Albertina Almeida
Gemma was never one to be tired and would keep walking miles in the course of her journey to achieve social, economic and political justice. I have also walked some miles with her. About a fortnight ago, however, she journeyed beyond the horizon.
I first bumped into Gemma at a National Conference of Women’s Movements at Patna in 1988. I was pleasantly surprised to see a group of nuns arriving from various regions across the country, dedicated to working at the grassroots level with the poorest of the poor, harbouring the dream of reaching the last mile for peoples’ empowerment. They were taking bold positions about the rights of women. I distinctly remember telling her that it is difficult to find nuns in Goa being as assertive in public life, and asking her why she, being a Goan, does not consider working in Goa. The go-getter that she was, she translated my suggestion into reality.
Gemma was one of those nuns who never asked to be called Sr. Gemma, and in fact spurned that kind of appellation for the distance that it created. Neither did she succumb to the pressures of any fossilized elements in power in places like Goa where the institutional Church was (and to an extent still is) dominant, who expected conformity to feudal and patriarchal standards. She was forthright in stating that as nuns, they have the possibility of taking risks which may be difficult for those who live within their families, since this could put their family members also at risk. Working with substance addicts, for example. She, in fact, skillfully walked the tight rope between institutional life and lay life.
We live in times when activists display qualities of both head and heart, and can be quite professional, but are still dismissed as ‘emotional’ beings whose work has no foundation in practicality. Gemma, equipped with her post-graduation from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, worked with a penchant for professionalism and precision, and compassion and empathy for fellow human beings, and demonstrated that the two can be merged in one person.
Some of Gemma’s work is visible in print form. In the Goa Law Referencer, published by Goa Foundation, the portion of the compilation of all laws applicable to Goa, be they local laws or Indian laws, with details of the Gazette on which they became applicable, is substantially her research and perspiration.
Another thing I learned from her is the ability to both analyse hard data and record oral histories and to triangulate claims from both to arrive at robust conclusions. Gemma was as much at ease with women from the suppressed castes and ethnicities, as she was with women from the dominant castes. I remember her interviews with women ranging from women domestic workers, both Goan and migrant, to women from the Mhamai Kamat joint family (as it then was), apart from referencing various books from the Central Library, to put together a kind of position paper on the status of women in Goa.
Did I say qualities of head and heart? Well, I have to say qualities of hands too. It is from Gemma that I learned to identify, by feel, the pressure points that need to be massaged to release stress-related discomfort. Her busy hands also helped produce hand-made cards that were crafted to raise funds, drop by drop to buy an office space for Bailancho Saad. These hand-made cards again combined both craft and message. One card she visualized even offered a feminist re-interpretation she had come across of the Three Kings as three queens, bringing not the expensive superficial gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh but deeper meaning gifts such as the milk of human kindness and the oil of integrity.
And how can one forget the decoy role that she played? When we realized that discrimination against the girl child very much exists in Goa, we couldn’t gloss over the possibility that people would be doing sex determination tests to selectively eliminate the girl child. There is such a strong tendency to brush things off by saying, “This doesn’t happen in Goa”. Yet casting aspersions does not befit us. So the next thing was to verify the information we had received.
There was enough of an age gap between her and me for her to pass off as my mother. We walked together into a doctor couple’s clinic at Margao, as mother and daughter. We were trying to gauge the extent of resort to sex determination tests. I told the doctor that I wanted a sex determination test done to know the sex of the foetus and Gemma added that we wanted to know how to go about it, and do many people resort to this test? His answer was a shocking yes, that he initially sent fluid samples to Maharashtra and it was so feasible that they had decided to set up a laboratory to do the amnio-centesis tests in Goa. When we got out, it took time to digest both the information he gave us, as well as the fact that we had been able to pull together our act of role playing. It was experiences like these that inputted into our contribution to the national legislation on regulation of pre-natal sex determination tests. Needless to say, this acting is different from maintaining the integrity of a conversation with someone one knows or someone who trusts you for who you are.
Talking of acting, Gemma skilfully adaptation of a play that someone had written called ‘If Mary were here”, about how Mary would have responded in the current situation of injustice, lingers. It highlighted a poignant way to practice the tenets of one’s religion, in a contemporary context, rather than through rigid monotonous readings that are not followed in practice.
Gemma also saw the importance of both responding to situations of injustice and going beyond to enable people to stand up for justice. Towards that, she tirelessly visited various educational institutions and youth and social forums as part of the Saad Aangan gender resource group, to engage in gender sensitization, and to assist in documenting individual cases of injustice and violations of community rights to resources, with the swift precision of her stenographic skills.
Her frugal yet healthy lifestyle is exemplary. Perhaps that was what Gemma drew from the Medical Mission Sisters of which she was a part. She braved asthma from her childhood and a heart condition in her adult years, both of which were challenges, but which did not deter her from her activism.
If one thought activists are heartless and only seek publicity, Gemma is a prime example of silent hard work. Her dedication demonstrated the rigorous discipline required in activism – yet she balanced it with fun, comic relief, compassion, and genuine concern for her co-activists.
Last but not least, Gemma was straightforward and would tell you what she thought, like it is. I, for one, am grateful to her for this has had a transforming effect on my life.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer and human rights activist)