state created in 1987.

Tourism arrived late. Through the 1970s and 1980s the visitors who reached Palolem were few, camping or renting rooms in village houses, while north Goa took the package trade. Wooden huts on the sand and a road improved along the coast changed that from the 1990s, and Palolem, Patnem and Agonda became the centre of a seasonal industry that is built up each October and taken down before the monsoon. The Konkan Railway, opened along this coast in the 1990s, made the district far easier to reach, and building rules, turtle protection and pressure on water and waste have been argued over ever since.

The rhythm of Canacona is village rhythm. Each settlement has its temple or church, its feast day and its association of households, and the comunidade system of communal village landholding, a Portuguese-era formalisation of older practice, still shapes who owns what. Konkani is spoken everywhere, and many families have members working in Mumbai, the Gulf or on ships, returning for the festivals.

The Hindu calendar brings Shigmo in spring, with drums, folk dances and processions, and Chovoth — Ganesh Chaturthi — in the monsoon, when families make decorated canopies and clay idols at home. Catholic villages keep their patronal feasts with mass, processions and food, and the pre-Lenten Carnival is celebrated across Goa. Mando and dulpod songs, brass bands at weddings and the Portuguese-influenced strain in Goan music are part of the inheritance here as elsewhere in the state.

Visitors have altered the beaches without much changing the villages behind them. Yoga and meditation courses, long-stay winter residents and a small foreign community have been part of Patnem and Agonda for years, and the season brings workers from Karnataka, Nepal and northern India to run the shacks and huts. Residents draw a clear line between the beach and the village: dress, noise and behaviour that pass on the sand are not welcome inland, and the point is made politely but firmly.

Canacona is a thinly populated taluka, its people spread among villages such as Agonda, Poinguinim, Loliem and Cotigao, with Chaudi, the census town of about 12,400 residents in 2011, the only place resembling a town. Fishing, farming and government employment sustain families through the year, and tourism provides intense work for about six months and almost none in the monsoon. Cashew, coconut and areca smallholdings and paddy fields fill the valleys, and the forest of the Ghats rises immediately behind.

Days begin with the fish landings and the morning market in Chaudi, where buyers come from the surrounding villages. Children travel to schools in Chaudi and Margao, and many young people leave for work in Panaji, Mumbai or abroad, sending money home. The season reverses the pattern from November, when huts are built on the sand, shacks license their pitches, and the beach villages fill with staff from outside Goa.

The issues here are the ones that come with seasonal tourism: waste and sewage, water supply in the dry months, building close to the shore, and the pressure on beaches protected for nesting turtles. Sand mining, plastic and noise rules are debated at village level, and enforcement varies. For most of the year, once the huts are down and the rain begins, the district is quiet, green and largely empty of visitors.

The Goan meal in Canacona is fish curry rice: par-boiled red rice with a curry of grated coconut, red chilli, tamarind or kokum and turmeric, cooked with mackerel, kingfish or prawns, plus a piece of fried fish crusted in rava semolina. Rechad masala, a red paste of chilli and vinegar, is stuffed into whole fish before frying. Clams cooked with coconut, known as tisryo, and dried fish in the monsoon are village staples.

Catholic kitchens add the Portuguese-influenced dishes: pork vindaloo, sharp with vinegar and garlic; sorpotel of pork and liver, which is matured before serving; chicken or beef xacuti with roasted coconut and spices; and chouriço, the local spiced sausage, eaten with pao, the soft bread brought round by the poder, the village baker, on a bicycle. Hindu Goan cooking runs to vegetable and lentil dishes tempered with coconut, khatkhate stew at festivals, and sannas, steamed rice cakes leavened with toddy.

Sweets are simple and coconut-heavy: bebinca, a layered coconut and egg cake baked one layer at a time; dodol of jaggery and coconut; and cashew sweets from the local crop. Drinks mean tender coconut water, sol kadhi of coconut milk and kokum, and feni, distilled from cashew fruit in spring or from coconut sap, with the milder urrak available only during the cashew season. The beach shacks cook for visitors — grilled fish, tandoori dishes, pancakes and pasta alongside Goan plates — while the food in Chaudi and the villages stays closer to home cooking.