"The Taste of Vinegar" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (Goa - 15 September 2012)

“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.

"There's Always a Loser" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (Goa - 18 August 2012)

We watched the Olympics with bated breath. As a sportsperson came within tasting distance of a World Record, we hoped that they were going to break it. Collectively, we partook of this uniting fantasy that as a human race, we could get faster, higher, stronger. And, yet, the games, ironically, are simultaneously about bringing nations together and having them compete against one another. The determination of athletes – a trait common to competitors regardless of their origin – is less of what the spectacle of the Olympics represents than it does the biopower of competing countries and the opportunity for the host nation to showboat. It is a chance for nation-states to put on display the standards they have reached in development and human prowess. In this, there is a connection between the modern games and their ancient counterpart. It is believed that the purpose of the original Olympics was to serve as a trucial event, bringing together various competitive sectors of the Greek world. However, even so, it was a time for each of those regions to show off the best of their male citizenry, testifying to the strength and training of the manpower at the disposal of the patriarchal state.  Even as peaceful events, the Olympics are not without their statist purpose – there is something to be said about the equivalence between economic power and the investment necessary to support the infrastructure required to train and groom athletes. With the games having been hosted by Britain this year, an added connection can be made with the politics of empire and its afterlife.

The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics which showcased Britain’s culture and its historical achievements was titled “Isles of Wonder,” as inspired by Caliban’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. A rather strange choice given that Caliban was Prospero’s slave in a play about racialized difference and colonial enterprise. Are the wondrous isles, then, England or those faraway lands it conquered? The Danny Boyle-directed Olympic extravaganza highlighted labour and industry as inherent to England’s historical trajectory. However, English history and culture cannot be separated from its imperial heritage. For example, the very raw materials that led to British prosperity came from elsewhere and the labour that transformed those resources was not always of English stock or from within the isles. 

1968

Events like the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, which was celebrated a few months prior, allow the nation to cling to the vestiges of its past while filtering out the unsavoury bits of that chequered history. Challenged by multiculturalism and globalization, themselves products of a colonial history and mired in it, the once colonizer’s racial homogeneity and political hegemony find themselves in question. But the playing field has yet to be levelled. As flags fly and anthems ring in commemoration of victory, they are reminders that nationalism is not a cause championed solely on the battlefield. It is equally heralded in the steps across a finish line and the medal tally after a fortnight of sport among international, but not equally-equipped, adversaries. 

An online version of this article appears here.

"Remembering Dominic" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 13 June 2012)

 “Hi, I’m Dominic,” he had said, but I hoped he was not.

I still remember when we first met. The year was 1990 and I was a teenager auditioning to join The Mustard Seed Art Company in Panjim. I had heard of someone named Dominic who had been in the news a lot in the last year. Indeed, all of Goa had heard about that Dominic. But when I met the lead actor of the theatrical group for the first time, the Dominic I met was charismatic and had a certain gravitas about him. I was soon to find that he could just as easily be a goofball. One of my most enduring memories of Dominic is that he loved yellow socks, which were a clue to his cheeriness in the face of adversity. He became a friend. When you are a teenager experiencing every adolescent anguish imaginable – from how no one gets your sense of style to the damnation that is your love life - an older friend who is willing to lend a ear, as if all those issues had equal weight, is someone to be held in high esteem. So, to me, my friend could certainly not have been that Dominic... or so I convinced myself. For as long as I remained unclear about the facts, I could keep my parents in the dark lest they ask me to leave the theatre group. But in a small place like Goa, it was not going to be long before they discovered the truth. Having been curious about who this Dominic was, my parents soon had their suspicions confirmed. All I heard as they upbraided me was that one word: “AIDS.” It was the one thing I had hoped not to have been true about my friend. 

