[Goanet] semper fidelis (conspiracy of the Pintos)
SEMPER FIDELIS (To a loyal horse) by MARCOS GOMES CATAO Hail to thee, fiery white steed Unexcelled the gallantry of thine unsung deed Who nobler than thee, high-spirited charger, More reliable than the stoutest armour. The unmatched fleetness of thy limbs Helped evade the foe catch a glimpse Of thy master they sought to seize Vengefully to torture by slow degrees. In the dead of night thy fluttering mane Trustworthier than a high placed vane And thine eyes with the force of a torch Steered thee safe to the homely porch Day after day thou kindled faith In the betrayed fighter in dire strait Carrying the victuals to hold his strength No matter the ordeal endured no length Thwarting their vigil with alert ears Thru' months that dragged on as years To the day they scented his lair That had driven them to despair That odious day they put him to death And gleefully buried his handsome head Not far, under a plain white Cross Where thou couldst grieve thy loss. Grim reminder too to his sore mother Watching disconsolate atop the balcony They'd relentlessly smother Any kind of dark conspiracy Sublime tha lesson of thy constancy So contrasting with the vile treachery Of who conspired but held not fast In dignity to the very last. AUTHOR'S NOTE: The horse referred to above was depicted in a huge mural in one of the rooms at my mother's house in Candolim. When children, we were told that, when the CONJURACAO dos PINT OS(PINTO CONSPRACY) was discovered and aborted, Lt. Manoel Caetano Pinto(my maternal great grand uncle, a key conspirator and the horseman on the white horse) fled to the nearby hills and the horse would come back every day, in the dead of night, to fetch food for him. This was, of course, an apocryphal story as Manoel Caetano had no time to flee and was apprehended almost immediately. However, the part referring to the mother and the Cross may hold a grain of truth. As per tradition of the time, in the case of persons condemned for crimes of lese majeste (high treason against the king), on the appointed day of the execution, Manoel Caetano's feet were tied to a horse's tail and the horse was taken all over the city of Old Goa until arriving at the site of execution, where his hands were cut off and then he was hanged. After death, he was decapitated and the rest of the body quartered. The hand and parts were then mounted on swords and taken by horsemen to the district capitals and villages of origin of the culprits. There they were impaled on wooden poles for the populace to see what happens to those that try to rise up It is possible, therefore, that his head or some part was buried under the Cross. The Cross must still be there in the curve of the road from the house to the church. It was there in l982 when I last visited Candolim. The insignia on the epaulettes indicate the rider of the white horse was, in fact, Lt. Col. Francisco Caetano Pinto (Manoel Caetano's elder brother and my maternal great grand father) who, along with his other brother, Lt.Col. Antonio Caetano Pinto militated in the Peshwa's army in Poona, fighting against the British until the final defeat of the Peshwas at Sholapur in l8l8, when both returned to Goa. Lt.Col.Francisco Caetano Pinto fought with great valour against the British, who, nevertheless, awarded him an annual pension of Rs2500/(currency value of l8l8) in recognition of his having saved the life of two British soldiers, Hunter and Morrison, who had been made prisoners by the Mahrattas and were being prepared to be put to death. Lt. Col. Antonio Caetano Pinto was left for dead on the battlefield but recovered. The British, his foes on the battlefield, offered him a post in their administration because of his great learning(he had studied in Lisbon, Paris and Rome and was fluent in French and Italian), and his specialized knowledge of agriculture. But he turned down the post, as well as another offered by the Goa Governor as Professor at the newly opened Military Academy in Goa. He dedicated himself to agriculture and was the first to introduce mills for producing sugar from sugar-cane at Saligao. I have not yet read the books but am told that two British authors spoke of them :GRANT-DUFF in 'History of the Mahrattas' and WALLACE in 'Memories of India'. Sadly, the valuable l8th century mural (valuable historically and artistically, not monetarically) was totally destroyed when the nuns demolished the house to build their present hospital there, though they did preserve the entrance gate with the encrusted coat-of-arms. Fortunately, I have been able to salvage a moth eaten photo of the mural though, being in black and white (colour photography had not yet been invented in the 30s) , much of the majesty has
