Goa Travellers

Goa, Through the Traveller’s Lens
Nina Caldeira
Editor
2019
Goa, Through the Traveller’s Lens
2019 Nina Caldeira, Ph.D.
Copyright of individual chapters is vested in the respective authors.
Copyright for the collection is vested in the editor.
The role of the Goa University in organising the event which generated the papers
included in this book is gratefully acknowledged.
Front cover photo: Fontainhas by Bina Nayak, Road to Anjuna (front cover), mando group
and temple (back cover) by Frederick Noronha.
First published in 2018 and reprinted in 2019 by
Goa,1556, Sonarbhat, Saligão 403511 Goa, India. http://goa1556.in, goa1556@gmail.com

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2
Contents
Nina Caldeira 5
By way of an introduction
Isabel de Santa Rita Vás 12

As kingfishers catch fire:
scholarship as travel through inscape
Sushila Sawant Mendes 31

Assolna, Velim, Cuncolim:
an insider’s view of Robert S. Newman’s oeuvre
Xavier M. Martins 45
Seventeenth-century maritime Goa as viewed by de Laval
Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa 52

French travellers on Goan food habits
Prema Rocha 60
Veni Vidi Amavi: writing Goa from the outside-in
Sunita Mesquita 68
Sifting sands: a search for stability and sustenance
of Goan culture through travel narratives
Glenis Maria Mendonça 77

Goa through the prism of contemporary travel blogs
3
C ONTENTS
Brian Mendonça 85
Through the eyes of a traveller-poet: Goa...
Irene Silveira 94
Goa through the lens of Europeans: a revisiting
Akshata Bhatt, Nafisa Oliveira 115

Reconstructing Goa through travel narratives: a study of
select writings from Manohar Shetty’s Goa Travels
Natasha Maria Gomes 125

Anne Bonneau’s radio travelogues:
A portrayal of the archetypal and stereotypical Goan
Palia Gaonkar 142

Footprints of the colonial past:
Goa in V.S. Naipaul’s A Million Mutinies Now
Ambika Kamat 148

An object of the Occidental gaze: analyzing Tomé Pires’
description of Goa in Suma Oriental
Frederick Noronha 156

In fact, this is only fiction:
unusual ‘visitors’ who came Goa’s way
4
By way of an introduction
N INA C ALDEIRA 1
T
RAVEL is a universal human experience. It is the innate nature of
man to explore new terrains. The exploration is most often fol-
lowed by explication for, as the American author Pat Conroy affirms,
“Once you have travelled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over
and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off
from the journey.” What is significant in this explication is the travel ex-
perience.
In the wake of cultural studies, the contemporary world has seen a re-
newed interest in travel writing. Various factors have contributed to this
awakening. Cultural encounters and the rise of postcolonial studies and
globalisation gave an impetus to travel writing in relation to power. In ad-
dition, the fact that travel writing crosses not merely geographical and cul-
tural borders but, more importantly, disciplinary boundaries, got various
disciplines interested. Historians, geographers, sociologists, littérateurs,
all began to regard travel writing as the indispensable aid for their study.
Moreover, as the very nature of travel writing draws from different writing
styles and blends together descriptions, reflections, narrations, dialogues
and arguments, travel writing began to draw attention. As such, its relev-
ance began to be widened. The corpus of travel writing is extensive and
its appeal ranges from an interest in interrogating imperial discourse to
the colonial, racial and tourist gaze, to cross-cultural and transcultural
analysis. Themes of multiculturalism, diaspora, hybridity, ethnography
coupled with imaginative and hyper-real travel, make the genre of travel
writing irresistibly fascinating.
The chronicling and exploration of travel have always been quite pop-
ular in historical writing. Merchants forged new routes and returned with
reports about fantastic places and cultures. These early entrepreneurs
propelled travellers to undertake a journey. The Venetian explorer Marco
1 Professor and Head of the Department of English, Goa University. nina@ unigoa.ac.in
/ caldeiranina6@gmail.com
G OA , T HROUGH THE T RAVELLER ’ S L ENS
Polo (1254-1324) spent many years travelling to China, India and the
Middle East which is recorded in the thirteenth century travelogue The
Travels of Marco Polo. The book got many Europeans interested in trad-
ing with China and the Middle East. The travelogue describes in great
details the silk route and the great wealth and power of China. So fas-
cinating was the travelogue that it propelled Europeans to visit China,
India and the Middle East and to trade with these splendid places. The
seventeenth-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsang (Xuanzang)
travelled to Central and South Asia, as recorded in his travel account
Xiyu Ji. The history of seventh century Bengal can best be unfolded in
the travelogue. Likewise, the Moroccan Islamic scholar Ibn Battuta often
called the world’s greatest traveller, travelled the entire Islamic world for
thirty years of his life. His travels are recorded in Rihla (The Journey).
The period from mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century can
roughly be said to be the epoch of scientific voyages. During this period
the European seafarers were able to plot longitude with accuracy and
were able to locate the Pacific Islands. The British explorer and navigator
Captain James Cook (1728-1779) remains the model and ideal for sailing
expeditions. The expeditions or voyages of this period were patronised by
monarchs and statesmen who invested much in the voyages. The possib-
ility of wealth, coupled with the desire for power and knowledge, made
voyaging and patronages of voyages very competitive.
Travels of this period need to be situated in the economic and polit-
ical history of the time, at times related to the political and economic
expansion of Europe. As such, these travels had very serious socio-poli-
tical consequences. The travellers of the period documented places, cul-
tures and people, most often critiquing and categorising by European
standards and in a position quite distanced from the cultures and lives
of the people they described. In taking on the authoritarian position in
describing ‘others’, travel writing of this period was complicit in the imper-
ial project. New York University professor Mary Louise Pratt, in Imperial
Eyes (1992), is interested in showing just how the European visual imagin-
ation fixed and subordinated non-European people. In fact, postcolonial
studies influenced by Edward Said’s Orientalism often explores the rela-
tionship between travel writing and imperialism. Most of the travel writ-
6
By way of an introduction | Nina Caldeira
ings of the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century are subject to

a postcolonial enquiry as they construct a picture of the non-European
world for the European readership.
The end of Imperialism would logically spell out the end of travel writ-
ing. However, the popularity of travel writings persists in the twenty-first
century. It is observed that with increased communication and connectiv-
ity across the globe, travel has become the predicament of the twenty-
first century and travel writing of the century has taken on a different
tone from the conventional documentary writings of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century. The focus has at this time shifted to the inward self
from the earlier outward-looking travelogues. The subject positioning of
the self vis-à-vis the outward geographical and cultural terrain is but the
logical consequence of the contemporary focus on subjectivity and self-
reflexivity. Travel writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries infuse
in their writings their own dreams and memories alongside the geograph-
ical and historical data. This is not to state that the mid-eighteenth to
mid-nineteenth century travelogues were purely objective observations
for travel writing has always been a blend of fact and fiction. The focus
might have changed. The travelogues of V.S. Naipaul are more a search
for self-identity. However, Naipaul’s travelogues are also critiqued for their
Orientalist leanings.
Debbie Lisle politicises travelogues by revealing their connection to
serious world affairs and their significance to the study and practice of
global politics. She argues that the quasi-fictional genre of travel writing is
at least as useful for understanding issues of international importance as
policy documents, government press releases, parliamentary debates and
media stories. Many critics find it difficult to place travel writing outside
the frame of postcolonialism. Lisle interrogates the popularity of travel
writing in present times, despite the decline of imperial rule. “If the Em-
pire that sustained travel writing was dismantled with the various decol-
onisation movements of the twentieth century, why hasn’t travel writing
itself disappeared?” (Lisle 2). Lisle attributes the popularity of present day
travel writing to the extension of the colonial vision in the more troub-
ling cosmopolitan vision. She argues that contemporary travel writing en-
gages most profoundly in the wider debates of global politics through its
7
structuring tension between colonial and cosmopolitan visions – “they re-

veal moments of empathy, recognition of difference, realisations of equal-
ity and insights into shared values” (4). However, at the heart of this re-
lationship is the production of difference: “It requires the author to dis-
criminate between what is familiar and what is exotic so that readers are
satisfied that they are encountering people and places that are sufficiently
foreign” (71) and “they smuggle in equally judgemental accounts of other-
ness under the guise of equality, tolerance and respect for difference” (10).
They actually form new forms of power. As such, the cosmopolitan vis-
ion is not really separated from the logic of Colonialism, Orientalism, or
Empire. Hegemony is recast in the cosmopolitan vision of the globalised
world.
The collection of articles in this book reflects on various travelogues
focussing on Goa from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the
present times. Unfolding Goa through the centuries from the lens of the
travellers therefore becomes a curious and fruitful activity. Isabel de Santa
Rita Vás’ article sketches the quest of two travellers, Anabela Mendes and
José Paz. While Anabela Mendes is in search of the travel writings of Gar-
cia de Orta, the well known physician and botanist of the sixteenth cen-
tury, José Paz’s love for the Portuguese language and the writings of the
Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore brings him to Goa. In speaking on
the ‘writerly journeys’ of Anabela Mendes’ and José Paz’s travel writings
on travel writings of two scholars, Santa Rita Vás in fact writes about four
exciting journeys across the boundaries of disciplines.
Sushila Mendes gives an insider’s view of Robert S. Newman’s oeuvre.
The arguments in her paper are a dialogue between an insider and an out-
sider, unfolding the cultural patterns and spaces about the people and
history of the Goan villages of Assolna, Velim and Cuncolim.
Xavier Martins, in his article ‘François Pyrard de Laval: Observations
of his India voyage’, talks of how the French navigator and traveller gives a
vivid description of the seventeenth-century city of Goa. This also covers
its people, the government, the ecclesiastical setup, the Portuguese naval
organization, his observations on India voyage, the internal Portuguese
naval setup, the voyages to ‘Cambaya’, ‘Surrate’, Malabar, China, Japan
and so on.
8
Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa attempts to understand the food his-

tory of Goa from the writings of François Pyrard de Laval and Denis Cot-
tineau de Kloguen. She analyses and assesses the two French travellers’
reflections on food habits in Goa, which they visited at different points
of time. While Pyrard de Laval visited Goa in its heydays from 1607-1610,
Rev. Denis Cottineau de Kloguen visited Goa in 1827 when the Portuguese
were in midway of decadence of their prosperous empire. In her analysis,
Costa asks pertinent questions such as: What did they observe in the food
habits in Goa? Was there a change between the two visits? And how relev-
ant is it to understand food history of Goa?
Prema Rocha shifts the focus on Goa from the tourist idea of fish, feni
and fun to the accounts of travellers who came to stay and made Goa their
home, in her in-depth analysis of Manohar Shetty’s Goa Travels and the
chronicles from Inside/Out. Therefore, Rocha rightly titles her article as
Veni, Vidi, Amavi (I came, I saw, I loved) instead of the colonialist dictum,
Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered).
Sunita Mesquita searches for stability and sustenance of Goan culture
through travel narratives and the need to correlate literature with culture
as the vital fulcrum of its sustenance. She assesses how travel narratives
have become veritable indicators of culture.
Glenis Mendonça makes a concerted effort to closely examine some
of the blogs written by travellers who have visited Goa. Mendonça offers
a traveller’s insight into unvoiced ‘Goa-experiences’, adding a new dimen-
sion to the Goa-travel literary output as well as building awareness among
the average Goan who is unaware of the interesting things in his own back-
yard.
Brian Mendonça, writing on his debut volume Last Bus to Vasco:
Poems from Goa (2006), speaks about his sojourn as a traveller-poet. He
documents the rapidly changing Goa, a landscape under erasure, and at-
tempts to theorise Goa through the lens of the traveller-poet.
Irene Silveira focuses on three rewritings of Goa by contemporary
Europeans – Les Instantanés du Monde, Goa is not India, and Contacto
Goa – with a view to examine articles, audio podcasts and film document-
aries in the light of past travel writing and the current reality. Her aim is
to revisit Goa from the Western standpoint to find answers to challenges
9
thrown up by cross-cultural contact.

Akshata Bhatt and Nafisa Oliveira, working through the baseline of se-
lect writings from Goa Travels, study and analyse the reconstruction(s) of
Goa through the travellers’ lens in view of Goa’s increasing tourist influx
and visibility on the global map. They argue that the contemporary im-
age of Goa – with its sun, sand and susegaado – can also neatly fit into
it a fourth ‘s’ – ‘stereotype’. This popular paradigm, they note, fails to do
justice to the inherent variegation and verve which is a part of Goa’s lar-
ger narrative – its diverse cultures, dialects, festivities, peoples and a sys-
tematic syncretism which is unique to a land that has endured dynamic
dialectics.
Natasha Maria Gomes opines that travelogues are a subjective ap-
praisal of an objective reality. She explores French journalist’s Anne Bon-
neau’s radio travelogues on Goa. Bonneau’s travelogues, Gomes asserts,
are structured around the archetype of the musician, artist, local artisans
and tribals; but the image of the Goan stereotype, the fun-loving susegaad
Goan, is ever-present. Gomes points out that some Goans themselves per-
petuate this stereotype in order to feed the tourist industry.
Palia Gaonkar argues that there can be two impressions of a certain
place – the tourist’s version, and the traveller’s version. Far from the tour-
ist version, a traveller will make a learning experience out of his or her
visit. Focussing on the few pages dedicated to Goa in V.S. Naipaul’s India:
A Million Mutinies Now (1990), Gaonkar seems to agree with V.S. Naipaul’s
observation that the “fracture in reality” of Goa is similar to any other In-
dian land.
Ambika Kamat analyses how Goa became an object of the Occidental
Gaze in The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, so as to unravel how the Por-
tuguese colony has been objectified in Pires’ account as a land yielding
great revenue.
Frederick Noronha critiques the image of Goa as a high profile tourist
destination. He addresses the issue of the global understanding of this
region, mostly from the information gathered from media images, while
also addressing the local perception of the place.
Drawing from various disciplines, the contributors to the book ap-
ply themselves to a number of key questions pertaining to travel writing;
10
ranging from travel writing as an historian’s conventional documentary

cache, to the interrogation and critiquing of the play of Orientalism and
postcoloniality, to the forces of globalisation and all that the travellers col-
lect in their travel box.
Works Cited
Conroy, Pat. “20 Of The Best Travel Quotes Of All Time.” pinterest.com.au,
written by Nadia Carriere, 12 Apr. 2013, https://www.pinterest.com.au
/pin/522065781779700673/.
Lisle, Debbie. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing. Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
11
As kingfishers catch fire: scholarship as
travel through inscape
I SABEL DE S ANTA R ITA VÁS1
Writers and academicians who travel in the footsteps of other

writers are unlike the tourists who move away from the fami-
liar primarily veering towards an exotic other world. Scholars tra-
vel firstly in response to a deeply felt interior invitation to meet
kindred spirits. We attempt to sketch the writerly journeys of two
scholars: Portuguese researcher Anabela Mendes, whose initia-
tive spurred writers and scholars to investigate the work of 16th
century Portuguese botanist-physician, Garcia de Orta, who did
pioneering work in Goa on tropical medicine. Researcher-edu-
cationist José Paz’s love of the Portuguese language and his pas-
sion for Rabindranath Tagore’s work brought him to Goa from
Galicia, Spain. The writers they have researched, Garcia de Orta
and Tagore are, incidentally, travellers themselves. These are four
exciting writerly journeys across the boundaries of disciplines.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swing finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
Gerald Manly Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.”
1 Guest-faculty at the Department of English of the Goa University, Goa. isabelsr-

vas@gmail.com
Scholarship as travel... | Isabel de Santa Rita Vás
Introduction
There are those who claim it is basically wanderlust. Individuals and
groups travel widely across geo-political boundaries and cultures and
seem to have always done so. Nomadic tribes have travelled as a way of
life, individuals travel in search of greener pastures, for employment op-
portunities; entrepreneurs are driven by compulsions of trade; we set
out on adventure trails; we escape from familiar settings; as pilgrims
we journey in search of the sacred; as tourists we gaze at the novel and
the unfamiliar; we flee from natural calamities and persecution and mi-
grate, sometimes en masse; in a globalised world we travel between our
homes; often, we cross bridges visiting family or seeking kindred spirits.
It is difficult to imagine journeys that do not, in some way, effect change
in the traveller, however transient. Travel writing is perhaps an attempt
to pin down and transmit an evanescent experience.
In contemporary times more and more persons who are writers and
academicians travel across borders in the footsteps of other writers. Uni-
versities and cultural organisations facilitate this process when they or-
ganize conferences or offer support for study. Literary festivals create a
congenial atmosphere for writers and readers to dialogue. Goa has seen
its share of scholars and writers who undertake to cross a variety of bound-
aries in the cherished hope of meaningful writerly encounters. The Goa
Arts and Literature Festival, for instance, has been hosting writers from
India and abroad, across languages, offering possibilities for mutually en-
riching conversations.
The comings and goings of scholars

Across the landscape of travel and travel writing, the comings and goings
of scholars offer abundant scope for contemplation. Unlike the tourist
who moves away from the familiar primarily veering towards an exotic
other world, armed with carefully selected sites to see and informed about
unmissable cultural and heritage practices to be experienced, scholars,
we would suggest, travel firstly in response to a deeply felt interior invita-
tion to meet kindred spirits, an invitation so germane to the scholars’ call-
ing that it can be recognised to flow from the inscape of their own being,
from that distinctive design that constitutes the identity of a person. And
13
though the geographic and cultural landscapes may differ from those in
their native lands, the scholars’ scrutiny reveals their inherent congenial-
ity with their own selves.
As Gerald Manley Hopkins indicates through the powerfully striking im-
agery in his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”, the essence of the kingfisher
is realised and revealed when its plumage blazes in the sunlight in its light-
ning flight or the dragonfly shines like a blue flame, or a stone cast over a
‘roundy’ well rings, or the plucked musical string or bell sings out the truth
that “What I do is me, for that I came.”
Goa — a meeting place: Anabela Mendes meets Garcia de Orta; José Paz
meets Rabindranath Tagore
This paper will attempt to sketch the writerly journeys of two scholars:
The first, Prof. Anabela Mendes, a Portuguese researcher whose eclectic
interests have led her to organize international conferences, one of them
in Goa. Her initiative spurred a number of writers and scholars across dis-
ciplines and continents to study the work of well-known Portuguese bot-
anist and physician of the sixteenth century, Garcia de Orta, who did pion-
eering work in Goa on tropical medicine. One outcome of that Goa event
is the publication entitled Garcia de Orta and Alexander von Humboldt:
Across the East and West.2
The second scholar is Prof. José Paz, a researcher and educationist
from Galicia, Spain, whose love of the Portuguese language and his pas-
sion for Rabindranath Tagore and his work have brought him to Goa;
his paper on “The Perception and Influence of Tagore in Goa and the
Lusophone world” (Mendes 2013) is a valuable contribution to Tagore
scholarship.
The paper will treat these two writers, Mendes and Paz, as travellers
within cultures; their writing describes no exotic dress or stunning slave
trade or rare architectural practices, but indicates a shared womb and
creates space for further encounters and conversations. The two writers
that they have researched, Garcia de Orta and Rabindranath Tagore, in-
cidentally, travellers themselves, combine with them to draw fascinating
2 The name Garcia de Orta has been variously spelt by scholars, vide Fialho (Garcia de
Orta e o seu tempo), Markham (Colloquies on the simples and drugs of India by Gar-
cia da Orta) and Boxer (Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine: Garcia d’Orta and Nicolás
Monardes).
14
maps of kingfishers catching fire. These are four exciting writerly journeys
across the boundaries of disciplines.
Anabela Mendes: she travels through the social sciences, the arts
Doutora Anabela Mendes is Assistant Professor with tenure at the De-
partment of German Studies of the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade
de Lisboa; Investigator at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa; Scientist
and Lecturer on Literature of German Expression, German Culture, Aes-
thetics and Philosophy of Art, Theory and Aesthetics of Drama, and Soci-
ology of the Arts. She has a large number of publications in these areas, in
German, English and Portuguese and she also works as a translator, play-
wright and theatre director. She has been the co-author of international
scientific projects, as well as different presentations and publications on
Literature and Science dedicated to the issues: Myth, Dream, Reason and
Unconscious in Goethe’s and Pessoa’s Faustus; and Prometheus and Faus-
tus in Goethe and Pessoa – Dialoguing Cartographies (2005-2006). To-
gether with Gabriela Fragoso she was responsible for the concept and the
organization of the international and interdisciplinary project entitled “Al-
exander von Humboldt and Garcia de Orta – The scientific journey and
dialogues among cultures (2006-2007)”. She organized the international
and trans-disciplinary Conference entitled “Garcia de Orta and Alexander
von Humboldt – across the East and West” (2008) in Goa. A more recent
Conference at the Azores led to the publication of Long-distance Travels
— Routes and Mappings (Mendes 2016), a volume that compiles a variety
of papers on aspects of travel.
In her essay “Were those the actual lands where Orta lived?” Mendes
reflects on her visit to Goa for the Conference: “Hosted by the splendid city
of Goa and its generous people, we felt as if we had been assembled under
the shield of a symbolic privilege – a privilege which concedes that one of
its parts is willing to step back for the other (a likely sign of a future evid-
ence, who knows) when someone ventures to become-with-the-other(s)
a multiple completeness.” (Mendes Were those the actual lands... 4)
Anabela Mendes can be viewed as both a trans-cultural traveller and
an intra-cultural navigator, one who familiarly inhabits, in the view of this
writer, a wide international cross-cultural space that invites conversation
and collaboration.
15
Who was this Garcia de Orta and why was he such an inviting figure
to Mendes and her fellow researchers?
Garcia de Orta: a 16th Century Portuguese physician in Goa

In the year 1563, a Portuguese physician had a book published in Goa,
Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas medicinais da India, Goa, 1563.
The book was in the form of a dialogue between two physicians, Garcia de
Orta and an imaginary Spaniard, Ruano; a few other characters wander in
and out of various scenes. Orta often calls upon his slave-woman Antonia,
to assist him. Interestingly, Benedito R. Ferrão, in his essay titled “Inquis-
itive Legacies: Ecologies of Power and Goan Modernity”, suggests that “It
is possible that this fictionalized character represents the locals, some of
them perhaps medicine-women, who shared with the Portuguese phys-
ician their knowledge of the plants of the land.” This conversation is, in
reality, a text on medicinal plants and remedies, the first of its kind. “In
a period before botany and medicine were constituted in their modern
forms, we can glimpse in Orta’s text his effort at building a revised “polit-
ical ecology of knowledge” against the older pattern based on classical tex-
tual authorities in the hands of European-based institutions.(...) For Orta,
to know the Asian materia medica, one had to observe closely in situ the
texture of the “book of nature”, not the text of an authoritative book. It is
the distance in space, in particular, and occasionally in time that creates
or allows for mistakes, errors and falsifications”, writes Inês G. Županov
(21).
Garcia de Orta was the son of a Spanish Jewish convert to Christianity,
who had settled in Portugal. He studied at the famous Spanish Univer-
sities of Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares and returned to Portugal as a
qualified physician. He practised medicine first in his hometown, Castelo
de Vide and then in Lisbon. He was posted as a lecturer at the University
of Lisbon for two years until he left for India as a physician to Martim Af-
fonso de Sousa, the son of a good friend and patron. Affonso de Sousa
commanded a fleet of five ships; Orta sailed for the Indies as the chief
physician aboard the fleet in 1534. A major reason for his leaving Europe
was probably the growing persecution in Europe of the Jewish converts,
who were known as New Christians. Orta accompanied Martim Affonso
de Sousa wherever he went on his military campaigns and had opportun-
16
ities to be in Bassein, Kathiawar, Ahmednagar, Diu, Cochin and Ceylon.

