Whither Chovoth’s community spirit?
Chovoth, which helped maintain Goa’s community spirit and communal harmony, is changing, says SANDESH PRABHUDESAI
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I am a non-believer; but I never miss Chovoth in my village. There are hundreds of temples (legal and illegal) of Lord Ganesh, but every household still celebrates Chovoth in their own homes, not in the temple. Chovoth is not a temple feast; it’s a community festival, a veneration of Mother Nature and not mere idol worship.
From Lord Ganesh’s mother and father – Gauri and Mahadev – to the elephant-headed one himself, all are represented in nature. The father and mother are made of coconut and different leaves, while the Ganesh idol is made of a special clay called ‘chikonn mati’.
The ‘mattolli‘ – a square grid made of bamboo – is a real treasure trove of the fruits and herbs of the season. Pooja-related items are flowers like ‘jayo’, and herbs like ‘durva’, ‘bel’, ‘tulsi’, etc. Chovoth food – like ‘khotkhotem’, ‘patollyo’ and ‘heett’ – is made from seasonal fruits and vegetables.
More fascinating is the community spirit of the festival. The ‘ghumott aartyo’ and ‘fugdyo’ are folk forms, which cannot be performed without an entire community. Chovoth integrates the whole neighbourhood, brushing aside minor differences and petty fights. Those who cannot bury such trivial squabbles isolate themselves during Chovoth.
But there is a stark difference between the real village Chovoth of my childhood – in the ’60s and ’70s – and today’s Chovoth of urbanised Goa. It reflects the dispersal of Goan village society and the weakening of the community spirit with which the festival was conceptualised. The next 20 years may be the death knell for the community spirit of Goa, which our forefathers skilfully built over millennia.
In 1961 – Liberation – 80 per cent of Goa lived in the villages. The 2001 census showed the urban-rural ratio at 60:40. It would not be a surprise if the 2011 census shows it exactly opposite to 1961, at 80 urban to 20 rural.
Galloping urbanisation is not that visible in the Old Conquests of Salcete, Mormugao, Tiswadi and Bardez. The trend here is of migration abroad. Urbanisation within Goa is seen more in the New Conquests – Pernem, Sattari, Bicholim, Ponda, Quepem, Sanguem and Canacona – all Hindu-dominated talukas. They are farther away from the cities that offer opportunities and facilities, so urbanisation becomes inevitable.
Till the ’70s, we lived in the villages, and always celebrated Chovoth as a community. It simply did not matter whose Ganpati was for only one-and-a-half days and whose for five or seven. The Chovoth spirit dominated the entire village for not less than seven days; preparations started at least a month in advance.
As children, we wandered around the ‘chitrashala’ where Ganesh idols were made; it was our annual crash course in sculpture and painting. Growing vegetables on the hillock behind the house was our school of horticulture. Collecting items for the ‘mattolli’ from the forest was our school of Ayurveda. The seven days of ‘ghumott aartyo’, ‘bhajan’ and ‘fugdyo’ (rehearsals started a month in advance) was our school of music, dance and singing.
None of this could happen without a strong community spirit, through which our generations learnt togetherness, tolerance, accommodation and the greatness of oneness. The Christians in the village were never isolated. They were an integral part of the festival, much as Hindus were part of Christmas festivities at a community level. This was Goa’s real strength. Chovoth (and Christmas) played a major role in maintaining the community spirit and communal harmony.
But with urbanisation the scene has changed. ‘Mattolli’ items, vegetables and fruits are purchased in the market. Some even feel proud buying plaster-of-paris Ganpatis, which kill the basic concept of worshipping Mother Nature. For citygoers, listening to the ‘ghumott’ and ‘shamell’ is a novelty. None can sing ‘aartyo’ without reading the words from booklets printed by the newspapers…
It’s a little different for youngsters of yesteryear, who are today’s adults. They rush to the village for Chovoth. Dead villages come alive. Long lost friends meet. Old memories resurrect. Nostalgia overtakes the entire village.
But it’s not the same for their sons and daughters. They don’t know the neighbours. They only know their cousins, who too come once a year, to celebrate Chovoth. They eagerly wait for the festival, but not to meet the whole village; just their cousins.
For them, the village is a holiday home. There’s no attachment to the place as a whole; only to the ancestral house. The cousins otherwise meet briefly for birthdays, weddings or family functions. But Chovoth becomes a prolonged extended family outing, with days full of fun and games (including cards) and nights with more ‘gozali’ than sleep. For the adults, the village comes together, but for the youngsters, it’s the joint family that comes together.
