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|Read Valmiki Faleiro's latest column on Goa's traffic entitled: |
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| Goa's appalling road sense - 1|
|http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=418
|
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WE NEVER TOOK THE MAIN ROAD...
Principal of St Xavier's High Secondary School, Prof Mervyn
D'Souza, tells Reema Kamat about the good ol' days when he
was growing up in Assagao.
[Weekender, Gomantak Times, March 26, 2006]
Professor Mervyn D'Souza has lived in Assagao for more than
35 years. Though born in Africa and schooled in Bombay, he
returned to his ancestral home in the early 1970s, and
pursued his further studies in the institution he is now the
principal of, St Xavier's Higher Secondary School, Mapusa.
And this was after having tried his hand at other occupations
for awhile. Life does come a full circle for some.
"The area that our house is located in is called Bairo Alto
and it is quite a small vaddo in Assagao. Erstwhile, there
was another area that had a large residential settlement, but
then, as some say, there came some sort of a plague and wiped
out many and forced others to flee from the area. That is how
the forest became our village. If you look around while going
past the area, you would never think that there was a village
there. In fact, Assagao itself is so small and obscure, that
its name is a derivation of the words 'assa' and 'gao', which
roughly translated means 'there is a village'.
This ambiguity, he explains, was caused by the presence of
concentrated greenery in the place.
"So much so that when you come down the hill into our ward,
there was a sudden drop in temperature, a very noticeable one
at that. You could literally feel a drop of about five
degrees of temperature, the atmosphere became that cool.
There were so many trees, it was literally like a forest. But
having spent years there, the inhabitants themselves knew
their way in and around the region. There are very few
landmarks like St Ann's Chapel. In fact, people's houses
themselves were landmarks; they were well-known and therefore
people used to guide each other to places and addresses by
referring to the location of these houses, big trees, etc."
If his residence was in Assagao and college was St Xavier's,
which is quite a distance away -- at least three to four
kilometres -- how was the distance covered by Prof Mervyn?
"By walking of course, how else?" he retorts. "It may seem
quite a distance for students today, who are used to
commuting with all kinds of vehicles or public transport at
least, but everyone used to walk it out then. In fact,
covering the distance while walking briskly took no more than
20 minutes, believe it or not. This was because we never took
the main road; we had our little shortcuts through the
forests and the trees, narrow little beaten paths known only
to us," he reminisces.
Prof Mervyn also brings forth his recollections about one of
the favourite haunts of his clique when he was a teenager.
"The spring that is located in one corner of Assagao was a
great pleasure to bathe in and the area around it was a
popular picnic spot. As youngsters, we used to trudge up and
down the hill, breaking off and eating the small fruit like
'boran', 'kaantan' and 'chunnan'. We used to just take off
with a small luncheon or snack basket and spend a major part
of the day there, till the Angelus bell tolled in the
evening, and we used to get back home as instructed. It was
good fun."
There was no electricity for a few years after Prof Mervyn
moved to Goa; this must have been hard, coming from a
developed urban area like Bombay which had all kinds of
facilities even then.
"In the beginning, for a little while, yes. But I soon got
used to it and it became less cumbersome gradually. I even
started getting attached to the laid-back style of living
here. Everybody knew and trusted everybody; houses were
always open. We could enter anywhere we wanted and were
always welcome."
Houses were small but strong in those days, he says.
"My ancestral houses itself is more than a hundred years old.
It has been subjected to no modification, except minor repair
work and maintenance here and there."
Today, sophisticated buildings and complexes are coming up
everywhere, especially in cities. But not only do these clog
the quality of living with their cloistered existence, they
have to have a waterproofing job done every year, the
standard of their construction speaks for itself."
"Today there has been unrestrained cutting of the trees that
once made Assagao what it was. There used to be steps where
crops were grown, and the trees that were there kept the soil
strong. Now, there is a high level of soil erosion and
leaching with the arrival of the monsoons. The slopes are
st
