“Business
is good,” he said in reflective response to the question, “but it’s difficult
to get vinegar.” Continuing the conversation in Konkani, the historian
commented, “But you were getting a regular supply from Tony, no?” The restaurateur’s
visage grew pensive as he remarked, “Tony died a few months back.” Pondering
this, the professor solemnly said, “I didn’t know...”
The
deceased Goan man was unknown to me, but I shared in this moment of loss along
with the other four present. The group comprised of a colleague who is a
prominent writer on Goa, the owner of the restaurant who had joined us during
the course of our lunch, the historian – an eminent scholar of Goa and a
long-time friend of my father’s, and his spouse. It was my first Goan meal on this
my first trip to Lisbon where I had attended a conference. Preceding the visit
I had felt ill at ease, but this sombre moment had the paradoxical effect of
providing me with a sense of calm. Perspective, even.
As
I prepared to journey to Portugal, I had felt the weight of history. I was the
first in my family to make this trip. Neither of my parents, nor their parents
before them, had ever been. The irony of this is that they had all, with the
exception of my mother, been born Portuguese citizens of Goa. My mother’s
British citizenship had been of an odd variety – as with other residents of
colonial East Africa, there was no pretence that her circumscribed rights were
on par with those of Britons in the colonizing homeland. Living in Britain, any
contemplation I had of a familial history that linked me to the land of my
residence was ambivalent at best. As it were, there were plenty of other
reasons to reflect critically upon the post-imperial and still imperious British
nation. However, Portugal presented a whole other set of challenges – far more
personal and now unavoidable.
The
meal at the Goan restaurant, nestled on a cobblestone Lisbon street, had been
the tastiest one I had had in Portugal. My only experience with Portuguese
cuisine had been the dishes my father had learned to prepare. Little did I know
that his interpretation had been severely Goanized: lots of pepper and other
spices flavour his bacalhau, for instance. I was surprised to find that the
“authentic” version of these dishes were bland in comparison. If the Portuguese
had journeyed to Goa five centuries ago in search of spices that would preserve
food and mask the taste of decay in a time before refrigeration – an effort
that led to Goa’s colonization – then contemporary Lisbon had foregone this
history in serving up its less than piquant fare.
And,
yet, here was this motley group of Goans I found myself amongst in the
postcolonial city, lamenting the loss of an erstwhile traveller. Like Vasco da
Gama and de Albuquerque before him the Goan man had also journeyed. Clandestinely,
he had ferried the flavours of Goa to the once imperial centre. Those bottles
of vinegar - an elixir, so potent and integral to a way of life – retain the
flavour of colonial history and make it relevant far away from home, wherever
it may be.
An online version appears here.
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