From Bassein, where he resided for a while, Orta came to Goa in 1538,
where he settled and had a very successful medical practice. He became
the physician to various Indian rulers as well as Portuguese Governors
and Vice-Roys. Garcia de Orta’s book,
was the third book ever printed in Asia, and the first on a non-
religious subject. It was the earliest foundation for the science of
tropical medicine and materia medica, as taught in European uni-
versities, where it continued to be used as an authoritative text for
the next two or three centuries, and it long predated the import-
ant therapeutic advances made by illustrious members of the Brit-
ish and French colonial medical services.(...) As personal physi-
cian to people high in Portuguese governmental and ecclesiastical
hierarchies in Goa, da Orta remained protected from the clutches
of the Goan branch of the Inquisition, which was suspicious and
predatory toward “New Christians” as was its Iberian counterpart.
However, a year after Garcia da Orta’s death, his sister Catarina
was burnt at the stake “as an impenitent Jewess” and in 1580 da
Orta’s own remains were exhumed and burnt in an auto da fé at
Goa as a posthumous punishment for being a crypto-Jew during
his life (Vas 66-68).
Commenting on Garcia de Orta’s book as a literary, medical and cul-

tural text, Palmira Fontes da Costa points out that “The Colloquies on
the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) were conceived and published at
a sensitive moment, both in terms of the history of print culture and of
European geographical expansion. They represented the culmination of a
life-time project for their author Garcia de Orta who had lived for almost
thirty years in Portuguese Goa.”
Mendes and Orta: distance meets distance

Mendes and her team of researchers chose Goa as their destination for
the Conference as a salute to this Portuguese man in the sixteenth century
who “let himself become one with the lands of India to the point that he
met his death there” (Mendes ‘Were those the actual lands...’ 10).
She affirms that as they headed towards the East, Garcia de Orta set
the inspiring tone for the papers later published; they met enthusiastic
researchers in India who did not hesitate to share with their European
colleagues the knowledge these might not have been acquainted with.
17
The trans-disciplinary conference threw up lively papers and discussion

and culminated in a published volume. Garcia de Orta and Alexander von
Humboldt: Across the East and the West includes, among others, the fol-
lowing papers, a feast for the researcher and the general reader: “Botan-
izing in Portuguese India: Between Errors and Certainties (16th -17th c.)”
by Inês G. Županov; “Science of Nature: Garcia de Orta as a Philosopher
of Science”, by Koshy Tharakan and Alito Siqueira; “Garcia de Orta and
Gelásio Dalgado: two eminent botanists in Goa” by Newman Fernandes
and Maria Araujo Fonseca; “Documenting the “Medico-Botanical Tra-
ditions of India”: The Colóquios of Garcia de Orta”, by Sharon D’Cruz;
“Portuguese Discoveries and Plants that Changed Goan Gastronomy”, by
Maria de Lourdes da Costa; “The Awakening of Ayurvedic Wisdom: Les-
sons from India”, by Ana Firmino; and “Through Long Ago Navigated Seas
– Scenic Text for Two Actors and Four Musicians” by Anabela Mendes
(trans. Sara de Melo): imaginative and diverse scholarly journeys with cul-
tural and scientific significance.
The last mentioned chapter contains the script for an innovative play
that was staged in Goa on the occasion of the conference as a multi-
lingual performance. It was authored by Mendes, and performed by Anju
Sakhardande (trans. into Konkani), Prajal Sakhardande, Alexandre Pieroni
Calado and Sandra Hung; the present writer was privileged to facilitate
this performance in Goa; the musical performances, talks, a book launch,
a workshop on Movement and Photography Exhibition, a poetry reading,
it all flowed from a shared interest. Mendes believes that “for a few days
we became a small trans-national, trans-curricular and trans-cultural
community. The lands where Orta lived still move around within us be-
cause the combination of differences brought about complementarities”
(Mendes ‘Were those the actual lands...’ 15). In this writer’s estimation,
this theatrical production, trans-cultural in spirit, captures something of
both Anabela Mendes, its author, and the scholar she investigated, Garcia
de Orta. A rich and satisfying journey that has only begun.
Rabindranath Tagore: world traveller

Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet, educationist, painter, was also a great
traveller. He first crossed the oceans in 1878, to London through Paris. His
aim was to continue his studies and he stayed in England for a year and
18
a half. But he was homesick and the experience seems to have put him
off travelling for the next decade. In 1912, he fell ill and spent time on the
river Padma to recover. This is the period when he translated his Gitanjali
into English. When he went to England again later that year, he met other
well-known writers, including W. B. Yeats, who became a great admirer
and wrote a foreword to the book of poems when they were published. In
later years Tagore visited the USA and Japan on a lecture tour. Then he
headed for Mexico, Peru and then Argentina, where he met the Argentine
writer Victoria Ocampo. He visited Italy. Later in life he went on a tour of
Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam and Singapore – and he
wrote about them in his travelogue Jatri. At the age of 69 he visited Europe
and the USA once again, where he lectured and exhibited his artworks.
He travelled to Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Russia. His last trips
were to Iran, followed by Iraq and Sri Lanka. He was always keenly inter-
ested in people, their lives and writing and philosophy and made friends
with many great minds all over the globe. He writes:
I have a home everywhere;
my mission is to seek out that home.
My native land is in every country
and I shall seek it out
with all my heart.
Whenever I visit an alien land
I feel as if
I have a shelter there,
I will have only to find out the entrance.
In every home
live my near and dear ones
and it is my task to go on searching
till I find them out.
Kumud Biswas notes: “This is the opening stanza of poem 14 of the col-
lection Utsarga (Dedication) by Rabindranath Tagore.(...) He was restless
by nature and could hardly stay at one place for a long stretch of time.
He loved to travel. And he was destined to be a widely travelled man. He
also wrote about his travels and became the author of perhaps the largest
number of travelogues. Unfortunately today they appear to be his least
19
read books. Yet in this genre they are the best in Bengali literature and
can compare with great travelogues of world literature. We travel for vari-
ous purposes - for profit and pleasure or for adventure and satisfaction of
one’s curiosity. But our poet wanted to travel for something more as the
above-quoted poem suggests” (Biswas).
Tagore was aware of a higher and inner journey. He writes to his friend
C. F. Andrews:
Pithapuram, 18th October 1918
Dear Friend,
I am returning to Calcutta and from there to the ashram. It is not for me
to travel about – to dissipate my attention – my mind sets forth on its true
pilgrimage when it is at rest. Give my love to Mahatma.
Affectionately yours,
Rabindranath Tagore (Qtd. in Datta and Robinson)
As far as we know Rabindranath Tagore did not visit Goa. But his writings
did. Prof. José Paz travelled from Spain and discovered Tagore’s admirers.
José Paz: from Galicia to Shantiniketan to Goa
Prof. José Paz is a Spanish educationist, who graduated in Education from
the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He earned his doctorate on the
theme of “Tagore, Pioneer of the New Education.” He was a professor in
the Faculty of Education at the University of Vigo, later the director of
Escola Normal de Ourense. Paz writes extensively in Spanish, Portuguese
and Bengali and has presented numerous papers at conferences on edu-
cation and on Rabindranath Tagore, a writer he has been studying since
1966. He has what could probably be the best private collection of books
on Tagore, over 30,000 volumes. He has donated this personal collection
of books, CDs and paintings on Rabindranath Tagore to Casa de la Índia in
the city of Valladolid, Spain. This collection includes rare first editions of
Tagore’s works in Bengali as well as books on him in numerous languages,
including Spanish and Portuguese. With this collection Casa de la Índia
has proposed to set up a Rabindranath Tagore Centre in Spain. Paz has
retired from his teaching career in his city of Ourense, and he now spends
almost half of the year in India, and he resides at Shantiniketan, where he
learns and teaches, and follows his passion of studying closely the great
Indian educationist and poet, Tagore. Shantiniketan is a small town in
20
West Bengal, developed by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore and later ex-

panded by his son Rabindranath, whose vision led to the establishment
of the Vishwa Bharati University in 1921.
José Paz nurtures another great love, his language: Galician-
Portuguese. Galicia, from which he hails, is situated to the north of Por-
tugal and borders Spain to the north-west. It follows Spanish law, but
its culture is very close to the Portuguese. In Galicia, the people speak
Castilian, which is akin to Spanish, and Galician, which is closely akin to
the Portuguese language, to which Paz feels strongly emotionally connec-
ted.
Professor José Paz visited Goa for the first time in 2008. In Delhi, in-
vited by the Instituto Cervantes to participate in a congress dedicated to
Tagore at the Indian International Centre, Paz decided to visit Goa. He was
very aware that this territory had been a colony of the Portuguese empire
for over four centuries, and driven as he was by everything Lusophone,
Professor Paz arrived in Goa. It was for him a moving experience, he found
himself in a place so familiar that he felt he was home.
“For a moment I rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was dreaming
or if what I was looking at was real. A Galician-Portuguese corner in In-
dia! Even as I woke up in the morning and got up, I thought I might be
in Oporto or in Recife in Brazil. Almost the entire zone of Fontainhas has
houses built in the colonial style, and quite well preserved, too. With ver-
andas, balconies and roofs like ours.(...) The words Rua (road) and casa
(house) are continuously repeated. People who are over 50 years of age all
speak Galician-Portuguese. It is really delicious to be able to express my-
self in my language in the very midst of India. Here one really understands
how false it is to say that Galician and Portuguese are different languages.
What a big lie! (Paz “Goa, um Recanto...”)”
Did Prof. José Paz come looking for Tagore in Goa? Perhaps he did. He
was familiar with the translations of Tagore’s works from Bengali into Por-
tuguese by Telo de Mascarenhas, which he had discovered in old librar-
ies in Oporto and Lisbon, published in the 1940s by the publishing house
Inquérito de Lisboa. He writes, “Because the territory of Goa is situated
in the Indian subcontinent and very near the city of Bombay (today offi-
cially called Mumbai), for the Goan writers and intellectuals the figure of
21
Tagore was already well known there from the beginning of the twentieth
century, and even more since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Liter-
ature in 1913. There are subjects often echoed in the Goan media. Trans-
lated into Portuguese by José F. Ferreira Martins, in 1914, the work Chitra
(Chitrangoda) was published in Nova Goa, being the first book by Robin-
dronath published in Portuguese on Indian land. Many Goans trained
at the universities of the metropolis, particularly in the most famous, of
Coimbra, were great Tagoreans, they admired his work and thought, and
wrote many interesting books and articles and books about this figure”
(Paz “Perception and Influence”). The Tagorean from Galicia was abso-
lutely delighted to find other significant Tagoreans in Goa who wrote in
the language he himself cherishes.
Paz considers Telo de Mascarenhas (1899-1979), the well-known au-
thor, poet, journalist and freedom-fighter from Goa, to be “one of the
most important Portuguese-speaking Tagoreans of the world, compar-
able to any other Tagoreans of other nationalities and languages of the
world” (Paz “Perception and Influence”). Mascarenhas is indeed close to
Paz’s heart: “(...) as he was a fluent speaker of Bengali, he carried out
beautiful translations into Portuguese of Tagorean works: The Home and
the World (Ghore Baire), Boat Wreck (Noukadubi), The Four Voices (Cho-
turongo), and an anthology of tales with the general title The Key to the
Enigma and Other Tales. In 1943 he published in Oporto an interesting
study entitled “Rabindranath Tagore e a sua mensagem espiritual” (Ra-
bindranath Tagore and his spiritual message). In the same year he pub-
lished the translation into Portuguese of Gandhi’s book Historia da Minha
Vida (The Story of My Life)” (Paz “Perception and Influence”). Paz admires
the fact that Mascarenhas fought against Portuguese colonialism, to the
point that spent several years in jail in Lisbon, yet “he always deeply loved
and defended the Portuguese language” (Paz “Perception and Influence”).
Other Tagoreans from Goa became accessible to Prof. Paz through
the Portuguese language: Adeodato Barreto (1905-1937), poet, teacher,
journalist, author, lawyer, who was born in Margão and lived in Ajustrel,
Portugal, for many years. Barreto was deeply concerned with pedagogy,
taught for many years, laboured towards social justice for mine work-
ers, and founded the Universidade Livre in Coimbra. Barreto died very
22
young in Portugal, but his writing expresses his great admiration for
Tagore. Paz regrets vehemently the fact that Barreto’s “Ideias pedagógicas
de Tagore”, a critical essay written in 1929-30 about Tagore’s pedagogy, fol-
lowed by an essay for the application to Portuguese schools of his funda-
mental principles, remain unpublished to this day (Paz “Perception and
Influence”). Prof Paz also refers to the essay by Propércia Correia Afonso
de Figueiredo (1882-1944) “Rabindranath Tagore, o Educador”, published
in 1942, “a true marvel in which she shows her deep knowledge of Tagore
and his educational model” (Paz “Perception and Influence”).
Among the numerous other Tagoreans that Paz highlights we find
Froilano de Melo (1887-1955), a doctor of renown, who wrote, with great
sensitivity, a monograph entitled “O Cantico da Vida na Poesia Tagoreana”
(“The Canticle of Life in Tagore’s Poetry”); Amâncio Gracias (1872-1950)
analyses two important facets of Tagore’s life, the socio-political and the
poetic, in his essay “Tagore, Político e Poeta”; Renato de Sá (1908-1981)
published various texts of Tagore in his journal A Harpa Goesa; Mariano
José de Saldanha (1878-1975), a doctor, teacher of Marathi, Konkani and
Sanskrit visited Shantiniketan and wrote a study entitled “O Poeta duma
Universidade e a Universidade de um Poeta ou Rabindranath Tagore e a
sua Obra Literária e Pedagógica.” He delivered a lecture on this theme
at the Faculdade de Letras at the University of Lisbon in 1943, preceded
by an invocation in Sanskrit by Sudhindro M. Tagore, followed by the
Bangla song “A lira do Universo” written and composed by Rabindranath
Tagore. Prof. Ramchandra Naique delivered a lecture on “O Gurudeva de
Shantiniketan” which was published in Heraldo in 1941. Sitarama Quercar
published a biography of Tagore in 1915 in the magazine Luz do Oriente;
Damodar B. Bounsuló, published a biography of the poet in 1950 in the
magazine of the Liceu Nacional Afonso de Albuquerque; Áureo de Quad-
ros published in 1996 his translation of Gitanjali into Portuguese. Repro-
duced in O Heraldo in February 2011 is an article by Paraxurama Quensori
on “Os dramas de Tagore” a critical essay on Tagore’s plays for theatre.
Paz saw that the media in Portuguese in Goa featured Tagore frequen-
tly: articles have appeared in O Académico, O Ultramar, O Heraldo, He-
raldo, Ressurge Goa!, Diário da Noite, Bharat, A Vida, and in publications
like the Bulletin of Instituto Vasco da Gama and the Boletim Eclesiástico
23
da Arquediocese de Goa.
It is of interest to know that a number of these writers wrote let-
ters to Tagore (Telo de Mascarenhas; Adeodato Barreto, who received a
reply from Tagore noting that the Indian Institute Barreto had founded
in Coimbra had the same scope and aims as Vishwabharati at Shantinik-
etan; Renato de Sá, to whom Tagore sent an autographed photo). In the
town of Mapusa, there existed an institution devoted to Tagore, named
the “Tagore Academic Association.” Paz notes, “I learnt of this important
fact at Robindro-Bhovon in Shantiniketon, when finding scanned copies
of two letters sent to Tagore by the secretary of that association, Caxinath
Sar Dessai, dated the November 3 and December 7, 1937. On November
22 of the same year, Tagore’s secretary answered the first from Santinik-
eton. We have photocopies of them and consider that it is very important
to continue in the future to investigate the work of this Tagorean academy
in Goa” (Paz “Perception and Influence”).
An inquiry into the writings of Goans on Tagore in other languages
would, of course, yield abundant additional material to this research.
Renowned Goan writers have felt the fascination of the great Gurudev
and have paid tribute to him in languages of their choosing. Among
them we count some shiny names. B.B. Borkar (1910-1984) wrote on
him in Marathi, “Anandyatri Ravindranath: Sanskar Ani Sadhana” (1964),
and “Mahamanav Ravindranath” (1974). Author Ravindra Kelekar’s (1925-
2010) grandfather Lingubab’s pride in his native culture and literature led
him to name his grandson ‘Ravindra’ after the great Bengali Rabindranath.
Today, Poet Ramesh Veluskar is fluent in Bengali and has translated the
Gitanjali into Konkani; Veluskar gives credit for much of his literary fin-
esse to his experiences at Shantiniketan where he spent time in 1981
(Malkarnekar).
The present writer was happy to present Dr. Paz with the script of her
play on Tagore, “Rabindrababu at the Postoffice”, written in English and
staged in Goa in 2011, a small contribution to his collection.
The interest in Goa in the person and work of Tagore from the first
decade of the twentieth century clearly points to the intellectual and emo-
tional connection that the people here felt with some of the great figures
from India. The political borders between “Portuguese India” and “Brit-
24
ish India” were porous in terms of trade and the movement of people out
of Goa seeking higher education and employment opportunities. But we
would do well to underline that the cultural bonds were also significant.
It is well known that numerous persons from Goa who moved to neigh-
bouring cities or towns contributed significantly to the cultural life of the
larger India in various important areas of activity. We are aware, of course,
that young painters from Goa like Angelo da Fonseca lived and studied art
at Shantiniketan and were deeply influenced by the Bengal Renaissance,
of which Rabindranath and his brother Abhanindranath were strong pro-
ponents. A similar impulse led Mariano José Saldanha to visit Shantinik-
etan, Telo de Mascarenhas and others to learn Bengali, study Tagore’s writ-
ing assiduously and translate it into Portuguese, as José F. Ferreira Mar-
tins did in 1914 and Mascarenhas in the 1930s and 1940s. We note that
Mascarenhas, Adeodato Barreto, Mariano Saldanha, Froilano de Melo and
others carried their admiration of Tagore into Portugal and publicized his
remarkable work in that country.
It was not only Tagore, the poet who had been awarded the No-
bel Prize, who charmed these writers. His politics drew the attention of
writers like Amâncio Gracias and Adeodato Barreto. His views on reli-
gion were of interest to Fr. Altino Ribeiro Santana, who wrote “O ideal
religioso de Tagore”, Fr. Carmo da Silva who authored “A mensagem de
Tagore” and José da Conceição Sousa. His philosophy of education power-
fully captured the imagination of Adeodato Barreto, the young doctor who
worked selflessly to make education accessible to the working population
in Ajustrel, a small mining district of Portugal; to Ramchandra Naique, the
Director of the Escola Normal, the teacher-training institute in Goa, and
Propércia Correia Afonso de Figueiredo, a well-respected teacher of the
same institute.
The romance between Tagoreans and the Portuguese language lasted
well into the late twentieth century, when Áureo de Quadros was inspired
to publish the Gitanjali in Portuguese. Quadros was in the colonial gov-
ernment service since 1939, under the Captain of Ports in Goa, Santos
Cabral. The following note about his translation makes for absorbing read-
ing: “Captain Santos Cabral, a littérateur himself, finding such interest
in Áureo Quadros, gave him a book he had authored: it was a transla-
25
tion from German into Portuguese, narrating an episode from the First
World War. He was to leave his post after the end of his tenure in Goa
and Áureo de Quadros decided to present him with something of his own
which would symbolize the Indian Culture (emphasis added). Having re-
ceived blessings from Rabindranath Tagore, he went on translating into
Portuguese the songs of Gitanjali (...)” (Tagore). The translation remained
unpublished for want of funds. Decades later, to honour the memory of
his young daughter Vania, who had suddenly passed away, Quadros had
his translation published in 1995, including in it prints of two paintings
by his daughter, inspired by Tagore.
As suggested by Sovon Sanyal in his essay “Universalism of Tagore:
The Specificities of Portuguese Reception”,
A general study reveals that translating Tagore as a literary agenda

(whether collectively taken or not) is uniquely nationalistic and
decidedly a dual process of cultural self-discovery and self-assert-
ion of a colonised people. If we consider that translation results
inevitably in establishing contacts between cultures, obviously it
went against the culture policies of the colonial government of
Portugal. Hence translating Tagore into Portuguese by Goans may
be seen as passive resistance to the imperial design of denational-
ising the people of Goa by the colonial administration. (...)
Portugal having been declared a Republic (1910), Goans took up

the questions of civil rights in their land. This contributed to
the Portuguese writings in Goa a new élan. A new phenomenon
of translating modern Indian writings made the literary sphere
more vibrant and enriched. Two Goan writer-intellectuals Adeod-
ato Barreto (1904-1936) and Telo de Mascarenhas (1899–1979) can
be seen as the two most important figures in this passive cultural
resistance, while the former wrote on and spread the message
of peace and universal brotherhood of Tagore in Portugal with
his writings and lectures, the latter translated some of his major
works into Portuguese. Thus Portuguese translations of Tagore’s
works by Goans between 1910 and 1961 assumed a very special
significance here. The process of translation is not independent
of the cultural and the political systems, and so of history. If we in-
quire into the process of reception in Portuguese, it would defin-
itely show that the process is an ideological act, than an aesthetic
one. Thus a reverse trend starts, the East enlightens the West (San-
yal).
26
Perhaps this appreciation of Tagore beyond national and cultural borders,

whether in colonial or post-colonial times, indicates a global sensibility
that the poet himself was known for.
The movements of persons, languages and ideas across political
boundaries over the past decades are food for rich discussion among so-
cial scientists.Within the scope of this paper is only to call attention to
the way in which deep affinities have prompted exciting cultural journeys:
an Anabela Mendes visiting Goa to study Garcia de Orta and enacting a
multi-lingual theatre performance; a José Paz discovering Tagoreans in
Goa writing in Portuguese; a Telo de Mascarenhas, freedom fighter, trans-
lating into Portuguese the works of Tagore on Portuguese soil, an Adeod-
ato Barreto migrating to Portugal and making it his home, and corres-
ponding with Tagore and Romain Rolland, an Áureo de Quadros wishing
to offer to a Portuguese official in Goa in colonial times a work of Tagore as
a symbol of his own Indianness, beyond his status as a citizen of Portugal
Ultramarino, a Bakibab Borkar celebrating Tagore in Marathi, a Ramesh
Veluskar translating the Gitanjali into Konkani.
Conclusion
Travel writers across the centuries have helped create maps of diverse
kinds; some accounts have been based on empirical evidence and have
paved the way for the dissemination of scientific knowledge; land and sea
routes came to be explored; an impulse towards trade often followed in
the wake of new-found information; travel writing has sometimes contrib-
uted to great poetry and prose; travellers have chronicled what are today
precious historical records of social and economic life, and indicated the
political milieux of the places they visited. About the visitors to Goa, Man-
ohar Shetty remarks: “(...) the history of Goa is unique and far removed
from the rest of the subcontinent. The vivid accounts left behind by these
travellers and chroniclers over the centuries provide a telling testimony
on both the glory of Goa during its high-water mark in the early sixteenth
century, its rapidly fading allure as a jewel in the Portuguese crown, and
its recent resurgence as a star attraction for travellers from around the
globe.”
The travellers discussed in this paper have added their own quite
unique pen-strokes to the cultural and literary map of Goa; they have
27
done so as serious scholars and academicians drawn to the Goan land-

scape, enthused by themes very close to their own hearts.
In her essay in Garcia de Orta and Alexander von Humboldt: Across the
East and West, researcher Raquel Nobre Guerra de Oliveira writes about
India in the life of the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935).
Critic, publisher, translator and philosopher, Pessoa is considered to be
one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language and a significant liter-
ary figure in the twentieth century. Conscious of the multiplicity and com-
plexity of his own being, Pessoa wrote under more than 75 pseudonyms,
or heteronyms, as he named them. He never came to India, but he finds
his quest for the East fulfilled in his very daily living, and he writes that
“The Ganges also flows down the Rua dos Douradores”, he discovers the
spiritual East at his own address (Oliveira 141).
Travelling through the conversations of Anabela Mendes with Garcia
de Orta and José Paz with Rabindranath Tagore, we reflect that Pessoa
might perhaps not find fault with the image of the kingfisher that catches
fire. A very different writer from the Jesuit Gerald Manley Hopkins who
found that “Each mortal thing does one thing and the same,” Pessoa’s het-
eronyms may have led him, strangely, to a not too different realization,
since he writes: “Travel is the traveller. What we see isn’t what we see but
what we are” (290-291).
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30
Assolna, Velim, Cuncolim: an insider’s view
of Robert S. Newman’s oeuvre
S USHILA S AWANT M ENDES1
American anthropologist Robert S. Newman grew up in the New

England coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. In the mid-
1960s, at the age of twenty-one, while on a two-year US Peace
Corps term in North India, he first visited Goa as a tourist.
Since then, he has written a voluminous amount of work on this
small region. How does a resident of the ‘AVC’ (Assolna-Velim-
Cuncolim) area which he studied respond to this body of work?
Does he write as an ‘outsider’?
V
ELIM being my maternal home for close to thirty years, and Assolna
my marital since the past twenty-seven years, I have ‘eaten, drunk
and slept’ the spirit and culture of the people of AVC. This essay examines
Newman’s cultural encounters in these three villages, of Salcete, South
Goa, which culminated in his anthropological study, Of Umbrellas, God-
desses & Dreams: Essays on Goan culture and society.
This title is representative of his essays on the Cuncolim sontrios (mul-
ticoloured huge umbrellas, ceremoniously used in a religious procession
once a year), goddess Shantadurga and a vision at Velim. He lived in As-
solna and has painted in words the beauty of what its people believe as
Osle na (Konkani for ‘nothing like this’).
The arguments in this essay are a dialogue between an insider and an
outsider, as it unfolds the cultural patterns and spaces about the people
and history of AVC. It is also a narrative on how anthropology and history
can together bring out different perspectives and evolve a richer under-
standing of a subject.
1 Head of the Department of History, Government College of Arts, Science & Com-
merce, Quepem, Goa. sawantmendes@yahoo.co.in
Background: Newman and Goa
Robert S. Newman grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a small New

England coastal town. He had no connection with India or Goa for the
first two decades of his life. By his own submission in the introduction
his book, it was only in 1965, at the age of twenty-one, that he arrived
in northern India to begin a two-year term of service with the American
Peace Corps. It was during one of his vacations that he very casually de-
cided to visit Goa for a week, purely as a tourist. He made certain obser-
vations about the Goa of those times. 1.Tourist facilities were almost nil.
2. He never met another tourist in Goa, Indian or foreign. 3. Restaurants
were scarce. Souvenir shops were nonexistent. (Newman 2)
After this week’s experience, ‘Goa fascinated him’ – ‘Its beauty and
calm, its mix of Portuguese and Indian culture and cuisine, the petite and
orderly people who were utterly different from the turbulent crowds of
north India’ – that he decided that he would definitely have to come back.
He wanted to learn more about what made ‘Goa tick’. Up north in Luc-
know, he studied Hindi and Urdu, married a Hindu woman Sudha – his
friend and wife, whom he publicly acknowledges in 2001, for ‘her patient
encouragement, help and love over these years have kept me on the track’
(Newman 9). They are to celebrate their golden jubilee in 2018 (Newman
personal interview). He returned to his hometown and, after a struggle as
an unemployed Ph.D., he decided to leave America and emigrate to Aus-
tralia.
While in Australia, working as an academician, he decided that his
future research should deal with a ‘multicultural, multilingual location’;
that’s when Goa came immediately to his mind. In 1978, he had his first
sabbatical for a five-month stay in Goa. To begin, he tried to search for an-
thropological literature on Goa. It was exceedingly thin. He soon realized
that if there was going to be any modern anthropological literature in Goa
he would have to start writing it, himself.
In the absence of written texts describing Goan culture, he took to an-
thropologist Clifford Geertz’s ideas about reading certain cultural events
as texts which speak about the values, behaviour patterns and expecta-
tions of life prevalent in a certain society. Using this as a tool, he tried
to discover which events in Goan society might act as such texts, to give
32
AVC... Robert S Newman’s oeuvre | Sushila Sawant Mendes
Goans a particular set of appreciations or perceptions of the world around

them. So he focused on religious festivals like zatras and feasts, as events
of that type: He also studied changing Goan society since Liberation: the
changes in gaunkari (village community organisations), fishing, tourism
and cultural expressions (Newman 4).
He wrote many research papers on Goa, such as:
Goa: The Transformation of an Indian Region.

