- Brian Mendonça
He was standing sipping his coffee in the
delegates lounge at the ICG, Donapaula. The Goa Arts and Literature Festival
was on.
I saw him in his trademark white Kurti. Though the room was buzzing with
people he was alone. I found it a bit strange. I went up to him and said the
first and last words I would ever say to him, ‘Hello Wendell.’
For just a fraction of a second he seemed lost. I
added, ‘I am Brian.’ And then a flicker of recognition played across his lips.
There was nothing more we said. I stepped back and went away.
To me Wendell was an enigma. He was so much of
everything. I watched him from a distance. I followed his career, because he
was a little older than myself. A poem I wrote on my blog observes, ‘Wendell
smiling at me from Prague,’ from the day’s newspaper. (Delhi, 2009)
Wendell was contributing to Goa in a distinctive
fashion, bringing his expertise to celebrate the textures, drapes and colours
of Goa. He was an inspiration.
I always felt that to dress Indian was to have
arrived. Many Goan men looked good in their Kurta Pyjamas, Sherwanis, Nehru
Jackets, Kurtis and Jootis. Height helped. Whatever you wore
was a fashion statement. Unconsciously I started modelling my clothes style to
the Indian idiom.
However, there was very little that the general
Goan public actually knew of him. He seemed reclusive. The last time I read
about him was when he attended the funeral of Mario Miranda.
His name splashed into the limelight when he took
a stand on issues. His face beamed at you from all the glossies. That very same
face in black and white tilted towards the camera. The glitterati swarmed
around him. He moved in a rarefied circle.
One response to the announcement of Wendell’s
passing came from a message posted by school mates in Bombay: ‘Is he on this group?’
I felt saddened that one of India’s ace designers from Goa was so unknown –
that too in Bombay where Bollywood was Wendell’s beat.
After his sudden passing, his funeral announcement
read: ‘NO HOUSE VISITS. NO FUNERAL CORTEGE. NO CONDOLENCES.’ Mourners were not welcome.
When an icon dies, s/he belongs to the world.
People should be allowed to pay their last respects.
The next day the papers showed the funeral cortege.
Cameras inside the church had photographed the front rows. The sermon was
summarized. The funeral had become a spectacle. Arshad Warsi’s presence was
highlighted. The moment the news broke, people fell over each other to post
photos they had taken with the dead man. Some flaunted them gleefully as their
display pics.
On another day it would be good to sit down with
Wendell and have a conversation. I would
speak about where he thought Goa was going.
As I wend my way over the roads of Siolim and
pause at the Colvale river, I know his story lives on in the lives he touched.
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Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, Panjim, Goa on Sunday, 23 February 2020. Pix of one of the exhibits for the Moda Goa Museum and Research Centre, viz. the Pano Bhaju worn while singing the mando. Courtesy One School Goa.
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