05 February 2015
Jason Keith Fernandes
jason.k.fernan...@gmail.com
I am always afraid when I go to watch a film that
features Goa or Goans, because of the host of
problems that plague their representation. These
problems were more than painfully obvious in the
recent films *Finding Fanny* (2014) and *The Coffin
Maker* (2011). As in these films Goa is invariably
depicted as a land of natural beauty, a veritable
paradise. This representation hides not only the
challenges being posed to its environment, but also
the profound cultural conflicts that are ripping
resident communities apart. For their part, Goans
are depicted as fun and pleasure-loving folk,
non-achievers given to drink, of easy virtue, and
marked by childlike simplicity. Such a
representation effaces the fact that far from being
easy, Goan communities, Catholic and others, are in
fact marked by strong moral codes that regulate
sexual behaviour.
It was thus with relief that I concluded my viewing of
*Nachom-ia Kumpasar* (Let's Dance to the Rhythm), the latest
Konkani language film directed by Bradroy Barretto
[bard...@gmail.com]. A musical, the film is bereft of the
problematic and insulting clichés that guide so many Indian
language films about Goa and Goans, and is a must see since
it is a fabulous contribution to Goan, and Konkani language,
culture.
There are two tensions that guide the narrative of the film.
The first is the love affair between the crooner Donna and
the musician and composer Lawry Vaz. This love affair
provides the meat for the entire film, regaling the audience
through the 164 odd minutes of the film. The other tension,
however, and in my opinion the more interesting, is that of
the complicated relationship between the Goan, and in
particular the Goan Catholic, and the Indian state. Indeed,
I would argue that the love story is merely a foil for the
more assertive political complaint.
The film begins with a grouse; that Goan musicians
who contributed substantially to the unforgettable
melodies of the Hindi film industry were, and still
have, not been given their due. Despite Goans
contributing to writing, composing, and arranging
the music, the credits invariably went to the
established names within the film industry.
But this is not all; at the conclusion, the film informs us
that the brilliant music that poured out of the Goans in
Bombay since the 1930s was forced to suffer a sudden and
abrupt death thanks to the Prohibition that was imposed in
Bombay by the chief minister Morarji Desai in 1950.
Prohibition ensured that the night clubs in the city had to
shut down, forcing the destruction of the cultural life of
the city that these Goan musicians had contributed vibrantly to.
This cultural life has been lavishly documented by Naresh
Fernandes in *Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The story of Bombay's Jazz
Age* (2011). With no avenues for live performances, these
musicians took up employment in the film industry. Once
again, despite their role in producing the cult hits that
went on to define the soundscape of Hindi film music, these
musicians remained unacknowledged. The final words are
particularly poignant: "After a final flourish in the 70s,
the curtains slowly came down.There was no finale. No calls
for an encore. And no applause."
In presenting this complaint to the larger public, the film
makes a more profound contribution than it may have realised.
It is articulating a long held, but rarely voiced, opinion
that the contributions of Goan Catholics to India are often
ignored, and their cultural life not considered valid, or
even legitimate. What the film does is to make obvious that
the ignoring was not unconscious but in fact a systemic
activity. To this extent it draws attention to the
injustices that have governed the operation of the Indian
state, where some communities are marginalised and erased,
even as their works and efforts are appropriated by the North
Indian upper-caste groups who seem to have emerged as the
ultimate beneficiaries from the creation of post-colonial India.
A common response to political complaints that are
articulated by marginalised groups, and especially in the
case of Goans who voice protest about the way in which they
are represented, is to dismiss the complaints. What
*Nachom-ia Kumpasar* also does, though perhaps unconsciously,
is to mount a rejoinder to the filmic representations of Goans.
If the film *Bobby* (1973) set up a standard for how Goan,
and Catholic, women in India were understood, then
*Nachom-ia* offers an alternative way in which to deal with
extra-marital sexual relations.
As indicated earlier, the film revolves around the love story
of Donna and Lawry. However, unbeknownst, to most characters
in the film, until it is far too late,Lawry is in fact a
married man. This crushes Donna, even more so when she
realises that Lawry has not only been hiding the fact of his
marriage, but persists in the affair whilealso hiding the
fact that his wife is pregnant. It is only when Lawry is
congratulated by members of the band that he and Donna belong
too that Donna realises that she has once again been duped by
the man she loves. The tears that Donna sheds, the portrayal
of the conflicts that Lawry encounters, and the statements of
a variety of characters in the film, clearly indicate that
love leading to marriage is the ideal within the community
that Donna and Lawry inhabit. Rather than offer up a
caricature of a community, the film engages with the
conflicts that often crop up in communities, whether Goan or otherwise.
