Cry, My Beloved Country, Cry!

© Prakash John Mascarenhas. 25^th November 2002.
My native village is Sangoddya, or what is called in Portuguese, Sangolda, in the Consuelho da Bardez. Although I was born and brought up in amche Bommai, my father would take up on an annual summer pilgrimage to our gaum — a Goan tradition.

My father's family hailed from the Livrant Vaddo or Livramento Vaddo, so called because of the grandiose kapel of Nossa Senhora da Livramento, Livrant-Saibin. Yet, because my father's house was small, we would stay at my Tia Merzelin's much larger house in the novo Vaddo of Belavist (Portuguese, Belavista). Belavista, it seems, is the name of the road that cuts off from the main arterial north-south highway connecting the city of Mapsa (Port., Mapuça), which is the regional capital of Bardez, to Ponjhe, the capital of Portuguese India, at the Alt-Porvorim junction (where the famous restaurant O Coqueiro! is situated), on the way back from Ponjhe, and cuts through Sangoddya and Guirim before rejoining the highway just shy of Mapsa. In an act of brazen effrontery, which was keenly felt even then, in my childhood, we learnt that the invaders had 'renamed' this the CHOGM Road, in honour of a British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held under the auspices of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of the Indian Union, one session of the meeting being held in the Occupied EIP.

Belavist was created during Portuguese times from what was the village commons, land owned by the Communidade. The area was till then semi-arid and devoted entirely to seasonal cultivation on terraced fields, which terraces still survive to this day on my aunt's property.

Between Belavist and the main highway, to its east, interposes a large hill. This hill begins from the Alt-Porvorim junction, subsides on the way north, then rises gradually again between Belavist and the highway till it ends abruptly in steep slopes above Livrant, which lies on its northern coasts, and Porvoriche Tisro, at its northeastern end, just above the beautiful kapel of Sant Ana. The low-lying southern part, towards Alt-Porvorim, has always, as far as I remember, being inhabitated, but the northern part, between Belavist, the highway and Livrant at its north, was covered by jungles.

As kids, we used to frequently go up for walks on this hill, amidst these forests. My uncle, Antonio Pinto, a Saugaumkar, used to take us there. It was our favourite haunt, to go up into the hill above Tia Merzelin's house and explore the shaddy forests. I remember that there used to be just one house on this part of the hill, located nearly on the junction where the northern and southern parts of the hill sloped to meet each other. A footpath cut over the hill at this point, with stone steps going up for a short distance and then a path, leading from Belavist to the highway, bypassing this house. But the house was never inhabitated, every time that I had seen it. It just lay there lonely and forlorn, surrounded by jungles on all sides and far away from the nearest house.

Tio Anton would take us for long walks towards the northern edges of the hill; frequently, we arrived at the rather sharp slope that takes one down to the kapel of Livrant-Saibin. A few times we actually descended this slope, however, it was not without its risks, and Tio Anton never preffered it. When we used to go to the kapel on Sundays, it was always by the roundabout route, skirting the hill's north-western corner at the end of Belavist, and then taking the steep road up to the kapel above Livrant Vaddo.

In the midst of the jungles that covered the hill, we would frequently arrive at an abandoned rock-quarry, now a deep pit with a little water at its bottom, and the whole thing overgrown with vegetations, from which echoed the cries of many unseen birds. This was our favourite, though not Tio Anton's, with his fears of us falling in.

However, as we grew up, and my father too aged, we missed many summer pilgrimages, mainly due to the pressure of high school and college. It was many years before I returned to the gaum, my nose thrilling to beloved scents and with fond expectations of finding again my childhood haunts. Leaving my aunt's home, we went up the beloved hill, only to be shocked by the sight of shanties having sprung up all over the place, even coming down close to my aunt's house, and the jungle having been cleared away. The whole thing reminded me of the slums of Bommai, places such as Dharavi. There were rough huts, zopdem made of bamboo sticks and with jute sack-cloth and bamboo netting for walls. And, horror of horrors, we found the whole hill littered with human excreta, with no proper toilets built for this settlement.

My aunts and uncles told us that the hill above was, till the edges where it fell down, the commons of Porvorim. Mrs. Indira Gandhi had initiated something called the Fourteen Point Program which was supposed to help the poor and homeless; this involved the distribution of the commons to such 'poor and homeless.' Needless to add, the main - in fact, sole beneficiaries of this largesse at the Goans' expense were the Indian Union's indigents who flooded the EIP after its occupation: Andhras and Kannadigas, with a sprinkling of other peoples from the Indian Union. As the years went by, this slum grew and grew, and today it has approached the edge of the hill directly above Livrant-Saibin's kapel.

More ominous is the fact that a Hindu temple is being built at this exact spot, right over the kapel. From the bus vending through the fields, as one looks up at the morods, one sees, prominently, where I earnestly sought out the welcome visage of the holy kapel, this horrible dæmonarium standing proud and tall over the towering trees that shield Livrant-Saibin's kapel from view on all sides. This was in June 2000, the last time I had visited my beloved gaum. What has happened since I don't know; but I know that the same trend that I last saw is continuing at a furious pace — the deliberate, purposeful transformation - colonization and urbanization - of the Goan landscape and demography.

After my visit to the hill, we had gone visiting to Shiolim, Oshel, Koingot, Kandoi and to many other places. Everywhere, I saw the same thing — the ominous, triumphant proliferation of new and underconstruction pagodas; emblem of the Hindu colonization of Goa, of the de-Christianization of Goa.

Every time I hear Goan songs, I hear the sad, plaintive whining over the sad plight that the Goans find themselves in. I have always asked, and I ask even today, what keeps you from taking up arms and stopping this onslaught, this rape of our beloved Goa? Why waste time and precious energy in vain crying and whining, when our present duty is to make war, to avenge and to end this holocaust?

Cry, beloved Goa, my woe-begone country, cry, for your sons and daughters are too dumb, too stupid and too cowardly to wake up and to fight. These are not red-blooded men, who are zealous for their rights and honour: these are, apparently, some bastard breed, spineless cowards and knaves, the whole lot of them. Who knows who bred them? Certainly not my beloved mother Goa!