- Vignettes from the life of a Goan
(A Novella in four parts)
continued from Part 1
Checking out and Checking her out
After the bike tube was repaired, they rode to her hotel in Panaji. Suzanne checked out, only to find that no taxi was available to take her and her baggage to Vasco. By the time the taxi could be arranged, it was clear that she would be unable to catch the train. The alternative was to try to take the bus to Hubli and then carry on by some other train from there. Or to take the next day’s train. They decided on the latter. Frank called a friend and arranged to book Suzy’s ticket. They returned to the hotel to check her in for one more night. But the hotel had already given the room to someone else and could not spare another.
Now it was up to Frank to scout for a room at some other hotel. Every decent hotel they tried was full, for the weekend was coming up and the holiday crowd was pouring into Goa, even though the Carnival was over. The only option was to move to a hotel in a location like Vasco, which was mainly a commercial town and not popular with tourists. But there was no point of driving around Vasco in a taxi with her baggage, while they looked for a room. Frank decided that he would take Suzy to Sancoale so that she could rest there, while he scouted for a decent hotel in Vasco.
As they neared his house, they smelt the invigorating smoke from the wood fire being used to cook food. Hearing Frank come in, his mother shouted, “Close the door and the windows or mosquitoes will come in.”
Frank welcomed Suzy (by now he was calling her by that name) home and gave her a drink she had never tasted before. She found it refreshing and asked him about it. He told her it was made from birinD, a fruit of the mangosteen family. It was also known as kokum and many people considered it to be Goa’s favourite fruit. It was the first time she had heard of the fruit, but not the last time she was going to drink it. She
was feeling quite warm and tied her hair into a bun so that the back
of neck was exposed to the breeze from the fan.
It turned out that she had come to see the Carnival and had planned to stay for a week after that. Frank told her that in Goa, people spelt it as Carnavale. He explained that it meant carna vale, or good bye to meat, since fasting for the month of Lent commenced just after it.
As she sipped the drink, she asked, “Do you play any musical instrument?”
He gave a big grin and replied, “I am rather fond of blowing my trumpet.”
She laughed, “I know that, but I was referring to a real musical instrument, not your attempts at self-aggrandisement.”
Self-aggrandisement was too big an English word for him. To cover his embarrassment at not understanding the word, he slipped into the adjacent room and emerged with his trumpet. He said, “I sometimes play during the intervals in the local tiatr performances at Chicalim.” He pronounced tiatr as “tee-a-Tr”.
It was her turn to be confused. She asked, “You mean theatre? Why do you pronounce it in that odd manner?”
“We call it tiatr here, spelt T, I, A, T, R. Tiatr performances are usually comedies, romances or political satires. In the intervals, there are songs played by a live band. These songs are usually comical. And these songs are accompanied by musical instruments like the violin, trumpet, saxophone, and drums. The trumpet is usually played in a funny and repetitive way.”
He played a snatch of lively notes, which made her laugh.
She said, “That’s quite entertaining, but it does not seem to have the soulfulness of a saxophone.”
“Yes,” he agreed, the first of the million ‘yes’-es that he would utter to her in their lifetime.
“Do you play the saxophone?,” she asked.
He ran into the inner room again, and fetched a saxophone this time. He explained, “I just bought it last week and am trying to learn it.”
As he placed the saxophone on the table, her tumbler of juice tumbled and rolled under the table. He got off the chair and under the table to retrieve it, only to be confronted by her who had also done exactly the same thing.
As they were face-to-face – on their knees, under the table – his mother, who was in the kitchen, came into the living room. She had heard the last line of their conversation and, seeing Suzy and him under the table, remarked, “That’s an odd place to chat. Why don’t you sit on chairs like decent people and talk?”
She added, with reference to his learning to play the saxophone, “He probably thinks playing a musical instrument will enhance his chances with the girls.”
Suzy laughed as she said, “It does – at least with this one.”
His mother gave her an inspecting look and, with a smile of approval, asked, “KoN re tee?”*
He introduced her, “Tije naanv Suzy.” – “Her name’s Suzy.” He narrated the circumstances of their meeting and her predicament at missing the train.
His mother responded, “When I was looking for a bride for you and asked you if you had any specific requirements, you said that you wanted a motorcycle-riding girl. You knew very well that there was no such girl in Goa, as I too found out when I made enquiries. It looks like, all the time, unknown to me, you were waiting for her.”
Suzy smiled, but did not raise any objection to the reasoning. She was glad to note that his mother was doing all the sales-talk on her behalf.
Suzy enquired, "Do you sing too?"
When Frank nodded, she continued, "I am going to go away tomorrow. Can you sing a farewell song for me?”
