GOA, India (AP) – The sun’s golden rays fall every night on Goa’s slippery sandy beaches, magical as ever, but strangely quiet and lonely. This holiday season, few visitors enjoy the celebrated sunsets in the Indian party hotspot.
The unspoken fear of the coronavirus leaves Goa’s lively beach huts and noisy bars off their lifeblood.
A Portuguese colony until 1961, this West Indian state usually comes alive in December and January, with its tourism-led economy with large foreign travelers and chartered flights bringing in hordes of holidaymakers.
Over the past decade, Goa has changed from a seasonal mecca for both hippie backpackers and wealthy vacationers to a second home destination for India’s middle class. The construction was booming, and it expressed concern about its impact on fragile environments. There was a lot of demand for apartments overlooking the sea, on the riverfront or surrounded by forests.
The pandemic and the subsequent travel restrictions changed everything, possibly forever.
Along the popular beaches in North Goa, from Candolim to Calangute to Morjim, many popular coffee shops, tattoo parlors and huts with sunbeds have permanently closed. The nightlife in popular party hubs is dead.
Seema Rajgarh (37) is a lone figure on an almost deserted Utorda beach in South Goa. Her blue sari stretched out against the Arabian Sea while hawking jewelery made of beads and stones. None of the handful of local tourists are interested in buying it.
On good days during the holidays, the mother of three girls, the youngest not yet two years old, said she earned 2,000 rupees ($ 27).
Now the times are gloomy.
“Some days I earn barely 200 rupees ($ 2.7), not enough to even buy milk and food for my children,” she said.
Rajgarh’s husband, a cook, lost his job during the nationwide lockdown set in March to curb the spread of coronavirus infections. He remains unemployed.
School fees for the children have long been in arrears. Rent is three months behind.
“This virus has ruined our lives,” Rajgarh said.
In 2019, more than 8 million tourists visited Goa, including more than 930,000 foreign tourists. About 800 charter flights arrived from Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Japan, among others, according to the State Department of Tourism.
As of August, only 1.1 million had visited, including just over 280,000 foreign tourists.
An official report on the impact of COVID-19 on Goa released in December estimates a loss of almost $ 1 billion for the tourism industry due to the exclusion in April-May. Potential job losses are expected to be between 35% and 58%. More than one-three of Goa’s 1.6 million people work in tourism.
Goa has accounted for more than 51,000 of the more than ten million reported cases of coronavirus in India, with 749 deaths. The continuing aftermath of the sudden disruption in economic activity has tempted many business owners to abandon it.
Designer Suman Bhat, whose luxury label ‘Lola by SumanB’ with his flowing draped silhouettes was popular at last summer’s home during the closing, was popular with Bollywood celebrities, whether she wanted her flagship store in the Goa capital Panjim close, or the slump in sales.
Bhat managed to retain her workers but had to give up her beloved retail space and move to a cheaper place in August.
“It was a hard farewell for me. You put so much money into the business to create a customer experience – and it’s completely taken away from you. There is no way for anyone to see, touch and feel your product anymore, ”she said.
Bhat says her workers are exhausted by the new routines of disinfection, testing and worry. With the end of the pandemic not yet in sight, the future remains uncertain.
Can my clothes be worn at night when there is no evening to go to? Is it fair to ask people to pay that kind of money when everyone is trying to save? she asked herself.
“Everyone is just exhausted. You do not know when a worker will say he has a fever. What are you doing? Turn everything off? Tell everyone to get tested, disinfect and spray everything? You are in problem-solving mode all the time, ”she said.
Months after the closure began to ease, Goa is showing signs of life. Domestic tourists increased during the year-end holidays. Casinos have reopened and visitors no longer have to show negative coronavirus test reports, unlike in most other Indian states.
But things are hardly normal again.
Yoga teacher Sharanya Narayanan struggles to make sense of what is lost.
Narayanan, 34, came from Mumbai to Goa in 2008 to perform aerial acrobatics at a club and continued to make it her home.
She taught in several places, but had to switch to virtual lessons during the closing. When wellness centers were re-admitted in August, only one of her jobs came back – her own private class.
“The pandemic has changed everyone’s lives, including mine,” she said.
‘I miss the sense of anonymity I used to enjoy in Goa. That every time I did not have the same set of people to meet, it always changed and developed so that I could recreate myself without a feeling of stagnation, ”she said. “This is the ephemeral nature of things that are so appealing to Goa.”