Sand and Sea’, Caje’s shack and his family pride, joy and above
all identity.
As the sea moved in Cajetano Rodrigues, Caje to his friends
in his beloved Jezus Nazareth football club, his village Siridao and those in
Bambolim where his father plucked toddy, looked at the palm tree in front of
his shack and spoke about his father. The senior Rodrigues was a proud toddy
plucker, the only one in the village and he looked after the trees and the
little cluster of land by the sea and raised five sons, four of whom also
learnt to undertake the most important climb of their lives, up the palm tree.
He, an illiterate man, raised his sons well, on the fish he caught and the food
his wife cooked and the values he imbibed. All got educated with two now in
Swindon, though in UK, which in effect is effectively a “waddo” of Shiridao.
As this conversation meandered, the waves adding to the base
and the wind to the treble, the main purpose of existence in Caje’s ‘Sea and
Sand’ was initiated. Under the guidance of his 84 year old mother, the
preparation of sol maas was commenced, a simple feast meant for kings and
commoners, a great exhilarating leveller. Sol maas is not a variant or deviation
of any other form of cooking the world’s tastiest meat-pork, it’s an art by
itself. It’s critical to get soft tender baby pork which is boiled. As the
water heats, dried chillies, crushed garlic and kokum is added, allowing the
flavours to waft into the tender meat which gets marinated as it cooks. When
the water dries, the pork fries in its own fat giving it a tinge of crispiness
with the garlic and the chilly doing their job. And then the final step that
leapfrogs sol maas from just another great pork dish to the doorstep of
culinary divinity, the generous sprinkling of rock salt, which carries the
genuine flavour of the sea. Like the best notes of music, each flavour, like
each instrument, rings separately and yet in symphony. Like the drums, cymbals,
the flute and the guitar hold their own as islands of excellence and yet they
merge and become one with the song, the garlic, the kokum and the rock salt
play excellent innings in this team game, complementing the aroma of the pork.
For close to thirty years, Mama Rodrigues, has been waking
up early in the morning to grind spices and getting it just right. She did it
at home and then she did it when two of her sons, Cajetano and Jose Marino,
decided to start the shack in the property they have nurtured as mundkars for
generations and here she was satiating the insatiable hunger of your columnist
for the flavours of Goa.
Caje spoke, an endless stream of stories and anecdotes from
a life happily lived and I feasted looking at the rising sea and the palm tree
that Papa Rodrigues climbed. This is the simple life that was once lived in
Goa, a life which is still possible, a life that encompassed all the touch
points that many Goans touched but do not any more. Caje trained to be a
priest, a product of the Pilar seminary, was a proud striker of the Jezus
Nazareth football club (more about that in a bit) and the owner of a little
shack in Bambolim village, cocooned by the beach and the sea and the provider
of Sol Maas.
The priest Caje didn’t quite happen in the formal sense, but
the footballer Caje did, in a big sense. Jezus Nazareth, to the uninitiated is
a part of Siridao, but try telling anyone from there that. Fiercely independent
and often at loggerheads with the better known Siridao, the ‘Nazareth’ village
fought for its identity through football, fielding a separate team with great
footballers. The team played regularly in the lower divisions of Goan football
till one year it actually qualified for the senior professional league where it
played the likes of all top clubs like Dempo, Salgaocar and Vasco. But the club
that really mattered was the Siridao Sports Club, which was also in the league.
While Nazareth lost to Siridao and the village mourned till the last drop of
beer and ‘cashew’ was consumed from the local bar, it gave them identity and as
they say ‘position’, and in that team played two very distinguished sons of
papa and Mama Rodrigues, our own Caje, as striker and his older sibling Jacinto
as right back. As Caje told me the story of his club as I lingered on the last
morsel of sol maas, his eyes were misty. But the story did have a happy ending.
In an inter village game later Jezus Nazareth football club made such history
that all those history makers were permanently inducted into the village hall
of fame. They beat Siridao Sports Club, perhaps their only win over them, but
that was enough. At that moment one felt that if Manchester City and Manchester
United boast of their same place rivalry, Goa has its Jezus Nazareth and
Siridao football clubs to offer as worthy equals.
This story got over, but Sea and Sand, Caje and his
football, Mama Rodrigues’ sol maas and the omnipresent sea which puts
everything in context, will never be. The Rodrigues’ may not have the riches as
many know it but they live and love and sleep well.
On the drive back through the jungle road out of Sea and
Sand and past the paddy fields of Bambolim, poet John Masefield came to mind
though I didn’t quite know why. At home, I looked up a long forgotten poem of
his about the sea, a poem which had Caje’s life written all over it. Its last
stanza read:
“I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy
life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like
a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s
over.”
