Der Schwarze Shrein von Goa

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Comments on my german, please!

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.

Week 01

Leaving (00:00 - 4th March)

I close my suitcase and stretch out on the couch for a smoke. In excess: black pens; in deficit: socks and a paper to present. A sentence lingers in my ear as I look around and absorb all the familiar things in my living room…

“I wish I’d met you at a different time”

After a while I go to bed. I wake up at 5.30 dreaming that the alarm on my cell had gone off. It vibrated, oozed a tune and a strange image of bees hovering around a cane plantation appeared on the screen. My cell doesn’t do that at all. I go back to sleep and wake up a couple of hours later to the regular alarm routine.

Nothing remarkable during the Porto-London trip. At Heathrow, waiting in the lounge, I wish I had welded back together and brought with me my lucky Ganesh.

The flight to Delhi is packed with British teenagers in some kind of an excursion. The girl behind me keeps banging on the electronic devices behind my chair including the touch-screen technology screen. All of them are very excited and they keep harassing the plane’s crew with trivial matters…

I start up a chat with my neighbours, a middle-aged Indian couple: “So, are you going for holidays or coming from holidays?” The talk is relaxed and courteous. The British teenagers are boisterous and rude throughout the whole flight.

Eventually, we cross the Pamir range…like a tense feline being, striped in white and sandstone, it awaits the moment to spring forth and attack.

JNU - Delhi (5th -7th March)

We stay at the Nehru Institute for Advanced Studies but it might as well be called the Nehru Institute for Lost Studies. There is nothing advanced about the place…The forlorn building lies in one of the remotest areas of the JNU jungle-campus. The nearest spot to buy a water bottle and make an ISD phone call is a 15 minute walk through shortcut paths. The building itself has an antique and almost abandoned ambience…but on the good side: since few people ever come here, there are a lot of peacocks around. At night, as I lay awake in bed, their exotic callings naturally bring flying in images of Mughal gardens and courtyards.

7 or 8 Portuguese come together for this academic happening. At night, when conversation gets more informal, most of them share their experiences and hardships regarding their stay. Ancient clichés are recycled in forever novel and exotic ways. I imagine the captains or fidalgos of the 16th century complaining about mosquitoes, spicy foods / loose motions, the caste system and the overall unhygienic sphere of India. One notable comment by one of the party: “Até os pretos em Moçamique consideravam os Indianos porcos”.

The closing dinner (18:30 - 22:30, 7th March)

I inform PVG that there is beer under the table. As an eternal sceptical, he doesn’t believe me. The closing dinner is held in a tent structure just outside the Advanced Studies Institute. Now, these noble academic functions, if they happen to include more than one or two Europeans, are a good excuse for the Indian side to build up an alcohol providing infrastructure, i.e. bar. With a sparkle in their eyes, the staff and waiters mount the drinks table, taking out the kingfishers from their cardboard boxes (which I had sensed earlier on); exposing, with a proud and mischievous smile, a few whisky, vodka and gin bottles; producing three or four types of glasses and, yes, managing some drinkable ice.

Our hosts make it a point to guide us to the bar one by one, not noticing that most of us already have a glass in our hands. The three hours or so of open bar witnessed the peak in attendance of the whole seminar affair. A whole entourage of university staff, students and staff and students’ relatives crowd in the tent outside the Advance Studies Institute.

By ten o’clock, the alcohol is finished and naturally, a minority of eager Indian academicians gulped down the hard stuff…

Delhi-Goa flight (8th March)

The plane has many empty seats and our stop in Mumbai provides for a spectacular view of the slums all around Andheri.

Behind me are a young couple with a son of about 5 and also one of the parents’ brothers or sisters with partner. It is strange how they all four of them adulate the boy, giggling and praising every single silliness or misdeed the boy proudly does. This adulation makes me nauseous, especially when the boy climbs up from the back of my seat and starts stepping on my shoulders. The parents do nothing but giggle and praise his climbing abilities.

I don’t get it. What is the use of all this? Will these same parents pressure the kid to do well in college? If so, will he succeed after so many years of pampering? Will there be a rupture point through which the parents switch from pampering into scolding and pressuring?

One thing is for sure: this boy will be as sure of himself as…India’s economy.

Arriving in Goa

Arriving in Goa was, as expected, an emotional occasion.

Arriving at Ernesto’s

Arriving at Ernesto’s was delightful. I came around 8:30 and he was sitting in a huge couch, at one end of the room, playing videogames in a big plasma screen. Ivo’s painting on the wall, a couple of tables occupied by Goan gents, the overall shabby appearance of wire and fans and informal management…and oh, but the ice-cold beer! Ernesto is moving in to Fontainhas, where he has bought a big house to be converted into a restaurant.

VM arrives for dinner – soon afterwards he goes back to work.

Arriving in Old Goa (9th March)

Arriving at Old Goa was strange…after the Augustinian convent, I went to Our Lady of the Mount and then to Sé and then just drove around in the Kinetic. I am very pessimistic about the future of this place. So I decide that, when I meet the ASI family, I will speak my mind no matter of the consequences.

Levanta-se o véu...

Hoje, por volta das 14:45, aqui nos claustros do Colégio das Artes, despoletado por não sei que estímulo exterior ou interior, tive a sensação de que o lado de lá está próximo...de que a minha viagem vai mesmo acontecer, tem de acontecer e não há nada que me fará ficar para trás.

Não sem cenas recambulescas, claro...a minha falta de organização dá sempre azo à confusão desde o momento em que saio de casa com as malas. Por falar em malas...já sinto o bichinho a morder para fazê-las...mas tradição é tradição! serão feitas na madrugada da véspera da jornada.

Levanta-se o véu sobre a minha viagem. Assim, será um autocarro até Lisboa, um Tap até Heathrow, um Jetairways até Delhi e lá, provavelmente, um estudante com um pedaço de cartão a dizer o meu nome por entre a confusão.

E mais não digo, apenas antecipo, porque prever o futuro por escrito dá azar e:

"You, actors in my play,
Jumble my cues
And upset my plans"

Mais do mesmo...não dá pra resistir