-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Add your name to the CLEAN GOA INITIATIVE | | | | by visiting this link and following the instructions therein | | | | http://shire.symonds.net/pipermail/goanet/2005-October/033926.html | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes on Goanness: thoughts springing from a Konkani lullaby
By Eusebio L Rodrigues Let me begin on a personal note, the exact moment, way back, when my Goanness quickened within me. I had picked up my motherless daughter who lay crying in her crib. My mother was in the kitchen. Not knowing what to do, I held my one year old close to my heart, wanting to sing her to sleep. What sprang to my lips was a Konkani lullaby that my grandmother used to sing to us when we went to Anjuna for the May holidays: Dollu re baba, dollamcho Dollitam dollitam bagilo Fulam vinchung lagilo To my utter surprise (I have a frog voice, so they tell me) she smiled sweetly at me and went to sleep. I continued: Eku ful velem, kanvlean Kiteak re kanvlea, fullu velaim Babaku mujea roddoitai Voddamchim pannam zoddoitai. As I gently set my little one in her crib, my mother standing in the doorway , looked with sad eyes at both of us. Then she burst into tears, and hurried away. Kiteak, I wanted to ask her, why, why are you still crying. I found her in the kitchen, looking lost, looking out of the window at the sky above. When I returned in the evening from my lectures at college she was still at the kitchen window. Why, I asked her, why. Nenno, I don’t know, she said, her eyes still heavy with tears. It couldn't have been the lullaby, I thought. Too simple, too crude, surely, to evoke such a reaction. The three of us had recently returned from England, and I was full of the new criticism, ready to lecture on the weaknesses of English romantic poetry. My Goan friends were impressed when I held forth, rather pompously, on the sloppy sentimentality of this lullaby, its musical monotony (the repetition of a note, five times, in the first line and the fourth), the sheer illogic of the images used (unlike the haiku, I proclaimed) some words linked together only by rhyme (bagilo/lagilo), the erratic jumps -- a lonesome child carefully choosing flowers, then a voice full of complaining kiteaks, asking a crow why it had taken away one of the flowers, why why was it making her baby cry, why make the mighty vodd drop its leaves. One Goan friend was not quite convinced: perhaps it hits you below the intellect, she said quietly, and left. That night, intensely alone on my bed, my Cartesian self lulled to rest, listening to the sounds of Bombay traffic we both had loved, the music stole into me and my Goan being began to sense the deep meaning of the lullaby: Dollu re baba, dollamcho Beyond the insistence of one simple note, beyond the deliberate pause, beyond the soft b and the liquid l, I became aware of the haunting background of the Gregorian chant out of which it may have sprung, deep, solemn, like the tolling of a church bell creating the sense of sad solemnity. My being began to sing: Dollitam dollitam bagilo Fulam vinchung lagilo The three word-forms, "Dollu," "dollamcho," "dollitam," their nuances untranslatable, released vibrations of enduring loss and of tenderness. Memories became liquid and began to flow. The fusion of words and images and sounds translated for me the sights and echoes of my remembered Anjuna. I couldn’t render into English the soft magic of "dollamcho." Nor the colloquial greeting for a village friend, met after a long time, implied by "bagilo." Nor the rich warmth of "vinchung," the careful picking of stones from rice before it is boiled, a labor of domestic love. (The vibrant richness of this untranslatable word is to be found in the mando, "Vintsun karhilolea suka," which combines choice, home, and affection.) Eku ful velem, kanvlean Kiteak re kanvlea, fullu velaim Babaku mujea roddoitai Voddamchim pannam zoddoitai. The images chosen by a woman to give voice to the tremors within her suggest the village scene. The child, newly come into this world, innocence incarnate, carefully picking flowers. The woman watching a crow, a bird always feathered in black, steal a flower. Kiteak, why, the woman’s voice asks the crow, why make my baby cry. More than just a question, it is a complaint to that omen of death. The woman does not quite understand the pain within her. The child will stop crying. Her own sorrow will endure. For her voice then makes a tremendous leap, from the personal to the universal. It gathers resonance. The lullaby becomes a lament which amplifies into a lamentation for mankind. The voice soars high into the sky daring to address Death itself that compels the mighty vodd, the banyan, perhaps the largest of trees on the west coast of India, to shed its multitudinous leaves. The woman experiences an intense moment of inner realization. Resigned to a truth that needs no voice, she accepts the mystery of being human. -------------------- About the writer: Emeritus, English Deptartment, Georgetown University.