Green Revolution – Blue Revolution: The Predicament of India’s Tra-
ditional Fishermen.
Faith is All! Emotion and Devotion in a Goan Sect.
Aims and objectives:
To study the anthropological writings of Robert Newman on As-

solna, Velim and Cuncolim.
To analyse as an insider the views and perspectives of Newman.
Methodology
The methodology I used for this study was the corroboratory approach,
as it is based on oral interviews, as well as archival references both in
Goa and Portugal, to reinforce my arguments in this paper. Robert S. New-
man’s writings have helped in looking at the history of my villages and my
people from a different perspective. As a resident of AVC and having lived
here for more than forty years, I could vouch for smaller nuances and in-
ner conflicts in the psyche and ethos of my people as an insider. As I am
in the process of writing my second book on the history of AVC, I must
admit I was inquisitive to study these writings. However, the more I read
Newman, the more I realised the less I could criticize him as an ‘outsider’.
Newman’s agenda
Newman stated that he developed a certain agenda and this he did in a
series of articles over many years. His work also reflects his agenda:
a) That much as the Portuguese had tried to convince Goans that they
were not Indians, to insist that Goan culture was ‘completely different’
from Indian culture was political propaganda almost swallowed by both
Goans and foreigners alike. Newman was determined to show that Goa
was firmly rooted in Indian culture and that Goa was a part of India. Thus
33
establishing Goa as Indian, for readers outside Goa, became an important

segment of his academic agenda.
b) The second political point of view that underlies his work is his dislike
of communalism, the distortions and corruption of communal politics
and the hatred that such politics endangers. Newman observed that Goa
in the late 1970s and 1980s was of politicians and people aspiring to social
or political prominence. His writings, he says, are meant to be an antidote
to the divisive tendencies of caste and religious differences followed by
many Indian authors: that ‘Catholics are foreign elements; Hindus are all
Maharashtrian and Muslims potential Pakistanis’. Goan culture to him ex-
tends in greater or lesser degree to all the Goans, irrespective of caste or
religion. (Newman 5).
The AVC connection
From 1982-1993, he visited Goa more frequently. During one such visit,
he spent five months in the Banda ward of Assolna village in Salcete (and
by this time nearing 40 years of age). As an outsider smitten by Goa, he
began ‘a series of cultural encounters which culminated in a spate of scin-
tillating essays on the Goa that no casual writer may ever see but which
every true blooded Goan displays openly up his sleeve’. (Newman back
cover) A thought inevitably occurs to an insider about how did Newman
as an outsider capture ‘feelings, the ethos, events’ so beautifully just by
observation and with his simple tools of anthropology namely: 1. Do not
judge 2. Participate and live the moment. 3. Write down the truth as you
see it. 4. Study the subalterns.
AVC’s strong Kshatriya underbelly
The Assolna, Velim and Cuncolim area – unlike other villages in Goa – has
a strong underlying identity to the Kshatriya psyche. Most often it is rolled
under the carpet of ‘caste is not spoken about in polite conversations’, but
it shows its ugly head at regular intervals like at times of arranged mar-
riages and even in some church ceremonies (Dias). During the freedom
struggle, references were made to the Kshatriya pen being as sharp as
the Kshatriya sword (Gomantak). The sword was a symbol of identity for
the warrior caste and also was a part of the logo of the newspaper run
some decades ago; this symbol has been continued in the masthead of
34
the Marathi Gomantak daily newspaper, which was started in the 1960s
and is still published today, though it has no connection with the original
publication, except for both bearing a common name. Newman was spot
on when he set out to study the Chardo caste, both its Hindu and Cath-
olic branches. The brotherly rapport, that was shared and is still shared
(Fernandes 130), transgresses religious boundaries as seen many a time
but very overtly so during the sotrios festival in Cuncolim.
In the AVC, Hindus and the Catholics, especially those of the Kshatriya
caste or the Chardos, consider themselves as belonging to a common an-
cestry, or ek motkitle. (The literal translation being ‘from one pot’, a refer-
ence to cooking and sharing the same food as done by a family.) They also
believe that their original Hindu brethren were made impure (‘batoile’) by
the Catholic Portuguese priests. The impurity refers to the eating of beef
and pork, proscribed as non-edible by the non-Christians (Dias). For a for-
eigner to understand these caste affinities, irrespective of religion, is truly
amazing. For the people of AVC, it is an unwritten code which maintains
these invisible walls; the only visibility is that each ward in the village is
delineated from another ward based on caste, till date. The place where
Newman stayed in Banda, Assolna, has not only the residences of the only
blacksmith community in the village but is dominated by hardcore Kshat-
riyas, who would even put the Hindutva brigade of the Rashtriya Swayam-
sevak Sangh to shame with their overzealous belief in not communal polit-
ics but certainly caste politics. Caste boundaries are safeguarded, subtly
but surely; young boys, I believe, even check the caste antecedents of the
girls or vice-versa before falling in love. In AVC , inter-caste marriages are
extremely rare. In fact, for generations, the people of these three villages
have married within the boundaries of these three villages as well as of
caste.
The designation of the people as crimidors, or criminals, as perceived
by the rest of Goa (Fernandes 129) – a myth to some extent given the nod
by the Roman Catholic Church, with reference to the slaying of the Jesuit
priests by the people of Cuncolim in 1583 – may have something to do
with this sociological phenomenon. Who would want to get married to ‘a
criminal’?
An interesting anecdote was shared by my colleague Rajay Pawar,
35
which shows how the rest of Goa perceives the people of Cuncolim. It is a
common practice in Goa for children to spend summer vacations in their
maternal grandmother’s house. His was in Canacona. Every evening, the
village boys would play football together but his grandmother would al-
ways warn him, “Do not meddle with that boy, he is a Cuncolkar.” The
boy in reference was just six years old! In my childhood, I remember (a
thought shared by my husband from Assolna) whenever there were inter-
village football matches and the Cuncolim team was sure to lose, the field
would be raided and the match halted. Nobody objected because nobody
dared to confront the Cunkolkars! (Coutinho)
Newman refers to the 1982 church conflict between the Mouradors

and the Shudras and Kshatriyas. The Hindu Dessais of Cuncolim suppor-
ted the Catholic Kshatriyas (Aquinas 37). The Umbrellas of Cuncolim are a
symbol of this cohesion and unity, which is sometimes nurtured by politi-
cians during elections to seek votes en masse. Most events in AVC like the
mell (also a procession held during the three-day carnival celebrations in
AVC), or the sontrios, display an underbelly of caste boundaries among
the participants (Timble). All along the route of the sontrios, one can see
Catholics waiting with aggarbatis (incense sticks) and marigold flowers
to worship the goddess. The traditional route also avoids the road next
to the present church and branches into an internal road (Personal visit),
where the Aguiar family has especially built a dovornem (originally built
in every village to lay download heavy loads off the head for some rest, in
this case to rest the goddess off the shoulders of the procession bearers)
for the palki (the palanquin carrying the goddess).
Newman’s writings on AVC also emphasize the Indian nature of Goan

culture and the tradition of tolerance and syncretism that presents an al-
ternative to communalism. In AVC, the polarisation of the Kshatriya caste,
irrespective of religion, is often a means to gain votes. The essence of what
Newman wrote about so many years ago still stands the test of time. In
fact, politicians of all hues and colours have used and abused the exist-
ing system; and, in a democracy, the majority wins the elections. Every
election in AVC is more often than not fought on the basis of caste and
religious numbers (Rodrigues).
36
Newman’s essays on AVC

The four important essays under study here are:
Goddess of Dreams, Homeland of Gold: Imagining Goa.
The Umbrellas of Cuncolim: A study of Goan identity
A Goddess and a Village: Shantadurga and the village of Cuncolim
Vision at Velim: Meaning of a miracle in Goa.
In another essay on ‘Konkani Mai Ascends the throne: The cultural basis
of Goan statehood’, Newman writes: “The processions of Umbrellas at
Cuncolim and Veroda are rituals underlying an obvious symbolic form of
history, kingship and common faith in Shantadurga.” The priests of the
temple have confirmed to him that the divinity oracle at the Shantadurga
Fatorpekarin temple is consulted more by Catholics then by Hindus. How-
ever as an insider, it is evident that there is no sanction for this from the
AVC Catholic society; irrespective of caste, devotion to the goddess is ab-
horred by the Catholic priests in their sermons and criticised from the
pulpit as being a Konkno (Hindu, in this case, heathen) practice. So, the
point is that despite this, Catholics, as well as Hindus, go to the temple
at Fatorpa to make offerings or to pay obeisance. Many go to the goddess
to ask for a cure or to help them sort out their financial problems. How-
ever, the Catholics, unlike the Hindus, do it clandestinely, as it has neither
religious nor social sanction (Ferreira).
In the same essay, Newman explains that the synthesis of Catholic and
Hindu beliefs in Goa is ‘neither wishful thinking nor an academic exercise
[by him] but is widespread and represented by festivals, acts of worship,
divination, and healing rituals’. He believes that ‘such a body of folk prac-
tice and belief is a living wellspring for the creation of a Goa Indica image’.
However that such an image does not yet exist is due to, according to New-
man, what Pamod Kale explains about popular perception of a Konkani
Tiatr, ‘The scorn with which an influential section of the Goan population
regards this syncretic pattern as being a vulgar expression of low taste and
dubious authenticity’ (Kale 2063).
For many years after the Alvara of 1684 was passed in Goa, the
Konkani language was officially suppressed by the Portuguese colonial
government. Even in my childhood, it was considered as a ‘servant’s lan-
guage’. Since then there has been a paradigm shift in the attitude, both of
37
the government and people of Goa. Though Goan society is riddled with
a honeycomb of caste structures, whose dynamics have even seeped into
language, Konkani does enjoy an official status as a state language, along
with Marathi. When Newman was undertaking his writing, Konkani was
in the process of attaining this status. Goa witnessed many a storm and
agitations. Today, though, a new generation of Goans have emerged, in-
cluding my daughters, who studied their mother tongue at the primary
stage. To our surprise, they were comfortable writing even English in the
Devanagari script, as that was the alphabet taught to them in primary
school. Today Konkani has indeed ascended ‘the throne’.
Newman uses two symbols of the folk religion to illustrate his views.
Firstly the colourful umbrellas carried by the Chardo caste to welcome the
return of their goddess back to their village after she was forced out by the
Portuguese in the 1580s. The umbrellas are a symbol of a common history
and kingship ties shared by the Hindu and Catholic Chardo community,
witnessed every year. The red powder or gulal, which is used to celebrate
the event, is never thrown on females (Personal visit).
Another example is the Goan respect for the Mother Goddess even
before the Portuguese arrived. She was worshipped as Shanteri or
Shantadurga and today has been replaced by Catholicism. One example
is the Our Lady of Miracles at Mapusa whose feast day is a popular event
among Hindus. The belief is that it was a Sateri temple. In Cuncolim,
whether it is Shantadurga or Our Lady or Mamãe Saibin, they belong to
Goa Indica (Newman 79-80). The myth which explains the syncretism of
this faith is that of the seven sister goddesses that lived in Goa, of whom
one or two were converted to the Catholic faith while the others remained
Hindu. Newman sees this as an emotional explanation of how Goans are
still one people with one culture, even if on the surface they seem divided.
In his essay ‘Goddess of Dreams, Homeland of Gold: Imagining Goa’,
Newman says people who share even dreams of a single goddess cannot
be considered to belong to different ethnicities and explores how culture
shapes the way we imagine ourselves. In this essay, he puts himself into
the picture – who, though he makes friends he remained an outsider, al-
ways a foreigner. As he puts it, “as an outsider I cannot hope to have the
local knowledge that Goans have about their land and society!”
38
The Hindu goddess appears in the dreams of both Catholics and

Muslims, who dare not ignore her requests. This belief in the goddess is
more widespread in Cuncolim as compared to Assolna and Velim, where
there is a strong awareness of common ancestry or kinship even though
conversions took place in the sixteenth century.
Newman speaks of a Hindu gentleman from Cuncolim who spoke in
Portuguese saying: “We defend the rights of Shantadurga Kunkollikarin
and Our Lady of Good Health.” Newman writes of different dreams
wherein the goddess appears and asks or requests for something – e.g. a
cassock from a Catholic priest. The oracles of petal of Shantadurga evoke
the power of divine intervention for advice regarding marriage, job offers,
medical operations, business or troubled relations, both for the Hindus
and Catholics.
Both Hindus and Catholics share the Shantadurga Kunkollikarin of
Fatorpa appearing in their dreams, the devout acceptance of a god,
whether Catholic or Hindu among the people of these three villages,
which results in miracles and apparitions – one of which took place in
my maternal village, Velim. Newman, without any preconceived notions
on miracles, simply states: “It was a miracle for me certainly.” He quickly
adds, like a true anthropologist, “I was able to study the whole phe-
nomenon at close hand.” As the apparition took place in the neighbour-
hood of my ancestral house, I remember visiting the site, but returning
back disappointed. All that I remember is my conviction that I should not
make fun of other people’s ‘faith’.
Deities of AVC
Newman observes that the goddess not only speaks through dreams and
petal patterns but also by possessing individuals and “speaking through
their mouth”. Even to seek guidance about religious matters, members of
the twelve clans go to the Shantadurga temple at Fatorpa. They pray to-
gether but the goddess speaks through one of them. In AVC, among many
folk deities is the devchar (spirit), who is believed to help the villager in
diverse ways, for instance, to find lost cattle etc., and is locally referred to
as the Hapsi, Rakno, Vataro or Bodgeshwar.
Prof. Pissurlekar in his list of temples lists goddess Santeri and Madeu
in Cuncolim, Santeri, Betall and Beirady in Velim and Betal, Santeri and
39
Purus Deckhecho in Assolna (Priolkar 79-82). Santeri is the common deity

to AVC. The evil eye is the dixtt. Therefore in AVC dreams are connected to
goddesses and protecting spirits, where communications via oracle, pos-
session and visions are commonplace and where evil spirits threaten as
well as protect. Newman concludes that dreams, possessions, divination
and spirits are interwoven into the Goan culture.
The essay ‘The Umbrellas of Cuncolim – A study of Goan identity’
shows that caste can be a stronger source of bonding than religion. The
villages of AVC have ‘an interesting history this implies a certain amount
of chaos and bloodshed....’ Secondly: ‘Goan literary culture has been con-
sistently dominated by Brahmins, both Catholics and Hindu Brahmanism
have typified customs and traditions. Goa’s Catholic Brahmin houses have
become Goan architecture and their food has become Goan cuisine, their
songs and dances have become Goan music’ (Newman 113). AVC is dif-
ferent. In fact, the vast majority of Goans are not Brahmins and they are
Chardos, Bhandaris, Sudhirs and tribal both Kunbis and Gawdas.
I particularly liked Newman’s interpretation of the Mother Goddess.
‘Goans worship Shantadurga not an intercessor like the Virgin Mary,
between people and a masculine deity, but she has power in her own
right.’ People line up in queues on the day of the zatra to pray for personal
favours like prosperity, marriage, fertility and also make vows. The myth
of the seven sisters of temples and Our Lady of Miracles in Mapusa and
Our Lady of Cures in Cansaulim show that deities were converted and are
today worshipped both by Catholic and Hindus who attend the respective
feast day in large numbers.
Shantadurga is worshipped by the twelve Kshatriya clans of Cuncolim.
They are among the mahajans of the temple, while in other parts of Goa
the mahajans are generally Brahmins (Faria 225-230). A traditional route
over mountains and rivers is maintained in the procession of the um-
brellas. Red powder, or kukum, thrown by the men shows the route of
the procession long after it is over. This procession is accompanied by a
Western-style band with brass instruments and also with Indian percus-
sion instruments like the gumot. The arti (ritual of worship) is performed
by both Catholic and Hindus, who on this day have only one identity as
Cuncolkars. The Catholic Aguiars of Cuncolim (whose ancestor was one
40
of the locals killed in July 1583) proudly display the concrete platform
built by them to rest the Shantadurga palanquin during the procession.
As mentioned above, the Catholics pay obeisance and put flowers as well
as aggarbatis (a Hindu practice, never used by Catholics for worship), to
worship the goddess during the procession.
In his essay ‘A Goddess and a Village: Shantadurga and the village
of Cuncolim’, Newman lists a narrative of different viewpoints in history.
Writers’ views of events about the Kshatriyas of Cuncolim refusing to pay
taxes and the guerrilla tactics used by the local people. Conversions and
the burning of the temples are the other events of history in AVC (Priolkar
79, Kamat 52-72, Mendes 36-42).
By 1881, the total Catholic population of Cuncolim was more than
double of that of the Hindus and Muslims put together (Dalvi 31). A Por-
tuguese view of the historical events is seen in the writings of Fernando
Leal, a government servant who was the Administrator of AVC in 1898
(Leal 11). He speaks about the killing of a tax collector, Estevão Rodrigues,
in Assolna. He also looks upon the Jesuit priests who were killed by the
local people in 1583 as heroes of Christianity (Fernandes 123-126). The
people of Cuncolim in the true Kshatriya spirit periodically protested to
the Portuguese King for almost a century and a half thereafter, as seen
from a petition of 1724 about the burning of their idols in the pagoda of
Fatorpa (Codice 54).
Teotonio de Souza writes about the views of Diogo do Couto who in
1788 describes Cuncolim as the “leader of rebels” and the people as “the
worst of the people of Salcete” (Newman 136). The procession of the um-
brellas was banned by the Portuguese in Cuncolim from 1886 to 1908,
in which year it was restarted. In contemporary Cuncolim, the people
whether Hindu or Catholic but of the Kshatriya clan believe that they “are
the descendants of freedom fighters and worship Goddess Shantadurga”
(Dias).
In Newman’s paper on “Vision at Velim: the political and cultural
meaning of a miracle in Goa”, he writes about one António Fernandes
who is believed to have a vision of Mary on a tile of the roof of his house
on March 8, 1987 (a Sunday). The author explains that the political mean-
ing of the miracle declaration was that a man who saw the miracle was a
41
Kunbi and this was an attempt to assert and gain power and respect as the
Kunbis in Velim as elsewhere in Goa have a low status in the village society.
The cultural meaning given is that this miracle was a syncretic experience
of the Khetri or the ghosts of people who die a tragic death, as in this case
the date of the miracle coincided with the death of his daughter who had
been accidentally burnt alive. Secondly, Antonio Fernandes was believed
to have a bhar, or was possessed by the Goddess Shantadurga who is also
worshiped as Our Lady of Vailankanni. Therefore this miracle was a state-
ment about the worth of a Goan Kunbi Gawda and a cultural statement
of the power of the goddess, in the psyche of a Catholic worshipper. This
vision was in the neighbourhood of my maternal home in Velim and I do
remember visiting this site. It takes a Robert Newman to analyse this mir-
acle from a sociological viewpoint of social status and power politics. To
me then, it was just a curious visit and I clearly remember I saw nothing
on that tile... and I had broken the first rule of an anthropological study:
‘do not judge’.
To conclude, as an insider I can see that the author has done a thor-
ough anthropological study which has resulted in a well written account
of the culture of the people of AVC. These writings also show the close
connection of the importance of anthropology and the subalterns in the
writing and understanding of history.
From the people’s perspective, a researcher cannot judge miracles or
spirit possessions from a scientific angle. Newman has used the tools of
anthropology to understand the people’s faith in their deities and how it
appears in their dreams. Visions appear and the people believe in both
their dreams and the visions. The sontrios portray a glimpse of the past
history which brings together communities at least once in a year. In AVC
these happenings are a part of the people’s psyche.
These festivals, dreams and vision are very real happenings in the lives
of the people of AVC. They are a symbol of syncretism of faith, of relation-
ships, moulded together as one people, one community who do consider
themselves responsible for accidents of history. AVC, therefore, has a very
unique history as compared to the other villages of Goa in terms of the
Kshatriya bonding which is both spoken aloud as well as expressed in
their beliefs, zatras and festivals, where caste affinities override religion.
42
Works Cited
Primary sources
Manuscript: Codice: 54 xi-37, VII. Petition of the people of Assolna, Velim and
Cuncolim to the King of Portugal to protest against the burning of the
temples in the villages by the Jesuit priests, Biblioteca do Palácio de Ajuda,
Lisboa. 1724.
Personal interactions
Almeida Coutinho, Cleofato. 12 Jan. 2017, Assolna, Goa.
Dias, Flaviano. 20 Dec. 2009. Porvorim, Goa.
Fernandes, Tony, 4 Apr. 2001. Cuncolim, Goa. He always offers lunch to the son-
trios procession when it passes his house in Buinsa, Cuncolim, every year.
Ferreira, Nozareno. 25 May 1997, Assolna.
Newman, Robert, S. 23 May 2017. Lisbon, Portugal. Had an informal interaction
with him during an international congress. This paper was written much
later.
Pawar, Rajay. 18 Jun. 2012, Quepem.
Timble, Prabhakar. 1 Feb. 2017. Margão.
Secondary sources
Newspaper
Gomantak, a fortnightly edited by Dr. Julião Menezes from Assolna and for
some time by my father, Adv. Louis Mendes from Velim, started six months
after the death of Luís de Menezes Bragança from Jan. 1939-1949. On
every July 11, his death anniversary was commemorated with pages which
were dedicated to his writings. Menezes Bragança was a Kshatriya from
Chandor, whose philosophy inspired many freedom fighters of AVC.
Books
Almeida, José Julião do Sacramento, A Aldeia de Assõlna. no publisher given,
1958.
Aquinas Thomas. Cuncolim is a Historic Village, Cuncolim, 1983.
Axelrod, Paul and Michelle Fuerch. “A Flight of the deities: Hindu Resistance in
Portuguese Goa.” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No.2, 1996.
Borges, Charles J. The Economics of the Goa Jesuits 1542-1759. New Delhi:
Concept, 1994. Note: The Jesuits cultivated fields and had coconut planta-
tions in AVC.
Dalvi, Lingu, R. História de Cuncolim. 1908.
Nagvenkar, Harishchandra T. (Trans.) History of Cuncolim, Margão: Adv. Dat-
taram Linga Dalvi Memorial Trust, 2007.
Faria, Planton. Cuncolim Down the Ages. Calvado, Cuncolim, Goa: Govani Me-
dia Centre, 2006.
Fernandes, Edna. Holy Warriors – a Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundament-
alism. London: Portobello Books Ltd, 2001.
43
Kale, Pramod. “Essentialist and Epochalist Elements in Goan Popular Culture”,

Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 21, no. 47, Nov. 22, 1986.
Kamat, Pratima. Farar Far: Local resistance to colonial hegemony in Goa. 1510-
1912. Panaji, Goa: Institute Menezes Braganza, 1999.
Leal, F. Relatorio acerca de Administração Geral do Campos Nacionais de As-
solna, Velim, Ambelim, Talvorda, Nuem e Ragibaga, Imprensa Nacional,
Nova Goa, 1898.
Mendes, Sushila. Luís de Menezes Bragança Nationalism, Secularism and Free-
Thought in Portuguese Goa. Panaji, Goa: Directorate of Art & Culture, Govt.
of Goa, 2011.
Newman, Robert, S. Of Umbrellas, Goddesses & Dreams: Essays on Goan culture
and society. Mapusa, Goa: Other India Press, 2011.
Priolkar, A.K. The Goa Inquisition. Self-published, Bombay: 1961.
Rao, R.P. Portuguese Rule in Goa. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963.
44
Seventeenth-century maritime Goa as viewed
by François Pyrard de Laval
X AVIER M. M ARTINS1
L
ARGE numbers of European adventurers and travellers were attrac-
ted to India. They were curious to know unknown lands. Only a few
of them left accounts of their observations – about rulers, the people, their
religions, customs, trade and other issues – in the form of memoirs, di-
aries, journals, travelogues and personal letters written by them to their
friends and relatives back in Europe. These accounts form an indispens-
able source for historical writings.
One such traveller was François Pyrard de Laval, a Frenchman, navig-
ator and the son of a cartographer. He left behind one of the most inter-
esting accounts of India from the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Pyrard de Laval set out for the Orient in 1601 and spent a decade travel-
ling in the East Indies, the Maldives, Moluccas and various parts of India.
He arrived wounded in Goa from Cochin and was admitted to the Royal
Hospital. Pyrard de Laval undertook two voyages aboard Portuguese ships
– one to Malacca and the other to Diu. On his return from Malacca, he
spent some twenty months in Goa and returned home only in 1611. His
account describes Portuguese navigation, shipping and trade in different
parts of Africa and India at the time.
The island of Goa and its defense
Goa was a cosmopolitan city and also was the economic, cultural and ad-
ministrative centre of the Portuguese State of India. Pyrard de Laval writes
that the Island of Goa was formed by the river which encircled it and also
formed other nearby islands (Gray 28). It had a circumference of eight
leagues with seven fortresses guarding its passages. According to Pyrard
1 Associate Professor, Department of History, Government College of Arts & Commerce,
Virnoda, Pernem, Goa. xaviermartins471@gmail.com
de Laval, the river was not very deep and the large Portuguese ocean-
going vessels, on their arrival, had to be anchored at the entrance or at
the mouth of the river which was called the ‘bar’ (26). During the mon-
soons, no ship could enter or cross the bar. The entrance of the river was
wide. There were two forts, one on either side of the river, at Aguada to
the north and at the Cabo to the south, to check the advance of hostile
vessels. These naval installations were vital for the Portuguese to ensure
the security of the bar. To ensure the safety and the defense of the bar, the
Portuguese built the fortresses of Cabo, Reis Magos and Gaspar Dias. He
also makes a mention of the Aguada as a watering station for all Lisbon
bound ships sailing from Goa (31).
Pyrard de Laval says that before leaving the port of Goa, the captain
had to make calculations about the winter wherever they happened to be.
To meet the defence and naval requirements, the Portuguese had a full-
fledged naval dockyard at Old Goa. He makes a mention of a large num-
ber of technical personnel working in the dockyard under a chief mas-
ter in different workshops. There were slaves and convicts employed in
the dockyard and in the arsenal. A proper register containing the names,
place of birth, age, identification marks, period of punishment etc. was
maintained (Mathew). He also makes reference to the local artisans em-
ployed in the dockyard.
Arrivals and departures of ships
Pyrard de Laval says that the ships left the shores of Lisbon for the voyage
to Goa at the end of February or at least by the beginning of March, so
that they could safely sail round the Cape of Good Hope (Mathew 233,
Boxer The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, Boxer From Lisbon to Goa, Leitão).
There were royal instructions to avoid late departures from Goa. Ships left
Goa in February or March, sometimes in April, instead of leaving on the
eve of Christmas or at the New Year.
He makes a reference to the Dutch presence in Goa. The Dutch
reached India for the first time in 1599 with two ships. They devised a plan
to barricade the bar of Goa, the point of origin of the Portuguese home-
ward sailing journey, with the objective of depleting Portuguese trade. In
1604, the Dutch fleet entered the mouth of the river Mandovi. Pyrard de
Laval makes a mention of the burning and sinking of the Portuguese ves-
46
Maritime Goa, viewed by Pyrard de Laval | Xavier Martins
sels. The Dutch fleet had blockaded the sand bar for almost a month, cre-
ating a panicky situation for the Portuguese (Boxer The Dutch Seaborne
Empire 56).
Piracy, and Portuguese measures to combat it
Pyrard de Laval refers to the piracy in the Indian waters and the measures
adopted by the Portuguese to combat it. Piracy was rampant in western In-
dia in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, both in the Malabar and in
the Gujarat waters. The Persian Gulf was vulnerable too. The Malabar pir-
ates maintained a constant watch on the Lisbon ships. Pyrard de Laval re-
iterates the observations of a Jesuit priest who remarked that “the voyage
from Goa to Cochin was more dangerous than that to Portugal” (Pearson
73). Special fleets of warships were maintained by the Portuguese to en-
force their trade regulations and to maintain a surveillance over the coast.
Portuguese control over the sea
The Portuguese wanted Indian rulers to accord protection to their trading

vessels against attacks by pirates. War and commercial links were the two
means adopted by the Portuguese to establish their rule in India. Pyrard
de Laval says that the Portuguese had signed treaties of peace and friend-
ship with most of the kings of India, calling them irmanos et armes, or
brothers-in-arms (Gray 208). The Portuguese induced the native rulers
to provide them locations with good anchorage to build trading posts or
factories along the western coast of India (208). These rulers promised
that they would not have any trade links with the enemies of the Por-
tuguese. Pyrard de Laval states that the Portuguese warranted the nat-
ive kings to guard all the seas against the threats from corsairs, pirates
and against all enemies who might appear in those ports (205). Under
these treaties, the Indian rulers and merchants were prohibited from car-
rying out trade in certain commodities like teakwood, slaves, arms and
ammunition, pepper and other species. For more details about the Por-
tuguese treaties with the native rulers refer to Biker.
To enforce their naval supremacy, the Portuguese introduced the
system of cartazes (Shastry 148-152 and Malekandathil 220-223), cafilas
(Leitão 122) and armadas.2
2 There are records at the Goa Historical Archives which reveals that the native mer-
47
Sailing of native vessels was subjected to sailing permits or cartaze is-

sued by the Portuguese captains at selected points. The cartaze or the
sailing permit stated the name of the local merchant, the tonnage of the
vessel, the number of crew, the cargo and the point of destination.
There were many native rulers and merchants who defied the Por-
tuguese claim of supremacy over the eastern trade and the trade route.
The Portuguese vessels were attacked, forcing the Portuguese to devise a
new system, that of the cafila, to control trade. The cafila consisted of local
merchant ships arranged in convoys and then being sailed under guard of
perhaps ten Portuguese ships, to Goa. Three or four food convoys came
each year from the Kanara to Goa. Pyrard de Laval writes of two to three
cafilas would sail to Goa from Cambay and Surat (Pearson 77). Every year
these cafilas were escorted by the war galiots. All ships had to halt here (in
Goa) to receive the cartaze and pay customs duties.
Special fleets of warships were maintained by the Portuguese for gen-
eral patrolling of the coast. Following the conquest of Goa in 1510, reg-
ular patrolling was undertaken from Goa to the north and to the south.
Afonso de Albuquerque, after the conquest of Ormuz in 1515, divided the
Portuguese empire into two zones placed under captain-majors (Mathew
139). However, after 1533, the Portuguese divided the Indian coast into
northern, central and southern zones under other captain-majors. Pyrard
de Laval says that every year the Portuguese sent two armadas from Goa,
one to the north and the other to the south at the cost of the Royal
exchequer. Each armada was placed under the command of a captain-
major. By the end of the sixteenth century, the northern and southern
armadas consisted of about 60 vessels.
Goa as the centre of merchandise
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his writings is the description of

trade between the eastern islands, China and Japan, Spanish America and
chants had to obtain the cartazes even in the eighteenth century. The cafilas, or the
merchant fleets under the convoy, would come to Goa twice or thrice a year. More de-
tailed information pertaining to the formation and the operation of the cafila is avail-
able in the Regimentos e Instruções series at the Goa Historical Archives. The term
armadas was applied to a group of ships commanded by a Captain-Major. There was
also a term frota, designated to a group of trading ships which sailed under the escort
of the warships.
48
the Philippines, and Portuguese Goa and Malacca.

Goa was the main port of the Portuguese trade in the east. Varied
nationalities from the Orient, from the Cape of Good Hope to as far as
China and Japan, brought their merchandise to Goa. Different types of
merchandise were loaded and unloaded as per Royal instructions. Pyrard
de Laval writes that the King would not allow or permit even the Span-
iards to sail to the east and trade. Violation of this order was punishable
with the death penalty. Portuguese ships from Goa sailed to Macau, Japan,
Malacca, Bengal, Ceylon, Pegu and the entire coast of Malabar and from
there to Mocambique, Bassein, Daman, Chaul, Dabul, Cambay, Surat, Diu
and along the coast of Ormuz (Gray 213). All goods collected from these
places were brought to Goa, except pepper, which was stored at the state
granaries till the arrival of the ships from Lisbon at Goa. The ships at times
sailed to Cochin to load pepper and, on completion of the loading, the
ships took the direct route to Portugal from Cochin, passing at the head
of the Maldive Islands (213). Pyrard de Laval points out that, at the order
of the King, every year, two or three vessels were sent to China and Japan.
These ships also sailed to Macau (215). Macau was an emporium for all
the merchandise that came in from China and other parts of the world.
From Malacca they sail to Macau and from there to Japan. The voyages to
China, Japan, Malacca, Mocambique and Ormuz were exclusively kept for
the King, except if this voyage was allotted to a fidalgo or a captain or to
any other officer as gift (mercês). Mercês or gifts of the voyage were made
to the individuals by the King. Officials, at times, would petition the King
asking for mercês for services rendered by them to the Estado da Índia.
In the Goa Historical Archives, there over fifty volumes titled as Mercês
Gerais, covering a period from 1612 to 1883.
At times these voyages were granted as gifts to fidalgos, captains or
any other officer. The main cargo that was carried from Goa to Macau was
sliver. Ships from Goa sailed with a variety of other goods such as wines,
woolen fabrics, cotton clothes, precious stones, etc.
Ships making the voyage from Goa to Japan (Nagaski), would take
three whole years, as the sailing depended upon the wind currents which
prevailed for about six months. The duration of these voyages also de-
pended upon the duration of the ship’s stay at Macao. This voyage, which
49
originally had been open to all and sundry, was soon limited to an annual
nau or carrack, under the captain-major appointed by the Crown. This
route was reserved only for the King.
Pyrard de Laval dwells on the poor conditions of the Portuguese sol-
diers and seamen. Most of them were not paid for months together. He
says that the viceroys, Governors and some of the King’s officers were the
greatest beneficiaries of the Portuguese eastern naval enterprise. These of-
ficers enriched themselves at the expense of the royal treasury (Gray 201).
He explains the serious flaws in the navigational system of the Por-
tuguese. According to him, during the voyage the apprentices and sol-
diers were not tough and active but careless, dirty and lazy (203). Pyrard
de Laval narrates his misfortune on the eve of his departure, when he was
pickpocketed, causing him great inconvenience, as he could not purchase
anything during his return voyage (282). He writes that each seamen was
provided with a small portion of bread and some water on the homeward
voyage, at Goa. In his narrative he also makes reference to certain leading
Portuguese figures. He refers to André Furtado de Mendonça, considered
by some as the greatest Portuguese captain, Archbishop Aleixo Menezes,
the English Jesuit Thomas Stephens and the French Jesuit Étienne de la
Croix in Goa. His account also mentions the buildings, churches, con-
vents, seminaries, streets, fountains, etc.
His observations about Portuguese navigation in the East assailed the
writings of some Portuguese chronicles. His accounts also unfold the cir-
cumstances for various despatches and orders of the King and proclama-
tions of the viceroys relating to Portuguese navigation in the Orient.
Works Cited
Albuquerque, Braz de. Commentarios de Grande Afonso de Albuquerque. Vol. II.
Biker, Julio Firmino judice (ed), Collecção de Tratados e Consertos de Pazes que
o Estado da India Portugueza fez com os Reis e Senhores com quem teve
Relações nas partes da Asia e Africa Oriental desde o Principio da Conquista
até ao fim do século XVII, Lisboa, 1881-.7, 14 vols.
Boxer, C. R. The Dutch Sea Borne Empire, 1600-1800. London, 1965.
——— The Portuguese Seaborne Empire,1600-1800, London, 1965.
——— From Lisbon to Goa, 1500-1750: Studies in Portuguese Maritime Enter-
prise. Variorum, Hampshire, 1990.
Gray, Albert (Trans). The Voyage of François Pyrard de Laval, Vol. 2, Part I, Asian
Educational Services, New Delhi.
50
Leitão, Humberto (introd. e notas). Dois Roteiros do Século XVI, de Manuel Mon-
teiro e Gaspar Ferreira Reimão, atribuídos a João Baptista Lavanha. Lisbon,
Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1963.
Leitão, H and J. Vicente Lopes. Dicionario da Linguagem de Marinha Antiga e
Actual, Centro de Estudos Historicas e Cartografia Antiga, Lisbon, 1990.
Malekandathil, Pius. Portuguese Cochin And The Maritime Trade of India 1500-
1663. Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2001, pp.220-223.
Mathew, K.M. History of Portuguese Navigation in India 1497-1600, Mittal Pub-
lications, Delhi, 1988.
Pearson, M.N. Coastal Western India. Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi,
1981.
Shastry, B.S. Studies in Indo-Portuguese History. IBH Prakashana, 1981, Ban-
galore, pp. 148-152.
51
French travellers on
Goan food habits
M ARIA DE L OURDES B RAVO DA C OSTA1
Food and cooking, diet and dietary habits, afford an opportunity

to comprehend complex issues of cultural changes and transna-
tional cultural flows. Many a traveller to Goa has made references
to food – some in passing, some relevant to a particular event or
related to an institution. François Pyrard de Laval visited Goa in
the first decade of the seventeenth century when it was in its hey-
day, while Rev. Denis L. Cottineau de Kloguen arrived in 1827, mid-
way through the decadence of the Portuguese Empire. Was there
a change in between these visits? How relevant is their writing to
understanding Goa’s food history?
T
RAVELOGUES have been considered as primary sources by histori-
ans, as these are firsthand descriptions of places visited by the trav-
eller. It also presents the traveller’s experiences and what he encounters,
specially by way of unknown or interesting aspects. Descriptions as fac-
tual as possible are characteristic of travel writing, testing a writer’s skill
and the writings are a gift to us.
However, the traveller may not always write with objectivity. Some-
times, he may be influenced with what he has on his mind or from what
he has heard and might try to see things he encounters in that light. Oc-
casionally, he may be influenced politically and try to write and interpret
facts the way it suits him or his country. Many relied on these travelogues
for the description of the areas, customs and manners of the people, hap-
penings of the time and what was available in these places. Meticulous-
ness and wonder with which a traveller recorded what a person, town or
landscape looked like has been very useful to those who want to recreate
or understand the past. One must admire the patience with which they
1 Research scholar at the Research Centre, Government College of Arts, Science & Com-
merce, Quepem, Goa University. lbravodacosta @rediffmail.com
French travellers on Goan food habits | Bravo da Costa
created pictures in words. Easily made and transmitted images are a re-
cent innovation, but people have wanted to see exactly what other places
looked like for much longer.
A number of foreign travellers visited Goa during the colonial period.
The Dutch, French, Italian and English, amongst others, are included in
this category. They have recorded their experiences in a single or multi-
volume descriptions. These narratives include geographical information
of the places the travellers saw, besides portrayals of people, their races,
castes, mannerism, customs, lifestyle, etc. With all this information,
travelogues, in fact, can also be considered anthropological works. A few
of them made references to the type of availability of food and food habits
of the people. In this essay, an analysis will be undertaken of the works
of Pyrard de Laval and Cottineau de la Kloguen. Both the travellers have
been selected as they are of the same nationality and both give significant
information on food in Goa at the time they visited the territory.
François Pyrard de Laval (1570-1621) was in Goa for three years from
1607 to 1610, quite a considerable period of time, and therefore we can
say that his observations will be closer to reality. His narrative is very in-
teresting and is considered one of the best for the period.
He writes that fish was abundant in Goa. This should not come as a
surprise to us, knowing the geographical conditions of Goa, blessed with
number of rivers and water bodies, both natural and man-made, produc-
tion of fish must have been excellent. We have also to keep in mind that in
the era that Pyrard de Laval travelled, the only way to preserve the catch
of the day, if not consumed fresh, was to salt it or pickle it. This would
enable people to store and eat their catch during the rainy season, when
availability of fish was limited due to weather conditions that made it very
difficult to venture into the sea. Fresh fish had to be sold on the same day,
or it had to be salted for preservation.
The narratives also present the difference in the food intake between
the economically well-off who could afford to buy different kind of meats,
as per their choice, and the poor who would survive on rice which was
available, as most of them toiled the land and cultivated the fields as la-
bourers. Goa’s main agriculture produce was rice, so it was but natural
that the people of Goa would consume it as their main food. The labour-
53
ers were paid in kind, as the barter system was in practice in those days.
This system did not allow them to have a cash flow to buy other products
even if available, as there was no money or its supply was limited.
Pyrard de Laval writes
The viands amongst the rich consisted chiefly of beef, pork and
poultry; the poor lived on rice and fish. Fish was so abundant that
in every street and lane, men and women were seen frying it and
pickling it for sale.
The lifestyle amongst the Portuguese at the time can also be gauged from
the diet offered at the Royal Hospital, where Pyrard de Laval was himself
hospitalised to recuperate. According to him, a variety of viands, fish, ve-
getables and sweets were served to patients. Breakfast consisted of bread
with raisins, alvo (halwa, a sweet dish made of wheat, coconut and sugar)
and conjee. For lunch, patients were served a full or half boiled or roasted
chicken and sweets. Dinner at 5 p.m. consisted of meat, soup, vegetables
such as ladyfinger and rice. In addition, the patients were served a variety
of fish, eggs, fruits and bread on the doctor’s prescription.
The abundance amongst the rich and those in power in the territory is
also corroborated by Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo (1616-1644), the Ger-
man adventurer who left behind writings on his experiences in Persia and
India. In his narrative he writes that “the Portuguese had a table filled with
largess when they entertained guests.” This points to the way they lived
and how easy they were on their spending. “Every course consisted only
of four dishes of meat, but they were so often changed, and the meat so
excellently well dressed. With the meat there was brought such variety of
excellent fruits that by continued change and inter-mixture of both, the
appetite was sharpened and renewed” (61).
However, Pyrard de Laval does not make reference to the curry, made
of coconut, which is a part of the Goan food trilogy of fish, curry and rice.
It is well known that coconut curry is important to a Goan’s rice eating
habits, a must, one could say. A housewife will make her curry prepara-
tion, a daily ritual, and make it an important input in the Goan diet. It is
prepared with coconut, which is abundantly available in Goa. Women’s
innovation has led them to improvise it into a more palatable food, and
curry was prepared in a way that made eating rice a delectable meal. The
54
addition of fish enhanced its flavour. Curry was a part of the Goan meal
much before the Portuguese arrived. The famous Portuguese naturalist,
Garcia de Orta mentions this in his conversation with his friend Ruando
in the Colloquios, published in 1563. Orta mentions that the natives used
coconut for curry, besides extracting oil for cooking and medicinal pur-
poses. “With this Coquo pounded they make a sort of milk, and cook rice
with it, and it is like rice boiled in goat’s milk. They make dishes with it of
birds and meat, which they call caril” (142).
The Portuguese are credited to have brought Catholicism to Goa.
Many were converted and adhered to the Catholic religion. Christmas
became the main festival of the Catholic community of Goa. The influ-
ence on the food was clear in the celebration of the festival. Thus, the Por-
tuguese influenced not only by converting but also by introducing food
habits.
Even in most of the houses and junction of roads, markets and

places, tables are set and on it are kept sweets, dry fruits and cakes.
They call the latter rosquilhas and are of a thousand of variety
which all the people buy to share with others for consuada, and
this kind of fare continues till the feast of Three Kings. At night
they put big boards with the following words, ‘Ano Bom’ (good
year), to the accompaniment of music (98).
What are rosquilhas? They are made of flour, milk, sugar, water, eggs, but-
ter and mixed to form a dough. A small ball of the dough is taken and
rolled to make a round bangle-shaped biscoit. The dough can also be twis-
ted across like a plait, to give it a different shape. This is the basic recipe
of a rosquilha. There are innumerable ways of making rosquilhas, and a
common way is by adding a sugar syrup coating to it or sprinkling sugar
while hot. We do not see people making rosquilhas today. However, they
are very popular in Portugal during Christmas time.
Cottineau de Kloguen’s Historical Sketch of Goa
By 1827, when Cottineau visited Goa, it was just a shadow of its past. There
is a warning given to the readers in the preface of the second edition of his
Historical Sketch of Goa to bear in mind that all features of Goa as actually
seen by the author refer to about the year 1827. The preface to the 1910
edition – the first edition was published in 1831, soon after the death of
55
the author – tells us that ”Denis L. Cottineau de Kloguen, one time chap-
lain of Colaba, spent a long time in Goa studying the history of the old city,
and then wrote a book which deserves to be called a classic.”
Between 1610 and 1827, many changes had taken place in Goa. How-
ever, agriculture continued to be the mainstay of the people with rice at
its centre. Cottineau writes that despite a shortfall in production, the situ-
ation had changed with new measures taken and the governmental en-
couragement to cultivate rice in the new province of Ponda. Rice was be-
ing produced in quantities more than required and was sufficient even
for export (114). This observation shows that with new and proper meas-
ures, the production could be increased. However, this experience does
not seem to have been adhered to or continued by the authorities, as rice
was again the main item of import to Goa during latter years as is the
case even today. This in spite of different measures for rice production
proposed to, and taken up, by the government.
Cottineau adds that another important agricultural produce was the
coconut, used to make oil and people use its water in almost all their
dishes and is also as a chief item of transportation especially to Bombay
(114). In fact, coconut ruled Goa’s export list for many years, both in the
form of the nut as well as copra. Coconut oil was important to the locals
because it was the local medium of cooking. Its importance continued till
some marketing experts started pointing to it as a high cholesterol oil so
that they could push other oils. It would appear that they were successful
in replacing the coconut oil, especially post 1961 in a big way. However,
fortunately, some traditional household cooking still uses the coconut oil
for its aromatic effect. But, many in the younger generation who have not
had the experience of eating the fish fried in coconut oil today grimace at
the aroma.
Cottineau notes that fruits available in Goa were mainly mangoes and
bananas, the mangoes being the very best he had eaten (114). By then,
there must have been many of the new varieties that were introduced us-
ing techniques of grafting. One may point out that Linschoten, whose de-
scription of Goa and other places he visited is considered among the most
vivid amongst the travellers of the times, gives descriptions of many of
the plants that were available in Goa and other parts. It is interesting that
56
when he describes the mangoes, he mentions those of Ormuz as being

the best followed by those from ‘Guzerate’. This leads us to surmise that
mangoes of quality – such as the famous ‘Malcorada’, ‘Hilario’, ‘Xavier’ and
other delicious mangoes that Goa is well known for – are a later addition
and came after the time Linschoten was in Goa.
Bananas were grown throughout the year and were consumed by
most. Goa had a variety of its own bananas grown by locals, like the fi-
gos de horta, saldatti, banana da terra or the famous banana de Moira
and the hapri (used for cooking). Today we have added different varieties
of banana on our menu and even in cultivation. However, we are losing
out on the traditional variety of figos de horta which one rarely sees in the
market and the banana de Moira.
Cottineau, however, has missed out on the summer fruits available
in Goa, probably because some of these were not cultivated and grew on
the hillocks, except for cashew and the kokum trees. Both were cash crops.
But other fruits like candas, jambul, a host of other wild fruits, the delights
of the children as well as adults, are absent from his narrative.
His keen observation did not miss the aversion of Goans to consum-
ing vegetables. He also says that they did not make any efforts to cultivate
more varieties of fruits and vegetables (114). Local vegetables were cul-
tivated only once annually, as the winter crop. No effort was made to in-
crease the number of cultivation, neither the area under vegetable cultiv-
ation, probably since there wasn’t much demand. It appears that lady’s
fingers (bende in Konkani) were a local favourite and were grown through-
out the year. It is known too that the people of the Island of Santo Estevam
cultivated the best variety of bende (considered to have seven veins), and
the inhabitants of this island are therefore nicknamed bhendekar (cultiv-
ators of lady’s fingers).
Cottineau noted (114) that although the high and rich classes ate
bread, and the poor used flour for different kinds of cakes; there being
insufficient cultivation of wheat, it needed to be imported. The mangoes
of Goa are indeed excellent, and, except for plantains, very little attention
is paid to the culture of other fruits, as also vegetables, of which they are
not very fond. Indian corn, millet, and Maguire, are only cultivated as curi-
osities and dainties. Sura or toddy, fermented and distilled into liquor, is
57
the only common drink of the majority of the inhabitants, besides water
(114).
The quotidian as observed by Cottineau’s narrative is as follows:
The food of the poorer sort, consists chiefly in rice, fish, plantains,
other fruits, and some cake of flour; they do not eat meat more
than three or four times a year; they season their dishes with ghee,
or clarified butter, after the manner of the Indians; curry is their
principal dish, and rice gruel congee is their only morning and
evening meal. Coconut water enters in almost everything they eat
(118).
While the above description is of the poor, the following gives an insight
about affluent families:
Rich and easy families take their breakfast between seven and
eight, after hearing Mass; it now chiefly consists of tea, bread, and
butter, and sometimes coffee; some, however, keep to the old way
of eating congee; between twelve and one, dinner is taken. The
richest have soup, and boiled and roast meat, and always finish
by rice and curry before the dessert, which consists of cakes and
sweetmeats; they drink Madeira, Lisbon and other Portuguese
wines; those less easy take no soup, but never omit the curry,
and they drink urraca; they have a particular way of dressing rice,
which is very much like the Turkish pillow; the use of sleeping
after dinner is universal. At four they drink plain tea, some adding
cakes and biscuits; the supper is taken at eight, and chiefly con-
sists of fish curry and rice; very few eat flesh meat; they are all
fond of smoking, and many even among the women (119).
Cottineau’s comments on different kinds of meat reveal that the most

commonly eaten meat at the time was pork, fowl and turkey, which were
available in plenty and beef was not available for want of demand.
The animal flesh, more commonly eaten, is pork, fowl, and turkey,
which are cheap and abundant; beef is likewise had at a low rate,
but is rare to be found for want of demand, except in three chief
towns, and on the table of the richest families; sheep and goat are
rare (114).
Rice as we know was consumed in different forms. It would be had as canji

or as cooked rice. However, there were other uses of rice. It is used to pre-
pare savoury and sweet preparations to be served at different time of the
day.
58
The quotidian also shows that tea was served for breakfast. But, this
was served only by those that had possibility of buying it. This would
mean the colonisers and the landed gentry. The commonman had canji
for breakfast because it was nutritious, besides being affordable. The
habit of drinking tea was probably introduced by British soldiers who
were posted in Goa, from 1798 to 1814, under the guise of protecting Goa
from a possible French invasion. Coffee must also have been an introduc-
tion by the Europeans who were fond of drinking it. The Portuguese had
also made an attempt to grow coffee locally and had earmarked some land
in the Satari Taluka for the purpose.
Conclusion: While the Portuguese influenced the food of Goa to a
great extent, rice, fish and curry remained the main food of the Goan
people. All of these were available locally to the people. This leads to the
comment that availability and economics were ultimately responsible for
the food habits of the people.
Works Cited
Comissariat, M.S., Mandelso’s Travels in Western India (1638-1639). New Delhi,
Asian Educational Services, 1995.
Cottineau, Denis L.. Historical Sketch of Goa. The metropolis of the Portuguese
settlements in India. New Delhi. Asian Educational Services, 2005.
Orta, Garcia da. Colloquies on the simple and drugs of India. Delhi. Sri Satguru,
1987.
Pyrard de Laval, François. The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East In-
dies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil. New Delhi. Asian Educational
Services, 2000.
59
Veni Vidi Amavi: writing Goa from the
outside-in
P REMA ROCHA1
Goa has long been sought after by travellers, much before it

gained the reputation as the tourist destination it is today. The
dominant narrative of Goa for the global tourist has largely hinged
on the idea of fish, feni and fun. This essay turns its gaze to se-
lect accounts of ‘travellers’ who came to stay. They made Goa
their home. It takes into account an essay by Manohar Shetty from
Goa Travels in addition to chronicles from Inside/Out, the maiden
volume of the Goa Writers group.
People don’t take trips, trips take people.

