Sonia Faleiro

“I was four when my father, Martinho, my younger brother Bernardo and I took the boat from Lisbon, where we had buried my mother Irene. It was the end of World War II. We took the Vasco da Gama route, because the Suez Canal was blocked. It took us a month, and I remember watching the sea through a porthole, and stopping in South Africa on the way to our new home. At the time, in the village of Raia, where we were to live, there were no young people. Only children and the elderly, because there was no employment. Of course, it was peaceful. The peace of the grave. ”

My father’s recollection dates to the year 1944, when Goa was a Portuguese colony. Separate from British India and subsequently independent India, it was liberated, or conquered, depending on where your loyalties lie, by the Indian army only in 1961. On the eve of the invasion, when it was known that Indian troops were approaching, many Goan families, terrified by what the future might hold, packed their gold and jewellery, fled their land and ancestral homes and secured anxious passage on a ship docked at the Panjim harbour. They were escaping to Lisbon.

After Alfonso de Albuquerque’s conquest of Goa in 1510, Goa developed, and became beloved for a profound Portuguese ethos. One imagines that upon their involuntary departure, the Portuguese felt like proud parents whose child has faithfully followed in their footsteps. But while tourists may not see past the charm of Fontainhas’ cobbled pathways, the elderly violinist plucking strings under a plump mango tree and the children kicking a wheezing football on a muddy ground understand that the calm camouflages a contentious history. Violent and traumatic, but also vibrant and progressive. The worst crime of colonialism, the imposition of a foreign culture, is now Goa’s potent attraction, making it the most beguiling of India’s states.

The post-Liberation children of Goa, like myself, have now reached adulthood. We grew up in a Portuguese influenced state, predominantly in Hindu or Catholic families. Of course, most Catholic families in Goa were once Hindu, and therefore our history despite the superficial differences in language, or food, is very much a shared one. The dynamics between the upper caste Goans, who were favoured for their formerly Brahmin status, and the lower caste Goans, as well as between the Catholics and the Hindus, the latter of whom were riddled with the complexities of their own caste divisions, further complicated this relationship.

So who are we, this new generation of Goans? At what altar do we stand, praying to which God, to the music of whose hymns? We turn to the older generation for answers. Aunts who stayed behind, uncles who returned, grandparents with memories of steamers setting sail from Goa to Lisbon, Angola, Mozambique, Kenya. We urge our elders to relive their memories, lay open the picture books of their souls. For by understanding their lives, we hope to understand our own.

One of my first meetings to this end took me to the village of Loutolim in South Goa where two well known faces of upper caste Catholic Goa, who also happen to be my cousins, live.

Opposite fields the green of key lime pie is a house as tall as it is wide, a place where a child may lose herself forever. Inside, Georgina Figuereido, an octogenarian in silk and pearls, and her septuagenarian sister Maria Lourdes, her bright brown hair a halo around her head, live in majesty. China from China, lace from Lisbon, furniture from Macau, 18th century blue and white porcelain from the East India Company, memorabilia from those other famous Portuguese colonies Angola and Mozambique. Memories over four hundred years old. Ask Maria Lourdes for a vestige of Portugal in Goa, and she will say with dignity, “You’re looking at one.” The house is all mirrors, shadows and carved wood. Doors and windows that open to vistas further than the eye wishes to see. But see it must, for history tells the truth of the present.

I haven’t seen the sisters in years. In that time they’ve converted a part of their house into The Old Heritage Inn, into which stream European visitors every summer. Maria Lourdes serves elaborate Portuguese meals to her guests, and it was after one such lunch that the sisters found themselves unknowingly photographed for a European clothing brand, the advertisement of which was circulated widely in Indian magazines. “I was returning from a funeral,” recounts Georgina. “The man (the model in the photograph) called out to me, ‘Madam, madam, come here!’ I thought it was a souvenir. A photo of an old lady who gives tours of her house. I never knew it was for an advertisement, until I received a call on Easter Sunday from a friend who saw our photo in The Economic Times.” Maria Lourdes explains, “I had served them a typical Portuguese lunch, with all the accompaniments. Clams, stuffed fish, sausages, an omelette of onion and green chillies, and fried fish with chilli, cumin seeds and yellow saffron rubbed with baked onion and garlic. After lunch, they said: ‘The food was so delicious. And so light.’”

Food is the most tangible way the sisters keep alive their connection with their Mother Country. For when they were young, courses were plentiful, elegant, and Portuguese-influenced, with concessions made in the usage of local produce like coconuts, tamarind, and sun-dried red chillies. Bacalhau (salted cod) and birds like turkey and duck, imported wines, flacons of olive oil, and silver dessert trays inscribed with pasteis de nata (custard tarts) and dedos da dama (coconut and caramelized almond cake) were on the table, which spanned the length of the room, and was spread with hand-woven lace. There was heavy silver cutlery, and a dinner set that could serve sixty people. Altogether, it represented the prosperity of the age.

