Paulo Varela Gomes succumbed to cancer on Saturday, April 30, 2016. He was familiar to many Goans both because he headed the Delegation of the Fundação Oriente in Goa for two terms, 1996-1998 and 2007-2009, and for his book on Goan churches.
It was in the first capacity that I met Gomes. Prior to this meeting I had been warned against him. He was racist and offensive, I had been told. Also that he was just another one of these supercilious Portuguese, mocking Goa and Goans from their metropolitan position. I have no idea what pushed me to meet the man despite these warnings, but I did, and I have not once regretted that decision.
Gomes was in fact — to be fair to the person who warned me against him –pessimistic, foul mouthed, dismissive, and from time to time a tad racist. But there was logic to his madness. The prickly exterior was armour, but breach that spiky defence and one realised that Gomes’ barbs were the provocations of a profoundly sensitive and giving man with a wicked sense of humour. A man who relentlessly asked questions, and never accepted the given until it bore up to the critique he subjected it to. When caught, he would laughingly confess to his prejudices, and it was this intellectual honesty and the ability to confront oneself that has left a lasting impact on me.
As our association matured Gomes grew to become an intellectual father. Lucky enough to live in the same neighbourhood as he did in Goa, I found myself able to go over to his home, engage in conversations that went on for hours, and borrow books from his library. Gomes’ library was an intellectual wonderland because he was a widely read man. Despite his learning and the difference in our ages, ours was not an unequal relationship. Gomes suffered my irreverence, and indeed encouraged it with his own.
It was thanks to these conversations that I was able to sharpen my perspectives, not just on Goa, but also on Portugal, a country that has come to be my second home. Gomes was among the first to point me towards developing a deeper understanding of the Bijapuri Sultanate and make sense of Goan history in that context. As luck will have it, the idea of an Islamicate Goa has now gained more appreciation, and for this alone, Gomes has left a lasting legacy on the way Goa can and should be studied.
Perhaps the greatest testament to Gomes’s wide reading, his ability to go against the grain, ask unorthodox questions, and come up with a new, more meaningful vision, is what was possibly his last academic publication; Whitewash, Red Stone: A History of Church Architecture in Goa (2011). In this book Gomes broke with the hitherto established ways of looking at ecclesiastical architecture in Goa.
His argument was bold, and there can never really be any going back to earlier ways of looking at architecture in Goa. Gomes’s argument was that Churches in Goa were not Portuguese buildings, nor were they mere copies of European buildings. They were in fact entirely Goan. These buildings participated in a European vocabulary of building construction, but the way these various elements and plans were assembled was entirely Goan. Churches in Goa were Goan buildings, constructions of native elite who were making a statement about the uniqueness of their culture and their place in the world. Whitewash, Red Stone is a critical work that would allow Goan ecclesiastical architecture to be appreciated more profoundly and deserves a wider audience than the one it currently enjoys.
In making this argument, Gomes went beyond, and challenged, two orthodoxies. The first was the one that seeks to delegitimise the uniqueness of Goan Catholicism, and the second that sees Goans merely as blind copy-cats of the Portuguese. Goans were South Asian alright, but they were South Asians who participated and innovated within European frames and hence they were also European.
There are few like them, persons who are willing to step out of their comfort zones, make themselves vulnerable to the local, and engage meaningfully. For this reason their memories will indubitably be long cherished.
When I moved to Portugal I imagined that Gomes and I would be able to pick up where he had left off, the same rambling, but always stimulating conversations. Unfortunately, however, the distance between our residences, and the distractions of frequent travel between Lisbon and Goa ensured that this was not to be. Our meetings were too few and far between, and our interactions limited mostly to virtual correspondence.
As much as one mourns the passing of Paulo Varela Gomes the fact is that there can be no crushing sorrow simply because every cherished memory brings to mind not just his courage, but also his irreverence. Gomes’s life was a lesson in picking up challenges and besting them.
For someone who was a natural teacher, and taught through lively debate, there was absolutely no doubt that the man was a natural raconteur.
Paulo Varela Gomes, friend, philosopher, and guide. Our world is diminished by your absence, but it would have been so much lesser without you.
(Jason Keith Fernandes is a legal anthropologist and
itinerant mendicant)
