Goa, Aug. 2 -- St Estevam or Jua as her loved one's call her is a beauty transfixed in a time bubble of a glorious past. It is also a village transformed. As 500 families hold hands figuratively and literally and look at their once fallow barren fields, explode as cynosures of fertility and bounty, this story has a heartwarming conception tale. A tale told, lived and shared by the proud folks of Jua and their well-wishers.

It is perhaps one of the rare stories of not just Goa but India where villagers took to farming as a form of activism and protest. Towards the end of 2017, they learnt that there was a road being planned to benefit a housing project in this eco-sensitive riverine village, which would actually cut through many fields an...