On the afternoon of my visit, in their casa de jantar that overlooks paddy fields through sweeping windows, we are being served batter-fried squid and fresh asparagus, succulently-flavoured, soupy seafood rice with prawns, lobsters, clams, and soft sweet fish, and Maria Lourdes’ feted mango pudding, thick and moist, with cups of strong black coffee. Georgina, her small face bright with animation, is discussing the Al Qaeda. Then suddenly, prompted by nostalgia, the most potent ingredient of the meal, she recalls:

“I was practising law in Bombay University during the 1950s. One afternoon, I got a call from my father. He was hosting lunch for an important minister from Portugal. He said, ‘I need pheasants, partridges, and quail for eighty people’. India was independent and it was illegal to transport livestock. What could I do? I took a chance. The birds were placed in cages, and we set off on the day’s journey to Goa by steamer. Before I left, a neighbour called the police: ‘Catch her! She’s transporting an entire zoo!’ But I made it safely across. There were liveried waiters at the lunch. Seven courses. Madeira wine with the soup, white wine with the fish, red wine with the roast turkey, and champagne for the toast. With dessert there was port wine. And we all ate together on the banquet table. We had had snacks and drinks; still, lunch lasted three hours.”

Yes, it was a time of luxury. But where there are the privileged, there will also be a class who fulfils the whims of privilege. To receive an education one had to know Portuguese, but in the initial period after the occupation, only Catholics were allowed to learn the language. Hindus who refused to convert either fled to Mangalore or Karwar in Karnataka, or across the Zuari River, away from the Velhas Coquistas or Old Conquests of Ilhas, Salcette, Mormugao and Bardez. Either way, they lost their houses, land, and any eminence they may have possessed prior to colonisation. The Portuguese, after the initial, brutal Inquisition of the 1500s and the imposition of the dreaded autos-da-fé, brutal public penance imposed upon heretics, tolerated the Hindus because they were the agriculturists. They could be seen, but had to keep their distance.

Who would know this better then Sridhar Tamba, an octogenarian lawyer who lives and works in Goa’s Capital, Panjim, and recalls with a laugh these words of his Portuguese professor: “To speak Portuguese, one has to eat pork.” Tamba’s Hindu family took flight from their village in South Goa in the middle of the night, crossing the Zuari in a canoe, carrying with them only a single religious idol. Although Hindus were allowed to build temples, they did so and worshipped in them as unobtrusively as possible. On Ganesh Chaturthi, called Chovoth in Goa, Hindus were debarred from carrying the Ganesh idol in a public procession, or immersing it in the sea. While Hindus could study at the Lyceum (higher secondary school) in Panjim during the latter stage of the occupation, at the rupee equivalent of Rs 60-70 a month, it was expensive for many Hindu families who were shut out of government almost entirely, and derived their income from agriculture and business. Even at their most liberal, the Portuguese ensured that Hindus were aware of their lower status in comparison with Catholics of all castes. The Hindu response was less dire, but strict. Hindus wouldn’t eat at a Catholic home, or mingle with them except when necessity demanded, at a public place like a bazaar. “We weren’t segregated, and neither was there enmity,” explains Tamba. “We simply had nothing to do with them, and they with us.”

He recalls:

“The Portuguese made their presence felt in out lives in many ways. They tried to eradicate Konkani. They wanted the community to follow Portuguese customs. For example, female labourers wore a sari without a blouse. But they were warned, ‘If you enter the city, you must wear a blouse.’ Initially, Hindus were debarred from wearing western clothes, but later, they were forbidden to wear a dhoti, kurta, and topi, which was the traditional dress. Everything had to be European, nothing Indian. We were allowed to either tend the fields or have a shop. Our lives were limited. After a time, my grandfather started visiting a lawyer’s house, and became acquainted with Portuguese law. He started practising it. Then my uncle, Krishna Tamba, became an assistant to a notary in Panjim. So, of course, Hindus wanted Liberation. Catholics resisted it because they were afraid of being dominated by the Hindus. And this resistance to India and Indianness continued until the mid 1970s. ”

Not all Catholics were unhappy with Liberation. At the core of the relationship many of us shared with the Portuguese, I am told, was a profound unease that despite speaking the language, or sharing a table, we were separated by their indescribable “betterness”. Then there were the nationalists, like my father, who were eager to grow with our vibrant new nation. Many less privileged Catholics, it should be recalled, sought refuge in Bombay, where a thriving Goan community in suburban Bandra was home to musicians, singers and writers.

This was where Ermelinda Cardozo, whom some aficionados of Indian cinematic history know as Sudhabala, flourished. Born on the Goan island of Divar, Cardozo was sent by her family to Bombay, where she was called Ermeline, to work as a nanny. Illiterate and impoverished, she had a passion for singing, and was discovered by a tout who “picked her up and put her in films.” Cardozo worked in over 30 silent films, and was described as India’s Clara Bow—the American star of silent cinema, and original It Girl. But her fame didn’t outlast the Silent era, and Cardozo is now best remembered for giving Prithviraj Kapoor his first break by choosing him from amidst a star struck crowd of onlookers to act opposite her in Cinema Girl (1930).