–John Steinbeck
T
RAVEL is central to the human condition. Man is quintessentially a
traveller from the womb. Variously, a pilgrim, searcher, seeker of
greener pastures, an exile, a drifter. But, apart from the trope of travel
as metaphor, man has a need to escape from routine and embark upon
the mystery and adventure that is built into travel. Travel offers a sense of
ambivalence in that it holds out the possibilities of exploration of self as
well as an escape from self. While it zooms in on new vistas, at a deeper
level it reveals to us parts of ourselves like moods and mental states that
may have been hitherto unexplored. The traveller is presented a tabula
rasa and freed, as Pico Iyer puts it, “of inessential labels”. This prospect
of establishing contact with more essential aspects of the self is likely the
reason the traveller feels most animated on embarking upon that journey.
Goa has been sought after by travellers much before it gained a repu-
tation as the tourist destination it is today. In his comprehensive antho-
logy of historical travelogues Veni, Vidi... Goa, Luís Santa Rita Vas maps
1 Associate Professor, Department of English, St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa, Goa. pre-
marocha@gmail.com
Veni Vidi Amavi | Prema Rocha
travellers to Goa from ancient times, dating back to Ibn Battuta in the
fourteenth century. In 1511, Tomé Pires almost presciently called Goa ‘the
coolest place in India’ (Shetty, Goa Travels xiv). Jerry Pinto draws atten-
tion to the fact that the ‘mantra of sun-sand-surf-soçegado’ has been Goa’s
‘siren song, with its lulling alliterative refrain, an invitation to the land
of lotus-eaters’ (Pinto xii). Yet another traveller cites ‘Fish, fetes, fenim
and fun’ as the central narrative of Goa for the world (Da Silva 386).
Goa Travels by Manohar Shetty comprises accounts of travellers from the
sixteenth to the twenty-first century including observations by Graham
Greene, Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, William Dalrymple and Nai-
paul, among others. This essay turns its gaze to some of the chronicled
accounts of travellers who made Goa their home. Consequently, it takes
into account an essay by Manohar Shetty from Goa Travels, in addition to
narratives from the book Inside/Out, a volume by the Goa Writers group.
In his essay “The Shady Invasion of the Beach Umbrella”, Manohar
Shetty tells his Goa story. He first experienced Goa in the 1970s as a long-
haired college student-cum-voracious reader-cum-clandestine poet in a
narcotic haze, haunting the beach belt and flea market. In time, while
working in Bombay he met his future wife “V” (290). Shetty concedes that
Bombay had a hold on him despite the many inconveniences. Ultimately,
he grew “tired of commuting, of being thumped back and forth like a dirty
volleyball. And V longed to return to Goa” (291). And so, they did. Sh-
etty muses over the Goa he inhabits as a resident: the political volatility,
provincial meanness, and misrepresentations of Goa by eminent writers.
He notes the struggle faced by Konkani, the degradation of the environ-
ment due to mining, the impact of unplanned property development and
rampant corruption in public life. He observes that xenophobia exists des-
pite the fact that his own Mangalorean origins rendered it easier for him to
be accepted in Goan society. Tourism, he argues, has disfigured the place.
While Goa may be paradise for the tourist, for the locals it is ‘paradise lost’
(294).
In the book Inside/Out, a number of Goa writers from the eponym-
ous group tell their story of Goa. Among them is Vidyadhar Gadgil’s cel-
ebration of his outsider status as liberating. “Garv se kaho hum ghanti
hain” has Gadgil trace his first sojourn to Goa – a week-long break with
61
college friends – spent completely inebriated. He notes that this is almost

a rite of passage for Indian youth, and adds: “I suppose we did most of
the things that middle-class 19-year-old Indian students do on holidays
in places like Goa. Wake up around 10 a.m., have some breakfast, start get-
ting drunk or stoned, drift off to a beach, ogle some White women, have
a dip in the sea, keep drinking off and on, have dinner in Panjim, and
back to the Santa Cruz dump for more drinking till the merry day draws
to a close” (52). He is ashamed of and would rather forget that episode.
Goa was to become home to him and his wife of Goan descent. Gadgil
humourously drives home pertinent observations regarding the Goan ob-
session with the insider-outsider issue. He considers the nuances behind
the Goan bias towards bhaille, ghantis and the binktamkar. He satirises
the Goenkar obsession with ethnic background:
If you can dig out some ancestor of yours who was of Goan des-
cent, you’re in. A quarter-Goan, half-British and quarter-anything-
else woman who has lived in the UK all her life, and never come
within sniffing distance of Goa, is by some mysterious process
more Goan than a bhaillo, without any Goan blood, who has lived
in Goa all his life (55).
He underlines misconceptions like that of the Goan invariably represen-

ted as Catholic in Bollywood and in literature, of Goans being ‘forced’ to
sell their land, the Goan obsession with White skin, and Goa being colon-
ised by India.
Five weeks after a reluctant holiday in Goa, Helene Derkin Menezes
is back for good. “From the outside... in” charts her journey. In 1994 she
found herself taking a break with her female friend from her job at the
country’s leading advertising agency in cold London to “32 degrees of sun-
shine” in Goa (93). The cheap holiday package was too good to resist. The
initial culture shock and paranoia give way to the feeling of being in para-
dise. She met and fell in love with her future husband on that trip. From
driving on rule-deficit Goan roads, to the traditional village feast dance
at Colva, the reader is able to view it all from the fresh perspective of one
experiencing it for the first time: the sights of vendors, the produce at the
local market, barbers at work, the delectable food at comparatively ridicu-
lously low prices. Five months later, Helene ties up loose ends in London.
62
She gives up the power dressing and labels for an idyllic life in Goa with
Derrick whom she married soon after.
“Bulletproof” narrates how German writer Kornelia Santoro took a
two-year sabbatical to travel India on her “Enfield Bullet”. Three months
in Goa, one and a half year of riding through India led her to “shed many
layers” of what she calls her pampered self (49). On her return, Goa felt
like home. She fell in love with her Italian future husband here as also the
friendly locals, the hills, the sunshine, the swaying palms, and the relaxed
pace. She and Alberto got married in Italy and returned to Goa where they
have been living ever since.
In a deeply reflective essay, pertinently titled ‘One Still Here’, love for
and identification with Catarina Da Orta (sister of the eminent physician
Garcia Da Orta) prompts Aimee Ginsberg, a Jewish woman who has lived
in Goa for ten years, to reconstruct the life of the Jewish Catarina Da Orta.
The latter was burnt at the stake in this land they both grew to love. She
gives the historical persona of Catarina, a human face. In so humanising
her and bringing her into focus she turns the spotlight on a largely over-
looked chapter of our history – the dreadful Inquisition. She reclaims ‘her-
story’, reimagining how the Inquisitionists waited till until Garcia – who
was a favourite of the rich and mighty – died, before arresting his sister.
Catarina was tortured for about two years before finally being burned at
the stake. Ginsberg wonders what kept the lady in Goa when she could
have sought refuge outside. Eleven years later, Garcia Da Orta’s bones
would be exhumed and burned.
In addition to the experience of the foreigner who made a home in
Goa, a sense of balance is maintained in the inclusion of narratives of
Goans who reverse migrated. Wendell Rodricks’ essay “Indian, interna-
tional, Goan!” records the manner in which the advice, ‘Put your country
and your roots in your clothes’, shaped his life and career. It prompted
him to “soul search on inside” and look at his work “from the outside”
(192-193). As a result, the man who gave India Minimalism returned to
his ancestral Colvale. He put India and Goa into his clothes even as he put
his village on the world fashion map.
Sheela Jaywant’s “Leaving Dubai” charts the journey of Shambhu, a
third-generation expat whose grandfather left Palolem in the 1940s and
63
set up base in Rajasthan. His father moved to Bombay and subsequently

to Dubai, “a kind of heaven”. Shambhu thus grew up in Dubai speaking
Konkani at home. Interestingly, he had been to Goa only twice before his
marriage. However, his friends, like those of his parents, were Goan. They
were part of Goan clubs, married within the caste, “sang folk songs, play-
acted tiatrs”, cooked Goan food. They preserved traditions in this foreign
land. The global meltdown in 2008 took away his job and they were forced
to leave the UAE. The notion of home is turned on its head with one hav-
ing to leave the only place one knows and a good life, for a veritable ‘vir-
tual home’ constructed through memory and hearsay (76).
Bomoikar late Melinda Coutinho Powell, too, relocated from Mumbai
to Davorlim in Goa in 1998. The article captures the initial skepticism giv-
ing way to acceptance and adjustments on both sides. She draws atten-
tion to the Goan penchant for camaraderie, expressed in seemingly nosey
questions posed by neighbours like “Is there fish in the market today?”
(84) She appreciates the traditions and experiences like that of the poder
on his cycle, the village tavern with its regular brawls and arm wrestling,
the sincerity and affection of the village folk, the buddy system of reach-
ing out in times of loss. She wistfully notes the degradation of the virgin
beaches and hillsides inevitably giving way to housing for the “‘outsider’
invasion” (88).
All of India seems to covet a piece of real estate in Goa. The Hindus-
tan Times elicited views from some who have chosen to relocate to this
dream destination. “Goa just lets you be”, affirms former actor Kimmy
Katkar who moved to Goa with her family in 2014 after living in Mum-
bai, Melbourne and Pune. Since 2011, Pralay Bakshi works from his home
studio and assists Bina Punjani (his wife) with her hair salon in Miramar.
He opines that Goa offers the closest to Europe that’s possible in India
providing quality of life as well as business opportunities. Green spaces,
and access to a good life are what magnetises them to Goa. Delhi litig-
ator Diviya Kapoor moved to Calangute in 2004. She runs a bookstore in
Candolim. She loves the beach and the leisurely pace. Theatre person Ar-
undhati Chattopadhyaya and Neel her musician husband state that Goa
offers them the quality of life they lived abroad. She elucidates that bey-
ond the cheese and wine, it is about “the ocean, greenery and quiet. We
64
hear the birds and the flour mill across the street. We have frogs and mon-
itors in our courtyard, a kokum, jambul tree.” Yogita Mehra and Karan
Manral who set up base in Goa in 2002 run an organic farm currently
spanning 2.5 acres of friends’ land. They’ve found, over the years, that Goa
fascinates the metropolis-maddened, artistic type.
Among those who have moved to Goa, Vas takes into account more
visible narratives like that of psychoanalyst and novelist Sudhir Kakar and
his wife Katarina, journalist turned novelist Sudeep Chakravarti, Amitav
Ghosh, author Lord Meghnad Desai, photographer Dayanita Singh and
Heta Pandit, among others.
What is alluring about Goans and Goa? Cleaner air, relatively cheaper
housing, the greenery, the lifestyle, the relaxed pace may be part of the
answer. History professor Parag Parobo notes that Goa is envisaged as a
“space of difference, and this difference has become its marker” (1). Maria
Aurora Couto regards tolerance, respect, and “appreciation of other cul-
tures and technology” as strengths of Goa (395). Historian Teotonio de
Souza grants that Goan identity originates prior to the arrival of the Por-
tuguese but 450 years of colonial rule have undoubtedly left a mark (Ran-
gel 7). Anthropologist Robert S. Newman posits that Goan culture must be
regarded as a “syncretic Hindu-Catholic one”. He locates this ‘fascinating
synthesis’ in the larger Indian context which is but a vast syncretic cul-
ture (Vas 337). Victor Rangel-Ribeiro cites the Goan intellectual João da
Veiga Coutinho’s description of Goans as “chameleon-like” in terms of ad-
aptability (13). He quotes Peter Nazareth to clinch the discussion: “I think
of myself as being a Goan first, as well as being an Indian. Being a Goan
automatically makes me an Indian; being an Indian would not necessarily
make me a Goan” (9). Couto likens identity to an onion: “If you peel it you
will shed tears, but there would be nothing left”. She wonders whether the
answer lies in respecting “multiple identities” (398).
Dreamy notions aside, cognisance has to be taken of issues that Goans
have to deal with as part of daily living: public transport and road woes,
maintenance of homes, getting labour, house help, communication and
connectivity bandwidth woes, dealing with the monsoons and white ants,
making businesses work, finding jobs, cost of living where the best pick
gets sent to hotels. Then there are the stereotypes that are only reinforced
65
by the media and film industry. Booze, drugs, the drug mafia, sex, rave
parties, a free for all permissive society where anything goes, these are no
less a part of the Goa narrative.
It is important to critique the packaging of Goa as a land of sun, surf,
sand and sex, and highlight – as Rajdeep Sardesai notes – the Goa of “deep
social conservatism, of folk religiosity... of simplicity of lifestyle within
rural communities, of a premium on education and of immense pride
in its plural, multi-cultural heritage”. However, Jason Keith Fernandes re-
minds us that there is much to be feared as well in shifting focus away
from the perverted gaze of the tourist and Indian media industry. To pro-
pose that the real Goa resides in the hinterland is to deny the claim “to
authenticity of the Goans who actually live and work in the beach belt.”
For, they are Goans too and this is no less genuine Goan culture as well.
Rahul Shrivastava asserts that the role of “the eternal outsider, [is]
a rare privilege in this retro modernist age of native, primordial identit-
ies” (Vas 343). The travellers who came to stay might agree with one who
knows something of the business of home. For Salman Rushdie, home is,
simply, “the place where you feel happy”. British-born American of Indian
descent, Pico Iyer, who has chosen to live in Japan, asserts that “home has
really less to do with a piece of soil than... with a piece of soul.”
The Goan in soul may identify with Leonor Rangel-Ribeiro. She encap-
sulates the ardent longing of the Goan exile to be unified with the home-
land even in death:
All this harmony of divine love that is Goa,

It is me!
And if one day in a distant land
Death should cull me without mercy,
I will return to the lands of Goa
Will return on the wings of the wind
Even as dust. (Ribeiro 16-17)
Works Cited
Couto, Maria Aurora. “Afterword: Waiting to be Translated...” In Nazareth, Pivot-
ing on the Point of Return, pp. 393-99.
Da Silva, Marion. “Return to Goa.” In Nazareth, Pivoting on the Point of Return,
pp. 381-386.
66
Fernandes, Jason Keith. “Of Rapes, Murder, Drugs and the ‘Real Goa’”. Go-
mantak Times, 26 Mar. 2008.
Gadgil, Vidyadhar. “Garv se kaho hum ghanti hain”. In Menezes and Lourenço
(eds), pp. 52-61.
Iyer, Pico. “Why We Travel.” 18 Mar. 2000. picoiyerjourneys.com
/index.php/2000/03/why-we-travel/ Accessed 28 Feb. 2017.
Lopez, Rachel. “Actor to Journalist: Look Who’s Settling Down in Goa for a
Dream Life.” Hindustan Times. 31 Jan. 2016.
Menezes, Helene Derkin. “From the outside... in”. In Menezes and Lourenço
(eds).
Menezes, Helene Derkin & José Lourenço (eds.) Inside/ Out: New Writing from
Goa. Saligão: Goa,1556/Goa Writers 2011.
Nazareth, Peter (ed.) Modern Goan Literature: Pivoting on the Point of Return.
Saligão/Panjim: Goa,1556/Broadway, 2010.
Parobo, Parag. India’s First Democratic Revolution. New Delhi: Orient Black-
swan, 2015.
Pinto, Jerry (ed.) Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa. New Delhi: Penguin, 2008.
Rangel-Ribeiro, Victor. Introduction. In Donna J. Young, Mirror to Goa.
S. R. Vas, Luís. Veni, Vidi... Goa: Travellers’ Views of Goa, Ancient and Modern.
Centro de Estudos Indo-Portugueses Voicuntrao Dempo, 2011.
Shetty, Manohar (ed.). Goa Travels. New Delhi: Rupa, 2014.
——— “The Shady Invasion of the Beach Umbrella”. Goa Travels.
——— (ed.) Ferry Crossing: Short Stories from Goa. New Delhi: Penguin, 1998.
Young, Donna J. Mirror to Goa. Saligão/Panjim: Goa,1556/Broadway, 2009.
67
Sifting sands: a search for stability
and sustenance of Goan culture
through travel narratives
S UNITA M ESQUITA1
A land that promises the traveller a culture of curiosity and an al-

most fathomless fascination for its inhabitants has been the hall-
mark of many travelogues on Goa. This ‘outsider’ image springs
from the reservoir of its imperialistic past that has successfully
created a Westernised present. By throwing light on the presence
of the rich traditions and cultural patterns that embody this tour-
ist destination, the paper attempts to search, question and assess
how travel narratives have become a veritable indicator of culture.
Accosted by the burden of a changing cultural scenario, the need
to correlate literature with culture would become a vital fulcrum
of its sustenance.
T
HE curiosity of coming to Goa and experiencing a ‘traveller’s delight’
is not unusual for a visitor to Goa. In fact, global and national trav-
ellers who haven’t made up their minds on where to go for a holiday would
have already noted that a Google search for a top holiday destination in
India will take you to none other than Goa. Goa’s chequered colonial past
has brought with it a universal curious fascination. Not just in contempor-
ary times but stories told by some of the earliest travellers are narratives
that traverse a passion for the unknown. In her research paper titled The
Fascination for the Orient in Contemporary Travel Literature and Painting,
Maria João Castro while maintaining that the cause of undertaking travel
was imperialistic in nature, opines that,
It was the imperial colonies, (Great Britain in India; France in In-

dochina; Portugal in Goa, Macau and Timor), who were the driv-
ing force behind overseas travel, contributing to an increasing
1 Associate Professor, Department of English, St Xavier’s College, Mapusa, Goa. sunit-

amesquita@gmail.com
Sifting sands | Sunita Mesquita
number of artists and writers being eager to experience and learn

about these overseas possessions (152).
While wanting to deliberate on the reasons why travellers choose Goa –

whether it is its beautiful beaches, places of historical richness and its
Indo-Portuguese culture – many Goans would find a representative voice
in the words of Prof. Eduardo de Sousa, writing in Fortune Teller, where he
states, “Romance of travel and love of nature, mingled with religious sen-
timents and feelings, draw many persons from distant lands to Goa. With
its mystic oriental charm, Goa attracts many foreign tourists” (Souza 51).
It is believed by every unsuspecting Goan that the major attraction for
tourists is Goa’s beautiful landscape and its rich cultural heritage. Every-
one would like to believe that these are the very things that attract the
traveller to Goa.
However, there is perhaps another truth. The general assumption is
that a great many people who visit Goa do it for the ‘entertainment’ life it
offers of fun, feni and fantasy. In this ‘fantastic’ land, the traveller has vis-
ions of a people given to the ‘trade of entertainment’ bereft of traditional
and educational space. It may come as an unpleasant surprise that when
you hear people inquire about Goa, they find it difficult to believe that
there are ‘colleges’ in Goa and that Goans here actually pick up an educa-
tion. Such a flippant attitude towards Goa is aptly described by Manohar
Shetty who writes in his introduction to Ferry Crossing: Short stories from
Goa
A recent Governor of Goa, sunning himself silly at the private

beach of Cabo Raj Bhavan, reflected on his tenure in Goa as a
thirteen-month-long ‘super-deluxe holiday at the cost of the Pres-
ident of India’.
Whatever the ‘visitor’ might think about being in Goa, with the onslaught
of European influence on traditional culture, Goans would want the ‘out-
sider’ to experience a different Goa... a Goa that is rich in culture, custom
and tradition where hard work, a tolerant attitude and respect for other
religions abound.
With literature as an indicator of culture, this essay attempts to ex-
plore the literature of travel and its views on the changing dynamics of
69
culture in the making of Goa. The task at hand is that of interpreting travel
narratives that will direct focus on contemporary challenges that come in
the way of sustaining Goa’s ethos, culture and heritage.
The gaze of the traveller
Given Goa’s multicultural diversity, should one be concerned about how

Goa is written? It is a lesser known fact that explorer travellers have written
about Goa as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even
earlier. An understanding of their perceptions would give an insight into
defining Goa and its evolving cultural history. However, it must be noted
that this perception is usually different when compared to the manner
in which local residents perceive their land. In the chapter titled Travel
Narratives as Textual evidences of Cultural Documentation, Dhishna states
that
The manner in which a traveller/writer views a new/foreign place

will be different from the way in which the people living in that
place perceive it. Hence, the accounts of a traveller would reflect
much more curiosity in comparison to that of the indigenous per-
son. The travel writer usually highlights the quality of the place,
its culture, custom, people... Hence the perception of the travel-
ler/writer about the culture of a place/people is important in un-
derstanding any travel narrative.
The traveller’s perspective has been under constant change when it comes
to assessing Goa. From visiting Goa to conduct the spice trade, to trad-
ing in drugs, much has altered. The ‘old Goa’ evades the new Goan. In
an effort to bring about a greater consciousness, it is hoped that travel
literature can fill the gaps in history and build a bridge to culture. Alex-
ander Henn argues, “Since Said’s groundbreaking text Orientalism, travel
literature has been a part of many theorists’ interdisciplinary attempts to
unravel the ways the West (“developed nations”) have perceived and de-
picted others in the East (“in the developing nations”).” He further argues
that the Portuguese conquest of Asian space vis à vis Goa has played a
significant role in its cultural construction.
70
Golden Goa... gone?

