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THE GOA THAT WAS
Most readers will not have known Goa while she was still undiscovered; while she was still a lost-in-time, forgotten and unfashionable pristine paradise. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been born and raised in that Goa, and I wish I could share that experience with you. However, I am at a loss for words to try and make you feel the way time moved at a pace so slow and so relaxed in a place at once so Latin and so Indian. Words to make you see what I saw through the eyes of an eight-year-old child: devout Christian ladies in Portuguese lace gloves and parasols, carrying their high Hindu caste like an invisible armour hanging on an invisible string from their pale upturned noses; serious learned Hindu gentlemen in Indian dhotis, Nehru cloth caps, socks and shoes, and the latest European jacket [plus a solid black British brolly for good measure] to complete an unintended premature fusion fashion statement; the smell of sunshine and dry leaves floating through a lazy sleepy village summer afternoon so hot, not even a crow could be bothered to fly out from under the shade of an over laden mango tree; screaming children running to the front verandah to watch the only car which might pass by on a red dusty road in the course of a whole week; people who ordered a carved furniture set and wisely let years go by while the master carpenters calmly went at their craft with an abundance of a precious ingredient unaffordable to today's art: Time. I remember the huge aristocratic mansions, the humble little huts and comfortable homely houses of all sizes in between, the ancient temples and white-washed chapels and a few rare mosques, all safely hidden under millions of coconut trees… the allopathic and country and witch doctors, all eyeing each other with studied suspicion… the tamed rice fields and wild lush forests and virgin silver beaches spilling one into the other. And above all, Goa's basically friendly people practicing two main religions, speaking two main languages and abiding by two thousand unwritten social dictates, all co-existing in a harmony which stood firmly on one unshakeable philosophy: live and let live, and while we're at it, let's sing a song and share a drink to help the time go by. No, I cannot accurately describe
what it felt like growing up in such a place during such an epoch.
I can, however, suggest you read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It doesn't
matter that he writes about South America. The villages, the houses,
the people, the states of mind, and above all the ghosts past,
present and future he describes so poetically—that could
well be the Goa I once knew and loved so well. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * *
Cover of Goa Ma Belle. Photo by Emmanuel Chastang.
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