[Goanet] GOAN MEDICS
GOAN MEDICS By MARCOS GOMES CATAO Not withstanding VOLTAIRE's mordant quip that Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.,medicine has never lost its pristine allure, possibly because, if properly exercised, in the right spirit, it remains one of the most idealistic and altruisitic of professions: Louis is Pasteur's painstaking work in the chemistry of life(the basis for the work of Lister, Roux and others;) the fatal abnegation of Marie Curie's radium research; the tenacious inquisitiveness of Alexander Fleming's mind have all been beacons that have illumed the vision of generations of students contemplating their future, without forgetting the soul-stirring Albert Schweitzer, celebrated organist, eminent BACH specialist, superb doctor and Christian evangelist who preferred to labour in distant, God-forsaken Lambarene (French West Africa) rather than accumulate wealth exercising any one of those professions. And, even to-day the inspiring example of of doctors working selflessly at great personal risk of life as associates of 'Medecins sans Frontieres' (Doctors without borders) in locales of war, pestilence and famine all indicating that the original Hippocratic creed still prevails on the whole. But the ravages of Time have taken a toll:in many countries, fortunately not all, the diaphanous veil of Idealism is being rent by a creeping wave of corrosive materialism. Fifty years back I read a revealing joke in the Journal of the American Medical Association' that ran as follows: The visitor goes to see the doctor at his house, finds him out and meets his six years old daughter. Father is at the hospital, she says he has a very busy day there. How so?. Oh, he has a tonsillectomy, an appendectomy and a hysterectomy to-day. My, my!Those ae very big words for a little girl like you .Do you know what they mean? Oh, yes.The tonsillectomy means fifty dollars, the appendectomy means two hundred dollars. The hysterectomy is best of all: it is one thousand dollars. I could not imagine then that there would come a time when, in certain countries, the last sentence of the little girl would epitomize the prevailing philosophy in medical practice. Fortunately, by and large, GOAN doctors have not fallen prey to such sentiments, possibly due to the solid ethical foundations bequeathed them by their forefathers and fathers(general term used, no offence meant to feminists.) Goans have always taken to the medical profession in a big way ever since the first graduates rolled out of GOA MEDICAL SCHOOL in 1846. .Dozens and dozens of others followed over the years, moving out to town and village, hospitals and sanatoria, as 'Delegados de Saude(Govt.Health Officers) in GOA and other Portuguese possessions. Who among us of an older generation can fail to remember the harried village doctor doing his rounds on the bicycle, standard leather bag strapped on the back seat? Or the town doctor who, at the end of a particularly hard case would be recompensed for his diligent labours with a live chicken or a huge bunch of bananas which he accepted with no lack of grace and a paternal smile on his face? And then, that gravest of all occasions, the 'Consulta'(experts' Consultation?) when the attending family physician,wrestling with baffling imponderables to arrive at a confident and precise diagnosis, would request the host to convene one or two other collegues and, when they arrived, all would huddle together discussing and arguing in hushed tones, sometimes with magesterial gestures until they arrived at a consensus, while from afar we watched and admired their learning and wisdom, bemoaning our own ignorance. And when the others had gone, the home doctor would sit and scribble out the prescription tailored for the occasion based on his deep knowledge of pharmacology acquired at the school benches and honed by experience: not for him the cut and dry, one-for-all formulations peddled by avid, commissioned salesmen. Those days are now gone, replaced by cold machines in even colder hospitals. Among the GOAN international trail blazers, Dr.GAMA PINTO deserves pride of place. Born in Saligao, he achieved great fame as an ophthalmologst in Portugal, and then went on to occupy the Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg(Germany,)then in the forefront of medicine.. He presided over the Ohthalmological session of the International Congress of Medicine held in Berlin in l890.When we went to Germany, we made it a point to visit Heidelberg to see the town where the GOAN banner had been raised with such distnction such a long time back.. Dr.BETTENCOURT RODRIGUES also ranks high among the early Goan pioneers. Born of Goan parents in the Cape Verde Islands, where his father was posted, he did not attend GOA Medical School but