In 1989, Dominic D’Souza, a frequent blood donor, found out he had contracted HIV upon being detained by the authorities. He was humiliatingly arrested and sequestered in a tuberculosis ward where he was the sole inmate – His disease was equated with criminality. He was the first person in Goa to have been diagnosed with HIV. To Dominic, how he had become infected was unimportant; rather, he was concerned about what he was going to do to change social perceptions about the disease. Dominic founded a non-profit called Positive People – It was the first organization of its kind in Goa, and it continues to exist. Despite the way he had been treated, Dominic loved Goa and saw himself as part of it. He wanted that no one else should have to go through what he did. At the same time, his advocacy efforts took him around the world as a voice for those who faced HIV-related discrimination.

Dominic, I did not get to say goodbye to you twenty years ago in May 1992 when you breathed your last in a hospital in Bombay. Not a day goes by without me thinking of you. I had hoped you were not that Dominic, because it would mean losing you. But the world is a better place because you were in it. You will always be remembered, my friend.  

An online version of this piece can be found here.

"Shippies" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 14 April 2012)

RMS Titanic

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912, yet the event continues to haunt. This is not least because, in its time, Titanic was a testament to technology – a wondrous accomplishment that something of its size could travel so speedily. In its sinking, however, it also revealed the vulnerability of humanity despite scientific progress. While the ship was meant to be a luxury liner whose primary purpose was the transport of well-heeled travellers, it also profited from others taking the maiden journey. Passengers ranged in class, and this was true of the crew as well. These economic distinctions are notably captured in James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, which has been re-released this year. In it, star-crossed lovers - an aristocratic lady and a stowaway - deal with societal differences and the wrecking of their vessel. Though the film reveals that people of various means travelled in the days when ships were a primary mode of long haul transport, it does little to foreground the racial diversity of those who made the often perilous journeys. For Goans, those travels have been part of our lore and familial legacies for centuries.

MV Dara

Journeys by sea have played a major part in Goa’s history. The start of the region’s colonization by the Portuguese was effected by Vasco da Gama’s 1498 landing on Calicut’s coast and, then, Afonso de Albuquerque’s naval conquest of Goa in 1510. In the colonial era, the once familiar waters that Goans as a coastal people had known so well and relied upon for subsistence would be left behind for the shores of the European empires in Africa and other parts of Asia. If the ocean is an archive, then the stories of tarvotti, men of the sea from Goa, have often been submerged in favour of a grander narrative of diaspora – projects that align the foreign-travelling Goan with the ethos of colonial exploration and “discovery.” No doubt, even the working class Goan seafarer has contributed to the perpetuation of colonial projects, but might these other perspectives offer nuance or even rupture to how a Goan history of oceanic travel is understood as not being a monolithic experience?

Gregory Fernandes

The tarvotti of yore may appear to be hidden in the mists of time, but the sea continues to employ Goans. In January this year, Goan crewmen aboard the Costa Concordia escaped the cruise liner which capsized in Italy. The phenomenon of Goans being employed aboard ships is so commonplace that these seamen have been given their own cultural designation – the term “shippies” renders them as present-day tarvotti. Unlike Concordia’s survivors, stories of shippies have not always been ones of luck. In April 1961, the M. V. Dara saw the largest loss of life after Titanic. A bomb blast aboard the ship, docked in Dubai, took the lives of over 200 people, many Goans included. In 2007, Goan sailor Gregory Fernandes was killed in a racist attack. He was on leave in Southampton, which was the port from where Titanic’s one and only journey began. This April, as that journey is recalled, it is also occasion to surface the economic and racial diversity inherent to maritime history.

An online version of the print article appears here.

"The Other Madonna" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 17 March 2012)

This Lenten season, an exhibit titled “The Passion and Glory” showcases Angelo da Fonseca’s art at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research. It ensues from “The Christmas Story” exhibition of the Goan artist’s work, which I had the pleasure of viewing at the same venue a few months prior. Apart from da Fonseca’s unique South Asian styling of Christian themes, what struck me is the centrality of the Madonna in much of his work.