While Goa takes pride in its cultural richness, it yearns for a revival of
everything ‘Goan’. It is against this backdrop that one has to remember
that several pages of travel writing are devoted to a description of Goa as
a land of plenty. This has been distinctly corroborated by Caroline Ifeka
who
...draws critical attention to the widespread tendency in European

writing to condense the description of the scenic beauty and
natural resourcefulness, the cosmopolitan life and mercantile
prosperity of the early modern Portuguese headquarters in India
into the image of Goa Dourada, or Golden Goa. (Henn)
In saying this, it must be acknowledged that this ‘Pearl of the Orient’

had abundance and prosperity walking hand in hand. A chance on-
line encounter with Goa, and the Blue Mountains by Victorian explorer
Sir Richard F. Burton published in 1851 was a pleasant revelation that Goa
caught the eye of the Western ‘traveller’. It is an account of his journey
through portions of southwest India while he was on sick leave from the
British Indian army. Traveling through Bombay to the Portuguese colony
of Goa, it provides a revealing look at the people who inhabited a part
of India that was generally off the beaten track in the nineteenth century.
Here is a line taken from this travelogue on the sea route to Goa:
We strain our eyes in search of the tall buildings and crowded

ways that denote a capital: we can see naught but a forest of lanky
cocoa-nut trees, whose stems are apparently growing out of a mul-
titude of small hovels. Can this be Goa?
Yes, it was Burton’s Goa and, like several other writers, his narrative in-
cludes descriptions that compare and contrast the image of Golden Goa.
He goes on to say, “The descriptions of Goa in her palmy days are, thanks
to the many travellers that visited the land” (Burton 46). Sir Burton de-
voted a sizable portion of his narrative to trace the perceptions of several
explorers and what they have said about Goa. Two such references are
cited by Linschoten and Capt. Hamilton. Sir Burton makes a reference
to “Linschoten, a native of Haarlem, who travelled to the capital of Por-
tuguese India about 1583. The book is replete with curious information.
Linschoten’s account of the riches and splendour of Goa would be judged
71
exaggerated, were they not testified to by a host of other travellers.” The ac-
count further states that “...during the prosperous times of the Portuguese
in India you could not have seen a bit of iron in any merchant’s house, but
all gold and silver.”
Karina Kubiňáková in her thesis titled Whose Goa? Projection of Goan
Identity in Rival Discourses refers to Suma Oriental, a travelogue written
by Tomé Pires between 1512 and 1515. Kubiňáková argues for the prosper-
ous image of Goa by referring to the exact claims made by Pires whom she
quotes:
Pires’s account of the early period of the capture of Goa describes

a grand kingdom with civilized inhabitants. He claimed Goa to be
civilized and “the most important [kingdom] in India, although
they [other Muslim kingdoms] might not wish it to be so.”
Besides, some early traveller’s insights could be found in The Land of the
Great Image by Maurice Collins, published in 1942. It is a narrative by Friar
Sebastião Manrique on his visit to Goa, the then capital of Portuguese
Asia when he was quite young (1604-1614). His stay coincided with the
last years of Portuguese prosperity. Historian Teotonio de Souza recalls
an unintentionally striking quotation from Collins: “For Latins, the city
was a paradise, a lotus-eating island of the blest, where you could sit on
your veranda listening to music as the breeze blew in from the sea, with
humble folk within call to minister to your every wish.” With this account
in his autobiographical work Goa to Me, Teotonio de Souza makes an al-
most overt representation of the parallels that exist between Portuguese
colonial rule in Goa in the sixteenth century, and the tourist trade that
exists here today, writes Vikram Gill.
At the same time, Goa has had its tryst with conditions that might
hardly be ‘golden’. This could be perceived from the descriptions pulled
out by Sir Burton, who goes on to write:
The next in our list stands the good Capt. Hamilton, a sturdy
old merchant militant, who infested the Eastern seas about the
beginning of the eighteenth century. The poverty of Goa must
have been great in Capt. Hamilton’s time, when “the houses were
poorly furnished within, like their owners’ heads, and the tables
and living very mean. The army was so ill-paid and defrauded that
72
the soldiers were little better than common thieves and assassins.
Trade was limited to salt and arrack, distilled from the cocoa-nut.
Today, Goa has its own share of richness and poverty. The houses may
not be made of gold but to have a house you would need to pay the price
of gold. The lanky cocoa-nut trees greeted Sir Burton on his arrival to Goa.
Today Goans have to fight for the identity of the palm itself. A travel narrat-
ive may dwell on Goa’s famous feni but what is feni without our coconut
trees? Goa legislative elections held in March 2017 were fought on the as-
surance of sustaining Goem, Goykar and Goekarponn. The desire to bring
back the past and restore Goa to its original ‘Golden’ image is perhaps
idealistic but the Goan craves for it all the same.
Searching through the cultural lens
An important challenge to Goa and the Goans is the issue of a disappear-

ing culture. There is yet again a feeling of an uncertain sense of what really
makes for this culture. In his introduction to Modern Goan Short Stories,
Luís Santa Rita Vas writes,
To an anthropologist and a sociologist, Goa is as interesting as any

other state of India. Perhaps more so, because of its peculiar his-
torical circumstances, which sets it apart from India for centuries.
The coming of the Portuguese four and a half centuries ago resul-
ted in the imposition of one culture on another of a profoundly
different nature.
Goans have a unique political history that has played a major role in defin-
ing its cultural history. It might be further stated that it is common know-
ledge that an Indian in India is culturally different from a Goan in India.
Travel writing lays emphasis on people that inhabit a specific culture.
In Goa, religion plays a significant role in determining one’s culture. Go-
ing back to Goa, and the Blue Mountains, it may be noted that Captain
Hamilton’s views of the manners and customs of the people are more in-
teresting than his description of the city. Some quick descriptions of the
Christians, Hindus and Muslims are noteworthy.
The native Christian is originally a converted Hindoo... and

though he has changed for centuries his manners, dress, and re-
ligion, he retains to a wonderful extent the ideas, prejudices, and
73
superstitions of his ancient state [...] The Moslem population at

Panjim scarcely amounts to a thousand. They have no place of
worship, although their religion is now, like all others, tolerated.
The distinctive mark of the Faithful is the long beard. They ap-
pear superior beings by the side of the degenerate native Chris-
tians.[...] Next to the Christians, the Hindoos are the most numer-
ous portion of the community. They are held in the highest pos-
sible esteem and consideration [...] But at Goa all men are equal
(102-106).
These observations might appear biased to the reader but isn’t it the right
of the traveller to have perceptions and interpretations of a land and its
people that might be different from the perceptions of the indigenous nat-
ive?
In the essay titled ‘Goan culture: an imaginative re-construct’, the
writer attempts to put into a cultural perspective the conditions surround-
ing Goa’s destiny thus “...the ‘Goan’ is a real individual rather than an eth-
nic guinea pig. He lives in a cultural space, stunningly ambivalent and de-
ceptively complex. His cultural context is a marvelous amalgam of fusions
and diffusions rooted in a long series of complicated human interactions”
(Budkuley 171). There is something unique about being a Goan which
cannot be disputed either by religion or by education. It runs in every
Goan vein and Prof. Eduardo de Sousa while quoting the late poet B.B.
Borkar writes that ‘Bakibab’ (as Borkar was known) once wrote about the
Goan personality in the booklet that was published in 1982 by the Govern-
ment of Goa entitled Goa, Now and Then. According to him, the Goan is
always warm, sociable, gay, talkative, fun-loving, relaxed and trustworthy
(163).
What then brings the traveller to Goa? The traveller knows that the
qualities found in the heart of a Goan is reflective of his long history of
political invasion, a generous tolerance that stems out of easy religious
acceptance and a language that speaks of living life in huge portions.
Stone Soup, a short story by Nora Secco de Sousa, describes José Francisco
Batata Fastudo as a “seasoned tramp and globe-trotter” who wishes to
visit Goa. When Dona Maria Pulqueria Clementina Grace Torrada compli-
ments him on being a “great traveller” and inquires with him, “And what
particular business brings you to this side of the globe?”, José Fastudo
74
replies, “I had heard so much about the peace, prosperity and plenty of
good things of life to be had for a song in Goa, that I always wanted to
visit the spot.” He goes on to say, “The Goans were always known for their
lavish hospitality which is paralleled only by the proverbial generosity of
the desert Arab.”
Yet the Goan in Goa feels threatened by the unwarranted projections
of Goa as a rootless community that is facing the assault of a corrupt
culture. The factors leading to this is crisply summarized thus: “The on-
slaught of the electronic multi-media, irreversible market trends, over-
whelming advertising campaigns, unabashed consumerism... [society]...
may be uprooted from native culture and thereby cast into the throes of
peregrination and faceless global ubiquity” (Budkuley). It might well be
said that Portuguese dominion no doubt transformed Goa’s cultural land-
scape but staying in a resort or hotel does not necessarily give you a sense
of what Goa is all about.
According to Stanley Stewart, Goa has not lost its cultural identity; it is
simply hidden behind the crowded tourist spots, writes Vikram Gill. Goa
still has its villages, one will yet find a farmer cultivating his field, while
religion is a major framework within which the Goan conducts life and
one will also find the Goan rushing to work like any other fellow human.
A lot is written about Goa but much more is left to be discovered. The
world of travel writing is huge. There are yet many spaces waiting to be
filled while recognising Goa’s culture. Like Sir Burton who asks the reader
to fill in the gaps as he concludes with these words
Adieu....! Farewell.... land of ....! May every...!

May...! And when..., so may .... as thou hast ... ourselves!
To the industry of an imaginative reader, we leave the doubtlessly
agreeable task of filling up the hiatus in whatever manner the per-
usal of our modest pages may suggest to his acuteness and dis-
cernment. (Burton 368)
I leave the reader the agreeable task of filling up the gaps and sustaining
the search for culture. Going back to the title... the traveller needs to sieve
through several cultural experiences in order to discover the real Goa... let
that search continue!
75
Works Cited
Budkuley, Kiran. “Goan literature: challenges of language and culture”. In Mus-
ings in the Meadows: Essays on Goan Literature and Culture, Sanjana Pub-
lications, Sanguem, 2012.
Burton, Richard F. Goa, and the Blue Mountains, Samuel Bentley & Co., Lon-
don, 1852. archive.org/details/goabluemountains00burtrich Accessed 11
Mar. 2017.
Castro, Maria João. “The Fascination for the Orient in Contemporary Travel Lit-
erature and Painting.” In International Journal of Humanities and Manage-
ment Sciences (IJHMS), Vol 4, Issue 2 (2016) Accessed 13 Feb. 2017.
De Sousa, Eduardo. “The Goan Villager”. From Goa with Love. All India (Press)
Letter-Writers Association. Bombay, 2002.
De Souza, Teotonio. Goa to Me, Concept Publishing, New Delhi. 1994.
Dhishna, P. Cultural encounters in the travel narratives of D.H. Lawrence, V.S.
Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin and S.K. Pottekkatt. 29 Nov. 2012. Pondicherry
University. Thesis. shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/ 10603/5364 Ac-
cessed 13 Feb 2017.
Gill, Vikram. “Parallels in Goa International Tourism and the New Imperi-
alism”. April 2006. ibis.geog.ubc.ca/ewyly/students/gill.pdf. Accessed 17
Mar 2017.
Henn, Alexander. “The Becoming of Goa: Space and Culture in the Emer-
gence of a Multicultural Lifeworld.” In Lusotopie, 2000, pp. 333-39.
http://www.lusotopie.sciencespobordeaux.fr/henn.pdf. Accessed 11 Mar
2017.
Kubiňáková, Karina. “Whose Goa? Projection of Goan Identity in Rival Dis-
courses”, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. February 2010.
http://www.goanvoice.ca/2015/issue25/ref/whose-Goa.pdf. Accessed 11
Mar 2017.
Pires, Tomé. Suma Oriental, edited by Pires, Rodrigues and Cortesão,
archive.org/stream/McGillLibrary-136385-182/136385_djvu.txt
Shetty, Manohar. “Introduction” Ferry Crossing: Short Stories from Goa, Pen-
guin Books, 1998, pp xiii.
Vas, Luís S. Rita. (Ed.) Modern Short Stories, edited by L.S.Rita Vas, Jaico Publish-
ing House, Mumbai, 2002.
76
Goa through the prism of
contemporary travel blogs
G LENIS MARIA MENDON çA1
On-line travel literature offers a traveller’s insight into unvoiced

‘Goa-experiences’ and enables the tourism industry to gain con-
structive feedback. It adds a new dimension to the Goa-travel liter-
ary output and, at times, enlightens the average Goan unaware of
interesting things in his or her backyard. This essay examines se-
lect blogs written by travellers that offer a peek into a Goa beyond
the balmy beaches and the tourist-vendor camaraderie. Along
with the glam, the grotesque and grim perspectives indicate that
there is still scope to improve the ‘Goa-experience’ for tourists.
T
RAVEL literature is a fascinating genre, a fertile ground for study
which is seldom traversed. It documents the bitter-sweet experi-
ences of travellers either in transit or after the travel experience. Such lit-
erature is not merely suited for eliciting a boost for the tourism industry
but also acts as a curious repertoire of collective shared experiences of
travellers who have visited a certain place. This essay collates the experi-
ences of visiting Goa by various national and international visitors (tour-
ists, expats and others). In a word, the present researcher will refer to
these experiences of visitors as “Goa-experiences”, which are available in
books on travel-literature, magazines, newspapers, television document-
aries, radio shows and online literature like travel blogs. This essay will
explore the Goa-experiences of travellers visiting Goa through the prism
of select travel blogs.
Understanding Goa through blogs
Goa has been on the bucket wish-list of several tourists, both in India and
abroad. Historically speaking, over the centuries, there have been count-
less travellers who have visited Goa for trade, commerce, for missionary
1 Assistant Professor, Department of English, Carmel College for Women, Nuvem, Goa.
Email: glenis.mendonca@gmail.com.
service, conquests, for adventure and even for satiating their interests in
sciences and literature. From the archival documentation and relevant
books written, there is copious evidence to ascertain the fact that numer-
ous travellers have visited Goa and documented their experiences along
with their own assumptions and prejudices. It is interesting to find schol-
ars like Luís S.R. Vas who have compiled such archived information on
ancient and modern travellers’ views on Goa in a book titled Veni, Vidi...
Goa. Therefore, it is imperative to see online sources for understanding
the views on Goa by travellers.
This essay limits itself to travel blogs of travellers who have visited Goa
and have written about their Goa-experiences. The question often asked
here is: What is a blog? Blogbasics.com defines a blog as a frequently up-
dated online personal journal or diary. It is a place to express oneself to
the world. It is a place to share your thoughts and passions. A blog can
really be what you want it to be. One may, thus, call it a personal web-
site which a blogger will update on a regular basis. ‘Blog’ is a short form
for the word ‘web-log’, as the two terms have been used interchangeably.
Thus a travel-blog is a twenty-first-century e-resource. Using it, a blogger
who has visited a specific destination as a tourist or expat, or for any other
purpose, narrates and writes his or her experiences, perceptions, views
and sometimes preconceived ideas about the respective destination. The
present paper looks at select travel blogs of national and international vis-
itors who visited Goa or as expats lived here for longer periods and docu-
mented their Goa-experiences in travel blogs.
Goa travel blog: Goa Beyond the Beaches
The wanderer.com is a traveller’s haven which has a blog space where trav-
ellers voice their travel experiences. One such blog here is titled ‘Goa Bey-
ond the Beaches’. Here, anonymous writers have informed about several
places in Goa which are of significant value to a visitor or tourist. The lan-
guage used is inviting and homely, drawing a reader to read with curiosity
and find out what actually lies ‘beyond the beaches’ in Goa:
Imagine walking through a lane in Goa with Portuguese houses all

around you, and chatter in local Konkani and Portuguese filtering
out of the windows. The doors of these homes are open and fam-
ilies are happily wishing each other with cakes and hugs. If you
78
Goa through the prism of travel blogs | Glenis Mendonça
are wondering this would be a typical day in colonial Goa in 1895,

think again. The old world charm of Goa is not lost, not yet. It lives
on in areas away from the overcrowded beaches... If you have seen
all of this, and want to explore something new in Goa — discover
the Old Goa, discover Goa beyond beaches, alcohol and trance
parties.
The author of this blog invites the reader to visit heritage houses, quiet
villages like Divar (which has to be reached with a ferry-boat) and savour
the serenity of the countryside amidst its traditional food joints. There
is a reference to interesting places to visit, like museums in Goa or the
Saturday Night Bazaar at Arpora and even otherwise niche vegan joints
like ‘Bean Me Up’ in Vagator. The author offers a few recommended food
and coffee joints in Goa which are worth a visit: Bodega, Urban Café, Hotel
Venite, Baba Coffee and Coffee Haven.
Vince’s Goa-experience: urbantravelblog.com
Vince arrives in Goa, where his party radar lets him down. An en-
counter with a young bracelet hawker, however, turns into an op-
portunity to spend the evening with an entire Indian family and
form a bond that goes beyond the tourist dollar (n.p.).
Vince’s blog is a terrific account of how an otherwise irksome family of

trinket hawkers turns out to be his Goa buddies as he and his friends take
them out to a restaurant for a meal, and share an inexplicable bond, which
he shares in this blog. The family then reciprocated by inviting Vince and
his bunch of friends to their own humble home and offered them food
and introduced them to their family. In an emotionally drawn description,
Vince writes:
It was really a special experience; it was very meaningful to

have transcended that vendor-tourist relationship, if just for a
brief evening. On a personal level, I think most travellers have
difficulty sorting out the disparity between their personal exper-
ience “on holiday” and the communities who may be affected by
their tourism. It’s one of the tough parts about travelling, and I
don’t have the answer to what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s be-
neficial or harmful. But I do know that moments like these are the
ones that take the economics out of the equation and bring people
together to just be people (n.p.).
79
As an international tourist, Vince is enthralled by the beauty of Goa: the

beautiful beaches, the heritage monuments and Portuguese legacy. On a
rented motorbike he explores the stunning countryside of Goa: jungles,
open fields of rice, bridges over rivers, country roads, and small towns. Ex-
periences in Benaulim, Anjuna and Quepem are etched in his memory.
The heritage houses of South Goa offer ample scope to appreciate the ar-
chitecture and culture of the countryside. He also recounts how little vil-
lage boys expressed delight when offered piggy-back rides by him on his
bike. A few pictures embellish the blog and offer a stimulating perspective.
Expatsblog.com: Hippie In Heels
Rachel is a young American expat in India. After backpacking for months,

she moved permanently to live with her boyfriend in Goa. An avid travel-
ler who has been to places in India, her expat blog called Hippie In Heels
helps girls get through the labyrinthine that is India, safely and fashion-
ably. This is how she describes herself:
I am a small blonde girl that people said couldn’t make it in India.

I have! I have made it all over the world, all the way to Uganda. I
love to travel and inspire others they can too. My blog is about be-
ing glamorous while you travel, you don’t have to look like an REI
catalogue, or a “backpacker”. You can be you, and you are brave,
strong, and beautiful. I believe in solo travel, and I think that a con-
cern of safety shouldn’t hold you back, so I give tips to help keep
girls safe, especially travelling where I live in India (n.p).
Here Rachael refers to Goa. Her blog is a creative and curious space where
she documents her experiences and at the same time offers counsel to
probable expat visitors to Goa. She emphasizes on the dos and don’ts to
be kept in mind in Goa, the places to avoid as young single girls, tips for
expats to settle comfortably in Goa as also the best use of time she makes
to go shopping and beach-hopping.
Goa vegan travel blogs
It is interesting to note that there are several blogs where vegan travel-
lers share their insights with readers. In a place like Goa, especially along
the coast where people visit to have a blast on the beach, enjoy partying
80
and eat the most forbidden non-vegetarian foods like beef and pork, it be-
comes very difficult for vegans to survive. Vegans visiting Goa have man-
aged to explore comfy and reasonable vegan food-spots so that their food
preferences are met in Goa which is often assumed to be mainly a haven
for fish and flesh.
One of such interesting vegan spots mentioned by bloggers in this
space is “Bean Me Up” in Vagator. They write:
This incredible restaurant, surrounded by tropical jungle plants,

serves some of the best food we have ever had. The staff is lovely,
the vibe is casual and laid back, and the menu seems never-
ending. A lot of love, care, and thought is put into the dishes at
this vegan restaurant which is probably why every single thing we
tried was phenomenal in freshness and flavour... We rarely give
five out of five stars for restaurants; but the service, atmosphere,
and food was outstanding.
The bloggers here mention the various varieties of vegan food dished out
in places such as Shawn’s “Bean Me Up”. The descriptions are so delicious
that even non-vegans would be tempted to try them out.
Romantic trips to Goa: traveltriangle.com
When Amit and Pooja from Bangalore travelled to Goa for their holiday,
they had some memorable experiences on what they called the ‘Backwa-
ters of Goa’. Their four-day trip to Goa where they stayed at The Lalit and
had a packed itinerary, was indeed something to cherish. Many travellers,
particularly newlyweds, treat Goa as a honeymoon destination. There are
special tourist packages designed for such visitors. The experiences, de-
tails, whether they are worth it or not and the real experiences of couples
are shared in such travel blogs which are attached to traveltriangle.com
This webspace is a platform for visitors to share their romantic travel
experiences. They share ‘things to be done’, ‘things to be avoided’, ‘must-
visit places in Goa as travellers’, ‘instructions to first-time travellers’ and
other such vital information which helps all those who will be planning a
trip to Goa. There’s another similar space called travbuddy.com, where
several tourists visiting Goa write blogs to share their experiences and
serve to enlighten other prospect travellers to Goa.
81
The flipside of Goa through blogs
A careful study of blogs reveals that not all travellers coming to Goa find
it an idyllic haven. There are some like the Delhi-based Deepti Kapoor
who observe that the beautiful, laid-back Goa of old is disappearing due
to pollution, over-development and fears over personal safety. It’s time to
leave Goa, she says while she overlooks an overcrowded Calangute beach,
with hawkers pestering the tourists to buy their wares. Tourism is gradu-
ally turning to be a failing industry in Goa, it is argued. The statistics are
stark and the several bloggers who write, understand the gravity of the
problem. One of the bloggers responds to Deepti Kapoor with the stats
and writes:
Foreign tourism has been falling for the last few years. India News
Network reported that the total number of foreign tourists had
fallen 20% over the last two years. The Times of India said 57,000
foreign tourists arrived in Goa between October and December
2015, compared to the 85,000 in the same period the previous
year. Over 20,000 Russians, the demographic Goa recently relied
on, have cancelled trips. 42% of Russians who had visited in the
last four years said they wouldn’t be coming back. For them, Goa
was too expensive, too dirty, the taxi mafia too aggressive, women
didn’t feel safe, the police were uncooperative (n.p.)
All this speaks volumes about the discontentment which is slowing creep-
ing in among those aspiring to travel to Goa. Bloggers are only being frank
and straightforward and creating awareness about the problems they ex-
perience and foresee for Goa and other visitors to the State. Such blogs
thus serve as eye-openers, not just to prospective travellers to the State,
but also to Goans and local government bodies to undertake a re-look at
the fast deteriorating tourism prospects and to make quick moves to rem-
edy the situation.
Though some years back, Goa was in the top 15 destinations of India
considered safe for solo women to travel, it is no longer so. With recent
unfortunate incidents along the beach belts of the State where foreign
women were victims of sexual abuse by locals, the travellers are gradually
raising eyebrows through their blogs. In the India travel blogs, the coun-
try itself is gradually getting notorious for being unsafe for solo women
82
(particularly foreign women) travelling as tourists. Goa too becomes no

exception, thus making the scenario for women solo travellers quite grim.
Conclusion
Travel blogs about Goa by travellers visiting or even those living in this
State, offer fresh perspectives from the so-called “outsider” about ‘inside’
matters of our State. They unravel the good, the bad and the ugly experi-
ences of the travellers coming to Goa and serve as reflectors to give feed-
back to the tourism industry linked officials and personnel so that they
could undertake timely interventions to remedy the failing situation and
improve the tourism prospects of the State.
Unlike personal diaries, travel blogs become shared web spaces which
illuminate, guide and inspire those who wish to know more about the
State of Goa. They offer kaleidoscopic insights not just to prospect travel-
lers or tourists planning to visit Goa, but also to Goans who assume they
know all about their State.
Works Cited
“The Reality of Being a Digital Nomad in Goa, India.” Global Gallivant-
ing Travel Blog, 3 Feb. 2017, www.global-gallivanting.com/reality-digital-
nomad-goa-india/.
American Expat Living in Goa, India Meet Rachel, www.expatsblog.com
/articles/1675/american-expat-living-in-goa-india-meet-rachel
“Nightlife in Goa: 10 Best Nightclubs, Raves and Party Places in
Goa.” Global Gallivanting Travel Blog, 11 Feb. 2018, www.global-
gallivanting.com/nightlife-ingoa-the-best-clubs-and-parties-in-goa-
india/.
IndiaNewsNetwork. “Over 8500 Regular British Tourists to Goa Cancel Their
Bookings This Year.” indianewsnetwork.in/over-8500-regular-british-
tourists -to-goa-cancel-their-bookings-this-year/
Joshi, Siddhartha. “The Wanderer.” Goa Travel Blog - Goa Beyond the Beaches!,
Blogger, 5 Aug. 2017, www.sid-thewanderer. com/2015/02/goa-beyond-
beaches-travel-guide-to-goa.html.
Kapoor, Deepti. “An idyll no more: why I’m leaving Goa.” The Guard-
ian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Sept. 2016, www.theguardian.
com/travel/2016/sep/07/deepti-kapoor-why-i-am-leaving-goa.
Rachel. “Hippie in Heels.” Facebook, www.facebook.com/ hippieinheelsblog.
Sequeira, Devika. “European Tourist Numbers to Goa are Falling, And That’s
a Worry.” The Wire, The Wire, 25 Sept. 2015, thewire.in/11526/ european-
tourist-numbers-to-goa-are-falling-and-thats-a-worry/.
83
Sharath, Lakshmi. “Goa beyond beaches - Shigmo Festival.” Lakshmi Sharath, 5

Sept. 2017, www.lakshmisharath.com/2015/03/17/goa-beyond-beaches-
the-shigmo-festival/.
“The Best Vegan Food in Goa - Vegan Travel Blog on VeganTravel.Com.” Vegan
Travel, 21 Jan. 2018, www.vegantravel.com/vegan-food-goa/.
TravelTriangle. “Iresh And His Wife Rocked Their Trip To Goa And Here’s
How!” Personalized Holiday Packages, 8 June 2017, traveltriangle.com
/blog/iresh-romantic-trip-to-goa-travelogue/.
TravelTriangle. “Amits Romantic Trip To Goa...” 16 Aug. 2017,
traveltriangle.com/blog/amit-romantic-trip-to-goa/.
TravelTriangle. “8 Most Amazing Places To Visit In Goa In December.” Person-
alized Holiday Packages, 15 Sept. 2017, traveltriangle.com/ blog/places-to-
visit-in-goa-in-december/.
“URBAN.” Urban Travel Blog, www.urbantravelblog.com/trip/goa-india/
Vas, Luís S. R. Veni, Vidi, Goa. Travellers’ Views of Goa, Ancient and Modern. Goa:
Centro de Estudos Indo Portuguese Voicuntrao Dempo, 2011.
Ward, Mariellen. “Choosing the perfect beach in Goa, India.” Breathedreamgo,
2 Aug. 2017.
84
Through the eyes of a traveller-poet:
Goa, yesterday and today
B RIAN M ENDONÇA1
Travel-writing has usually been confined to prose. In this inquiry,

