Running Naked and Unmasked in Goa: Pleasure in the Pandemic

Authors

R. Benedito Ferrão, William & MaryFollow

Document Type

Article

Department/Program

English

Department

Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies

Journal Title

eTropic

Pub Date

4-2021

Volume

20

Issue

1

First Page

134

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

In November 2020, Indian celebrity Milind Soman posted a picture of himself on social media, which showed him running naked on a beach. He was charged with obscenity. This article considers the time and place of Soman’s act over the alleged impropriety. The photograph was taken on a beach in Goa, the tropical setting serving as a pleasure periphery to India which annexed the region in 1961. Accordingly, a longer history of states of undress in Indian advertising, filmmaking, and tourism are considered here to apprehend how Goa has been posited in the Indian imagination as a destination for wanton self-gratification while local realities are undermined. The article thus interrogates what it means for Goa, whose economy is overly dependent on tourism, to serve as a vacation spot during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when, in 2020, it had among the highest number of virus-related deaths in the country (Dias, 2020, par. 4). Using the metaphor of the celebrity who has no qualms about running naked and unmasked in Goa, this article enquires into what such events leave unrevealed in the economic requirement that some locales function as holiday destinations, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Recommended Citation

Ferrão, R. Benedito, Running Naked and Unmasked in Goa: Pleasure in the Pandemic (2021). eTropic, 20(1), 134-156.
https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3789

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3789