-Brian Mendonça
As we sped from Vasco to Varca end-May I was
wondering whether we would be afforded any glimpses out of a poem by Eunice de
Souza titled ‘Varca 1942.’
The last time I was on these roads was when I had
gone to pay a condolence visit at Carmona. On that occasion too I was spurred
by resident of Carmona and noted author Savia Viegas’ Tales from the Attic written about the goings-on in Zonkar vaddo of Carmona. We almost dropped in
to the sprawling old Goan house and Saxti
Kids, --Savia’s initiative -- but felt that our mission was one of
bereavement after all. The dead would frown on this levity.
We were on our way to Varca, 30 km. away, to visit
friends from Bombay who were putting up in a prominent club resort, complete
with a fun zone, on the lip of Varca beach. Meeting the same people in Bombay
is not quite the same, as the pace of life is so frenetic. The conversation is
not as placid and intimate as it is in Goa.
I was overwhelmed that the family agreed to forego
their morning programme on the eve of their departure to spend time with us. As
the tête-a-tête
ripened we found the clock nudging 1 p.m. Even though they were on holiday the
couple said they went for Mass daily to the imposing Our Lady of Gloria church,
Varca. On Sunday they heard the 9.30 A.M. English Mass at Colva. The ’boys,’
their sons, were very well-behaved. As we sat in the lounge one of them, a
teenager, emerged from the room and asked his mother permission to go out. Here
were the Catholic Goan values at their best. For lunch we were offered
sausage-bread which the mother had prepared. The smell assailed our nostrils the
moment we entered the suite.
We drove back after a satisfying conversation. I
was keen on going to Fisherman’s Wharf a
little way up the road to Mobor beach, Cavelossim. But we had left baba at home
and good times need to be enjoyed with the family.
On the inner roads, advertisements of Moods
condoms were displayed prominently. A vegetable vendor read me the riot act -- in
Hindi – when I parked in front of his stall at Betalbatim where we stopped to
pick up some beef, prawn and chicken patties for our guests.
We had gone to visit our friends during our visit
to Bombay, when they said they were in Goa. Our friends had been coming to the
resort for the last 5 years, we discovered. As we left we told them we looked
forward to their next visit to Goa (hoping they would inform us about it!)
The opening lines of Eunice’s poem distinguish it as
one of her ‘Catholic poems’:
The Archbishop said
Great landlords and peasants
must worship together.
So the great landlords of Varca
shot at their Archbishop
(they missed)
We would need another trip to Varca to ascertain
whether the classes live in amity now.
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Published in Gomantak Times Weekender St. Inez, Goa on Sunday 21 June 2015. Pix from flickr.
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