I place my poems on Goa written during my sojourn so far as a
traveller-poet. Though identifying with the larger matrix of India,
the Goa poems have nimbly yielded a collection of a book of verse
by itself. The last decade from my debut volume Last Bus to Vasco:
Poems from Goa (2006) to my blog writings today have tried to
mediate what it means to be a traveller in Goa. In this pursuit I
have shifted genres from poetry to prose, reviews to reportage. Al-
ways the subject has been the shifting signifier – Goa. The first
poem, ‘Requiem to a Sal,’ (1987) lamented the hacking down of a
tree, a horrific reality even today, thirty years on. Similarly there
are poems which are descriptions of the places I have spent time
in like, ‘Good Friday in Cuncolim,’ (2003) or the march of the tides
in ‘May Queen,’ (2004).
T
HIS IS a poetic documentation of a rapidly changing Goa, of a land-
scape under erasure. The prose narratives are based more on inci-
dents, like the killing of a man by villagers in Pernem, or the vast untamed
outback one sees when one travels in Dharbandora taluka for example.
Along the journey several social oddities of each place are noted and
merged in the creative canvas. These minute observations give a sense
of rootedness to the reader with that place. This paper will explore the
terrain of my published writings on Goa and attempt to theorise Goa
through its lens. It will also consider in its purview critical studies on my
work so far.
Documenting Goa
Living away from Goa for most of my life, I have been fascinated by
the way Goa was /is configured. In so many ways it defied description.
1 Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Carmel College of Arts, Science and
Commerce, Nuvem, Goa. brianlibra@gmail.com
One way to set about understanding its projection was to write about it.
Though I primarily write about Goa now in prose, through my weekly
column in the Gomantak Times Weekender, I begin my foray in poetry
with my debut collection of poems titled Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from
Goa self-published from Delhi in 2006.
To document Goa’s social reality in verse was something new. There

were no takers, in terms of publishers, and whoever I approached was
inclined to bin it. When I decided to self-publish the work, I was drawn
more intensely into my poetic practice, since I was the author, the editor,
the publisher, as well as the salesman for my own work. The canvas, how-
ever, was not Goa initially. The canvas was India, written during my years
in Delhi from 1997 to 2010. From those poems I culled out the Goa poems
for a volume on Goa with which I made my debut as a Goan poet. The en-
terprise came to the attention of an aide to Menino Peres, then Director of
Information and Publicity who was travelling to Delhi on the same train
as me, the iconic. Mr. Peres later released an advertisement by the Govern-
ment of Goa, which was featured on the back cover of the book.
As has been mentioned in the theorizing of this seminar, this seminar

seeks to look at the ‘curious’ perceptions of ‘outsiders’ about Goa. In some
ways, as Sushama Sonak observed, I am both an ‘insider’ as well as an ‘out-
sider’ to Goa. This vantage point has enabled me to distil my experience
of Goa and offer it up on a palette, as if it were, a unique slice of India.
The years since the publication of Last Bus to Vasco (2006) were the
years of rapid change in Goa. However the volume contains poems on
Goa from two decades earlier. My title poem ‘Last Bus to Vasco’ (1986)
was written when the bypass was being built at Agassaim to Panjim. In it
I described the quaint road the Kadamba bus used to take as it laboured
on from Panjim to Vasco. It was also the year that there was a move to
rename Vasco da Gama as Sambhaji Nagar. Even if that materialized, I
thought, the name would be preserved in my volume of verse. It was my
attempt to preserve the status quo.
‘Last Bus to Vasco’ the opening poem in Last Bus to Vasco exemplifies
the themes which will underpin my later work. The opening itself is one
of dissolution, a yielding, a melting away into the cosmic universe:
86
Through the eyes of a traveller-poet | Brian Mendonça
Cool zephyrs of night

Under the canopy of the western sky,
Everything dissolves,
Places, smells, memories, distances.
Interestingly, the volume takes it first breath with the ‘brooding Goa Velha
cemetery’ in the second verse of ‘Last Bus to Vasco.’ It ends with the poem
‘The Bells of St. Andrews’ (2005) with fond remembrance:
Those whom we love

Sleep nearby.
Goans have always to mediate loss and they do so in elaborate ways. From
the burial of the dead to the observances at the funeral and after, the de-
ceased are always and memorialised.
The liquidity of the poem ‘Last Bus to Vasco’ comes across with
the merging of the mighty river Jamuna from North India and the river
Krishna from the South. As compared to these the ‘lambent Zuari’ from
Goa, in an act of intimacy ‘receives the prow of the ferry boat in cos-
mic harmony.’ Goa evokes the image of ‘Vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ the
Sanskrit phrase meaning ‘All Creation is one family.’ Today though we do
have souls who profess themselves to be digital nomads working on the
beaches of Goa, at one time even for a phone call home to say you were
going to be late was a trying experience:
Must call home. It’s late.

‘All-lines-in-this-route-are-busy.
Please-call-after-some-time.’
Village rhythms are evoked in ‘Fr. Joseph Rowland Salema’ (1999) written
at the feast of St. Anthony of Siolim. Through the persona of a priest, the
poem comments on the historicity of the moment. There is a melding of
the past and the present here, a hint of the colonial encounter:
Like channels of peace, the rivulets run by

As marigolds of saffron set aflame a wayside khuris.
The tulsi manch metamorphoses into a plinth for a cross
As an old man in kaxti walks with a stick on a bridge.
In ‘Sonya’ (2002) the quest for Sonya becomes a journey of discovery, re-
tracing her steps on the sandy shore. It is a poem which sees Sonya as a
87
citizen of the world with no fixed destination. It is possible to cultivate the

art of aimlessness in Goa:
Basel, Setubal, Goa, Madras

Homes of the self, anchor of the fugitive
Where are you going? Where are you now?
The construction boom in Goa has wiped out vast areas of green cover in
Goa. At what price development? On my furtive visits to Goa from Delhi, I
summed up my lament in ‘Homecoming’(2000):
Gone are the trees

From the hillside green
As the sons of the fathers
Seek homes of their own...
Houses of Goa
Thy death-knell is nigh
As the axis shifts
From squat to high.
Though there are many poems anchored in Goa, there are almost an equal
number written in transit. ‘Ei or ie’ (2005) tries to capture the incorrect
pronunciation of names of places in Goa by migrants in trains coming in
to Goa:
Trouble with the vowels

One the 2450 Dn.
‘Mud-goa comes before
Thi-VIM. Mad-goa is later.’
Goa and India

Though I have self-published two books of verse to date, the other being
A Peace of India: Poems in Transit (2011), the fact remains that the poems
in the two volumes were written concurrently. I did not sit down to write
the Goa poems first and then in another session do the India poems.
This binary between Goa and India, ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ has struck
me as curious. Living more than a decade in Delhi which is culturally very
inclusive, I am curious about Goa’s narrative of ‘we’ versus ‘them.’ A rail
track does not change its complexion when it crosses the state boundary,
nor does the river change its course as you travel over its bridges. Being in
88
a third space like Delhi helped me to use my angst, my saudades to mirror

Goa in my lines. The ache of leaving Goa and loved ones, was only made
more bearable by forming a supportive community away from Goa – one
that welcomed me as their own without distinction of caste or creed.
So my poetry is imbued with the spirit of India, while writing about
Goa. There is a larger canvas out there, a different reality, with a different
set of questions which need to be addressed. Some of these questions are
the abject poverty of people in Jharkhand for example; the eerie silence of
dusk in Srinagar, with its disturbed conditions, and the several instances
of havoc along the coastline of Tamil Nadu due to the wrath of nature.
All these moments have been enshrined in my poems across this country.
And in the same breath, it is possible to see Goa as with its beauty, its
peaceful living conditions and the many times a cyclone has passed over
it, leaving this tiny state untouched – as devout Catholics believe, through
the intercession of Saint Francis Xavier.
Sometimes for a poet boundaries melt away. All that remains is the
immensity of nature. One’s destiny is bounded by the elements, viz. the
sea and the land. We are all fugitives, travelling from one destination to
another trying to find our meaning. Here is a poem written in Portuguese
by me:
Fugitivo
Fugindo
A cidade
Para o mar
O mar
Para a cidade
Sempre. (Enroute Goa Express 2001)
The theme of the fugitive was expanded in an article I wrote from Delhi
for Goa Today in 2001. When it was published I pressed it into the hands
of family and colleagues in Goa and Delhi and was amazed at their re-
sponses. It also brought to the fore the disconnect between the capital
of India and the nuances of Goa – or the poetic life for that matter. Like
Brueghel’s painting ‘The Blind leading the Blind’ each reader confronts
his/her own aporia [blindspot] while engaging with the text. I sewed them
all into a quilt and called it ‘On the Run.’
89
On the Run
‘It’s about the dialectics of self and location.’
‘Hmm. Colourless city.’
‘Carl Sandburg – is that a beer?’
‘Ravished – has my name on it!’
‘Who’s Souza Lobo?’
‘How can you talk about passion with a married woman?’
‘It’s in the clouds. Can’t you write like the others?’
‘You live in the past.’
‘It’s like Icarus being burned.’
‘Delhi, shitty of shitties?’
‘Did Pessoa have a PhD?’
‘like the way you always write about Goa.’
‘Needs polish.’
Aapne Dilli aur Goa ko bilkul mila liya.’
‘It’s so lyrical – reminds me of Kalidasa!’
‘Mention of Saramago adds weight and beauty to your remarks.’
(New Delhi, 2001)
My poems have in fact always been ‘on the run’. Whether in Goa or out
of it, I am a poet in a hurry to write a poem to capture a moment as it
were, as in a photograph. I have done several studies of places when I do a
photo-shoot of the area. I then look at the pictures and then piece together
the lines of poetry on the train on the way back. The impulse to travel is
always there:
Yes I Will Go
Yes I will go
To see my ‘friends’
The rivers, the birds
And the trees
Where the wind calls
And the forests wait
In the stories of an India
Yet to be told.
(Delhi, 2007)
To continue to write is to begin to mediate the equation between Goa and

India. People flock to Goa in search of nirvana. How they get it is any-
body’s guess. As a traveller-poet, I sometimes identify with those tourists
90
who come hoping Goa will not disappoint them. But in marketing Goa, we
seem oblivious to the treacherous trenches we lead our young and youth
to. With new technology, poetry is now being WhatsApped. On the occa-
sion of the BRICS summit, I WhatsApped these lines and sent them off ill
at ease with the state of affairs in Goa:
Good Morning from Goa

Good morning from Goa
The land of bricks,
Where many are gallant
But others just pricks.
Where you can take a ride,
With time on your side,
Get stoned, get honed,
With nowhere to hide.
The hillside is barren
The workers disaffected,
No jobs, no food
Is it rhyme, wine or mine?
Come the pretty girls
Their allure holds sway.
When the night is done
Keepest thy deed at bay?
Enjoy the season
The charters have arrived.
It’s festive time, enGALFing times.
Goa’s greener – not anymore
Prithee, hark now, the rents do show.
(Goa, 2016)
The current vision of Goa, having moved to Goa seven years back is more
pungent and hard-hitting. Gone is the romance and nostalgia. There is a
new concern for Goa and its predicament.
Time/Space
Life can be looked at as existing on the time/space dimension. Both these

realities are acutely experienced by the traveller. Whether s/he has to
catch a train or board a bus, an awareness of time is essential to get
91
you from one place to another. The sense of time is different in different
places.
In Goa time moves slowly – at least that’s what tourist brochures would
have us believe. Life in Bombay – or Delhi – is different, and faster. Time is
associated imperceptible with place. Like they say there are many ‘Indias’
in India, so too I would say there are many ‘Goas’ in Goa – each with their
unique sense of time and space. The village road of Nagoa-Consua is not
the same ascent as the six-lane highway from Old Goa to Panjim. With
faster connectivity on land and on social media, space becomes surreal
– because you are always in transit. Everything is happening at the same
time.
The lens of the traveller is not single. There are many lenses. The first
one is the humanistic – the traveller looks with a benevolent eye on hu-
manity around her/her. S/he may not be able to do very much to lessen
their burden, but at least a recording of their predicament or utter poverty
will establish solidarity with their condition. The second lens is the prac-
tical. If one is too busy courting the muse one is likely to miss the train.
The more a traveller travels, both inside Goa and outside it, the more rar-
efied and distilled the lens becomes. The world indeed is his/her canvas.
It is up to the traveller-poet to make his/her contribution to the world in
his/her lifetime.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Mendonça, Brian. Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa. Self-published, New
Delhi, 2006.
——— A Peace of India: Poems in Transit. Self-published, New Delhi, 2011.
——— ‘A Peace of India: Narrative of a Nation.’ Tribune, Chandigarh, 22 Jan.
2012.
——— ‘A Traveller’s Take on Goa,’ Blogpost. www.lastbustovasco. blogspot.in
Uploaded 4 Apr. 2017. lastbustovasco.blogspot.in/2017/ 04/a-travellers-
take-on- goa.html
——— ‘Saptah, Sonepur and Snows.’ Blogpost. Uploaded 13 Aug. 2017.
www.lastbustovasco.blogspot.in lastbustovasco.blogspot.in/2017
/08/saptah-sonepur-and-snows.html
——— ‘Nagoa to Nerul: Thirty-six Years After School.’ Weekender, Gomantak
Times, St. Inez, Goa, March 2017.
——— ‘Dharbandora.’ Weekender, Gomantak Times, Goa, 2017.
——— ‘Caitan-ya.’ Weekender, Gomantak Times. Goa, 2015.
92
——— ‘Fugitive: On the Run.’ Goa Today, Goa, August 2001.

Secondary Sources
Anant, Ambika. ‘Poems of a Pan-Indian Itinerant.’ Book Review. Muse India.
www.museindia.com/regularcontent.asp?issid=39&id=2856
Malik, Monica. ‘Dr. Brian Mendonca: Inspiring Journeys,’ atblink .blogspot.in 1
March 2014.
Manjushree, K. ‘Interview with Brian Mendonça: A Popular Goan Poet.’
Ashwamegh. Aug. 2016. ashvamegh.net/author-poet-interviews /brian-
mendonca/
Mendonca, Brian. Destination India. www.lastbustovasco. blogspot.in.
lastbustovasco.blogspot.in/2008/11/destination-india.html 14 Nov.
2008.
——— R-Day Eves. www.last bustovasco. blogspot.in lastbustovasco.
blogspot.in/2017/01/r-day-eves-2017.html 26 Jan. 2017.
N., A. ‘Journeys in Verse’. The Sunday Tribune – Books, 3 Sept. 2006,
www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060903/spectrum/book6.htm.
93
Goa through the lens of Europeans
– a revisiting
I RENE S ILVEIRA1
Situated at the crossroads of world spaces, Goa has long been a

traveller’s delight. Their well-documented accounts and pictures
render a bird’s eye view, often missing the essence of the place and
its people. Goa is still at the crossroads of space and time, where
Western itinerants flock for a glimpse into the past, a look into the
future, or to try feel the pulse of present events. They now carry
more sophisticated equipment, and hope to succeed where others
before them stumbled. We focus on three such rewritings of Goa
by contemporary Europeans – Les Instantanés du Monde, Goa is
not India, Contacto Goa – and examine articles, podcasts and film
documentaries in the light of past travel writing and current real-
ity. We revisit Goa from the Western standpoint and hope to find
answers to challenges thrown up by cross-cultural contact.
G
OA , a tiny enclave on India’s west coast, blessed with bountiful nat-
ural resources and pristine beauty has attracted visitors over a
long period of time. Its coast and hinterland, believed to have been com-
manded out of the seas by the gods themselves, are dotted with world-
renowned beaches, gushing waterfalls, serene lakes, rustling streams,
towering jungles inhabited by fauna and flora so diverse as to be the para-
dise of every lay nature lover and sagacious bio-scientist. The sheer vari-
ety of rare birds hovering in the Goan skies call out to both ornithologists
and everyday tourists. Goa and tourism do indeed go together and her
spaces are swamped by local and foreign visitors all year round.
With this tourist-brochure-styled introduction, I seek to highlight
Goa’s appeal to the foreign visitor from times immemorial right down
to the present ones. If, in the past, Goa’s strategic geopolitical position
1 Assistant Professor at the Department of French and Francophone Studies, Goa Uni-
versity. irene29@rediffmail.com
Goa through the lens of Europeans... | Irene Silveira
brought conquerors from near and far to its shores, today, her beaches
and unique cultural ethos work their magic on Indian and foreign tourists
alike. As in the days of yore, Goa has its fair share of coastal and hinterland
visitors, each seeking his or her own answers in what could also be God’s
own country.
God could well have authored her destiny if we are to believe the many
myths and legends surrounding her conception, coming of age and woo-
ing by princes, sultans, and sailors down the centuries. The Portuguese
conquest in 1510 (also said to be under the auspices of a saint) changed
her face drastically. The Cidade de Goa as she now came to be known soon
saw people of all colours walking the streets, and acquired a cosmopolitan
hue, one which Goa maintains till date.
From the sixteenth century onwards, numerous European travellers
headed to the East docked at Goa. Stops at this spot may have been in-
tentional or not; but once they landed, the strangeness of all they en-
countered did not leave them untouched. In their writings, they aspired
to describe and explain what they witnessed in the East, for the benefit
of their countrymen back home. These European travelogues have con-
stituted a valuable source of information for historians and were until re-
cently considered to be more or less objective reflections of Indian condi-
tions of the time.
The present research centres on European accounts of Indian, more
specifically Goan, physical and social topography. I shall begin with a
brief mention of the writings of prominent European visitors to Goa
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, along with highlights of
their impressions. I shall seek to prove that these are indeed merely im-
pressions and not thoroughly devoid of subtle manipulatory tactics. The
second part of my research will focus on present-day travel narratives by
Europeans in Goa in an attempt to redefine new tendencies in writing the
Other. Has the revisiting of a new Goa by Europeans in the twenty-first
century given rise to new, more informed styles of writing travelogues?
What continues to plague or romanticise the European vision? Is a more
truthful and objective rendering expected? These are some of the ques-
tions that will be looked at in this essay. The concluding section will
glimpse into diverse modern travelogues within the larger travel narrat-
95
ives taken up for analysis. Issues pertaining to identity and language will
be touched upon and the travellers’ take on Goa’s uniqueness will be dis-
cussed.
I argue that despite the progress made in representing Goa, the
European gaze continues to function through a European lens, one which
continues to be tinted. Today there is definitely no dearth of knowledge
available on Goa, yet a true knowing of the land and its people may re-
quire a more insightful look.
Writing the Goa of yore
On alighting at the Cidade de Goa, Western travellers in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were confronted with hitherto unseen topography,
climate, flora, fauna, peoples, customs, traditions, and socio-economic
configurations. They were often plagued by strange dreaded diseases and
faced extraordinary challenges. All of these found a way into their travel
writings. The Portuguese Estado da Índia was given enormous attention
in scholarly writing of the time. Portugal ruled the Eastern seas and con-
trolled the spice trade in the sixteenth century; the glory of its golden cap-
ital was unrivalled even in Europe. Goa has been described by the French
adventurer François Pyrard de Laval at the beginning of the seventeenth
century as a city of magnificent streets, churches, squares and palaces.
The Cidade de Goa was, in the seventeenth century, a bustling cos-
mopolitan city with people of different origins and faiths within its walls.
John Huyghen Van Linschoten wrote:
In the towne and island of Goa are resident many Heathens,
Moores, Jewes and all strange nations... using severall customes
and superstitions in religion (222).
Other well-known European travellers like Mandelslo, François Bernier,

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier also attested to the presence of Jews in Goa (Fisc-
hel 39). Many of these Jews were gainfully employed in the Portuguese
administrative setup as translators and agents in the initial period of the
Portuguese rule over Goa.
These favourable conditions were soon to end with the Inquisition,
yet Jews continued to maintain their presence and influence. In the un-
easy political climate of the times, with the threat of the Mughals loom-
ing large, it was crucial that the Portuguese maintain close ties with the
96
Deccani Sultans from whom they had wrested Goa. Diplomatic missions
to the Sultanate were powered by Jewish resourcefulness with Judeo Coje
Abrahão at the helm of affairs. His services were acknowledged by the Por-
tuguese crown and he was granted a handsome pension (Fischel 43).
Particularly worthy of mention is the Jew who lends his name to the
Panjim municipal garden and is known as the father of the European prac-
tice of Indian medicinal plants. In his well-known book, the famous Por-
tuguese savant Garcia da Orta reveals in dialogue form the value of Indian
herbs, aromatics and spices. Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India is a
work structured as a series of conversations between the author himself
and an imaginary character – Dr. Ruano – representing the European aca-
demic tradition with its lacunae. Garcia da Orta was not alone in his criti-
cism of European medicine. According to Cristiana Bastos, although Goa
boasts of the oldest colonial Western-style medical school in Asia from
the 1840s, its director from 1854-71, Eduardo Freitas Almeida questioned
the credibility of its doctors who earned the title but were incapable of
practising what they learnt. In contrast, the native healers were effective,
affordable and popular (770).
Cristiana Bastos highlights the role played by Goan physicians in Por-
tuguese India and Africa and the hybrid nature of the medical practices.
She states that:
imperial powers were not always successful in their attempts to

erase local knowledge. In some situations, they did not even at-
tempt it and, instead, they adopted elements of local knowledge
as much as they brought in, or imposed, the European ways.
On occasion, the traffic between European and local systems
happened both ways, leading to the development of medical hy-
bridisms (768).
It is a well-documented fact that the Portuguese colonial regime pro-

moted hybridism, beginning with Albuquerque himself who purportedly
encouraged marriages between Portuguese soldiers and local women.
However, this racialised narrative leaves room for doubt given the caste se-
gregation prevalent in Indian society and which continued even after con-
version to Christianity. Bastos asserts that the hybridism is rather cultural
in nature, with the adoption of foreign customs by a Goan society firmly
97
attached to native customs and practices (773-774). In the field of medi-

cine, there was no dearth of medical knowledge in India with Ayurveda,
Unani medicine and Goan folk healing practices. That these continued to
be practised in a hybridised form right in the Royal Hospital and the med-
ical school in Goa can be seen to be an outcome of the long hybridisation
process that constituted the Indo-Portuguese.
John Huyghen Van Linschoten, the celebrated traveller from Holland
whose monumental work Itinerario led to the rising of the Dutch sun in
Indian skies, claims that the Portuguese Viceroy, Archbishop and aristo-
cracy preferred Hindu panditos and vaidyas to the Portuguese physicians
of the time (Figueiredo 52). The Italian traveller Gemelli Careri writes that
the doctors from Portugal used to learn with the vaidyas the treatment
of cholera and other tropical diseases, because European methods of dia-
gnosis and therapeutics were unsuitable for these diseases.
Françoise de Valence credits seventeenth-century French travellers to
Goa with describing maladies and remedies of the time. Pyrard de Laval
lists hot fevers, dysentery, and venereal infections as the common dis-
eases prevalent in Goa. Garcia da Orta describes the symptoms of chol-
era which plagued the city of Goa. These epidemics were equally docu-
mented by French travellers Pyrard de Laval and Charles Dellon, and the
malady was later known as mordechi or modechien in French, a corrup-
tion of the Konkani word modachi which alludes to the swift and sudden
death brought in its wake (Valence 115). Narcotics were among the drugs
recommended: datura, notably, has been described by Garcia da Orta as
well as by Jean Mocquet, while opium finds a mention in Dellon’s travel
writing. The French traveller also remarks that the Goan conje (rice gruel)
was used by the pandits to treat dysentery (Valence 117-118).
In addition to writing about the Indian physical and social topography,
the Europeans worked to modify it. Understandably, European travellers
have given vivid accounts of the practice of Sati, which led to its eventual
eradication. However the tone of the writing had nuances that differed
from the native historiographies and justified the colonial enterprise. Sim-
ilar was the case with some Portuguese narratives pertaining to the Goan
village economy – the gaunkari system. Afonso Mexia’s Foral de Usos e
Costumes dos Guancares describes the Comunidade system, under which
98
profits from the land were divided among the shareholders who collect-
ively owned the land. Paul Axelrod and Michelle A. Fuerch highlight the
variations between Mexia’s Comunidade and the Saraswat village of the
Sahyadri Khanda. This Hindu text, through its emphasis on the village
deity and temple, differs remarkably from the Western document in its
reproduction of the village economy (442, 455). The Comunidades again
gave rise to numerous debates in the nineteenth century with Portuguese
Orientalists like the Viscount de Torres-Novas Goa and Constancio Roque
da Costa arguing that the system was unsuited to modern economies and
should hence be abolished. Parallels can be drawn with British represent-
ations of clan-based villages as stateless ancient forms to justify the Raj.
The opposing position was upheld by Xavier and Cunha Rivara, Secretar-
ies to the Portuguese Governor-General who regarded the Comunidades
as an idyllic village republic sadly eroded by the Portuguese government.
The Comunidades live on to this day thanks to such defensive arguments
which nevertheless, did not differ much from Mexia’s original analysis
(Axelrod, Fuerch 457-459).
The winds of change swept swiftly in Portuguese times, and the Goan
landscape saw many additions in fruits and crops. The Portuguese Je-
suits dedicatedly visited orchards and improved the grafts. The fruit of
their labour can be tasted till this day. P.K. Gode opines that the delicious
mangoes, some of which still fetch a high price in the Goan market, were
the fruit of grafting which was introduced in Goan horticulture from the
1550’s onwards (281). Italians visiting India have heaped praise on the
Goan mango and enumerated many of the fruit’s varieties.
Plants, fruits, and spices were richly documented by the foreign trav-
ellers. The exotic botany narrative of the time was in response to the mys-
tery and allure that the spice trade conjured up in the European mind.
According to Saldanha, Chapters 49 to 83 of Linschoten’s Itinerario “intro-
duce exotic fruits like mango, pineapple, and coconut; aromatics (sandal-
wood, frankincense); narcotics (datura, betel, opium, cannabis); and all
the fine spices” (162). The following extract praises the benefits of cloves
to a European audience. The discourse at spice farms aimed at Western
travellers to India today, is not much different and it corresponds to the
larger than life image of Indian spices in the Occidental eyes.
99
The water of greene Cloves distilled is very pleasant of smel, and

strengthneth the hart, likewise they procure sweating in men that
have the Pox, with Cloves, Nut megges, Mace, long and black Pep-
per; some lay the poul der [powder] of Cloves upon a mans head,
that hath a paine in it, that proceedeth of colde. They strengthen
the Liver, the Maw [stomach], and the hart, they further di ges-
tion, they procure evacuation of the Urine, and stop lascativenes
[diarrhea], and being put into the eyes, pre served! the sight,
and foure Drammes being drunke with Milke, doe procure lust.
(Saldanha 162)
In the light of the fact that today’s European tourists often visit spice farms
and local markets, not so much to make purchases as to take in the exotic
sights, smells and sounds, it is but evident that the marketplace would
have also figured in the accounts of European travellers to the Cidade de
Goa. The market in the Goa of old was called the Leilão (auction mar-
ket) and was situated at the Rua Direita (main street). Pyrard de Laval
describes it thus:
Proceeding from this palace [of the Viceroy] to the town, you
enter the most handsome street of Goa, called la Duo drecho, or
“straight.” It is more than 1,500 paces in length, and on both sides
has many rich lapidaries, goldsmiths, and bankers, and also the
richest and best merchants and artisans in Goa, all Portuguese,
Italians, or Germans, as well as other Europeans. This street ends
with a church [de la Sancta Misericordia], the most beautiful, rich,
and highly decorated in Goa.... While this market is afoot, there is
so great a crowd in the street that one can hardly pass (Saldanha
163).
This iconic market street has been immortalised in Linschoten’s drawing

on Goa. What stand out in the scene are the inequalities in class and eth-
nicity. In the midst of the frantic commercial activity, the viewer’s gaze
moves from the black slave girl to the horse in the centre before resting on
the opulent palanquin and richly adorned Portuguese gentry on the right.
Linschoten covers all segments of the population in his account – women,
slaves, prisoners, Mesticos, Castisos, Arabs, Jews and animals. Linschoten
claims to reveal in his Itinerario:
[...] places thus far discovered and known by the Portuguese; to

which are added, not only the description of the habits, polities,
100
and nature of both the Portuguese living there and the native
Indians, and their temples, idols, houses, with the most import-
ant trees, fruits, herbs, spices, and suchlike materials, as well as
the manners of these people, whether religious, political, or eco-
nomic, but also a short narrative of the commerce [...] Everything
described and gathered by the same; very useful, seemly, and
also entertaining for all the curious and lovers of strange things.
(Saldanha 155).
Travelogues thus seemed to be written for the pleasure of the curious

