Week 02

The wonder that was India (12th March)

Our table for dinner at the Venite was heterogeneous just like PVG likes it. With relish, he set in most of the conversation topics. And although our Manglorean and Goan-US-something else guests were a bit uptight, the topic of change of perception of India in the eyes of western beholders came to pass. The starting concept being that the moment when westerners stopped seeing India as rich and started perceiving it as poor was essentially a British fabrication. However, I argued that the change had already began in the Portuguese heyday, when they witnessed all the internal upheavals and strife that led to the fall of empires and kingdoms since the end of Vijayanagar up to the defeat of Marathas and Pindaris in the 1820s. Of course by then, the topic of the decadent Portuguese themselves was equally fashionable.

From the mid 16th cent, as the knowledge of the Indian hinterland grew, the idea of a nation once united and governed by a powerful ruler or dynasty, that led Hindu culture and religion to its zenith set in - as opposed to the then present times of internal division, wars, rise and fall of feudal tyrants and a general superiority of Islam or else a profusion of religious and cultural miscegenation. India was thus beginning to be perceived as a nation once powerful, peaceful, prosperous and orderly but now a battleground for ever-seceding states. The great Mughal was an essentially foreign power that had taken advantage of the mess and had managed to halt the process. But only to a certain point and its times of prosperity and invincibility were transitory. More and more, India was becoming a sea of ruins and ruined economies. More and more, everyone was out for the plunder. The final blow came naturally from the Raj…but definitely, by the time the British won Plassey, the idea of an intrinsically decadent India had already settled in…and that made it an even more alluring prey for western interests.

The turning point was the moment when the Portuguese and Europeans perceived that the wealth once produced and accumulated in India was now being drained out of India. By themselves.

For the last few years, we have had the privilege to witness the inverse process.

The past, it grows on you (13th March)

Is this the moment I start to come to terms with the recent past? With the things that made me buy the ticket in the first place?..
‘Largar lastro’…Another sea-faring expression. These and other thoughts crossed my mind while I sat in the balcony at Ernesto’s after being in Old Goa for most of the day. Since no one showed up for dinner, I got up to pay. Ernesto came fourth: “So…two kingfishers and one prawn wafers…105”. I already had a 100 rupees note in my hand…so I got a 5 rps discount.

I asked the man “Do you remember what Ivo used to have for dinner when he came?”
“Noodles, veg noodles…but he hardly ate, no?”
“Yes, hardly…but he was here often…always had tea”
“Yes, tea he always had”
“And, when he ate, he had tea with noodles also…”
“Yes”

Goan youth who fly (14th March)

One is an architect, another is in the high-end tourism business, another is a mate in a ship, another drives a luxurious car and then you have the Mangalorean comeback kid. They talked about cast, politics and India’s future as you might talk about your neighbour’s dirty little vices. The night went on and on over feni and kingfishers and some of the young Goans got emotional. They passed comments on all the clichés of cast-relation, internal Indian ethnic rivalries, Goan perceived by others and by themselves, separate Goan immigrant communities divided according to their village of origin, pro-Portuguese Goans, etc, etc, etc. No cast, sub-cast, culture or region in India survived un-scattered. Just about everyone had right to some kind of an insulting-affectionate put-him-in-his-place remark. And then, after this incredible exercise, they turned introspective and tried to define their own position within this hierarchy. And they passed some put-him-in-his-place comments amongst themselves and even at their very selves.

And then the owner of the shack told them to be quiet because they were shouting too loud.

The House of the Conde de Mahem (15th March)

“But Mr. António, as you understand, I have nothing to do with the family disputes at court…”

We had arrived earlier at the location of the house, a fantastic spot near some paddy fields close to the Mahem lake. On approaching the compound gate, a few dogs started barking and then a boxer appeared with a coarser kind of bark…and we stepped back out of the gate.

Eventually, a young woman came out of the house, built carefully in between old and portentous trees, with its private chapel recently lime-washed closing a court-yard angle.

“Hello Madam, I am so-and-so and have come from there-and-there and would be really appreciated if I could visit the chapel…”

She stalled and then rang up one of the proprietors who lays claim to the beautiful house of the counts of Mahem. I repeated the same stuff and talked for some time with Mr. António. To no avail…the court situation was above everything and photography was strictly forbidden anywhere inside the property.

Why? Around the mid 1950s, the freedom fighters of Goa placed a bomb at the beautiful front porch of the house, overlooking toward the paddy-fields and the Mango trees. In retaliation, the right-hand man of the count burned a great deal of their own plantations and groves and blamed the calamity on the freedom fighters and some recalcitrant labourers whose loyalty towards their master was wavering. In consequence, four Goans were sent to a concentration camp in Moçambique. One of them was alive by 1961, the moment when prisoners were exchanged between Portugal and India. He went to the house and found out the pro-Portuguese caretaker…whose body was later found tied to a tree with a few bullet holes on its chest.

The long over-worked workers overran the extensive property and the descendents of the count of Mahem who hadn’t fled to Portugal had to barricade themselves inside their house…from where they feared to leave under threat of being molested or worse…Eventually, the situation died down and became essentially a court issue with hot political contours.

Still, Mr. António is afraid of curious people wanting to photograph the house and chapel. I don’t blame him at all.

Anyways, later that day, VM told me that he had managed to photograph the interior of the chapel in 2007, when he had come to Goa for the first time. At that time, Mr. António poured out onto him his whole anger and indignation at the miserable situation of the house of his ancestors.