TUESDAY, MAY 07, 2024
Sujay Gupta
The canvass of Goa is awash with the brush strokes of creativity. There’s music and song from the galleries, venues, academies. If there’s an art show in Moira there’s a jazz festival in Bogmalo, if there’s a literature festival in Panjim there’s the country’s biggest arts festival in Panjim. From films to music to art. Goa is exploding in a manner of a creative monsoon. And it’s capital Panjim is at the heart of it all.
And as we speak in December and move into the New Year the sheer quality of the festivals need to be toasted. And Panjim’s streets are awash with artists poets musicians and students.
We are on the high road to creativity and this is when our Panjm rises up to her magnificent best, literally opens its doors and allows the world to come in.
This is when all of Goa’s venues, including ancient palaces will come alive, the Adil Shah Palace, Captain of the Port Jetty, Bento Miguel, PWD Complex, Children’s Park, Old GMC Complex, ESG, Kala Academy, DB Ground, Mandovi Promenade and Santa Monica Jetty, each not just a home to the festival but a destination by itself. Artists like FN Souza and Vasudeo Gaitonde, and their connection with those who came before them Trindade, Chimulkar, Fonseca, and to younger colleagues (Laxman Pai, Vamona Navelkar) will be celebrated.
And can food ever be far behind? Celebrated as an art form, this year’s Serendipity festival will be as much about art with brush strokes as culinary art, where food styles from Goan homes will be curated and presented, mainly by the real curators – grandmothers, mothers, wives and sisters. Bars dress up, there’s music on all the time and the buzz is palpable. From IFFI to the Arts and Literature festival and then Serendipity, Panjim has embraced them all
But there’s a lesson in all this. Each of these events celebrates what is genteel, creative, expressive and fine. They cater to the DNA of a small beautiful town by the river parts of which still lie embedded in an era long gone on the calendar. At the same time these spaces are shrinking. Spaces like leafy lanes, cobbled streets, old homes, small bars and cafes and peopled by folks who can launch a charm offensive as soon as they get out of bed. This is a Panjim that needs to be cradled and protected.
And to begin with it must get back its Fontainhas festival, our very own. We look back at the time when the streets of Panjim’s Latin quarter became a stage and a dance floor. When each home became a seat to watch the show unfold on the streets. When drawing rooms welcomed strangers who became instant friends. This was Panjim the way we knew it. An extension of the red and black dances, the carnival festivities, the shigmo parade, the revelry during feasts and during Ganesh Chaturthi. The Fontainhas festival was a chip off the same block. It was and always will be Panjim’s not Portugal’s.
Much of what the Panjim of old treasures is actually Goan. They are indigenous. The spirit is native not borrowed. When we realise that this is about all of us, then some of us will not come in between all of us and the way our town should be.
So raise a toast, shake a leg, sing a song and turn back the pages of the calendar to refresh them today. To all of us Viva Panjim.
