The environmentalists may love these features of Goan heritage. It has become a fad to love and protect the heritage, but I believe that many will concur with me that Goa needs badly a climate change, rather than working towards stopping it, like nations worldwide are struggling unsuccessfully and unconvincingly to save the mother earth.
Goa’s tropical, sunny and humid weather may make it a tourist paradise for those who come from afar looking for its beaches during the summer months, but the Goan natives have to bear with sweltering heat and humidity the whole year round. Fortunately for many, such as the work migrants and those holding Portuguese passports, there is a respite from this unremitting heritage which leaves everything and everyone dusty, rusty and mildewed.
I cannot help recalling the burial of four of my close relatives, including my own dearest mum, which I had the privilege of officiating while a Jesuit priest. Usually, the elderly in Goa fall victims to the rainy weather of July-August. That was the case of all these relatives. It pained my heart to see two of them buried in Saligão cemetery, where the “foxy” or wily natives did not provide a protecting ceiling for their dead.
While I was protected from the downpour with an umbrella, my departing relatives had their coffins immersed in inundated graves. I had to invent a comforting environmentalist thought to calm myself. I imagined that they were welcomed by the womb of mother earth. The other two relatives, including my mum were buried in Moirá, where the “wise fools” have provided for a protective shelter for their departing residents.
A regular Portuguese visitor to Goa, published recently in his travel book, entitled “Uma sombra laranja-tigre” (A shadow of orange-coloured tiger) that in Goa’s sweaty weather one can smell the sweat of the pigs and eggs can cook inside the hens. He even wonders somewhat irreverently how the heat did not provoke the miracle of sweat on the incorrupt body of St Francis Xavier.
Afonso de Melo, the Portuguese author and godfather of a child of Michael Fernandes from Colvá, owner of the shack named Michael Bob’s, was unable to understand his friend’s obsession for shifting to Portugal and acquiring a residence in Baixa, the commercial zone of Lisbon. Michael knew little Portuguese beyond bom dia and boa noite, but he refused to listen to “Afonz”, the author, who tried to convince him not to exchange the Goan paradise for the hell of Lisbon. Only after long shots of beer and occasional swigs of rum Michael would forget for a while that Lisbon existed.
At the fag end of his book, Afonso de Melo quotes from some other book with some veiled emotions a phrase he wished could be his: “Since Adam was expelled from the paradise, he had never been so close to it again”. Apparently, it is a metaphor to convey that the Portuguese now feel closer to Goans than ever since the expulsion of the colonial regime.
From the above paragraphs one could conclude that Goa’s physical and cultural heritage is ambivalent. It all depends upon the life conditions and options available for the natives or visitors, who regard it as a paradise on earth or a frying pan. The wisdom of the elders tells us that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, or its Konkani equivalent: “Dada khonddta thuim mov” (where dad digs the ground is softer).
Hind wisdom, not unlike our national Hind Swaraj, usually comes too late to repair the damages or to opt for a favourable change. That has always been an existential challenge of humans at all times. Has one to believe in another adage: “Fortune favours the brave”? Unfortunately, much of that fortune requires more than the bravery of the fools. I can vouch for it from my personal experience. Now, almost a septuagenarian, I spent nearly two-thirds of my life, including the most active and productive phase of it, in Goa.
It is a life experience of all of us that we don´t choose our country or our parents, two factors that greatly determine our heritage, for good and for bad. We may call it our inherited karma, but as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in one of his two masterly books on History, we can improve our options in life, independently of the inherited karma, just like a player in a game of cards. A player who receives good cards may lose, while one receiving bad cards can win. Player’s intelligence and skill can turn the wheel of fortune one way or another.
My moving out of Goa in 1994 to settle down in Portugal was not motivated by any patriotic or unpatriotic emotionalism. My critical writings about whoever deserves criticism have not stopped. Neither was there any single motivation for my shifting out of Goa. It was very much in line with my professional conviction that there is no monocausal explanation in History.
In an autobiographical introduction to my farewell book, Goa to Me (1994) I tried to put down in a somewhat veiled language my various motivations. It may be read in the Googlebooks at http://bit.ly/25p2CIt It was a sort of critical self-analysis which I consider essential for any major decisions in our life.
(Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994). He presently resides in Portugal)
