Vivek
Menezes
By the time you read this Sunday newspaper, the inspirational centenarian Libia Lobo Sardesai will be en route to New Delhi, where she will receive her 2025 Padma Shri award from Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan tomorrow evening. It is true our Libby – as she is affectionately known to all – should have been recognised many decades ago, or with her late husband Vaman Sardesai in 1992. Still, even belatedly, it is truly wonderful the right thing is being done now, and it is especially meaningful this diminutive, doughty icon will be honoured by another important pioneer, the first Adivasi (and second woman) President of India. It was so touching to hear Libby’s first response to the fantastic news on Republic Day earlier this year: “I am as happy as I was on the day Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule. Today, I feel a similar happiness. Such moments are very rare in one’s life. The award has come as a big and pleasant surprise. I never expected or aspired for it.”
The fact that Libby didn’t expect even the fourth-highest civilian award says something about her humility and grace, and also reveals yet another dereliction of governance in Goa, where some of the most distinguished candidates for national honours languish without ever being championed by their own state, with rare exceptions that come once every few years. Here, let us remember that in November 2023, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said “next year, we will recommend Lorna’s name for the Padma Shri” – and we are still waiting – but there are so many others, and in the case of the great Konkani litterateur Damodar Mauzo, he has already won the Jnanpith Award in the meantime. In fact, it was exactly the same for Libby, except for the direct intervention of Narendra Modi’s PMO.
Let’s give credit where it is due: they made an excellent selection. They recognised Libby’s extraordinary record of national service, especially in the Western Ghats jungles for six years running the Voz da Liberdade (Goencho Sovonecho Awaz) clandestine radio station that broke the news embargo. In her own words: “all communications were suspended. The people of Goa had to rely only on the propaganda of the Portuguese, and they could not know anything about what was happening in the outside world, and how the [freedom] movement was going on. The people were getting desperate, and they were losing their morale. There was no way of communicating with the Goans or educating and enlightening them in any way.”
When this adventure began, there were four idealistic freedom fighters in the jungle: Nicolau Menezes and his wife Alda, the intellectual Vaman Sardesai, and the firecracker “chit of a girl” who had been working at All India Radio when they hatched the plan. After a short while, the older couple couldn’t manage, and after that it was just Vaman and Libby who did the job, and on Liberation Day on 19th December 1961, they exulted high in the skies above their homeland in an aeroplane given to them by Krishna Menon (an indelible moment that is pictorialised in Nishant Saldanha’s vibrant artwork on this page) to broadcast the good news that Goa was free.
There is much more before that highlight, and long after as well. Libby represents the best Indian history in so many different ways: her heart first stirred as a young Bombay girl witnessing the bloody aftermath of Quit India movement rallies, and while still a student, she was the Secretary of Tristão de Bragança Cunha’s anti-colonial Goan Youth League. Then, after wartime years as a censor/translator for Italian prisoners of war (where many other Goans were similarly employed) she got her first degree at the new Siddharth College established by Ambedkar, where Babasaheb himself expressed pleasure about her signing up. Nissim Ezekiel took her to hear MN Roy speak, and even later in life – Libby married Vaman on the anniversary of Liberation Day in 1964 – she remained actively engaged with the likes of Aruna Asaf Ali.
Back in Goa after 1961 – except when Vaman Sardesai was India’s Ambassador to Angola from 1988-1991 – this phenomenal power couple held a series of important posts in the newly Indian administration. Libby was the first Director of Tourism, and helped found the Women’s Cooperative Bank and the College of Home Sciences. She turns 101 on May 25th – which calls for a public celebration – but still continues to be an indomitable, lucid and luminous presence, and a constant encouragement to everyone around her.
Tomorrow, the rest of India will get to know all about our Libby – you can count on her being the star of the show – but I asked her favourite grand-niece Nerissa Britto what it was like to grow up with her, and she told me via email from Mumbai: “as a child I spent a lot of time with her at her house. Though back then, she was still in the thick of her professional life, she would still take time out to read to me every afternoon before my nap, take me to Miramar in the evenings and wait patiently till I had my fill of playing. She always encouraged me, and still does - to take on new tasks, new challenges and push myself. As I grew, I realised how progressive, motivated and accomplished she is. Her ability to push through and get a task accomplished is almost unparalleled. Her example shines across generations as a lady who is way beyond her time, unfettered by any societal restraints, progressive and very, very adaptive and practical. She is also very open to meeting new people and making friends, both very young and old. I am very happy that she is being recognised and feted formally.”
(Vivek Menezes is
a writer and co-founder of the Goa Arts and
Literature
Festival)