Some people called me Goanese, and I
didn’t mind the allusion, not feeling the affront;
I was flattered by my humble roots confluenced
by a unique duality of Indianness! Were I to feel
a double baptismal of being both Goan and Indian!
Yet, how are we changelings all our lives, otherwise we
are stupor, comatose and dumbstruck? I
understand that the call of arms in 1961, that
ended 451 years of Portuguese rule, did not
make much difference to the laid back people
of Goa. Yes, the colonialists spread rumours that
alarmed locals that if they joined the struggle, they (the
colonialists) would unleash an atom bomb that would
destroy the entire state of Goa! I think, we (my ancestors)
were converted about 350 years back, when we were
made to adopt the name of the Portuguese priest who
converted us – Rodrigues. Till then, we were Borkars.
The whitewashed Church in Varca is somewhattish over
350 years old. I could not buy a trajectory to the past;
because there are simply no Church records of my
forefathers. Probably, we can only refresh recent memories,
and they are, themselves, salient serenades in the groves of
mangoes, tamarinds, jackfruits, java plums, cashews, palmyras
and coconuts. Or more poignant in the hymnal gatherings around
the little chapel, where the natives prayed for rain! If I swung on
the childhood oscillation under the mango tree, the rope
tied to my soul where the overlooking bough was the frontier
of my remembrance. Dad in my arms, the last and most beloved
child. Would I remember the paddyfields of my youth? That father
can become son, and son can become father. Which poet said:
Child is father of a man?! I don’t seem to remember! I saw Mum,
at her birth, and told my great grandmother, this girl child would be
mine through matrimony with my youngest son. I don’t even try to
remember love! It falls like perennial rain on the earth to find its
space under the skin of the earth, my skin; filling it with a rustic country
aroma – my singular awareness and realisation! (My impromptu
histories granted to me in periodic revelations). If a child can fathom
the immensity of the weight he has to carry, since the first apparitions
he was witness to. Reincarnation is layer upon layer, sometimes,
you just spontaneously sink into the quicksand to recollect!
We can be excluded with hostility by the world for our belief systems,
but nobody has the right to exclude ourselves from ourselves, our loves,
our ideas, our ancestry, our philosophy, our relations, our convictions,
our faith….Those who use devious means to hijack us from everything
we hold beholden are as rampantly villainous and wanton as the biggest
criminals of history. And worse still, if they seek to capitalise on our
innateness by hijacking all these precious, priceless, possessions from us,
that should only be ours and of the ones that are ours!!!!
montes-musings.blog 