The other element of the caricature of Goans and
Indian Christians that the film engages with is the
relationship of Goans to alcohol. Just as in the
lives of most Goan Catholics, alcohol is present
throughout the film, be it when persons are
drinking at home, at feasts, or in the public space
of the tavern. The naturalness of alcohol in
social life, as well as the virtues of drink in
moderation, are in fact actively highlighted by the
presence of the lone alcoholic in the film. The
fact that he is the sole alcoholic makes the
eloquent point that while drink is ubiquitous in
the Goan lifestyle, not everyone is an alcoholic.
The advice that this alcoholic gives Donna when she begins
her own disastrous descent into alcoholism makes the
relationship between the Goans and alcohol very clear. In
the words of the character played by the tiatrist Prince
Jacob, one drinks for one of two reasons, either out of
happiness, or due to sadness and the desire to forget.
Forgetting, he advises, is not possible through alcohol.
This moment, that draws its gravitas from the Latin maxim in
vino veritas, ensures that alcohol and alcoholism in the film
are not merely tropes employed to titillate, but are evidence
of community wisdom and advice. It is also worth noting that
the alcoholic is humanised. He is not a drunk just for the
sake of being drunk. That he is able to offer Donna such
sage advice means that he has turned to alcohol for
particular reasons. This is in sharp contrast to Bollywood
representations of Goan alcoholics where one only understands
them as being buffoons who drink for no apparent reason.
The manner in which this advice was communicated to Donna via
the otherwise comic figure made one more feature of the film
strikingly obvious: the power and strength of the tiatr.
Those familiar with this Konkani language drama tradition
will recognise the extent to which the film is provided
substance by the formulae of tiatr. The tiatrist and comedian
John D'Silva plays the role of Logic, Lawry's aptly-named
manager and sidekick, through the whole film, while Prince
Jacob, a well-known practitioner in the genre, does a
brilliant job of playing the alcoholic.
While both tiatrist play supporting roles, it is in fact
their performances that guide the film and gives it depth and
solidity. D'Silva demonstrates his versatility and the
capacity of tiatr by operating as more than just the
comedian. He also effects a smooth transition to the
manipulative manager who gets Donna to sign an unfair
contract that will prevent her from singing with anyone
besides Lawry. Speaking with those involved in the
production of the film I was given to understand that D'Silva
was also responsible for shaping the screen play to ensure
that it spoke to diverse Goan audiences and did not remain
entirely an "intellectual" exercise. This engagement with
the film and indeed the success of the film points to the
vitality of tiatr.
It is through these tiatrist and the multiple Konkani
speaking actors in the filmthat one is also witness to the
breadth of Goan Catholic Konkani language forms. The Konkani
is peppered with words that have Portuguese origin, but have
over time been hammered into shape to become uniquely
Konkani. Sadly, in recent times this diversity has come under
threat through the acts of the state of Goa. Since the
recognition of only Nagri-scripted Konkani as the official
language of the State of Goa, in 1987, the state has
supported only the Nagri script and Sanskritic version of the
Sarasawat Brahmins in the territory, and suppressed all other
forms of the language.
Introducing the audiences to the diversity within
the Konkani language spoken among Goans is a highly
laudable feature of this film. A particular target
of ire was the language form that gave birth to the
tiatr and cantaram, which used words of Portuguese
origin, and was written in the Roman script. More
recently, voices have been growing in protest
against this suppression. In referencing these
language forms the film has become one more tool
for those struggling to gain recognition for
Konkani in the Roman script.
If there is one shortcoming of the film it is the fact that
the lead actors are not Konkani speakers. Their discomfort
with the language is obvious and jars against the fluidity
with which the other actors speak the language in all its
nuances and inflections. A case in point is the stellar
performance of Meenacshi Martins, who plays Donna's mother.
In addition, one suspects that it was this unfamiliarity with
the language that ensured that the emotional range of these
actors and their engagements with each other was not
elaborated but restricted to monosyllables and facial
gestures. This shortcoming could have been overcome by
casting experienced tiatrists in these lead roles.
The location of this film's storyline in both Goa and Bombay
is another issue linked with the recognition of tiatr and
other cultural forms of the Catholic labouring castes and
classes from Goa. For a long time tiatr artists in Goa were
not recognised by the government of Goa given that most of
these artistes were based almost entirely in Bombay.
As *Nachom-ia* so clearly shows, Bombay was the
space where the labouring Goan Catholics seemed to
have been able to assert themselves outside of the
suffocating shadow of the landlord, and the social
positions that caste and the comunidade system
meted out to labouring groups. Celebrated by
dominant-caste Goans as the embodiment of village
democracy, the comunidade system ensured the
communal management of village lands by an
oligopoly of dominant caste families to the
exclusion of everyone else. While claiming descent
from the founders of the village, these oligarchs
saw other villagers as merely living in the
village, rather than constituting the village. The
position of marginalised castes was ritually
inscribed and marked at every event of village
life. It was to also escape this ritual and
quotidian humiliation that so many Goans migrated
to Bombay and further afield.
