By Dominick Rodrigues
Panjim: The wells in Goa echoed to the sounds of splashes and crowd roars on the occasion of the famed San Joao feast, that is a popular tourist draw with people flocking in from around the country and the world.
Even as this feast is celebrated in Goa in a big way, besides abroad in the UK and Middle East, locals and tourists dressed in their festive best thronged the State’s popular venues of Siolim and Aldona along with various other sites, for three days to participate or just watch the swimmers take a leap into the deep well waters that have been fed by the continuous monsoon rains.
The feast celebrations began with bonfires being lit the previous night, where the colourfully-clad villagers danced around it singing songs and also distributed to the gathering free snacks like sannas, boiled grams and a variety of fruits like jackfruit, pineapples, papaya, pears, moira bananas and mangoes, even as the tourists encouraged the swimmers to dive numerously into the water. Some villages highlighted on-the-spot competitions to see which divers could make the biggest splash, even as the crowd too got drenched in the process.
The festive activity then changed sites from the wells to the streets as musicians led processions to their homes to continue the merriment with booming music and “dancing in the streets” the +rain dance+ amidst falling rain and a shower of waterspray from the host’s garden hose.
However, what stole the limelight was the popular venue of Siolim in North Goa, which has been featured much on the Goa Tourism’s tourist attraction calendar
This year’s event witnessed canoes colourfully-decorated with beautifully-dressed women and men vying for the gathered-tourists attention and the prizes that were being offered on the occasion.
Even as the event compere encouraged the participants to greater song-and-dance in their boats, the festive spirit was evident in the crowds which even cheered on a boatload of competing performers that had overturned with their occupants getting completely drenched in the shallow waters of the Siolim River.
While most of the villages had their own form of entertainment including competitions, Aldona village lad Nashville F. highlighted the details of a centuries-old traditional event that witnessed the playing out of a unique competition called “Kathodio” – which rivals the Mexican form of “Pinata” (pronounced pinyata) – where a participant is blindfolded and given a long bamboo stick for three attempts at smashing a coconut on the ground.
Meanwhile, the rains failed to dampen the mood of the festive revellers, who continued to sing and dance late into the night.
