Click to play videoGoa: Goa will be ruled by King Momo, a fictitious character who appears at the beginning of the Goa Carnival for the next five days.
He orders every Goan to eat, drink and make merry while the carnival is on. But the architect of Goa Carnival Parcival Noronha and also the man who resurrected the carnival in the 60s is not in a mood to enjoy.
“You need money to organise such a festival. But there has been too much commercialisation of late. The people have reacted but the government is carrying on. Politics has entered the festival nowadays. I don’t know what is happening this year. Newspapers have aptly called this Carniwar and not Carnival,” Noronha.
The Goa Carnival was celebrated in a small way during Portuguese times. But was branded a Portuguese festival and completely stopped, after Goa was liberated in 1961.
It was Noronha, then a tourism department employee, who persuaded his employers to revive the festival in a big way in 1967. His efforts made it a huge tourist attraction.
“The year 1967 was declared as tourism year internationally. That year Tourism Department collaborated very successfully with Panjim Mucipality and later on the festival was carried out very well with crackers, music and dance,” says Noronha.
However, despite all this, Goa still enjoys the festive spirit.
(With inputs from Suman Chakroborty)
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