Title: Who the Bleep cares about Goa's tender nights and the flatulence of modernity? By: Selma Carvalho Source: Goan Voice Daily Newsletter 8 May 2011 at http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/
At a precise intersection in Nuvem, two roads slide past the white-washed Igreja Mae dos Pobres; one road leads to Panjim, the other to Majorda. The church is quite magnificent; its steeple dwarfs everything else, snaking into the sky, telling stories of Empire, of seaworthy Portuguese men who travelled half-way across the world in their caravelas with a map in one hand and a sword in the other, fighting Arabs along the East Coast of Africa until the fury of the wind-Gods drove them up the Indian ocean. Of the Church, I don't know much, although I intend to find out some day (if it's not demolished by then for unfortunately heritage conservation is still in its infancy in Goa and many monuments are lost due to neglect or ignorance) but every November it celebrates the Mae Dos Pobres feast. The feast is preceded by daily novenas which take place in the evening and finish just as night falls. In Nuvem, in November, night falls hurriedly, restlessly; a deep dark embracing the sky. When a moon finally emerges from its folds of velvet black it smiles with all the benevolence of a child amidst a multitude of stars hanging over the land. In those days, when the pealing bells signaled the end of the novena service, young girls with thickly-pleated dresses cascading to their knees and men with prime moustaches and light cotton shirts would file out of Church and form a long, snake-line queue leading to an old doddery woman making the best bhajias this side of the Zuari. We didn't quite know where Uma came from; I suppose there must have been people who knew her but there she was every winter like the returning chill in the wind. She sat squat-like on the red laterite earth with a kerosene stove in front of her and worked like a whirling dervish dropping little formless balls of watery batter with onions and chillies into a bubbling pot of oil and scooped them out with all the precision of a magician performing tricks. Brown balls of the most delicious doughy tenderness would melt in our mouths but we could never afford more than a paper funnel-full and all of us girls, little girls and luscious older girls would walk home with Uma's bhajias in our hands and the wolf-whistles of young roadside Romeos ringing in our ears. Older men, as is the custom in the villages, would trail behind the women, some on foot, others on Raleigh bicycles, keeping a warden-like eye on the goings-on and ensuring everyone's safety. As nightfall deepened, the sounds of the night spread a whimsical ghostly dread through the candle-carrying procession of girly-giggles and manly bravado walking home over the narrow stretch of land which ran through the paddy fields. Sometimes now, when I return home to Nuvem, I lie awake at night, uncomforted by sleep trying to discern those singular strands of sounds so familiar in my childhood; a throng of crickets in the grass, the nasally cries of bulbuls, the rustling of the hibiscus flowering red in the garden and in the distance over the paddy fields, past the deathly quiet of the cemetery, the foul weeping of foxes. But I can't find them anymore. I hear instead the occasional honk of an out-of-state truck on the NH1 highway, the drip-drip of public water-taps which go unattended through the night and some unmindful neighbour playing his stereo. The government promises to make this stretch of the road into a four-lane highway. Every organism, gnarled trees, grand-old houses, gauda hamlets, which have lived peacefully by its wayside for centuries will be destroyed by this flatulence of modernity. I wonder what Uma would think of all this? Would she continue frying her bhajias unmindful of the desecration wrought onto the land or would she clasp her hands to her emaciated chest and weep? Book promotion (For UK Residents only): To win a free copy of Cry of the Kingfisher, answer the question: Who wrote Cry of the Kingfisher? and email your answer to carvalho_...@yahoo.com To help you with your answer go to: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL15712861W/The_Cry_of_the_Kingfisher_(a_novel) To order a copy of the book for yourself, go to: http://goa1556.goa-india.org/index.php?page=buy-books-via-paypal Promotion runs till end June, 2011. A draw of names will reveal 3 winners. The winners of the Modern Goan Literature promotion were: N. Menezes, UK, D. Marques, UK and S. Colaco, UK.