What is interesting is that it was exactly at the time that
the labouring Goan Catholic in Bombay was churning out music,
film, literature, and a range of novel cultural forms that
pro-Indian Goan nationalists like Tristãode Bragança Cunha
(1891-1958) and Luis de Menezes Bragança (1878-1938) were
haranguing Goans for their inability to engage in vibrant
cultural production. The former of these two nationalists
has today been integrated into the pantheon of Indian heroes
as 'The Father of Goan Nationalism'.
In fact Bragança Cunha's analysis of the problem in his
famous tract The Denationalisation of Goans (1944) has become
the bedrock of the delegitimisation of the cultural practices
of Goan Catholics. Bragança Cunha argued that Goans, and
especially the Goan Catholic had become denationalised as a
result of adopting a culture that was imitative of the West.
In the face of the kind of cultural production that
marked the life of the labouring Goan Catholic in
the city of Bombay these assertions are bizarre!
If taken seriously they can only mean one of two
things. First, as was the case with the rest of
their upper-caste and landed elite brethren, these
two nationalists ignored and disparaged the
cultural innovations of the labouring Goan. The
other possibility is that the intended audience,
and the subject, of their nationalist rhetoric were
the Goan Catholic elite alone. In either case what
is revealed are the limitations of the current
deities of the pro-Indian Goan nationalist
pantheon, and their irrelevance in the face of the
vibrant cultural life of the labouring or bahujan
Catholic.
The tragedy is that this space was destroyed even as the
labouring Catholic began to gain in confidence and
recognition. First, as the film argues, by the Prohibition
that marked the beginning of the end of Bombay's
cosmopolitanism, and secondly through the manipulations in
Goa that ensured that the language and culture of these
labouring Catholic was excised from the realm of state
recognition precisely through reliance on the skewed analysis
of the type offered by Bragança Cunha. What Bragança Cunha
and his ilk had done was to adopt a racist understanding of
what culture and Indian-ness meant and scripted anything
seemingly connected with Europe outside of this definition.
This scripting did not bother them unduly because these
nationalists were able to assert their Indian-ness by falling
back on their upper-caste identity. That it was a
nationalist Gandhian ideology at work in the Bombay of the
50s and Gandhians in Goa who masterminded the displacement of
Konkani in the Roman script from official recognition should
give us ample proof of the upper caste Hindu hegemony that
Gandhian ideology underscores. In addition it should warn us
that the contemporary problems that minority groups in India
face have roots that lie deeper than the current obsession
with finger pointing at the BJP alone.
The final accolade that the film deserves is for casting the
spotlight on Lorna, that icon of Goan culture. It is widely
suggested that the love story of Donna and Lawry is based on
her relationship with Chris Perry. The final segments of the
film, which suggest scenes from Lorna's rapturous return to
the Goan stage, indicate just what a phenomena she was and
continues to be. Lorna is an icon of Goan culture not merely
for the songs she gave, and continues to give, life to, but
for the kind of sexuality that she embodies.
Her voice does not contain the sickly saccharine and shrill
sweetness that marks so much of Hindi film music and embodies
virginal, self-effacing purity. Her voice is an earthy one
that can roar if there be need for it. The woman that her
voice gives life to is conscious of her sexuality and vocal
about her desires. It is this kind of mature sexuality that
Palomi Ghosh, the lead actress who plays Donna, fails to
capture. Rather than the strong woman of Lorna's life story,
for the most part one sees the depiction of a slightly
nervous, giggly girl. This is such a shame. One wishes that
the lady is memorialised through the naming of a public
institution or space after her. Failing that, this film will
be one that will memorialise those artists who despite their
substantial productions and innovations seem doomed to be
kept out of the Indian and statal imagination.
*Nachom-ia Kumpasar* is a great film devoid of the
humiliating clichés that are the stock of Indian
filmic depictions of Goan Catholics. The film
achieves this feat not because it emerges from
within the community, but because it engages
politically with the history and the ethos of the
community and unapologetically airs a long-held
grievance.
(I would like to thank the members of the Al-Zulaij
Collective, especially R. Benedito Ferrão and Dale Luis
Menezes for their comments on earlier versions of this text.
I claim ownership of all errors in the text.)
~~~
Jason Keith Fernandes has completed a PhD in Anthropology at
ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon.
http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8056%3Agoans-films-and-their-worlds-putting-nachom-iakumpasar-in-context&catid=129&Itemid=195
