ALBERTINA ALMEIDA
Life has its coincidences, and sometimes they speak di rectly to you. One such mo ment came on a boat ride from Vanxim with the 4.59 a.m. Wakers Group. As we glided past the man groves, the boatman pointed to clusters of red, horn-shaped fruits on a small mangrove tree. I had just read a message on WhatsApp that Fr. Bolmax’s health had turned critical. The mangroves are coinciden tally something that were both Fr. Bolmax’s field of study for Ph.D. and his passion in activism. I recalled then about an inter view Fr. Bolmax, he once gave to Heritage Connect when he spoke about the likely etymology of the old All India Radio (AIR) Konkani programme I would return to af ter school, which was called Kan dram Ovram. He had said in the interview that he realised it is the Konkani word for the botanical name Agiceleus Cornaculatum, a mangrove species. Like the man grove, he said, the AIR programme too was part of our heritage. It seems that this heritage shaped Fr. Bolmax and he in turn shaped others. As priest, youth animator and lecturer, he trans mitted a consciousness of Goa’s mangroves and the Khazan eco system. He was clear that the eco systems were not commodities for tourism, but living systems in tertwined with our own lives. Per haps that is why, the boat ride was less a sight-seeing and more like a reflective space. By a strange turn of events, I had landed in Vanxim, a place I had long heard in discus sions about land rights and the sale of tenanted lands. In one of my last long conver sations with him, I was trying to understand his model of commu nity farming. There was much to admire the way he got youngsters to literally ‘mess their hands’ in the soil, and the way he used his networks to make the marketing of produce viable so that farm ing itself would become viable, through other integrated activi ties.
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Yet there were also questions without easy answers, like: if the youth cultivated land taken on from owners, and part of the pro duce still went to these owners, were we reproducing the same land relations? He acknowledged the complexity. But he also suc ceeded in something vital, which is, to reconnect young people with the earth, and in a way they found meaningful, which is also so im portant if we want to retain the Goa we inherited. It strikes me that Fr. Bolmax had an organic sense of politics and the ‘organic’ here was not limited to farming. He did not hesitate to state that there have to be politi cal solutions to the problems that have surfaced, and even if it is not party politics that drives us, we need to drive parties which have a people-centric ideology to stand up to their politics in real life. It is in this context that his call for a political solution to the Mhadei diversion issue, must be read.
It is pertinent to note here, that he distinguished this politics from the politicking by pitting Goa against Karnataka and vice-versa. As a true ecologist, he understood the value of viewing the Mha dei-Mandovi river basin holisti cally. His sermons also were rooted in lived experience. They were earthy and delivered in a manner that people could connect, be ing grounded in the everyday. In what was perhaps his last or sec ond last sermon, he spoke about cockroaches, and one could in stantly connect with the analogy he drew. He said that earlier he would simply lift a slipper to kill a cockroach, but now, on ponder ing, he felt compelled to ask why is the cockroach there in the first place. He shared his realisation that the option was to clean up the mess and address the root cause. That was Fr. Bolmax – calling a spade a spade, and in a language everyone could under stand. Fr. Bolmax was unfortunate ly dragged into a controversy where in a sermon, he valorised a deceased ruler, but distinguished the same from the weaponisa tion or pedestalisation of that ruler, where there could be no dialogue. The Honourable High Court of Bombay at Goa, rightly quashed the First Information Report against him. That Fr. Bol max was not sectarian or com munal could be palpably felt from the many persons of faiths other than the Catholic faith, who paid glowing tributes to him. He did not lag behind in also engaging deeply in the academ ic arena.
He was instrumental in getting an interesting Ph.D. the sis publicly discussed, so that such research would not stay on shelves, but could inform strat egies – in this case, about how the Courts could address envi ronmental issues, beyond the immediately and visible textbook violations. He was keen to ex plore how the boundaries of the law could be expanded, within our Constitutional framework —absorbing the lived experienc es and perspectives, in meaning making. Given that he loved singing and tiatr, he did not hesitate to leverage his skills to convey the message. He even sang from a famous song in his sermon itself, apart from singing in the tiatrs he took part in, where he was trying to convey the message to protect Goa from the assault it is facing. He also enthused the youth to use dance as a medium.
I distinctly recall the efforts during the COV ID-19 period where the youth of Chicalim danced their way through different parts of Goa, to mark their protest against the un-people-centric model, being foisted on the people in Goa. That too also had his imprint. Fr. Bolmax leaves behind an unfinished Kandram Ovram — a heritage of ecology, courage, and community that now rests with all of us to carry forward. (Albertina Almeida is a law yer and human rights activist)
