Hi Frederick,
I really enjoyed reading the article by Derek Almeida. I was at school
in Belgaum between 1962 - 1968 and lived in Church Street. My cousins
lived in the same Bungalow compound as the Noronha family.
Couple of things caught my eye - Derek is an Almeida and is from
Assolna. How do I contact him? I knew a man when I was in college in
Panjim whose name is Marco Almeida and he is from Assolna. I lost
contact with him and I was wondering if Derek might know of him.
Kind regards,
Walter Da Costa
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, April 8th 2025, 21:54
Subject: [GOABOOKCLUB] 2, Market Street (Derek Almeida, in Belgao...)
2, Market Street
Derek Almeida
For as far back as I can remember, life for me started at 2, Market
Street, Belgão. It was a quaint road with rows of houses on either side.
Most of them were single storied with an occasional two storeyed one.
Like the one where Teacher Eve (name changed) lived. It had a wooden
staircase that led to the first floor. It squeaked as we climbed the
stairs and the wooden floor gave out loud thumps when we walked around.
How do I know all this? It's a valid question. I know this because my
brother and I went every evening for tuitions to her. Teacher Eve
genuinely believed that it was her duty to make fine, clever men of us
all through proper instruction and some spanking.
Mrs D'Souza, who lived opposite us, also had a two-storeyed house. We
were in and out of her house so often that one would easily get the
impression that we were related. We were not. We were just good friends
and often went for picnics together. I have some black and white photos
to prove it. Our favourite picnic spot was Asoga. This outing started
with a dumney ride to the railway station followed by a train journey to
Khanapur and a really long and tiring trek to the picnic spot which was
on the banks of the Malaprabha river.
By the way, a dumney is a bullock cart with a carriage on the top to
seat passengers. It was dark on the inside and the bullocks were really
slow. This contraption did not have shock absorbers so every crack or
pothole in the road sent shock waves right through our backsides. The
journey in a dumney always started with a fight for window seats. Being
the smallest, I usually lost.
If a dumney was not available then the next best mode of transport was a
tonga which was drawn by a horse, like the one Basanti had in the film
Sholay. This had spring shock absorbers and was a little faster but if
the horse was left standing for too long it crapped and that made us
laugh until the stench hit our nostrils. Then, we pinched our noses and
laughed harder.
The only time we saw animals other than a bullock or a horse was when
the circus came to Belgaum. The great big tent, which was usually
erected on station ground was mesmerising. We would run to the site
during the afternoon school break and peep through the cracks for a
`deko' at the elephants, hippo, tiger and more horses.
I lived at 2, Market Street along with my aunt, cousins and a few
boarders. It was quite a big house, or perhaps it looked big because we
were little. It had a hall, three bedrooms, a kitchen with a storeroom
attached, a loft for storing things, a `chula' in the back for heating
water and making guava jam, which my aunt did once a year, I think. Mrs
D'Souza also had boarders. I think everybody had boarders back then.
When I look back at my time in this street the one thing that now
strikes me as remarkable was the drains which comprised neatly cemented
open gutters running down the front of the row of houses. At the
beginning of the drain was a water pipe which was opened once a week by
the Cantonment worker to flush the drain. This was the time for paper
boats which launched in the turbulent waters. Some capsized and we ran
along the street following the ones that survived. They don't make
drains like that anymore.
Of the many friends who lived on the street was Alan, who lived with his
grandmother. His parents worked in Mumbai and they would visit from time
to time. It was a time when everyone who wanted to do something with
their lives went to Mumbai. The rest stayed back and did something else,
like work at the post office or become a priest, which I gave some
thought to when I was older and still clueless about where my life was
heading.
I assumed the Jesuits would be grateful to have me in their order and I
remember having one meeting with a priest called Fr Ambrose at the
Jesuit house. It didn't take him long to figure out how clueless I was
and conclude that I would be a huge loss to the Jesuits or any other
religious order for that matter. Fr Ambrose was a smart dude.
A note about the Jesuit house. It was more like a castle. A spooky one.