[Goanet] ABBE FARIA
This was sent on Saturday 13th BY MARCOS GOMES CATAO [EMAIL PROTECTED] ABBE FARIA It was indeed gratifying, and commendable, that you decided to write on Abade Faria, such a prominent Goan so few Goans know about. There are one or two factual innacuracies which I hope you do not mind my drawing attention to:JOSE CUSTODIO de FARIA was born in Candolim, not Colvale, on 31st. May l756; he had no partcipation whatsoever in the 'Conspiracao dos PINTOS (PINTO Conspiracy),as hinted by you because, at the age of 15 in 1771, he left for Portugal with his father and never returned. And the PINTO Conspiracy took place six years later. Finally, he was and was not the son of a priest and nun :he was born to a normal married couple in perpetual acrimony. So, years after his birth, by mutual consent, they decided to separate. After the requisite dispensations from the Holy See, the mother went to the Conmvent of Sta. Monica and he studied for the priesthood and was ordained. Availing of the opportunity of the occasion, I would like to expatiate further on the person. (Being born in Candolim myself, as a co-villager perhaps I can hope some of his reflected glory can rub off on me!?) CAETANO VICTORINO de FARIA was born in Colvale and pursued the preparatory course for the priesthood. But then he married RITA de SOUSA, daughter of ALEXANDRE de SOUSA, a very rich man from Candolim .As she was the only daughter, Caetano Victorino came to live at the house in Candolim (gor zavuim?). Being an only daughter and heiress presumptive to a large fortune, Rita had been brought up as a spoilt child: she was proud, highly temperamental and domineering. So, from the very start the marriage went off on the wrong track with constant dissensions and fights.The father tried his best to restore normal, harmonious relations between the two, to no avail .The resulting stress took a heavy toll on his health, which deteriorated rapidly. Seven years after the marriage, he died. Ten months after the death of the father, a son was born to the couple, JOSE CUSTODIO de FARIA But, even after this auspicious event peace was not restored to the household and the old acrimony continued.The couple, therefore, eventually decided that separation was the best solution. After the requisite dispensations had been obtained from the Holy See, they were separated: RITA went to the Convent of S.Monica and Caetano Victorino pursued studies for the priest-hood and was ordained. In 197l Caetano Victorino resolved to go to Portugal and took his son along with him. In LISBON, with his pleasant manners and 'pushing' nature, he managed to gain several friends in influential circles at the Court. He then decided to go to ROME and got his doctorate there before returning for good to LISBON. The son, JOSE CUSTODIO, accompanied the father to ROME, studied for the priesthood and eventually also got a doctorate in theology. He then returned to LISBON. Using the large, influential contacts he had achieved in LISBON, the father allegedly got an assignment for the son to preach at the Royal Chapel, quite a distinction for a young, yet unknown priest On the assigned day, when Jose Custodio went up on the pulpit and saw before him Royalty, noblemen and courtiers his head began to spin and he got tongue-tied. The father, standing beneath the pulpit, sensed the son's predicament, and wanting to proffer help muttered sotto voce :Kator re bhajji(I do not know an adequate translation for this pithy Goan phrase and would welcome help, if available). The recall of the motherland acted like a magic bullet and immediately loosened the preacher's tongue who proceeded to deliver an eloquent, and much appreciated, sermon. However, news of the PINTO Conspiracy in GOA had now reached Portugal and, since Caetano Victorino, the father had gone to Lisbon with letters of reccomendation from IGNACIO PINTO, the father of one of the key conspirators, JOSE CUSTODIO thought it prudent to move to France. In France Jose Custodio immersed in his studies and experiments, travelling to several cities. He mixed a lot socially with the cream of French literary and scientific communities, achieving great popularity as ABBE