Frank
seized the opportunity to express his emotions. He got up and went to
the gramophone-player and switched it on. He selected an album from
the shelf and extracted a record from its sleeve. He put it on the turntable. When the turntable started
turning he, placed the arm carrying the stylus onto the groove in the
record.
It
started playing
Red River Valley (click here to listen to the song) and he started singing with it. She
sat on the opposite side of the table and listened attentively. When
he came to the line that went “Come and sit by my side if you love
me...”, she got up and pulled the chair close to him and gave him
a smile. He was not sure if her change of place was in response to
the words or not. He interpreted her smile as encouraging. He saw no
harm in taking comfort from presuming so, and proceeding accordingly.
When he continued singing, "Do not hasten to bid me adieu", she said, "I have to go, but I will come back soon."
Frank was thrilled and suddenly changed his tracks. He started singing a different song -
a Beatles song, "
Oh yeah, I tell you somethin', I think you'll understand, When I say that somethin', I wanna hold your hand, I wanna to hold your hand, I wanna to hold your hand". And she gave him her hand. The gramophone continued playing Red River Valley, but they were oblivious of it, as they continued to hold hands.
He wanted to know more about her and she was ready to share everything with him. The thought of booking a hotel room had slipped their mind.
That night he slept in the portico, waking up more than once to the bites and hum from a swarm of mosquitoes, while she slept in his room. Though he had disturbed sleep, he did not mind the mosquitoes, for these were Goan mosquitoes. They regularly attended tiatr, choir and bhajans in large numbers, even when the performers outnumbered the audience. They did not differentiate between the performers and the audience, as both had music in their blood. They, however, did know the difference between "B sharp" ** and "B flat". The former, BE SHARP, was essential to it for piercing the victim for its next feed, and the latter, BE FLAT meant death, by being flattened by the victim. The mosquitoes repeatedly hummed a tune that he recognised. It was Mendelssohn's Wedding March. That was surely a good omen, he felt.
* “Who is she?” = “What’s her name?”
** More commonly known as "C"
***
Wood you believe this story?
The next morning, Suzy was awakened by the “parp-parp” sound made by the bicycle horn of the poder – the baker – delivering pão to the house. Frank, seeing the surprised look on her face, explained, “This is José – he gives us our daily bread!,” making a biblical allusion.
That morning, as they sat for breakfast, eating a simple vegetable curry with the pão, she heard him say, “Mamma, meat!”.
Surprised, Suzy asked, “Yesterday you said you did not eat meat during Lent, and yet you have asked for meat?”.
His mother, bringing a small container from the kitchen, explained to her, “He asked for salt. In Konkani, salt is called meeT.”
Looking around the drawing room, she enquired, “Why have you fixed two crucifixes on the wall, one below the other?”
Frank was happy that she had asked. Many people had seen the two crucifixes but not really noticed or enquired about them. For there was a strange story linked to them, which he now recounted to her.
He used to love roaming the countryside on his bicycle before he had got his motorcycle. One day, when he was around 16, he had set off for a long ride. His aim was to ride up to Velha Goa or Old Goa, a distance of around 20 kilometres. He had gone there many times earlier too and loved to potter around in the ruins of St. Augustine’s Church.
The church, which was one of the largest in Goa, was built in the early 17th century by Augustinian friars. It used to have an imposing four-storey tower with a large bell. One vertical half of the structure had collapsed over a hundred years back and only the other vertical half remained. So, oddly, it remained four-storey structure. The bell had been moved to the Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Immaculada Conceição in Panaji.
Frank went around the ruins, climbing over moss covered walls and clambering into roofless chambers. Sitting down at one of the several gravestones in the floor of the main hall, he tried to decipher its Portuguese inscription written in Latin script. Suddenly, he saw an old monk, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. The monk asked him whether he wanted to see a real dead body. Frank jumped at the opportunity to indulge in the macabre.
The monk led him down the hill to the main entrance of the Basilica do Bom Jesus. He took Frank in through the door and, as they walked toward the altar, Frank saw a raised platform to his right. A wooden ladder was leaning against it. It looked as if some repair and carpentry work was going on. The monk then gestured to him to climb the ladder. When Frank did so, he found himself looking into a glass and silver casket which contained the body of an old monk. He also noticed that some parts of the body seemed to be missing.
Climbing down the ladder, Frank asked the old monk about the missing parts. An arm was in Rome, the monk said with a chuckle, and humorously confirmed that a humerus was in Macau. He then bent down and picked up a few pieces of wood from the scraps lying there and gave them to Frank, saying, “Here’s a puzzle for you. Make what you will out of these pieces.” Frank put the pieces in his pocket and continued looking around the grand basilica.