It was a two-storied granite building painted in dull grey like the
gloomy monsoon sky. It had Dormer windows which exuded mystery because
they were never open. It was enveloped in a cloak of silence and we came
to believe that it might harbour a few ghosts of some priests who never
made it to heaven. Every time we passed the house to return from
A-ground after six in the evening we ran like mad and stopped only after
we were out of the main gate.
It was in the parlour of this house that Fr Ambrose interviewed me, but
by then I realised that it was not so mysterious after all. It was just
very dull and boring.
The 'spooky' Jesuit House.Photo Deepak Pillay.
So back to Market Street. Alan was our friend for many reasons, the main
one being his possession of a trunk full of comics. So we always tried
to be on the right side of Alan, which was easy because he was a cool
chap before `cool' became mainstream.
Like there was this time when he was dashing across the street to come
to our house to play when he struck a bicycle. We heard a yelp and
expected a lot of crying because on close examination we noticed one of
his teeth hanging by a thread. But he didn't. There was a tear or two
but no crying. We helped him dislodge the tooth which was fun and made a
big thing of asking him to show the gap to us and other friends. After
that, losing a tooth became cool.
Alan was also quite religious. One day some of the bigger boys got hold
of a gun, a real one and shot a sparrow. Alan was miffed. He was
determined to give it a burial worthy of a sparrow. So he dug a hole in
the space between his house and the main road. Not Market Street as it
totally lacked the space for religious antics. He placed the bird in the
hole, gently and then declared that by tomorrow it would be in heaven.
Then, he threw in a pink rosary to make sure.
The next evening after school we rushed to the burial spot and dug it up
to ascertain if the sparrow had gone to heaven. It was still there
covered with ants and other tiny creatures. It wasn't a pretty sight so
we buried it again with another rosary. We said an `Our father' to the
best of our abilities, a few `Hail Marys', a `Glory Be' and buried the
bird for the second time.
We did not open the grave again because we did not want to be
disappointed, but more so because we were afraid that if it was still
there our belief in `heaven' would go for a toss.
That's how I remember Alan. Those were the days when we wore shorts to
school and pretty much everywhere else and played marbles.
Market Street branched out from Independence Road near the corner of St
Paul's High School and stretched all the way to what seemed like
eternity. We seldom got to the end of the street. The furthest we got
was to Roland's house which was at the point where the street joined
Khanapur road. Roland's house was on the first floor which was accessed
via a narrow stone staircase and a door on the left. I always wondered
how his parents managed to get their furniture, beds and all into the
house through that narrow staircase. They never told me because I never
asked them.
Market Street today. Photo Deepak Pillay.
Roland was more than a friend. He was a family friend. Even though we
share the same surname we are not related. Years later I got to know
that we came from the same village in Goa, which is Assolna.
He would come quite often to our house to play and one afternoon asked
if we were interested in taking a look at the buffaloes owned by the
Noronha family. This family supplied milk to almost everybody in the
area. Very often I would sit outside our house and wait for the Noronha
milkman to return the milk bottles. They used to supply milk in two
types of bottles, one with a red striped cap and the other with a blue
striped cap. One was low fat and the other high, I can't remember which
was which. It was a long time ago.
Talking about buffaloes, it was during Diwali, I think that all the
buffaloes were adorned with garlands and with their horns painted bright
orange, taken in a procession. We all waited till the end because the
last to come were the bovines owned by the Noronha family and they were
huge, almost like hippos.
It was after one such procession that we accompanied Roland on a trek to
get a second look at the Noronha buffaloes. We walked down to the police
station junction, took a left on High Street and went all the way to
Havelock Road. Then we took a mud path which led to a huge open space
known as `dhobi ghat'. At least, that is what Roland called it and it
stuck in our heads. (By the way, when I write `we' it usually means me
and my brother and sometimes, Alan).
Dhobi ghat was the place where all the dhobis washed the clothes and
hung them to dry. It was like acres and acres of land covered with
thousands of clothes hung from lines of twisted rope without clips. The
method of using twisted rope to hold the clothes in place was sheer
genius.
So, we walked across the open space to the place with a large granite
shed where the buffaloes were kept. Roland first hoisted me on his
shoulders to take a look through a horizontal open window. I remember
touching the head of the buffalo. She turned to look at me and I
scrambled back. Then Roland hoisted my brother and after that the two of
us hoisted Roland.