Unlike Ermelinda, the next person I visited, writer and historian Mario Cabral e Sá, continues to live on Divar, a ferry ride away from Panjim. Flat and verdant, Divar has neither sand nor beach, but is bright with paddy fields, and ponds in which men languidly dip homemade fishing rods. There is now a brittle, cold wind shivering through the jackfruit trees. When the monsoon commences, the river water will swell high above the ferry, and although the distance from the mainland to the island is but a few minutes, brace yourself, for your tongue will taste both rain and salt water.

I recall visiting Cabral e Sá’s house as a child, anxious but awed by the height of the ceilings, the ease with which one could walk through the narrow corridor until the echoes of laughter from the sala de estar faded, and the way back was forgotten. This morning, the leafy branches of the guava trees are heavy with rain. They stretch like eager fingers through the windows into the house, where its owner is working on the draft of his latest book. A golden light pours like wine through the sherbet pink glass windows. A cabinet is filled with china tea sets whose cups tinkle as the wind playfully nudges their patterned curves against each other.

Cabral e Sá’s surname, like that of all converts of the time, was a replacement for his family’s Hindu Brahmin title, Kamat, given after his family was—let us generously contend—convinced to convert to Catholicism. The Faleiros were also Kamats, and after their conversion underwent a metamorphosis I imagine was both fascinating and traumatic. As Cabral e Sá points out in his book, Legends of Goa (IBH) “Men began to wear top hats and women whalebone corsets that greatly enhanced their charm.” On the table, fish and vegetables declined in relevance to beef and pork. The signs of the time—hymns, musical instruments, Lisbon’s architectural crazes, literature and fashion, even the Fado—bluesy Portuguese folk music ironically brought to Portugal by Brazilian immigrants in the early 1800s—became as inherent to the lives of upper caste Goans as of the colonisers themselves. It was, to paraphrase Cabral e Sá, a wholly new theology, but one which merged two apparently distinct but really very similar kinds of snobbery -- that of a former Brahmin, and then that of a privileged new colonialist.

However long this fusion of East and West, native and foreign took, by the end one thing was clear. Upper caste Goans knew without a doubt that while they weren’t entirely Portuguese, they were certainly not Indian. Those less privileged, however, may not have been convinced of their Goan identity, but had seen enough to wave goodbye without regret to the last Portuguese ship setting sail from India. Naturally, much of what appears to be Goa’s inability to let go of its past, comes from what we see around us. The Portuguese knew that the more the face of Goa was systematically altered to resemble Portugal, the less likely Goans would be to feel Goan, and the easier it would be for them to accept their new culture. Churches were built where temples once stood; agriculturists’ homes in which the family slept on the floor in a single room were scorned, and while the architects and craftsmen of new homes were Goan, the blueprints were from Lisbon.

Perhaps I’m making excuses. Would Goans speak Portuguese, and crave bacalhau, and download the music of Amalia Rodrigues that most beloved of fadistas, if our landscape reverted to what it had been prior to Albuquerque? Would we not drift into a stupor of memories and desire, while listening to Rodrigues sing Uma Casa Portuguesa on an indigo night sprinkled with stars? I think we would.

“Why the nostalgia?” mulls Cabral e Sá. “I think it comes from frustration. I saw on television how young Goans were supporting Portugal in the World Cup. But these people weren’t even born at the time of Portuguese rule! It’s artificial, a way of displaying contempt for the present. I remember when we were young, few people ate bacalhau. The general sentiment among the Goans was that it stank like dirty socks. Now it’s considered a delicacy. Among the older generation this nostalgia has less to do with being Portuguese or Indian, than it does with wanting to re-live the ‘good old times.’”

The “good old times”.

As I left Divar, I thought again of the Figuereido sisters, and in particular of something Georgina had said to me about my grandmother Irene, who died in Lisbon. “Martinho told me, ‘I cried so much for Irene, so much, that I lost my sight,’” she recounted. This romantic story wasn’t entirely untrue, I knew. Grandfather had turned blind. A professor at the Lyceum in Panjim, he had spent years studying by the light of a kerosene lamp, determined to read as much as he could before the inevitable happened. I recounted this anecdote to my father the following day. He laughed. “Yes, it’s true. He did go blind. But that was 10 years after my mother died.”

It was then that I realised that the Goa I know today is like the sentimental story of the relentless tears my Grandfather shed for his beloved wife. A history of memories and myths shared, and shared again, until in their nostalgic telling, they become the truth."

Goa Unseen, Travel + Leisure South Asia, September 2006.
Photos above: SF
For a sample of photos featured in the story visit Prabuddha Dasgupta. For the entire collection so far, drop by "Myth and Memory. A Portrait of Goa" between September 16-19 at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Delhi; and at Bodhi Arts, Qatab Institutional Area, Delhi, between September 22 and October 28.