The old monk seemed to have disappeared. After Frank spent some time there, he returned to the main door to go out. But, it was locked. So he looked around for another way to leave. Then he noticed the side door, commonly used by the public and tourists. The door opened and a clergyman walked in. The clergyman questioned Frank, “How did you get in?" "It is not time for services yet,” he added.
Frank narrated his story of the old man leading him to through the main door. The clergyman said the main door was locked and had not been opened that day. When Frank mentioned having climbed the ladder, the clergyman insisted that there was no old monk around, that no work was going on and that there was no ladder there. He implied that Frank was lying. Standing firm on his story, Frank led him back to the casket. There was, indeed, no sign of any ladder or repair. Frank forgot to mention the pieces of wood in his pocket, which was probably what was meant to be.
Frank was ceremoniously escorted out and rode his bicycle back home. When he narrated the happenings of the day to his mother, she said that he might have fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing up. Commoners did not get such a close view of the remains of St. Francis Xavier, she said. Excitedly, he remembered the wooden pieces and fished them out of his pocket. There, he claimed, was the proof that he had not fallen asleep, laying the four pieces of wood on the table. She was then convinced about the truth of his story.
All the pieces were around 1” wide and 3/4” thick, but their lengths differed. Three pieces were exactly the same size and had a 1” notch extending to half the thickness. The fourth piece was longer and had a notch, not in the middle like the other three, but to one side. He tried putting them together. There was only one way they seemed to fit. One short one and the long one formed a cross. And the two short ones formed an X. He told his mother that the X stood for Xavier. She told him that he had been blessed by a visitation from the Saint himself. She also told him that the Saint would not have given him an X, because he would not be egoistic. She then come around the table and turned the X by 45 degrees and it formed a cross similar to the one used by the Red Cross. She said that such crosses with equal arms were common in some parts of Europe.
They had not gone public with the story, as people could claim that ordinary pieces of wood, which could have been got from any timber shop, were no proof. The same day, both the crosses had been fixed to the wall of the drawing room as a blessing on the house and had remained there ever since.
He had also made a silhouette sketch of the tower and showed it to her. She remarked, "It looks like the profile of a man wearing a crown of thorns and tiled to a tree."
***
Family Tree
Frank had never stepped out of Goa – he had never felt the need to do so. The only time he left the land of Goa was when he took his daily swim from Sancoale promontory to San Jacinto – a distance of about 2500 metres. He had a simple argument: Why would anyone wantonly leave this lush paradise?
Suzy, on the other hand, had travelled across India. Her father was an Anglo-Indian who, like many others of his community, worked in the Indian railways, as had his father before him. When working in Ooty, her father had met her mother who was teaching English in one of the schools there. They had married and, soon after, Suzy was born. Later, Suzy’s father was promoted and posted to north India. They spent a few years in a north-Indian state capital. When Suzy was studying in the sixth standard in a prestigious school there, her father was transferred to Delhi. She said she had served in the very first batch of the Road Safety Corps, an initiative to make children aware of traffic control. She claimed to have been single-handedly responsible for a terrific traffic jam while on duty at the gate of Pragati Maidan, where Asia ‘72 fair was held. Then her father fell sick and had to give up his job because it had become very strenuous. He took voluntary retirement and they relocated to Ooty, and her mother returned to teaching.
Frank’s mother had Portuguese blood in her, while his father was a descendant of a Hindu family which had converted to Christianity. He
told Suzy that the carnival festivities originated from the Intruz
festival, which was a version of Shigmo, a Hindu festival. Shigmo
is the Goan equivalent of the Holi
festival celebrated in other parts of India. Like many Goan Christians, Frank said, he too visited his ancestors’ temple. In fact, he went a step further – he joined the fisher-folk in their re-enactment of the flight of their family deity’s idol. He believed that the Saibini, the mother goddess venerated in churches as Mary and in temples as Shantadurga, was the same divinity. He recollected that his paternal grandmother had once taken him to their ancestral temple at Veling. He had memories of seeing some exquisite paintings and carvings in the main hall of the temple. Walking around during that visit, he had spotted a peepal sapling growing in the gap between two laterite blocks which formed part of the steps at the temple tank. The peepal tree, also known as the bodhi tree or sacred fig, is often present in temple courtyards. On impulse he had pulled it out of the gap and brought it home and planted it in the front yard. It had now grown into a large tree.
