Dear friends, Today we lost a singular Indian of his generation, and one of the true giants of Goa's art and culture. Dr. Jose Pereira's monumental work and contributions are irreplaceable building blocks of the continuing quest to understand and appreciate Goan identity.
A small personal tribute: some favourite photos of Dr. Pereira in Goa are attached here, as is a column from 2006. RIP Dr. Jose Pereira. VM -- Being Indian with Dr. Jose Pereira in Borda -------------------------- A tonsured Brahmin pandit on a sanctified church wall? That's what we find in a corner of the marvellous, highly orginal fresco that enlivens the sacristy of the St. Joaquim Chapel in Borda. It's just one feature of this remarkable modern contribution to Goa's sacred art, a richly detailed "Celebration of Food" that takes in the sources of Goan staples (coconut, fish, etc), indigenous producers and sellers, and soars to a compelling image of a peaceful Christ entombed in a garden paradise. All this is the singular creation of Dr. Jose Pereira, the linguist, scholar, writer and artist who is himself aGoan original of the highest order. He writes about his work, "the production of food is thus envisaged as a eucharistic sacrifice of the earth's first fruits, performed not in confining temples but on the wide earth and under the open sky." It's a consistently thought-provoking painting, easily among the most interesting modern public artworks in India. "I hate Goa," says the lean, aquiline Pereira. But so much of the septuagenarian's life work belies the attestation, including authoritative works on our distinctive variant of neo-Roman architecture, on mando, on much-loved Konkani. The level of sheer scholarship is unusual, especially in our times. The amazing polymathic curiosity - spanning languages, cultures, religions - is inimitable. His published works are so many that a simple listing fills six dense pages.Their breadth is enough to encomapass 16 separate categories, ranging from Theology & Philosophy: Buddhist to Language and Literature: Sanskrit. In between is a lifetime that has included lots of serious art - Pereira studied at the J. J. School before plumping for Sanskrit. His medium of choice is fresco buono - the painstaking technique utilized by the great Renaissance and Baroque masters. It makes the painting an architectural element, the image literally becomes part of the wall, it fuses with the structure itself. The artist paints on a layer of wet plaster, the fresco emerges in true form after the surface dries and the intended pigments are revealed. Nothing can be hurried - it is art by minute accumulation, imagemaking that hearkens back to the earliest religious paintings that were imprinted or carved painstakingly on cave walls. If Dr. Pereira has never been to Usgalimol, Goa's riverine site of some of the world's best Mesolithic art, he should head there immediately, he might find some ancient resonance with his contemporary "Celebration of Food". We Goans are irrevokably the result of a great mish-mash, a gradual accretion of influences and borrowings. Pereira emboidies this both intellectually and instinctively - his epic in Borda illustrates it throughout. It is deeply Catholic, but grounded in Indian reality, it expresses deep feeling for the Konkan even while seeking the category-free exultation that characterizes the best religious art. It is fully from one tradition but serves many in its universality. It makes a serious bid for the eternal, it has a gutsy, very appealing ambition. But it is also more. It is a contribution to Goa's Catholic heritage from a man who was born into the most idealistic era of Indian nationalism, a GoanBombayite who threw himself into Sanskrit scholarship because he wanted to really understand what it was to be Indian, and the mother language seemed to be "the embodiment of Indianness." This is also a man who hastily decamped from Portugal because he insisted (to an audience that included the Patriarch and the Governor) that while Goa was Latin, it was not a slavish copy of the Portguese variant but novel in its own right. In a dim corner of Curtorim is a stunning self-portrait executed decades ago. It is Jose Pereira in classic pose - back arched, gazing inquisitively, calmly, unblinkingly at the viewer. It poses a wordless challenge to the viewer. Who are you? What are you? The calmness is what is most unnerving, you know that the painting's subject has figured it all out. No Goan alive knows those fundamental answers better than Dr. Jose Pereira, let us all hope that he continues to share them with us in his writing, his art, and in longer, even more fruitful visits to his precious homeland.