FARIA. Apart from DUMAS who used him by name in Count of Monte Cristo,CHATEUBRIAND also made him a personality in his Memoires d'outre ombre.ABBE FARIA took an active part in the French Revolution, marching ahead of a crowd of rebels. During his lifetime ABBE FARIA was able to publish only one bookDe la cause du sommeil lucide,ou etude de nature de l'homme par l'abbe FARIA,brahimini,docteur en theologie,PARIS l8l9(The cause of lucid sleep or a study of the nature of man, by abbe Faria,brahmin,doctor in theology,PARIS 1819) He died young of fulminant apoplexy.Ref. CUNHA RIVARA:A Conjuracao de 1887 em GOA l875 Edition N.B. P.s.:Fr.JOSE VAZ is now 'Blessed and not 'Venerable' as he was beatified by Pope John PAUL II in COLOMBO,Sri Lanka in l995.Sri
[Goanet] Homecoming
* G * O * A * N * E * T C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S * Enjoy your holiday in Goa. Stay at THE GARCA BRANCA from November to May There is no better, value for money, guest house. Confirm your bookings early or miss-out Visit http://www.garcabranca.com for details/booking/confirmation. --- A M O T H E R'sC A L L ( B o m b a y t o G O A b y s e a) T h e f a r e w e l l' s d o n e, t h e s h i p' s b e g u n I t s h o m e w a r d t r a i l i n b l a z i n gs u n H u g g i n g c l o s e l y t h e c o n t o u r o f t h e l a n d N o t f a r f r o m t h e e n d l e s s m i l e s o f s a n d. M o t l e y t h e c r o w d o f t r a v 'l e r s a b o a r d E a c h o n e p a y i n g w h a t h e c a n a f f o r d' U n d e r g o i n g g r e a t t r a v a i l t o q u e n c h a t h i r s t D e e p f e l t y e a r n i n g f o r t h e l a n d o f b i r t h. B l u e t h e s k y n o m a t t e r w h e r e y o u v i e w T h e o c e a n p r e s e n t s v a r i e d s h a d e s of hue P l a c i d g u l l s o f f e r t h e o n l y c o m p a n y R a i s i n g o n e 's t h o u g h t s t o t h e A l m i g h t y. P a s t h i l l s r e s t i n g t i r e d f e e t i n t h e s e a And b e a c h e s w h i t e a s f a r a s e y e c a n s e e T h e h o u r s s p e e d m o n o t o n o u s l y u n t i l S l o w l y d u s k d e s c e n d s a n d a l l i s s t i l l. L o n e a t o p t h e t a b l e l a n d s e n t i n e l s s t a n d G h o s t w h i t e a g a i n s t t h e p i t c h d a r k o f t h e l a n d F l a s h i n g f i t f u l t h e i r g u i d i n g l i g h t T o t h e s e a f a r e r s l o s t i n t h e n i g h t. T h r o u g h t h e w i l l o w y w a v e s t h e s h i p f u r r o w s C u t t i n g p a t t e r n s o f m a g i c i n t h e b i l l o w s, W h e n l o ! !i s o l a t e d s t r a i n s o f p l a i n t i v e m e l o d y D r i f t f r o m d e c k s b e l o w i n d i s s o n a n t h a r m o n y. S o o n m o r e v o i c e s s w e l l t h e s e e m i n g l a m e n t S i n g i n g l u s t y t h e i r p e r e n n i a l t o r m e n t P e r f o r c e t o l i v e f a r f r o m t h e i r n a t i v e h o m e 'Mong u n w e l c o m e c l i m e s a n d f o l k s t o r o a m N o w t h e r e 's n o s t i r b u t m e a s u r e d s i g n s o f b r e a t h 'Cos g e n t l e S l e e p, t w i n s i s t e r o f D e a t h H a s e n v e l o p e d a l l i n i t s d r o w s y e m b r a c e, C a r r y i n g t h e m i n t o f a n c y r e a l m s o f s p a c e . E a r l y m o r n u s h e r s i n t h e s t r i n g o f f o r t s B a s t i o n s b u i l t 'c o n q ui s t a d o r e s ' t o s u p p o r t M a j e s t i c l a n d m a r k s d e f y i n g u n s p a r i n g T i m e O f t e n r e m i n e s c e n t o f f e a t s s u b l i m e. U p a n d d o w n t h e e s t u a r y f l o w A n c i e n t, d i g n i f i e d 'p a t m a r i s' s l o w C r o s s i n g u g l y p o l l u t i n g b a r g e s, T h a t d r a i n t h e l a n d o f i t s r i c h e s M o v i n g i n l a n d o n e a n d a l l d e a r l y g a z e A t t h e e n c h a n t i n g v i s t a s t h a t d a z e: R u s t i c c a l m, v e r d a n t p a l m, p e a c e d i v i n e T h a t a l l a b o a r d s o d e e p l y e n s h r i n e T h e s h i p 's n o m o r e t h a n a b r a c e f r o m s h o r e M e n a n d a n i m a l s a r e s p e c k s n o m o r e F a c e s o n d e c k a r e a g l o w a t t h e t h o u g h t O f s t e p p i n g o n s o i l s o l o n g i n g l y s o u g h t W e h a v e d o c k e d; t h e j o u r n e y ' s d o n e C r e w m e n b u s t l e r e a d y i n g f o r t h e n e x t r u n. S w i f t l y a l l d e p a r t b r o a d l y b e a m i n g S a v o u r i n g t h e g r e a t j o y o f h o m e c o m i n g. M A R C O S G O M E S C A T A O _ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list (Goanet@goanet.org)