On the way back Roland stepped into a pool of cow dung and we all had to
go back to the shed so he could wash his foot in the water tank. And
that was that.
Market street had a lot of families in the milk business. They all had
cow sheds in their houses and one had to pass through the shed to get to
the living quarters. It was quite scary. We had to do this often to meet
a friend, Keshav, who went to school with us. The milkmen usually parked
their cattle on the road during the day where they were washed and fed
watery stuff in buckets.
Practically, every schoolboy who lived on the street went to Teacher Eve
for tuitions. She literally ran a school in her house with over 50 boys
neatly segregated into classes. We were scared to death of her because
she believed that the only way to stuff history, geography, math,
science and English into the head of a boy was with the cane. And thanks
to her, we all came out smarter for it. I remember standing first in the
final exam in third standard, all because she never let go. I never
repeated that feat ever again. Those were the days when corporeal
punishment was part of the school syllabus and parents believed that an
occasional kick in the pants got you better marks.
There was Billy, who was related to my cousins but lived somewhere in an
area populated by bungalows with massive compounds and several
outhouses. At tuitions Billy often got the thick end of the stick.
Nonetheless, every Sunday Billy would go to church and pray for Teacher
Eve. He would pray that one day a knight in shining armour would trot
down Market Street on a horse or buffalo, sweep Teacher Eve off her feet
and carry her to a place at least 500 miles away from Market Street. It
eventually happened, but not as quickly as Billy had hoped. Billy wasn't
great at praying.
Finally, no story of Market Street would be complete without a mention
of Michael's Shop. It was located in one of the front rooms of the
Britto residence and was our go-to place for almost everything,
especially a very hard sweet which was in the shape of an egg and looked
like an egg on the inside. It had to be broken into smaller pieces with
a stone.
Michael was a genial fellow who sat in the shop and passed his time
cutting old cigarette packets into strips for smokers to light their
cigarettes with. Very often he would let us into the back of the shop
through the side entrance where we helped ourselves to jaggery.
On one such occasion we were stopped by an elderly gentleman with black
horned glasses whom we knew as Uncle John. We boldly told him that we
had Michael's permission and he, even more boldly, told us that it was
his shop not Michael's. We were shocked to discover this truth, but
continued calling it Michael's Shop, much to Uncle John's dismay. He
couldn't, for the love of God, figure out why, when or who renamed his
shop as Michael's Shop.
And then one day, when I was in the third standard, I think, we got
another shock when we were told the house we lived in did not belong to
my aunt and that we would be moving to BC 45 in bungalow area, which was
closer to Billy who was still praying for Teacher Eve at that time.
A giant of a man named Fakira took charge of loading all our belongings
onto bullock carts. Even though he was lean with sunken cheeks and hair
sticking out of his ears, he had the strength of ten men. He was what we
called a `gaundi' because he undertook cement work and came every
Christmas to whitewash the house. He seldom smiled, and ate a lot of
paan. He continued to do work for my aunt at the bungalow. And then, one
day he stopped coming. We thought he had died, but he hadn't. He just
faded into the background as people shifted from whitewash to paint.
Every now and then we would catch a glimpse of him walking on the road
in his favourite baggy shorts, long-sleeved shirt and a turban neatly
wrapped around his head. We still looked at him in awe because he could
whitewash a house in a day and single-handedly move large cupboards with
ease. They don't build men like Fakira anymore.
We left 2, Market Street behind but carried memories with us. Some faded
with time and some remained. It was a good life, even if for a brief
moment in our journey through life.
Derek Almeida, journalist and editor, worked at the senior level at
almost all the English-language dailies of Goa. He also undertook a lot
of writing assignments and crafted a weekly humour column, for over 20
years. Currently he's working on his first graphic novel. He believes
Belgaum shaped him into the person he became. Derek lives with his
family in Porvorim but always dreams of going back to Belgaum.
This is an extra from the Belgao book, which will be discussed at the
XCHR's History Hour on Friday, April 11, 2025 at 6pm. The event is open
to all.
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