Time is the greatest creator, the greatest destroyer, and the greatest healer. Aurvi Sharma explores Goa's golden - yet brutal - past to find out how change is the only constant thing in the world.
On May 20, 1498, Vasco da Gama set foot on the soil of India. By 1510, after having been ruled since 3 BC by the Mauryans, the Chalukyas and the Delhi Sultanate, among others, Goa came under Portuguese control.
Time begets many changes. By the time Jawaharlal Nehru sent in the army to liberate Goa in 1961, Portuguese was the language of the educated in the state. English, the great lingua franca across the subcontinent, had not permeated Goa's olive and buttercup houses. The coconut tree-state was peppered with Catholic churches and Portuguese style bungalows. The greatest mark of mingling was the food - 'Goan' was a cuisine by the time the colonizers left, mixing turmeric with palm wine, cumin with palm vinegar.
Goa still holds these strange legacies. Crucifixes are adorned with garlands of marigold flowers, earthen lamps burn outside indigo-white chapels, Hindu idols are housed inside erstwhile European bungalows. In Goa, the past overlaps the present, history and geography merge in a confusing medley and a slice of Europe comes to manifest itself in India.
Old Panjim, called Fontainhas, is beautiful. Old Goa was abandoned in the seventeenth century for Fontainhas because of recurring Cholera and Malaria epidemics. Colour-washed villas in yellow, olive and terracotta are everywhere, and the Pato creek flows on one side, fringed by leafy trees, topped by a curving wooden bridge. The houses are neo-classical in design. Like Pondicherry, I think, and then smile at my ignorance. Like our non-English past anyway, or the memory of it, an idea of another world, a negative print left behind, skewed in its swapped colours.
What are olive villas doing in an area that is supposed to have been created when the Hindu sage Parshuram made the sea recede with his arrow; or nameplates such as Texeira and Dionisio in a state that predominantly speaks Konkani, I wonder, watching Dominic, our driver, eating fish and rice with his fingers. He separates fish bones in his mouth and wipes his plate clean at the end of the meal. At the Calangute beach, Konkani women wearing large nose pins and flowers in their hair offer me foot massage, calling me 'Didi'.
''My mother used to rap me on the knuckles if I did not speak Portuguese at home," Peter Fernandes, owner of a resort, gracious host, all Goan, had said as we ate fish mayonnaise on crackers and fresh cheese balls that deflated when pushed against your palate. We were sitting in his cramped study, bottles of alcohol on the table between us, the fax machine and unruly papers pushed to a side.
"My uncle grew up at the time when Portuguese was the official language of Goa." Peter had taken a swig of his rum, had refilled Jayita's glass with more vodka. "He feels very confused now, with all this English coming to Goa." He had taken another swig, stared into his glass. "His pronunciations are so skewed because he studied the Portuguese alphabet. If you ask him about the nuclear deal he will say naklear," Peter had laughed and then sobered up.
"Cerveja," I had raised my glass to him. He had looked at me, surprised, and reached for another bottle of beer. "My flat mate in England was Portuguese," I had told him. This is the only word she could teach me in the one year we were together, while she rattled off "aap kaise hain" and "accha" with ease by the end of our MA's. I'm quite satisfied with my achievement though. Cerveja, beer please.
In Goa, paradoxes raise their heads and surprise me, again and again. When did I ever expect to actually use a Portuguese word? "To use if you ever come to Portugal," Joana had said. "He who has seen Goa need not see Lisbon" was a popular Portuguese proverb in the 1600s. The maze of Goa's bazaars offered Chinese silk and Basra pearls, spices from Sri Lanka and velvet from Portugal. This was Goa Dourada, Golden Goa, the capital of the entire eastern colony of the Portuguese that spread till China.
Today, Old Goa is quaint, and surprisingly small, the bazaars and riches gone; only a handful of churches remain, built in dark stone, on two sides of a wide road, flanked by coconut trees that are sparse but tall. On the fringes are dhabas, stalls selling rosaries and shell key chains, vendors selling green coconuts that they shave at the head and stick a straw in for you to drink the water.
A world heritage site, Old Goa is visited by foreign tourists as well as busloads of Christian pilgrims from all over India. In 2004 when St Xavier's remains had been taken for their once-in-ten-years round, 2,65,000 pilgrims, Christians and non-Christians, had queued up, touched the body and photographed it.
This is also where the Inquisition, famous for its torture and cruelty, was at its peakwherein suspected heretic Christians were systematically prosecuted, punished, killed. Starting in 1560 and ending only in 1812, the Goan inquisition was far more brutal and lasted far longer than the Portuguese one.