The Pietà at St. Peter's Basilica

Of course, da Fonseca is not alone in portraying Mary as a central figure in artistic composition. At the risk of correlating the Goan artist’s images to Western iconography, my purpose in comparing da Fonseca’s renditions to Michelangelo’s Pietà will be revealed to be more about female representation than about similarities in Christian art. In 1972, Laszlo Toth infamously struck Michelangelo’s creation at St. Peter’s Basilica with a hammer, declaring that he was Jesus Christ. Despite Toth’s messianic pronouncement, it was not the figure of Jesus in the sculpture that he chose to efface, but that of Mary. The repaired statue now finds protection behind glass, still drawing attention to Michelangelo’s artistic focus on the Madonna. The dead Christ lies on her lap, almost out of view. His body is seen upon following the trajectory of the Mother’s downcast eyes. Mary, here, is not so much an icon of divinity, but a mother in mourning. Though Toth’s actions could be psychoanalyzed as an oedipal expression of repressed feelings towards a mother figure, did he exact his vengeance on the Madonna because of the gendered representation of her humanity?

Angelo da Fonseca (1902-1967)

Compare this to the reception of da Fonseca’s work, produced mostly during the twilight years of colonization in British and Portuguese India. In her evocatively titled essay, “Painting the Madonna Brown,” Savia Viegas, curator of the XCHR exhibits, says of elite Catholic Goan society that they perceived da Fonseca’s Indian-coloured woman as a threat, because “the classical Mary was a source of identity that connected [them] with ‘white society’...” Like Michelangelo, da Fonseca had created a Madonna who was human. But, this time, Mary’s lack of divinity was in the colour of her skin, which also invited attack.

In noting the racialized caste-bias of the Goan artist’s audience, Viegas reveals the subversive element in da Fonseca’s work. In a similar vein, theologian Felix Wilfred indentifies how “the dalits’ encounter with manifold social oppression led to a re-reading of the gospel,” causing the development of South Asian liberation theology – “an analysis of society [that takes] into account the caste structure, directing its critique against Brahminical hegemony.” 

Visitation (1954)

So also, the brown Madonna offers a potential counterpoint to patriarchy in general. For example, when da Fonseca depicts Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, no visible male figures frame their contact. Here, being a woman is not equated with motherhood. The Madonna, then, is posited in da Fonseca’s oeuvre as a woman whose gender and race brings awareness to marginality. Her humanity is in being the revolutionary other.


A version of this piece appears in print and can be found online.

"Love in the Time of Colonization" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 18 February 2012)

Catherine of Braganza

In this the month that celebrates love, the events of the year 1662 comes to mind. That year, in a far from romantic episode, the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza was married to Charles II of England. A custom thought of as so South Asian, their marriage had been arranged as a royal alliance between the colonial powers. Portugal included one of its Indian ports in the royal dowry. Perhaps they gave up that possession thinking it far less significant than the natural harbour of Goa, but the gift was to become a major factor in the establishment of British commerce in the East. That port was Bombay.

The bestowal of Bombay upon the English suggests Portugal’s acknowledgment of that empire’s overlordship in the seventeenth century. Portuguese scholar Boaventura de Souza Santos ruminates on “the relations of hierarchy among the different European colonialisms” and sees British colonialism as “the norm ... in relation to which the contours of Portuguese colonialism get defined as a subaltern colonialism.” He rightly conveys the historical dominance of England over Portugal in the Early Modern period. In so doing, however, Santos literally colonizes the politically loaded language of subaltern and postcolonial studies which all but leaves out the colonized themselves. Further, where de Souza Santos would categorize the dowry offering as proof of Portugal’s subaltern position below England, this would obfuscate how the bond extended the imperial reach of both colonizers. In other words, the “marriage” of convenience – as unequal as it was – still benefitted England and Portugal.