Frank showed her the peepal tree in their front yard and told her that it was the sapling that he had planted. He also told her that his father had built this large house, and they had moved in from the smaller house on the premises, now let out. When moving into Casa Ferrão, as the new house was named, he had innocently asked his father, “Are we going to stay in the VhoDle Ghor*?” But Frank’s grandmother had hushed him, saying, “Don’t say VhoDle Ghor! Say Novea Ghor (New House).” He had later learnt that the term VhoDle Ghor was a euphemism used by many Goans to refer to the building that had been the headquarters of the Inquisition in Goa. It had many dungeons, where unmentionable torture and atrocities took place. The victims were both Hindus, who had not converted to Christianity and converted Christians, who continued to follow their pre-conversion religious practices.
He also remembered that his grandmother had told him that after he got married, he would have to take his bride and offer a coconut. He mentioned this to Suzy, and she expressed a desire to see the temple. He would surely take her there after their marriage, he thought to himself.
Frank and Suzy also discussed the various churches around Goa. When he mentioned that the Nossa Senhora in the names of Goan churches referred to “Our Lady” in Portuguese, she said that the name of her school Notre Dame was the French version of it!
*Big House, in Konkani.
***
Sales Promotion
Mr. Roberts had a wonderful train journey from Bangalore. He had come to Bangalore by car from Ooty and had boarded the Vasco slip coach, which was attached to the train going further north. It arrived at 6 am sharp at Hubli, and then proceeded on towards Londa. At Londa, the coach was detached from the parent train, while the main train proceeded towards Belguam. Some time later, the coach was attached to a train which arrived from the north and was bound to Vasco. When the train stopped at Castle Rock for attaching a banker, he mused that Castle Rock (U.K.) made him feel he was in England. He conveniently ignored the fact that the real expansion of U.K. in this case was Uttara Kannada, the name of the district in Karnataka. Just after the train left Castle Rock, he saw it enter a castle-like façade, which was actually the entrance to one of the many tunnels on that route in the Braganza Ghats section. The hillside was lush green, as the Western Ghats always get a major portion of the north-west monsoon that hits India’s west coast every year. A little further, as the train negotiated a length of curved track across a tall bridge, he was able to take an excellent photograph of the Dudhsagar falls in all its monsoon glory. He had good vibes about the objective of the journey.
As soon as the train stopped at the first station in Goa, a few young
boys boarded the train and started shouting, “Beer, Brandy, Feni,
Whiskey!” As liquor was cheaper in Goa as compared to other parts
of India, they were able to sell a few bottles. The buyers managed to
empty some bottles before the end of the journey. Some tourists would
also leave Goa fully tanked up at the end of their visit.
He alighted on the railway platform in Vasco and studied the crowd there. Most of them were passengers in a hurry. There seemed to be very few locals who had turned up to receive guests. A few hotel touts tried to drum up business, as did some taxi drivers. There was even a young man holding a trumpet. Funny, he thought, ‘this chap must have come to receive a wedding party.’ But there seemed to be no such party in sight. He walked past the young man towards the exit of the station, when the trumpeter played a few lively notes just behind his head. Surprised, he turned around.
“Welcome to Goa, Mr. Roberts,” said the young man, sticking out his right hand. Mr. Roberts smiled... he had been right, after all – the chap had really come to receive a wedding party.
Once they reached home, the discussions were a mere formality. Mr. Roberts could not say no to his daughter and had already given his consent to the marriage. His only concern was whether the groom’s family would demand a dowry, a practice among many Indian families.
Frank’s mother did not raise the topic at all. She was quite progressive in these matters and had no intentions of making such a demand. However, just as Mr. Roberts was getting up to take leave, she gave him her most wicked smile and said, “By the way, Mr. Roberts, I totally forgot to ask you for something.”
Thinking ‘here it comes’ and concealing his chagrin, and smoothening his bristling moustache, he bravely put up a smile and prompted, “And that is...?”
On the cue, Frank’s mother said, “You should receive the groom’s party with packets of Pan Paraag,” with a huge smile plastered across her face. Pan Paraag was a betel-nut product advertised on television as a mouth-freshener and a digestive supplement.
Mr. Roberts understood that she was acting out a role played by a famous actor in the advertisement. He did not let her down. He responded – just as another actor in the advertisement did – saying, “I did not know that you too were a fan of Pan Paraag!”
She hastened to clarify that none of them party used the product and that she had always wanted to spring that line on her son’s prospective father-in-law.
Later Mr. Roberts gave them a copy of his sketch of the Dudhsagar falls. He had drawn it on the basis of a photo he had taken from the train when it had crossed over to the opposite site of the valley. Though the photograph did not contain the train he was travelling in, he had added the train on the bridge in the sketch. Oddly, it seemed to be a sketch of two faces peering at each other, eye to eye, at close quarters, with the train crossing over at the bridge of their noses.
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