'THE FORCES DESTROYING GOA ARE MUCH STRONGER THAN I AM' One of Goa's foremost intellectuals, Dr Jose Pereira, also known as Goa's Da Vinci, inaugurated his painting exhibition at Porvorim last week. In an exclusive interview, this polymath (who has published 24 books on theology, history of art, architecture, Goan culture, language, literature and music) speaks to GERARD D'SOUZA about his varied interests.
Q: Your interests span a wide range of issues from Islamic architecture in India to teaching Theology of World Religions at the Fordham University, to the Goan mando. How did you come to span such a wide range of interests and specialisations? I see myself as a product of two traditions: one is the Latin-Christian tradition and the other is the Indian Hindu tradition. So, in order to bring to expression these traditions, I had to do extensive research. Q: You spent a majority of your life outside Goa. How did it feel to be separated from your motherland? Like a rat, I have run away from the sinking ship, which is Goa. Q: How did you manage to keep in touch with Goa despite being based in far off places, even before the internet came into the picture? When I was in London, I used to travel by land to Goa. That meant travelling across Europe and then to the border of Iran. From there, I would hitchhike by truck on the border of Pakistan and then make my way into India. Nobody does that anymore. Q: You have done extensive work on the mando. How do you look at the mando today? As I said, I am a product of two cultures. In the mando, I find a concrete symbol of the synthesis of two cultures. I needed a concrete argument to bring out the synthesis of the Latin Christian and the Indian Hindu and I find this in the mando. The mando is beloved but betrayed. It was the work of the aristocratic minority to create a fragment of Europe surrounded by the waters of the Arabian sea and the hills of the Sahyadris... an attempt to create a little Vienna with a fantastic spirit and dance. It is amazing to see a file of men dressed in purely Western outfits and a file of women in Indian costumes holding ostrich fans gently swaying back and forth to a melancholic tune. It was a fantasy world. It couldn't have lasted very long. It lasted about a hundred and fifty years. I like the fantasy world of the mando. Q: What about the tiatrs? In my time, there were folk plays, beautiful plays. But they published nothing. It was only when Joao Agostinho arrived on the scene that he began publishing. They were lucky I arrived on the scene and took notes of what was happening. These folk playwrights were ahead of their time. They were already attacking social evils like landlords sexually exploiting their tenants and drunken behaviour and all this pushed them much ahead of their contemporaries. Q: Even today, the tiatr is a very vibrant industry, don't you think? Yes, that is because the Catholics are afraid that their entity is being dissolved and this is their way of asserting their identity. Q: What do you feel about the future of Konkani? I'm no longer optimistic about the future of Konkani. It has to fight too many forces that are too great for it to take on. What will we do? Look at Marathi. It is spoken over such a wide territory, almost 80 times the size of Goa, and they all have one standard that they can look up to. How can Konkani survive? They claim there is a standard: the Devanagari Konkani, but does it inspire loyalty among a Bardezkar or Saxttikar? Take for example the mando 'Adeu Korcho Vellu Paulo'. Tem Ponddekar-ak poddlam? Amchem nu mhonntelem te. If we have the zeal of the Jews, then maybe. They have revived the buried Hebrew language. It's plastered everywhere, on their walls, they speak it to their children and they speak it on the radio. Do you think we are capable of this? Q: You are primarily known as a scholar and intellectual. Where does painting come into the picture? I look at myself as a painter. It's just that my primary source of income was not from paintings. Besides, nobody noticed my work so I went into scholarly studies. People were perhaps... equally confused as I was about myself. My painting was otherwise sporadic. Q: You were based in Benares for awhile. Tell us what you did there? I was centered in Benares as I had a project to research the history of Indian art with the American Academy of Benares. I was working on producing photographs of Indian monuments across India. We were supposed to take pictures and store them there and then study them. That was our plan. I was doing Indian Baroque art. I travelled a lot in India then, especially visiting Daman and Diu, Bombay and Kerala, not to mention Goa where Baroque art is popular. Q: Tell us about your encounters with D.D. Kosambi? My encounters with him were very brief. He was being driven somewhere and he allowed us to enter his car. But I was friends with Manoharrai Sardessai and still remember his poems. Q: How did you end up lecturing Theology? I'm a self-taught theologian. It is one of my greatest fascinations, especially Latin scholastic theologies. I've written articles on theology. But then, how does one expect people who are into theology to be interested in a painter? Q: If you were to get a chance to live again, what would you like to come back as? I supposed I could be a computer graphics expert. But then, a meditative existence would not be possible. I would not be able to have the vivid experiences that I have had. I am happy to have lived in the time I have lived and have been living. Q: What are your views on today's young generation? I know nothing of the young of today. I am nearly eighty years old. The world that I knew is very different from the world of today. We used to read books and classics. I read all of Shakespeare, Dickens... but today's youth know computers. We had an opening to Portuguese culture which today's youth don't have. The Portuguese have died out and with that the Goa I knew has also died out. We no longer create new songs. In our time, the songs were being composed by the dozen. Q: Do you think Goa is a good place to nurture scholars of your caliber? We don't have the institutions. It will take time. Where can one do meditative research? Definitely not at Goa University! In any case I don't live here so I don't know the scene. Q: Do you ever regret leaving your home behind? What they cannot control, the wise do not grieve. The forces that are destroying Goa are much stronger than I am, why should I grieve? SOURCE: Gomantak Times. * * * * * Dr Jose Pereira's forthcoming programmes in Goa: July 30, 2010 (Wednesday) : 5.30 pm Folk Plays of Salcete, talk at XCHR-Alto Porvorim. July 30, 2010 (Friday) : 4.30 pm Release of the book Song of Goa, Hotel Mandovi. Both functions are open to the public. * * * UK STOCKS EXHAUSTED! After a community-supported launch at Croydon, Selma Carvalho's *Into the Diaspora Wilderness* is available at Broadways Book Centre, Panjim [Ph +91-9822488564] Price (in Goa only) Rs 295. Ask a friend to pick up a copy. Details of the book http://selmacarvalho.squarespace.com/ * * *