"The Long Game" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (10 July 2016)

Goa and Macau share an Iberian past and a gambling present. Yet, casinos which rely on local heritage as lure do nothing to sustain it. 

While on the hydrofoil to Macau on a recent visit from Hong Kong, I chanced upon an older issue of the on-board magazine, which prominently featured an article titled “Your Very Own Macau Experience” (Horizon, June 2016). The article is about the region’s latest tourism slogan: “Experience Macao Your Own Style”.  Leaving aside the odd grammatical composition of the catchphrase, it and the article’s title reminded me of the slogan created by Tata Housing for their Goa Paradise property project: “It’s Time to Claim Your Piece of Goa”.

Writing elsewhere, columnist Jason Keith Fernandes notes of the poster for paradise that greeted him at Dabolim airport in January this year, that what is most offensive about the Tata slogan is its blatant imperial tones. “The word ‘claim’ continues to have [colonial] connotations, and … is [an] effective call to an act of conquest” (O Heraldo, 22 January, 2016), Fernandes argues. While the consumer is given primacy in the case of both these advertising phrases, what the slogans also suggest is that these former Portuguese enclaves – their very Iberianness being the major draw for holidaymakers and investors – are devoid of locals, or that they do not matter. As Vishvesh Kandolkar deduces when writing in this newspaper about second homes in Goa, investment properties are promoted as “‘virgin’ sites” for the wealthy while the presence of Goans and their housing needs are occluded (“The Rise of the Villament”, 13 September, 2015).

Even as the article I read about the Macanese slogan presents the veneer of the isle’s culture, its true purpose is to showcase the many attractions offered alongside the casinos that the place has become famous for. The coincidence with Goa is once again self-evident, and not least because of designs to introduce yet another gambling boat into the state’s waters, amidst protests. As the pleasure peripheries of the great modern empires of India and China, Goa and Macau, respectively, serve as playgrounds whose Iberian charms make them just that little bit different, but not completely alien, from their mainland metropoles. Doing no great favours for the growth of local culture, casinos at both sites bank on the differentness of their host locations as a lure, with scant regard for sustainability, either of environment or industry.

Ironically, I used the casinos in Macau as my landmarks as I ventured around the island. I’d ask for 

directions based on the proximity of heritage sites to these modern edifices. But at one point I was 

spectacularly lost. Thanks to a passenger who spoke a little English, I discovered that I’d taken the bus 

going the wrong way. Privy to our exchange, an elderly woman first asked the person I had spoken with 

something in Chinese and then touched my sleeve. “Fala Português?” she enquired. I brightened up. 

“Sim!” I responded, hoping that the few years I had spent studying the language would pay off now. I 

understood enough of her rapid fire instructions to find my way to Fortaleza da Guia, making the trek 

all the more memorable.

On the return trip, seated in front of a group of American exchange students on the hydrofoil, I could 

not help overhearing their conversation. I gathered that they were on a weekend jaunt away from their 

university in Hong Kong, and as they compared notes on this their first visit to Macau, they came to the 

same conclusion. “I don’t know that I’d come back”, one of them said. “For what it is, it’s just not worth 

it. Too expensive”, another added. “I could have just gone to Vegas”, yet another decided. As 

illuminating as this conversation was, it was also rather disheartening. It was clear that these visitors 

had not ventured past the casinos, had experienced nothing of Macau’s unique Luso-Asian heritage, and 

might never have the opportunity to do so in the future. Indeed, they had travelled halfway around the 

world to have the same experience they could have had in their own backyards. 

How long before some other attraction calls to the fickle tourist? While the impact of waterfront casinos in Macau and floating ones on Goan waters take their toll environmentally, they also cannot be relied upon as guarantors of local employment; simultaneously, the casinos’ reliance on local legacies sees no return. Investment in cultural heritage could be the long game, a consideration eclipsed by the desire for fast profits through short cons. For now, though it is the house that always wins, that victory does not belong to the land upon which it is built.   

From The Goan. 

"Windows Between Worlds" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (19 July 2014)

Save for their shape, the little panels of mother-of-pearl looked like the ones in the windows in my grandmother’s house. As a child, I had always marveled at the beauty of the delicate translucence of those windows. My uncle responded to my question by saying that mother-of-pearl was used before glass became more readily available and because, for Goans, the sea gave them shells to make windows with. Because the milky pearl-like shingles let in light but not sight, he added, old Goan homes could also do without curtains. This was certainly true in the Mandarin’s House in Macau, which I visited last month. Its naked windows were a display of wooden geometric shapes that, in lieu of glass, held captive nacreous bits that I learned had come from Goa.

The Mandarin’s House, thought to have been built in the late 19^th century, was recently restored and its doors thrown open to the public in the last few years. Its 21^st century renovation was overseen by the Chinese government, perhaps in an attempt to highlight Macau’s pre-colonial cultural ties to the mainland. That notwithstanding, the Mandarin’s House clearly demonstrates architectural traits that are not solely East Asian. As with Goa, Macau was a Portuguese territory; it was handed over to China in 1999. In various parts of the city-state, Lusitan influence is still apparent postcolonially. This is evident in the names of streets such as Avenida da Amizade and Rua da Madeira, as also in the fact that Portuguese is still an officially used language. In the Mandarin’s House, European design elements come into relief alongside Chinese ones, but as the use of the Goan opaline shards in the windows attests, there are other cultural factors to consider.  

In Goa, it is not exactly rare to see both chinoiserie and pottery of Chinese origin dating back to the colonial period. While blue and white pots punctuate the furnishings of the Mandarin’s House, bathed in the refracted light that filters through the iridescent window panes, the counterpart would be the family heirlooms and objet d’art of East Asian origin that are sometimes to be found in Goan homes or other institutions. They may take the form of vases and crockery in the colour scheme of azulejos, itself an Iberian art form borne of Moorish and orientalist imitation. 

The itinerary of these various objects – opalescent glass, blue and white tile, and china – suggests the cultural circuits of colonial trade that gave shape to class-inflected taste. But what do we know of the labour that fashioned and transported these items or of the colonial consumption of such articles that exceeded the specificity of a given household or institutional milieu? How did the travels of these pieces impact multiculturality within and across Portuguese colonies, to say nothing of the metropole in relation to these outposts? 

In other words, if a shared coloniality made for the appearance of the prized crockery in my grandmother’s home in Goa, do the windows in my ancestral home open onto another former Portuguese colony, one that shares the same kind of portals even if they are shaped differently? Did it mean the same thing to have “Goan” windows in Macau as it did to have “china” in Goa? Even as the Mandarin’s House takes pride of place in recently Chinese Macau, its legacy would seem to be a window into many other worlds, but not just those of times gone by.

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