My mum was one of ten siblings. Five brothers and five sisters. All of them but one have since died. The youngest a sister will celebrate her 95th birthday tomorrow.
My maternal grandfather who is from Loutulim in Salcette, died before I was born. He was a rich landowner I am told, but gambled all his wealth with the likes of Vicent João Figueiredo the baron of the village and an inveterate gambler himself in whose house the card playing took place sometimes for days on end. The outcome was that my grandfather reduced his family to utter penury and his wife had to raise ten children by gradually pawning off her jewellery and managing from the produce of the little land on which the house was situated and fields rented from the communidade, tilled by her mundcars. Two of the siblings went off to become priests to save on the expense of a formal education and they helped the family manage to live a half decent but hardscrabble life. In time, one of them even reclaimed a small part of his mum’s pawned trinkets which made her happy no end. My grandmother was a sweet lady. Despite the hard life forced upon her, she always had a smile that covered the lines on her face that her unfortunate circumstances had etched. I was one of her 15 grandchildren, but she made each one feel special. All my aunts and uncles and my mother lived to their late eighties with no heart trouble, cancer or hint of dementia. I remember all of them dying of natural causes. The youngest who lives, will be celebrating tomorrow in Goa. The average number of their children: 1.5. Perhaps they took the lesson of their own large family to heart. I remember my mum telling me that when there was no food to be had, they survived on coconuts, fruits in the compound and fish from the nearby ‘bandh’ that emptied out in the also nearby Zuari. They walked to Church, to school and to Margao when needed, a distance of about 10 kilometres. Couldn’t help myself with all these thoughts, I thank you for your patience with them. Roland. Toronto.
