Thursday, November 22, 2012

Goa (May 1997): Looking For Bebinca - 4

                      Tourists zooming along on hired scooters were a common sight. Every single self-respecting tourist spot was not without its ‘Scooter For Hire’ stand and Panaji was simply bursting with these two-wheelers. Panaji, as the state capital, also burst with people. People going to the office, people going to the beach, people going to the market, people going to tourist spots, people going to meet other people, and people hanging around to bump into other people. Old Mai’s in blue, pink, and cream jazzy silk frocks, carrying woven baskets that were filled with groceries; nattily dressed office folk wiping the sweat off their foreheads with their white handkerchiefs, and squashing their files under their arms; innumerable loafers in their trademark dirty pants, smelly clothes, and their sweat stained caps.
                        The funny thing was, the ones who were in the greatest rush were the tourists – Gujaratis, Punjabis, Mumbaiites, Malayalees…They shouted and swore (in their own languages). They blared their horns, and pulled long faces. When they saw a gap in the lane, they tried to squeeze their cars and bikes through. They were on a holiday and it seemed as though they’d left their good manners at home. The Goans, on the other hand, seemed untouched by the blazing sun. They went about their business with good humor and great calm. If they frowned or spoke sharply, it was at an erring child or an utterly sloppy character they’d had to deal with. And even then, they seemed to sing out their frustrations.
                         We trundled past stacks of tea shops, endless restaurants, provision stores, STD (‘Standard Trunk Dialling’)/ISD booths, hair salons, Bata shoe shops, bakeries, pharmacies, sweetshops, and roads full of people till we connected with Panaji’s main road. This medium-sized road hugs the Secretariat, the Mandovi Hotel, a park, a few bus stops, and a great line of shops. What distinguished it most was its picture-perfect look. The buildings were all not more than two storeys high and they stood in a neat line, painted white, prim and proper. On the other side of the road lay a narrow promenade that traced the Mandovi River.
                         We parked near a row of shops and I strolled down alone to the Secretariat. It stood out on the Panaji landscape with its white stucco walls, red tiled roof, square dark windows barred with wrought iron. It belied its small size with an incredibly imposing face and squatted, ushakeable and solemn, in its corner. I could see why Goa might have elicited memories of Lisbon. The distant authority of the ruling country had replicated itself in a far more exaggerated fashion here. The architecture of a colony often overwhelms itself in its intent to remind native and ruler alike of the utopian ruling power that lies across the seas, far far away. It aims to be inspirational, grandiose, grave, commanding.
                         In Goa, Roman Catholicism had given colonial architecture a severe and punitive face. It was the face of massive grey stone, piled row upon row, fortifying prisons and retreats and convents and monasteries. It was thick , impenetrable walls that held within them immeasurably romantic courts, near Moorish in design, green with palms and creepers, scented with jasmine, whose arches and walkways had their silence broken by the calls of the birds, and where the bees themselves were drowsy and spent,
                         “Until they think warm days will never cease,
                          For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells
                          ...with patient look
                          Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.”
                         Time stood still, broken only by our footfalls on the wooden boards and tiled courts. It seemed like an uncertain paradise. For still the walls cried down upon us – “Repent and you shall be forgiven!”

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