The evidence is the most blatant at The Se, or St. Catherine's Cathedral, which today stands larger than any church in Portugal. The dreaded auto da fes were held in the square here, when suspected heretics were publicly tortured and burned at the stake. The Se was built with a Tuscan style exterior, and ornate, Corinthian style interior. Fifteen altars were made to adorn the walls inside, intricately carved and painted with saints and martyrs. Outside hung the Golden Bell whose tolling announced the start of the auto da fes. Today, 500 years later, I crane my neck up and shade my eyes to look at the bell which is suspended placidly, silently.
What strikes you, now, is only how old the place is. The ancientness is palpable in every thick wall and every high ceiling. In the old gilt altars and the fading paintings. In the white murals of angels and the cherubs that nestle at the foot of the altar. In the fading Portuguese lettering on the floor which is painstakingly being restored.
Outside, honeymoon couples walk about hand in hand - women wearing cut off jeans and Calvin Klein tank tops with mangalsutras, sindoor and red bangles that reach their elbows; husbands self consciously carrying their wives' little purses. The couples are self-absorbed, hardly noticing the marvels in stone around. A large family sprawls on the grass nearby, looking irritable. "Pappa when will we go home?" the little girl whines. "We will go see a mummy now bacche!" the father says, wiping his face with a towel handkerchief. The girl looks visibly excited.
Inside the Basilica of Bom Jesus, people touch the altar and kiss their fingers; some Hindu women join their palms together, murmur supplications and light incense sticks. Old, dark ladies with the cross dangling at their chests sit at the pews, head bowed, rosary on fingers, eyes closed in prayer. This is where the remains of St. Francis Xavier have been enshrined since 1534. The air is hushed, like in a tomb.
The Basilica is enormous, with gilded columns and complex carvings. The main altar is extravagantly decorated, a sight very popularly photographed. Covered in gold, it shows the infant Jesus under the safety of St. Ignatius Loyola, who was the founder of the Jesuit order. A domed casket holds the body of St. Xavier, whose withered hand can be glimpsed amid satin and silver.
When we had parked our car outside, a man had handed out pictures of Catholic saints. "Keep in your wallet ma'am. Blessing ma'am." We had taken the pictures quietly, and said thank you, and had started walking away. To our backs the man had said, "Ten Rupees only ma'am. For a good cause."
Near the Basilica, a woman selling marigold garlands had come to us and had said, "Keep this over dead body inside madam." Jayita and I had burst into helpless giggles over 'dead body', the mysticism of the moment broken even before we had entered the Basilica. A man passing by had started singing Tu cheez badi hai mast mast on seeing us and we had shut up. But of course, that man was not here to visit a world heritage site, nor to visit a monument of religious importance. The man was here, after all, to see a dead body, a mummy, the ultimate tourist attraction.
It is cold in the Basilica and our whispers echo. I sit down at a pew and stealthily shake my feet out of my flip-flops; I feel the cool, hard, ancient stone floor and drink the quietness in.
Later, I will go to a dhaba for lunch, a dhaba that plays very loud Himmesh Reshamiya songs, renting the air, shattering the peace. As I would be hesitating between Vindaloo and Xacutti, a girl and a boy will start dancing; here, from where we can see the chapels that resound with silence. The dancers will be dressed to party at three in the afternoon. The girl will be wearing a halter-neck top inlaid with sequins, the boy a shimmering peach shirt.
But now, I sit and think about how the even tapestry of our present is made of blood-and-bone conflicts of the past. And yet the present smoothens it all out, whitewashing the black dots into oblivion. So the churches and gilt altars, the ancient air and the old vibe merges with dhabas and blaring Bollywood music. Goa is a paradox, like all of our present.
Later, the boy in the peach shirt will twirl the girl around and they will laugh and give each other the final look of appraisal, the final flirty smile, and start walking back to their table, hand in hand. But for now, I sit at the pew, bow my head, and close my eyes.
About the author
Aurvi Sharma looks for stories in everyday life, unabashedly people-watching and eavesdropping on conversations. She is interested in books, people and food.
On May 20, 1498, Vasco da Gama set foot on the soil of India. By 1510, after having been ruled since 3 BC by the Mauryans, the Chalukyas and the Delhi Sultanate, among others, Goa came under Portuguese control. 
kwherein suspected heretic Christians were systematically prosecuted, punished, killed. Starting in 1560 and ending only in 1812, the Goan inquisition was far more brutal and lasted far longer than the Portuguese one. 
