Sushila Sawant Mendes
Most Goans have fond memories of their annual family mudança’s or vacations in different airy spaces like a beach or a grandmothers house, generally in the months of April and May. Variak bosop, (literally sitting to inhale fresh air) has always been an effective Goan method of beating both heat and stress. My in-laws rented a house in Colva for a month for their honeymoon and this tradition continued every year. A couple of days back our festakar Marius Fernandes curated the Mudançachem or Muddasachem Fest in Valpoi with local community support. Among different activities was the festakarachi pasoi, a walk through the still untouched lush green areas of Valpoi.
For people of Salcette, the preferred beach was Colva or any beach on this shore which had public transport like Velsao, Cansaulim, Majorda, Betalbatim, Benaulim, Varca, Zalor, Cavellosim and Mobor ending with the Betul beach. In the north, Calangute was the most favoured beach besides Morjim, Arambol, Vagator and Tiracol. Many families who stayed in Panjim would choose a beach near to their ancestral village or landlords who had property and a house near the beach would spend a month there. Mudança on the beach was looked forward to with eager anticipation.
Goans also believe that sea baths have medicinal and therapeutic effects against rheumatism and arthritis because of the salt content in the water and would also help in building immunity against common sickness which came during the monsoons that followed the hot season in Goa. Today the cool breeze and the cool baths are replaced by curated summer camps inside rooms. Teaching continues even during the vacations but this time of songs, dances, painting, even oratory–structured learning so to say. Children may prefer the beach, go exploring for kanddams and charams, like we did on the Baradi hills, or in search of cashews, tamarind, guavas, jambools, just leaving us free to enjoy our own spaces and do whatever we fancied, climbing trees and mountains, playing games, gorging on mangoes and jackfruits, enjoying the simple pleasures of childhood while on vacations.
Baths and walks on a Goan beach is being in the lap of nature and a much more aesthetically pleasing activity to keep healthy. Beaches in Europe have icy cold water almost throughout the year and many months without the sun. A rare sunny day becomes an occasion for an outdoor picnic day in the UK. Educational pedagogy always encourages learning to be made fun and exciting. The rising suicides during examinations in Goa is a call that our system does not provide healthy alternatives to students who cannot cope. Students should be given the freedom to choose what they love as each child is wired differently and parents along with society need to respect their choices. A mudança with long walks on the beach can go a long way to narrow differences.
Goan children across communities have fond memories of going for a three day picnic on the beach. We went by the tarcar’s (boatman’s) canoe from Khutbon to Mobor beach with a simple home cooked meal of rice, attoiloli koddi (a thicker version of curry) so that it would not spill during the journey, salted mangoes, capped with juicy mangoes or jackfruits. Tea time would be of light black tea with some bulinas (kind of cookies), or attol (a thickened sweet–again for convenience of carrying). Above all was the enjoyment of the three sea baths per day and the joy of neighbours being together. Women bargained to purchase dry fish wholesale and then divided among the families. Sharing and caring by the elders nurtured a community spirit. It’s strange that I do not recall any uncles accompanying this group, perhaps the men were busy working abroad or on the ship (common in most villages of Goa).
My husband’s grandmother’s family have a house especially built for a mudança in Betul. Relatives and cousins would book this house much in advance. It is built on a hillock facing the river and has a lovely view of a hill in the backyard and water in front. He has fond reminisces of exploring that area with his grandmother. Today vacation holidays are in Thailand, Ceylon or countries of Europe for those who can afford. The traditional mudança of yesteryears has moved on with the times! The tradition of enjoying and having a lived in experience of Goan culture and Goanness has almost disappeared. Every place of travel however is a learning experience in itself. Betul was also a place for the annual summer retreat of the clergy.
The availability of fresh fish in the vicinity was the cherry on the cake. Seeing a ramponn (fishing net) being pulled on a beach with the live fish struggling in the net is an experience by itself. On the first day of the mudança, small manddoios and shell fish would be collected from the shore and this would be used to make a tasty pulão or arroz on the next day. Each child vied with the other to see who collected the most. Bending and collecting with your legs wet in the water was a healthy exercise. During these vacations the kids would also hire cycles and enjoy their drives on the village roads of Goa with the coconut palms swaying along the roads, providing shade from the summer heat with the cool sea breeze cushioning the face.
Many Goan children have fond memories of spending their entire vacation
pampered by their mamamai’s (maternal grandmothers) who fattened pigs and kept chickens ready to make the sorpotel, sausages and shakuti. Breakfast was of Koilolos or chapatis with mangada (mango jam). Pez, or the Goa rice gruel with pickles and chutneys, one of the most healthy mid-day snacks, which kept a physically active child’s belly satiated till lunch time, diminishing the urge of consuming artificially coloured aerated soft drinks or biscuits and chocolates. The grandmother would prepare homemade snacks for the brood of grand-kids for tea with locally available ingredients like the enriched in iron Goan palm jaggery, making the healthy chun with grated coconut and boiled pulses and even boiled ghontas (a variety of mangoes) freely available on the neighbour’s mango tree. Ghoddchem, tizan, or even the humble dry water melon seeds or boiled jackfruit seeds were munching delights.
Meeting up with cousins, eating together the nutritious Goan cuisine around the family table, are simple but memorable experiences that the new generations of Goans unfortunately will rarely experience. My own children have never had this opportunity. Today grandparents are visited by cars for just one or two hours. Without attending expensive summer camps, children made new friends, played traditional games, inculcated social skills of adapting to people of different temperaments, roamed the whole village visiting relatives and friends and thus studied the map of a new place so effortlessly. One would grudgingly return home, the day before school started.
Mudanças helped rejuvenate a tired body and mind and provide the much required psychological calmness for the stresses and strains of everyday life. It is a part of our Goan ethos and lifestyle down the ages and surprisingly Goan tourism has never marketed and maybe cannot market mudanças as the concept is intrinsically Goan. The spirit and adventure of a mudança has a big slice of Goan culture wrapped in its very being.
(Dr. Sushila Sawant Mendes is a Professor and Author of History and an
Independent
Researcher.)