The village too, is being divided, between ‘real’ villagers and urbanites (a villager from Pernem called city dwellers ‘dhovem kavlle’ or white crows). Some urbanites have even started playing ‘dandiya’ – an urban festivity – when they come for Chovoth. The rift is clear.
Another new trend is to rush back after the festival. People who are already mentally detached from the village feel restless, and don’t get proper sleep at night without air-conditioning. They want to rush back to their posh nests. For them, Chovoth is no community festival but a mere ritual, done mainly out of fear of God…
The young love Chovoth, but are prevented by the education system. They have to rush back to the city within three days. Our great education system doesn’t allow them to stay longer and, maybe, get to experience the community spirit. Whether to give a longer holiday than the mandatory three days is the prerogative of each school.
Chovoth is not the only community festival in India. Each state has one, and the spirit of community is encouraged by longer school holidays. Who has heard of schools working during Dusshera in North India, Onam in Kerala, Durga Pooja in West Bengal or Navaratri in Gujarat?
Are ‘most literate’ Goa’s ‘most educated’ schools and professional colleges on the warpath to kill the community spirit of Chovoth? The Maharashtrian model of a month-long holiday for Diwali continues in Goa today, even though Diwali festivities here do not last for more than four days. A proposal submitted by a few sensible educationists for a holiday pattern appropriate to Goa’s culture is gathering dust. Neither do the so-called educationists in the department seem bothered, nor do our so-called education ministers seem aware of it!
What will happen two decades from now? Urbanisation and the ‘flat’ culture has withered the joint family. The nuclear family too is shrinking. Goa’s fertility rate is 1.7; much lower than the universal replacement level of 2.1. It means the population of Goans is rapidly shrinking…
I do not advocate that we should have more children, but we need to develop alternate support systems for children in nuclear families, to keep Goa’s community spirit alive. Otherwise, even the ‘joint family spirit’ we see today during Chovoth will gradually die, and the community spirit of the village will completely be history. What will that mean for Goa’s fabled spirit of togetherness, tolerance, accommodation and oneness?
(This article first appeared on www.goanews.com)
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Perfection and imperfection
By Vanessa Lobo
Nowadays everyone seems to be obsessed with perfectionism. Take a look around. Everywhere you see people running the rat race, compromising on all there is to compromise on! What for? Just to have the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect wedding, and everything perfect. Goodness knows, what’s next? We are told of fairytales from a very young age. All fairytales have the perfect ending “and they lived happily ever after…“ We watch movies and most of them seem to have happy endings too. How we wish that would happen in reality! Unfortunately that’s not the way it works. Then we also have our modern day television advertisements which affect us a whole lot more than we care to imagine. They brain wash people into thinking that something is wrong with them if they don’t have the perfect life. Don’t you just get tired of the whole facade?
Let’s go a little deeper into the subject. Why do people want to own perfect things or to be perfect? It is probably because perfectionism is made to look attractive, it is made to appear to hold the promise of happiness. People will love you if you’re perfect and you wear the perfect clothes, watch, make up etc. And who doesn’t want to be happy in life? Who doesn’t want to be loved and admired? So we’re caught at our own game, we fall into the trap that we ourselves have set. We are made to believe that if we have the perfect car (which coincidently also happens to be the most expensive one) we will be happy. We will just find someone who already owns the same car and find out if he’s happy! My guess is that he’s struggling to pay the loan he took to buy the car, besides meeting maintenance costs, sky high petrol/diesel costs and he probably has the recurring nightmare of someone stealing, scratching or smashing into his prized possession.
Actually, being perfect has nothing to do with being happy. It is just an illusion. No wonder, the world is never happy, never satisfied. It is always waiting for the next perfect item to come along to make it happy. In fact, the more perfect you try to be, the more you find that things don’t go your way, people don’t meet your expectations and happiness eludes you. The main reason for this being that, nothing is perfect!
We aren’t perfect, the people around us aren’t perfect, situations aren’t perfect and basically (as sadly discovered by yours truly) life itself isn’t perfect. In fact, nothing was ever meant to be perfect. That’s the way life goes.
So the only way to be happy is to accept imperfection. It would be terribly boring to live in a perfect world anyway. Where would we find all the fun, the surprises, the suspense, the thrill of achieving goals? Here’s raising my hot cup of morning tea to an imperfect, happy life!! As far as I am concerned, “Long live Imperfection!”
