Ourplace is fast becoming placeless and we are rapidly losing the distinctivecharacter of place. We may ask ‘What is a place?’ One can say that place iseverywhere. Actually, space becomes a place through territorialisation byhumans. Animals like dogs mark their space too. Place is not simply ageographic portion of space. Humans shape a space into a place by infusingmeaning, emotions, belonging, memories etc, into it.
Thisalso means that places do not just have materiality of space; they also havetemporality or history. An experience of a place is an embodied practice. Oneembodies some places and makes them part of one’s identity. Our home, thechurch, temple, masjid, village, city, state and country are places that livewith us and make us what we are. We have intimate relations with these places.
A placebecomes placeless when its distinctive character is defaced. This can be donephysically by erasing the natural and cultural heritage of a place. It can alsobecome placeless through the ideological totalisation of a place.
Indiais promptly becoming placeless not just because of a sustained attack on ourecological resources for industrialisation and urbanisation. It is fast losingits character as a home for plural diversity and is becoming a monolithichomogenised place in the images and likenesses emerging from the ideology ofHindutva. India is de-Indianizing before our eyes.
Placelessworld
Globalisationhas flattened the world and converted it into a village. There are costs wehave to pay as a result of its full flow. We are increasingly trapped in amonotony of life with boredom as well as loss of local culture and tradition.We may have seen totalitarian populisms irrupting across the globe.
Theplaceless condition brought about by globalisation seems to have made usintolerant to cultural otherness while in the same breath we embrace thesameness of the branded goods made available to us by the neo-liberal economy.
Theshifting geographies of computation from the desktop to the palm-top havebrought all information to our fingertips. While this is a blessing, it hasdisplaced us and increased placelessness. Today, we do not have to remember thedistinctive landmarks of a place to identify it as we can find it throughGoogle maps and other digital apps.
Suchplacelessness has taken globalisation to its logical end. Our specificgeographies have been rendered irrelevant and are kept away from our attentionand only those things that the consumer self in us needs pops up from thedigital world so that we can satisfy our consuming hunger.
Thus,the placelessness that we experience because of the communication revolutionhas become an enslavement of our attention to only a designer world where weenjoy fractured freedom as we do not have access to the other world that is notavailable on the web. A placeless self is a caged parrot that only enjoys theworld within the cage and enjoys that which is thrown at it by those who holdthe keys of the cage.
Placelessfamilies
Ourfamilies are also becoming placeless. We do not face and relate with the livingflesh and blood individuals in our families but prefer the virtual experienceof engaging the world through social media, television and other platforms. Weare increasingly insulated and isolated and, thus, already fast becomingvictims of manipulation and deception. We have become vulnerable to those whowish to use us for their political and economic interest.
Theplaceless character of our life deeply attacks our psyche and we cannot mournthe pain of trauma that has constitutive spatial and temporal character. Thisis why we are already going through aggression, depression, suicides, etc.
Beingdisincarnated from our place and lived time, we have migrated into a digitizedde-physicalised bodies provided by platforms like Facebook, Istagram and thelike. We are collectively facing the death of symbolic function of place andare in danger of becoming placeless zombies.
PlacelessGoa
Goa isnot free from this assault. Although Goa is placed as an exotic touristdestination, we are fast losing its natural God-given beauty because of ourhaphazard development.
We havealready lost a lot of our green cover. Our forests are threatened, our fieldsare disappearing and our water bodies are filled at very quick pace. Goa istruly becoming placeless today.
Developmentthat simply makes Goa a corridor for coal handling is going to darken ourecology. Our cultural and natural heritage will have to give way to a tsunamithat will wash away our place.
Ourrivers have lost their dignity of name and have become mere numbers due tonationalisation. The Mhadei has been diverted into Karnataka and our villagesand forests around it are going to face the fate of being placeless.
Placelessnessis eroding Goaness out of Goa and Goans. It is fast de-Goanizing us all.
Theresponse
We arefaced with the challenge of protecting our place from those hell-bent onimposing placelessness on us. To these power elites, Goa is a placelessresource for their economic and political interest. We will have to fight thesevultures from devouring our place.
Thechallenge to accept and respond to our placeless condition cannot be postponed.We have the challenge to resist all placeless lures of the digital world aswell as the physical destruction of our place in the interest of industry,urbanisation and technologisation.
Besides,we will have to deliberately choose time to enjoy the physicality of nature’sbeauty and learn to protect both natural and cultural heritage.
Tobegin this counter-culture, we may have to start with our families. Familieshave become placeless. We need to find quality time for every individual memberof our family. We will have to choose physical relations over their virtualpossibilities and thus wage a war against everything that is making usplaceless. The global pandemic has attacked a placeless world. It has broughtus on our knees and missionised each of us to protect embodied life.
It istime that we learn our lessons and work to protect our place from becomingplaceless. Otherwise, we shall fall victim to even more lethal virus that willtake away our freedom.
(Thewriter is professor at Rachol Seminary)