Seventeenth Century Bombay

Because of this “gift,” Bombay became the conduit between Portuguese and British India. It cemented their relations – a collusive effort that played out in perpetuating European dominance in several parts of the world. The link between the empires was also useful to Goans, who were able to expand their horizons beyond Goa’s limited opportunities. From British India, Goans found their way to different parts of the empire, East Africa included. There, Goans were designated apart from other South Asians because of their Portuguese colonial connection, and were often employed in administrative positions in the racially segregated society. Portugal, meanwhile, supported the idea that Goans in British East Africa were somehow different, because it upheld the distinction of Portuguese colonial power in the subcontinent. In this way, even the colonized in the British Empire were used to maintain Portugal’s imperial power.

Jer Mahal, Bombay Site of Goan Clubs

Interestingly, the channel that Bombay provided for Goans would prove to be part of the undoing of their colonization. Writer Victor Rangel-Ribeiro notes how “once Goans began to emigrate en masse to Bombay in search of a university education and well-paying jobs, we became exposed ... to India’s push to independence; the more deeply we breathed in the heady winds of freedom, the more tenuous became Portugal’s grip...” Ironically, Bombay – the interlude in the colonial affair between Portugal and Britain - led to Goa’s divorce from its colonizer. Apparently, some relationships are not meant to last...

An online version appears here.

"Time and Place" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 21 January 2012)

I crane my neck for a last glimpse long after the aircraft lifts off the red earth. Already there is longing.

After a month in Goa during the Golden Jubilee year of its decolonization, I left feeling the weight of the past tethering me to the land of my origins. Goa’s historic tryst with the world and a preoccupation with futurity were palpable in events like the Goa: 1961 and Beyond conference held at Goa University, but also in online fora, in conversations, and in the press. Right alongside these was the artistic, as with the second Goa Arts and Literary Festival. Predicated on commemorating 19 December, 1961, such affairs indicate Goa’s potential to inspire further creativity and scholarship. There is a desire for an acknowledgment of Goa’s legacy and what it is to be Goan. Here is a moment and momentum. What would it look like to translate this into a field called Goan Studies? How might we consider the world from Goan perspectives? I will not dwell on the unoriginality of this idea, often proposed yet unfulfilled. Instead, I will stress its necessity. The Jubilee events are a step in the right direction, and it is important now that a destination be arrived. 

It is ironic for a transnational writer to advocate a permanent location to ground epistemology and creativity. Indeed, I understand my own “Goanity” as having emerged from my family’s history outside Goa. But the palimpsests of Goa and its diaspora crossover. In Goa: A Daughter’s Story, Maria Couto points to the “cultures from across the ghats and beyond the seas [that] have clearly contributed to ... a [Goan] society that is cosmopolitan in its rootedness.” Even so, Couto’s articulation of a historic multiculturality cannot be conflated with similar contemporaneous migrations. 

At the Arts and Literary Festival, writer Amitav Ghosh reflected on migratory trends in Goa that he is a sometimes-resident of. He noted the presence of “the Russian mafia, ... vendors from Karnataka and Maharashtra, ... workers ... from Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, and the North-East...” and their influence on Goa where he can now “listen to coconut sellers from Siolim bargaining in the language of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.” In this poetic enjambment, all history and differences of identity are collapsed when dead Russian authors, migrant workers, and traditional labourers occupy a fantastic togetherness. “All of this is new. I am not afraid of it,” Ghosh proclaims of our antique land, finally speaking for Goans themselves. 

Ghosh’s eschewing of historicity echoes in João da Veiga Coutinho’s A Kind of Absence when he claims that for Goans “roots have been replaced by horizons.” A replacement though is not the equivalent of an erasure. Too quick to privilege horizons, Coutinho can still not deny the persistence of roots. At a time when the continual reiteration of the loss of Goan identity in the wake of globalization reaches a deafening cacophony, it is not proclamations of authenticity that are useful. Alternatively, we require multivalent discourses on how we belong to the red earth rather than the other way around. I see Goan Studies greatly contributing to this end.

An online version of the print article can be viewed here.