https://www.gqindia.com/live-well/content/the-coolest-things-to-do-in-old-goa-if-youre-visiting-in-february-march-2020
An enduring mystery abides in Old Goa, the district of 16th-18th century architectural masterpieces spilling down to the Mandovi riverside, including the largest church and convent in Asia. Of the state’s 5 million annual visitors, only around 10% of them venture to this UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site. But even they tend to restrict themselves to two important churches – the Basilica of Bom Jesus (where the body of St. Francis Xavier resides) and the Sé Cathedral. Venture to the other monuments, each one more interesting and beautiful than the next, and you are quite likely to find yourself entirely alone. This paradoxical situation makes no sense. The stunning buildings that constitute Old Goa bear vivid testimony to the explosive 16th and 17th centuries, when this location dominated trade routes criss-crossing the Indian Ocean, as the capital of Portugal’s Estado da India maritime empire, extending from Mozambique all the way to Japan. All through those years, the city functioned as an early crucible of East-West globalization on an epic, unprecedented scale, seething with money and traders from every known corner of the world. It was double the size of contemporary London and Paris combined. Immediately afterwards came decline – as steep and dramatic as the initial boom had been – but still leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of built heritage, that’s entirely unique in the world. >From the austere Church of Our Lady of the Rosary – the oldest Old Goan church still standing – to the jaw-droppingly ornate mouldings of the 17th century St Cajetan’s, the interiors and facades of this glorious array showcase a barely appreciated dimension of Indian architectural history. The late historian Paulo Varela Gomes states the case succinctly. These “were not buildings imposed on Goans, or buildings negotiated between Goans and foreign authorities.’ Instead, they are “native” buildings, “unique in world history”, and “to anyone with architectural and artistic sensitivity, these churches don’t seem to be the end-result of a compromise, but the affirmative artistic statement of a cultural position.” When I emailed to ask his opinion, the poet, critic and curator Ranjit Hoskote told me, “Old Goa is a globally important site associated with a particular genre of religious imagination, that of Iberian Catholicism, and its aesthetic expressions through the Manueline and Baroque idioms. We all know this. What is less well recognized is the transcultural confluence of visions, techniques and practices that Old Goa incarnates, from the grand scale to the intimate. Consider the triple-corded girdle that St Francis Xavier wears, with its distinctive knot. Turn your gaze to East Asia, where the saint carried forward his ministry, and you will find that girdle worn by Bodhisattvas in Japan and Korea, its origins traceable back to Persia. Look at the fine *azulejo*, the blue-glazed tilework. This art travelled from Persia to the Mediterranean, to Italy and al-Andalus, and came to Goa with Iberian priests, administrators and artisans, some of whom may well have been descended from Muslims and Jews forced to convert after the Reconquista. There is nothing flat or monolithic or predictable about Old Goa's Catholic atmosphere – it is richly nourished by diverse cultural sources. It is not difficult to harp on historic wrongs, on narratives of invasion, conquest, conversion and diaspora. It is more difficult to embrace the richness of the cultural encounters generated by these processes.” Hoskote pointed to the consistently overlooked Museum of Christian Art (scheduled to reopen in March, after substantial renovation) in its tucked-away location in the giant 16th-century Convent of Santa Monica, as “an extraordinary collection of religious art and sacred objects. It is a unique institution, mediating as it does between the world of belief and the world of secular attitudes, relaying the significance of its objects to its visitors in many ways, historic, aesthetic as well as contextual. Its collection – which I have been privileged to work with – allows us to trace an arc of cultural dialogue and confluence, in the way in which European Christian iconography was reinterpreted, adapted, and gradually Indianised. Their little ivory icon of 'Nirmala Mata', the Madonna in a sari, which I showed as part of my Serendipity Arts Festival exhibition, The Sacred Everyday, in 2019, embodies this process beautifully.” In addition to this excellent small institution – and the Archaeological Survey of India’s rather more indifferently curated premises next to the Cathedral – two brilliant music festivals offer visitors an opportunity to experience the marvelous settings of Old Goa. Both focus on classical music from India and the West. The 18-year-old Monte Music Festival takes place in February each year in one of the most beautiful concert venues imaginable: the 16th century Capela do Monte, on its promontory overlooking the Mandovi river valley all the way to Panjim in one direction, with the serene river islands of Divar and Chorao just below. Following closely on its heels in the cultural calendar, the four-year-old Ketavan Music Festival has ambitiously opened up several other centuries-old buildings for these kinds of events for the first time, most notably the St. Augustine Church ruins very close to the Museum of Christian Art. Last year, the acclaimed dancer-choreographer Sanjukta Wagh made an unforgettable appearance at the Monte, accompanied by Kabir poems sung with great ebullient style by Shruthi Vishwanath. Watching from high up in the Capela windows, my sons and I became transfixed, as the setting sun burnished the performers with ever-deeper shades of gold. Recalling that transcendent moment, Wagh told me “the energy was palpable. The content of Jheeni [her dance troupe] – especially the poems by Kabir – is largely improvised, and so the sky, the river, the birds, the setting sun and nature all became much more than a backdrop. We responded to them as we danced.
