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| With Isaac Sequeira, Secunderabad Club, 2006 |
New Delhi, September 2006
On a rain-swept evening on 29 July this year at the Secunderabad Sailing Club I met with Sir - he was always 'Sir' to me - for the last time. To the tempest of the angry Hussain Sagar lake in the background, Isaac Sequeira was to introduce me on behalf of the Poetry Society of Hyderabad to read from my debut volume of poems Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa (2006).
In some ways Sequeira's life was pretty poetic itself. The youngest of five children he lived on his own terms, did what he most enjoyed - made a career of it, in fact - and was loved and respected by one and all. Though he hailed from Sequeira vaddo in Saligao, Goa, Sequeira was born in Abids, Hyderabad. pn 5 an 1930. He travelled widely all his life. 'He was a true humanist, a teacher, multifaceted and rare,' says Professor Rana Nayar, University of Panjab.
At ease in Latin which he quoted that evening, Sequeira would often regale us in the ASRC auditorium, Hyderabad in its heyday in the 90's, with quotations from Italian, Greek and Portuguese. From there it was a short distance to his whipping out his mouth organ and playing a blues tune, for the by-now unforgettable lecture-dems on American music. Though he had over 80 research articles to his credit it was his book Popular Culture: East and West (1991) which best defined him in the range of its discussion from the Goan carnival to Bob Dylan.
He had the gift of making you believe in yourself. His twinkling eyes made everything seem alright. He spurred you on to what you could become – to perfect yourself. In Chandigarh for the MELUS conference at Panjab University in March 2005, after playing for him the customary Goan dulpods which he loved, he pointed out that my guitar recital of a Giuliani 'Andante' needed brushing up. He was a connoisseur of the arts and everything of taste.
Sequeira was a father-figure for so many of us. And on the 29th evening he quipped that he had now achieved 'grandfather' status since he had taught Professor Lakshmi Chandra, CIEFL Hyderabad, my own Ph.D. supervisor, back in '71 at the Nizam college, Hyderabad. 'His dedication to the ASRC, his willingness to listen and to help,' are fondly remembered by Professor Chandra. 'An era ended with him. He was a person of the first magnitude, an institution by himself,' says Ms. Tanutrushna Panigrahi, Fulbright scholar and Assistant Professor of English, Bhubaneshwar.
'Books, music and food, these were his loves – in that order. He used to encourage people who wanted to study and helped them financially too,' recalls Mrs. Marie Sequeira, wife of Sequeira's nephew Hector. 'On Sunday mornings he was part of the church choir; in the afternoon he would visit the Widow's Home to spread the sunshine of his bonhomie,' reminisces Manju Jaidka in her moving tribute.
And on the 29th I left the company of those partaking of the banquet of snacks and hastened into the plush hall. I wanted to compose myself for the reading from my poems which he had enjoyed immensely for the 'sights and sound of Goa.' There in the vast hall was Sir, a lone figure, in his light grey safari, proud in his ideals and life long values, already sitting on one of the chairs. Always conscious of time, Sir was there before time near the dais. Alone-ness, however, was no stranger to Sequeira - he remained a bachelor.
I seized those precious moments with him and he asked me about my work. I told him about my poetry reading in Calangute, Goa the week before. He was saddened by the dwindling numbers who actually spoke or understood Konkani these days. So full of his joie de vivre, he once more urged me on to write more and continue what I was doing. And after a pause he burst out in Konkani 'Kator re bhaji!' the colloquial idiomatic expression to roughly mean 'Carry on! Press ahead with what you are doing!'
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