GOAN EXPATS By Valmiki Faleiro Goans were adventurous. From the mid-18th century, perhaps earlier, they ventured to distant shores, sometimes deep into uncharted territory. They made their fortunes – in Africa, the rest of India, the Far East, the Americas – and returned home. Unfailingly. Wanderlust it certainly was that paved their path to wealth. As internet friend, Anthony (“Martinho”) de Souza, a retired schoolteacher from East Africa now settled in Australia (who compares ‘Goan Gentiles’ to the Jewish Diaspora) says, “My grandfather went to German East Africa out of a spirit of adventure.” Early Goan adventurers, though, were few. The exodus truly began after Goa’s intermittent occupation by the British, between 1798 and 1815. The British saw in the Goan what the Portuguese had failed to notice in the three centuries before. Retreating British civil and military officers took back with them the ABC of Goan household staff … Ayahs, Butlers, Cooks. Thus began the celebrated (but mostly mocked) institution of Goan “cooks and butlers.” The British also observed that the local school system produced honest young men employable as clerks. They took them in large numbers not only to British India but to British Africa as well. Thus sprang the second, and major, middle-class segment of Goan expatriates, the celebrated ‘Bomboicar’ and ‘Afrikcar.’ The British also saw potential in youngsters from coastal Goa. Some thousands were hired as ratings in the Royal Navy. In time, British shipping companies like BI and P&O absorbed huge numbers of able-bodied Goans as their kitchen, saloon and cabin crew. Thus started the third celebrated institution of the Goan ‘Tarvoti.’ The triumvirate of Goan émigrés was complete. The booming Arabian Gulf was still half a century away, off-shore oil rigs and cruise liners another half century after that. Today, the number of Goan expatriates in various parts of India and the world would be in multiples of Goans back home. There are more Goas in the world than Goa. The community of Non Resident Goans can be divided, as I do, into two basic classes: NRG-Type 1 and NRG-Type 2. Type 1 is the regular Goan expatriate. He is based somewhere in India, or works on cruise liners, the merchant navy, or is a ‘Gulf Goan’. For gainful employment, he is compelled to be away from home and hearth. If outside India, he travels on an Indian passport. The defining characteristic of Type 1 is that he is essentially homebound, returns to the land of his ancestors every vacation and most certainly will after retirement. True to the pioneers. Type 2 is a class apart. He fanned out into the wide world either directly from Goa/India or from/via Africa, Portugal or the Gulf. He is invariably settled in a developed country (UK, continental Europe, USA, Canada, South America, Australia or now, in increasing numbers, in New Zealand.) He travels on a foreign passport, now maybe also on an Indian one under India’s dual nationality scheme. Even if he retains his Indian passport, he falls in Type 2 if he is settled in a developed country with his family. The defining characteristic of Type 2 is he is Goa-bound only at heart. He will never return to Goa on a permanent basis. There is another marked characteristic of Type 2, as any resident Goan subscribed to any of the several Goa-centric cyber fora will testify. Type 2 is loudest in wailing for Goa, never forgetting to pontificate on why and how Goans in Goa need to save Goa! A stray Type 1 exception, however, is akin to Type 2. He is an Nth generation Goan whose forebears settled somewhere in India ages ago. He may visit Goa as a tourist. He knows not the native village of his ancestors, much less any family or relatives in Goa. So, briefly, we have two types of NRGs or Goan expatriates: 1. the Non Resident Goan; and, 2. the Non Returning Goan. Many friends in Type 2 migrated “only to provide (their) children a better education.” Never grudge that. They have retained Indian nationality. And swear they will return. They never will. The reason is simple. Once the kids grow up in the milieu of domicile, they will never want to resettle in Goa/India. The kids will pursue careers, marry and raise their families in the adopted country. Would parents return to Goa when the kids and their families are abroad? What for? To live in some Home for the Aged? When a reverse migration starts if India emerges as the world’s largest economy half a century hereafter, those same kids will curse their parents for having sold the ancestral property in India’s paradise called Goa… (To conclude.) (ENDS) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the April 13, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