European and for the satisfaction of his urge to acquaint himself with
strange things. Pursuit of the different Other was primordial and the de-
scription that ensued stressed on the unusual. The encounter with this
difference gradually gave rise to what Pramod K. Nayyar calls a “rhetorical
transformation of India” (213). Although meant to be predominantly in-
formative for the benefit of the European readership back home, as reiter-
ated by Linschoten, travellers’ texts were infused with a generous dose of
the marvelous. The initial contact led to an accumulative account border-
ing on exaggeration which soon saw a subtle shift from benevolent abund-
ance to deplorable excess. In the initial years, a mystifying exoticism co-
existed with a demystifying scientific as travellers in awe and amazement
sought to paint the land of the plenty. The pleasant profusion in paradise
was followed by exaggerated tales of horror. In later stages, the Europeans
painted the Indian sphere as deficient. Excess was substituted by a lack,
which evidently needed to be filled. This “iconoclastic moral marvelous”
trend in writing flattened differences among Indian landscapes, emptied
native icons of value and highlighted native moral deficiency; thus paving
the way for a repopulation of the Indian scene with English icons (Nayar
218). Thus writing by visiting travellers served colonial interests in a much
larger sense. Although Nayar’s typology is in reference to English travel
writing in the early colonial period and to India in the larger context, clear
resonances between these early trends and modern Western perceptions
of Goan conditions can be detected.
Recording the Goa of today

A traveller documenting his impressions of Goa in the present technolo-
gically advanced times would resort to more than just the pen. I have thus
selected travelogues which present Goa through audio and video record-
101
ings and are aimed at a wide public reach through the mass media. The
corpus includes travel documentaries in audio or video format by Por-
tuguese, French, German and Russian visitors to Goa.
Nalini de Sousa hails from Portugal but currently lives in Goa from
where she heads Lotus Film and TV Production. She is well known in the
Lusophone world for her documentary series Contacto Goa – aired on the
Portuguese channel RTP and showcasing the close links between India
and Portugal. Sousa’s work is prolific; the series cross the seventy-number
mark and touch on a variety of topics of relevance in Goa. Through its
recording of real, everyday life in Goa and interviews with a great number
of locals and visitors, Contacto Goa has succeeded in bringing Goa closer
to television viewers in far-off Lusophone places.
Les Instantanés du Monde is a book accompanied by a CD and comple-
mented by around ten podcasts. These are essentially snippets taken from
the travel experiences of French globetrotter and blogger Anne Bonneau.
True to their name, the Instantanés du Monde are instants frozen in time,
served with just the right dash of magical sounds to make the listener be-
lieve that they are still around for the savouring. Anne Bonneau has so-
journed in Goa for around two weeks in 2010, and written on the land and
its people in heart-warming prose and poetry. The audio recordings with
her surreal commentary and authentic conversations with Goans from
across the street are sure to seduce any would-be traveller to Goa. Her au-
dio portraits transport the listener into an enchanting Goa that one may
not necessarily encounter on the ground.
In a change of tone, the Austrian Rudolf Gottsberger presents us with
a realistic documentary film on the Goa of today, with its beauty, madness
and filth. The unusual array of visitors is tied to Goa’s northern beach land-
scape (Arambol in particular), and presents a rare view of this land. Travel-
lers vouch for the fact that “you are never alone” in Goa and also confess
“you can find company, you can find loneliness”. The illusion of Golden
Goa – the land of dreams (and shanti times) – is carefully shattered as
Gottsberger exposes the paradoxes that go into the making of present-day
Goa.
In the initial part of my analysis, I shall identify the major tropes in
these travelogues. Undoubtedly the Goa of today is far different from that
102
of the yesteryears. Yet, it is important to look for parallels with the writings
of classical Western travellers. I do expect differences in style to be con-
nected to writers’ experiences and background. In my opinion, it is the
original standpoint that will eventually determine the image captured.
The beautiful topography of the land, its green foliage and rich fruit
described in the past has justifiably been given due attention through
photographs and video footage. Anne Bonneau transports us to this para-
dise via her dreamlike descriptions in sensual prose. The rain of Goa, its
wet earth, enchant time and again. The repetition signals a sense of won-
der and awe and can be likened to the accumulative trend in early English
travel writing. Contacto Goa too, documents the luscious fruit of Goa. In
this case, more than the mango, it is the cashew that appeals. The epis-
ode on the cashew along with interviews with the proprietor of Zantye’s, a
prominent cashew nut processing and exporting firm, brings this popular
fruit and nut to the centre-stage. Modern-day botanist Miguel Braganza
reveals that in Goa the nut was first eaten only in 1928 and that the
cashew itself was a relatively later entrant into the Goan soil (post 1720)
and hence missed making it to Garcia da Orta’s monumental Coloquios
dos simples e drogas da India (“Contacto Goa” 23). Such inter-textuality
between travelogues and centuries is fairly common and of particular in-
terest.
Amongst Contacto Goa’s many interviews, is one which connects with
the travelogue of Linschoten – that of a descendant of the Vaidyas of old.2
This episode stresses on the continued popularity of indigenous medi-
cine, revealing the relation between the owners of present-day iconic
Hindu Pharmacy in Panjim and the well-known Ayurvedic medic Dada
Vaidya. (“Contacto Goa” 61). Indian healing systems proved their value
in the Portuguese era and continue to hold their sway over Europeans
in Goa. Their present popularity among Westerners in Goa is well docu-
mented by Rudolf Gottsberger. The third story in the series testifies to the
effectiveness of Indian healing. Maya hails from Russia and talks candidly
about how she was cured from a serious illness thanks to the meditative
dance form that she now practises and promotes with her friend Tanit.
2 Vaidyas and Pânditos are terms used to designate indigenous doctors in Portuguese
times.
103
The therapeutic dance focuses on physical and mental well-being, and

has influences of Sufi and Indian temple dance practices. The document-
ary also speaks of the appeal of Ayurveda and other ancient Eastern forms
of healing among the Westerners in Goa. (“Goa is not India”).
Gottsberger trains his camera on the Jews that inhabit the Goa of
today; he offers rare video footage of a Jewish wedding on the coastal belt –
a poor attempt at recreating a big fat Indian wedding. The bride arrives on
the beach, dressed in a white wedding gown and riding a decorated horse;
she is unceremoniously assisted by men, rather than by her own maids of
honour (who incidentally are White women wearing red saris); her hus-
band is dressed in Indian festive attire, the marriage is solemnised on
the beach by a Jewish rabbi, and the ceremonial prayer shawl is revealed
to have been bought at Mapusa market from a certain Mohammed. The
bride imagines herself a princess and is accompanied down the streets
and onto the sands by a modest retinue of scantily clad tourists and in-
formally dressed locals. Understandably, the scene does not have much
in common with the illustrious Jews of Goa’s past.
The Gaunkari or Gaonkari system also finds a mention, especially in
Bonneau’s work,3 as do Goan people from different strata of society. In
contrast to the derogatory portrayal of natives by sixteenth-century travel
writers as “palanquin bearers, galley slaves, petty traders, deceitful feud-
atory chiefs, and heathen savages...” (Axelrod, Fuerch 443), Bonneau as
well as Sousa focus on folk tribes and their customs, bakers and vendors,
fisher-women, taxi-drivers, men of religion, musicians, artists, writers, ar-
chitects, intellectuals... This representation of a cross-section of the Goan
populace is certainly in more positive terms, yet leaves much unsaid or
over-interpreted. The listener is left with a false impression that bakers
in Goa have French bakeries4 (Bonneau 83-84), sausage vendors are flu-
ent in five languages – including Portuguese5 (Bonneau 85), every Goan
3 Victor Hugo Gomes in his conversation with Bonneau asserts that Goa’s true heritage
lies in its unique Gaunkari system (“Instantanés 2” 00:03:18-38)
4 The bakery run by Gil Gomes displays the signage “French Bakery”. Its products how-
ever are more Goan than French. Bonneau seems delighted in her find of a “French
bakery” but makes no mention of any Goan bakeries serving baguettes, croissants
and such French fare. She concludes that Goans eat pão (as do the French – le pain)
and both are very similar.
5 The sausage vendor, Florence Lobo, is portrayed to be fluent in multiple languages
104
has music and jazz “in his blood”6 (“Panjim” 00:15:42-48), upper-class in-
tellectuals have made a “pact with the coloniser” and their houses have
“nothing Indian about them”,7 (“Chandor” 00:04:18-24). Scenes are con-
jured up – of football games (with no mention of popular cricket matches),
of an august mansion where coconut oil is purportedly extracted and
which turns out to be a modest house (Bonneau 84). Claims like “it is Por-
tuguese to be drunk in the afternoon”,8 (“Panjim” 00:13:00-32) are evid-
ently either half-truths or exaggerations, rooted in an inadequate know-
ing of the Other. Bonneau confesses her ignorance when she states that
Europeans cannot tell the difference between Andhra Pradesh and Tamil
Nadu. She then applies the same yardstick to Goans claiming that Por-
tugal and France is the same seen from Goa (84). This is entirely incorrect
and most Goans are aware of Portugal and France as being distinctly dif-
ferent.
Gulfs in knowledge are apparently bridged by turning towards one’s
own culture. Faced by an experience of overwhelming strangeness, the
visitor often attempts to correlate with his own culture and reinterprets
the contact with the Other in his own cultural mould. The Other thus
begins to resemble the Self in the mind’s eye. Bonneau sees Goan saus-
ages arranged as a chapelet (rosary), connects the Goan choriz (sausages)
with the European chourisso, draws connections between the Goan pão
and the “pain” (French bread), terms the Goan tea break the “pause café-
tartine”; she has also reinterpreted the Goan bhatcar in the Konkani stage
tiatr as the “Arlequin”9 of French theatre.
Bonneau is delighted to stumble upon a French bakery (which ironic-
including Portuguese. It is highly improbable that she is capable of communicating

in Portuguese with the exception of a few mispronounced phrases.
6 Alex Fernandes claims that Goans have music and Jazz in their blood. Bonneau is
merely documenting a stereotype. Not all Goans are necessarily Jazz music fans.
7 Bonneau makes this assertion following her visit to the Menezes Braganza house in
Chandor, and her encounter with Aida de Menezes Braganza, a descendant from the
family of Luís de Menezes Bragança, the famous Goan journalist known for his anti-
colonial writing. Bonneau has mistaken the true identity of the Goan Catholic elite
and assumed that they had nothing Indian about them. The fact remains that many
Goan elites were proud of their Indian roots and spoke out against the colonizer.
8 Bonneau is again providing a stereotypical representation, which is far from the truth.
9 Arlequin (or the Harlequin) is a typical character in French theatre. Bonneau identi-
fies the bhatcar character common in Goan tiatr with Arlequin.
105
ally only bears the name and serves no French bread, of the likes of crois-
sants and baguettes, both of which are however available in Goa), to dis-
cover that a Goan is interested in environmental and social issues, like
so many French people. She has found a Victor Hugo in Goa (surnamed
Gomes) – and his name is music to her ears! “C’est son nom, Victor Hugo”,
she proclaims triumphantly10 (Bonneau 88). In matters relating to reli-
gion too, she draws on her native cultural representations: she compares
the offering baskets at church in the two countries, and is impressed by
the Sãn João feast in Goa. She unwittingly terms the local Catholic tra-
dition of jumping in the well as “pagan”.11 (“Saligão” 00:13:27-14:10). Al-
though these are minor aspects that do not appear to make a great dif-
ference in the portrayal of Goa, they serve as indicators of the viewpoint
through which the French traveller sees Goa.
Despite some attempts in stretching one’s imagination, Bonneau’s
documentary may be held in stark contrast with its German counterpart.
Magical Goa turns dark and morbid in Goa is not India. Repulsive im-
ages of cripples crawling, woman coolies running behind taxis, haggling
vendors and a narrative of Goans being out to cheat every foreigner per-
vade that account. This supposedly rampant behaviour is rationalised by
the European as a sort of return colonisation. Having been exploited in
the past, the natives thus purportedly see Europeans as a “walking wallet”
to extort money from. (“Goa is not India”, Rudolf Gottsberger.) The focus
is on Westerners living and doing business in Goa. The local police are ma-
ligned for taking bribes but also for doing their duty and enforcing secur-
ity measures which become a hindrance to European business activities.
The rhetoric opposes the “They” to “Us” and presents the natives and the
Europeans as watertight compartments and warring entities. Indians are
portrayed as inefficient and incapable of building a bridge in less than 15
years (“Goa is not India”, Elena Slovush). Ironically the travel writer also
confesses that he would like to know Indians better.
Knowing the Other entails spending time with the Other, inattent-
10 “It’s his name, Victor Hugo”. Bonneau alludes to Victor Hugo, the monumental French
writer known for his interest in social causes.
11 The jumping in the well tradition linked with the São João or Sãn João Feast can hardly
be termed pagan or non-Christian merely because it is not celebrated in the same
manner here as in the West.
106
ive, unbiased observation and fruitful conversation. Speaking the Other’s

language and using interpretative services where required are expec-
ted to lessen the Tower-of-Babel effect. Although the classic European
travelogues of past centuries were for long preferred in academic circles in
view of their objectiveness and freedom from pressures exerted by the In-
dian power classes and a familiarity with the sights of India, Eugenia Van-
ina questions the veracity of these accounts by pointing to the linguistic
inadequacies of the Western travellers, very few of whom were proficient
in the native languages (270-271). Hence, the importance of language in
contacts with natives and subsequent observations cannot be overlooked.
The Western texts are today examined in the context of their writers’ socio-
economic background and home country conditions. They are no longer
viewed as objective sources of information but as interesting renditions
of the Indian scenery, duly coloured by the writers’ stereotypes and con-
structs of the Indian Other.
Subsequent to this research, I argue that knowledge of local languages,
and close links with the local population in its diversity can yield a more
truthful version. Goa is not India is primarily in English with some parts in
German, Les Instantanés du Monde is in French interspersed with English
and at times Konkani. It is noteworthy that the French is mainly a trans-
lated voice-over of the original English and that the documentary maker
found it pertinent to enlist the services of a Goan proficient in French to
interpret and facilitate her interactions with the Goan landscape. On the
other side of the spectrum is Contacto Goa, which although predomin-
antly Portuguese, registers English, Konkani, Hindi, Marathi, and French
through its conversations with different sections of the population. A
voice seems to be given to all communities in Goa, and Hindu culture and
way of life is sufficiently represented. Les Instantanés du Monde – the fruit
of a two-week long maiden voyage – over-represents the Catholic com-
munity and highlights the Portuguese face of Goa while eclipsing its In-
dian side. In the case of Goa is not India, the entire local population is
silenced in favour of the European voice.
Travelogues within travelogues
Travel narratives are often interlaced with other travel stories which may
be in to Goa, or out of Goa. Sousa interviews folk artists and dhalo dance
107
performers who evoke their trips to Rajasthan and to “Reshia” (Russia)

(“Contacto Goa” 1). Similar is the account of José Custodio Faria’s days in
Portugal and France, and the famous incident where his father is repor-
ted to have encouraged him with these words uttered in Konkani – kator
re bhaji.12 The power of words is scientifically acknowledged today as the
power of suggestion. Isabel da Santa Rita Vaz13 in her conversation with
Sousa labels Abade Faria as a son of this soil and claims that the Goan
hero never did stop being a Goan. This particular episode of Contacto
Goa pits Goans against Portuguese by bringing to the fore understated ele-
ments regarding discrimination against Goans which was to culminate in
the Pintos’ Revolt masterminded by Catholic priests (“Contacto Goa” 26).
Another illustrious son of Goa whose travel tales are recorded by
Sousa is Francisco Luís Gomes, the Prince of Intellectuals, who fought for
the democratic rights of Goans in the Portuguese Parliament. An anecdote
is told in vivid tones: In Portugal, Gomes speaks about the beauty and
riches of his land. He says the natives are so rich, that they do not wash
their dishes after meals; they merely throw them out (“Contacto Goa” 36).
The plates he referred to were probably made of leaves and not of fine
porcelain as would have been imagined by his European audience. Mul-
tiple ways of seeing the same reality characterise inter-cultural meeting
points. Alex Fernandes, Goan portraitist and photographer, who lived and
worked in Kuwait, confesses to Bonneau that despite learning Arabic dur-
ing his time there, he still had to deal with cultural differences in social
behaviour vis-à-vis women in the Arab world (“Panjim” 00:03:10-35).
Goa has seen a wide range of travellers down the centuries. Some
are paradoxically situated between two worlds, having sojourned in Goa
and in the West. Others are of Goan origins... such as Wendell Rodricks14
who came down from France upon being exhorted by a lady at the Yves
Saint Laurent fashion house, to look to his homeland for inspiration (“Col-
12 A phrase used in local parlance to encourage and boost morale. José Custodio Faria’s
father is reported to have uttered these words in Konkani and spurred him on, in a key
incident when he was to speak in public in Europe. The words did have their desired
effect and more. They probably inspired Faria to research on the power of the human
mind and present hypnotism to the world.
13 Retired English professor and theatre personality in Goa.
14 Well-known fashion designer from Goa. Lived in France.
108
vale” 00:01:55-4:25); and Remo Fernandes15 who in a reversal of travel

trends, was inspired to be an Indian hippie in Europe. (“Siolim” 00:01:00-
29). Both speak to Bonneau in French. Then there is Nalini Sousa herself
who traces her origins to Goa. In an interview with Sousa, Anuj Timblo,
on vacation from the United States, gives credit to his Goan family for
permitting him to pursue his dreams in music, and to Indo-Portuguese
Goa for being his muse (“Contacto Goa” 2). Margaret Mascarenhas has
also returned to Goa from America and collects art by Goa-based artists
when she is not penning novels on Goa.16 She expands the definition of
the Goan artist to include all artists creating out of Goa. Mafalda Mascar-
enhas is one such Western artist among the many who see Goa as an ideal
place to unleash their creativity (“Contacto Goa” 3).
That Goa is populated by Europeans who live and work out of the
place is given much credence by Goa is not India. However, the Europeans
are shown to interact mainly among themselves and to do business in this
land which alternately attracts and repulses them. On the other hand is
Sousa’s narrative where Europeans live and work and create together with
locals in an attempt to add to Goa’s financial and cultural value. Episodes
dedicated to architecture explain that the architectural style typical of this
state is veritably Indo-Portuguese in character. It is no longer Portuguese
or European, rather the original creation of the Catholic and Hindu elite in
Goa (“Contacto Goa” 4,5). Contacto Goa’s stress on the Indianness of Goa
is unmistakable. The makers of the documentary series give enormous
footage to Hindu and Indian customs, evoking prehistoric Neolithic set-
tlement sites, Hindu gods, temples and festivals, folk dances, ancient deit-
ies, Maratha vestiges and the like, all narrated in English and in local lan-
guages, aptly translated into Portuguese for the global Lusophone audi-
ence.
And Goa is....?
Just as in centuries gone by, recent narratives have attempted to capture

the essence of Goa and reconstruct it for the Western viewer. Anne Bon-
neau has done it beautifully, conjuring up magical imagery of a Golden
15 Famous Indian pop star. Of Goan origin. Travelled through Europe.

16 Her acclaimed work includes the novel Skin amongst others.
109
Goa through poetic reading, realistic sounds, authentic noises17 that sur-
prisingly prove to be music to the ears. Everyday marketplace haggling
and the noise of blaring horns are transformed into sweet sounds. The
rain is magical and the muddy slush is pleasing to the touch (Bonneau
88). Goa is wonderful beyond compare! Rudolf Gottsberger works at the
other end of the spectrum, beating the drums about Goa’s supposed in-
numerable failures. The multitude of negatives is appalling. Goa seems to
bear all that is unwanted in great measure – corruption, apathy, filth. In
addition, the moral values of the natives are questioned, thus creating a
space for the traveller. Natives are portrayed as corrupt, unprofessional,
lazy, and undependable, inferring that the Westerners are far more cap-
able of running successful businesses in Goa. In the past too, travellers
juxtaposed the Enlightened Self with the Other, drawn up as a savage in
their eyes. Parallels with Nayar’s typology stand out, as the two narratives
(Bonneau and Gottsberger) show a dramatic shift from excessive beauty
to exaggerated horror before arriving at a moral marvellous and casting
doubts on the value of the native way of life.
Of the three narratives examined, that of Contacto Goa alone seems
fairly authenticated and objective. Bonneau’s story-telling is highly
emotive and exotic, and she deals with the unusual by linking it in some
way to her own culture. Gottsberger is extremely critical and contrasts
Goa’s deficiencies with the supposed plenty of Western culture. Overall,
it is Sousa’s informative and interpretative presentation that through the
use of multiple sources – Indian, Indo-Portuguese and Portuguese – suc-
ceeds in constructing Goa as a multicultural entity. The vantage point, in
this case, is no longer the West. She moves from her comfort zone into the
everyday Goa and does not hesitate to look back at Portugal with a critical
eye.
Goa’s mysterious allure lies in her contradictions. In the past, West-
ern travellers attempted to define her as the Rome of the Orient. “Goa is
not India,” firmly states Leon Rebelsky. Gottsberger lends his approval by
entitling his documentary accordingly. Bonneau too assumes that “there
17 Bonneau intersperses her narration with local music and sounds – singing, bargain-
ing, traffic, rain etc.
110
is nothing Indian in this house”18 during her visit to the Menezes Bragan-
ca House in Chandor, overlooking the stellar presence of Luís Menezes de
Braganca and his anti-colonial writings. She later arrives at the very same
conclusion – “Goa is not India”19 (“Panjim” 00:08:40-49). Despite a sem-
blance of valid evidence, these attempts at defining Goa remain factually
incorrect and largely incomplete. The French and the German narratives
define Goa by an absence and a negation, leaving much unsaid.
So what is Goa? The version delivered by Contacto Goa presents this
space as essentially Indo-Portuguese. Nalini Sousa answers the enigma by
showcasing facets of Goan culture that are Indian and Portuguese while
stressing on the confluence of the two. Synthesizing forces such as the
sounds of bhajans sung in a Christian church are given due representation
in many episodes.
An encounter with the Other produces varied responses. Thierry Wil-
helm – world traveller – enjoys the interpersonal encounter and the cross-
cultural exchange in the course of his travels. However, he states, as did
the Western travellers of the past centuries, that he wishes to satisfy his
curiosity (“Goa is not India”). Are accounts of the East meant primarily
to satisfy the curiosity of the Western traveller and audience? In my con-
clusion, I choose to reflect on Mafalda Mascarenhas’ reaction vis-a-vis In-
dian tourists. In a candid conversation with Contacto Goa, this Portuguese
artist in Goa states that she finds the sari to be a sensual garment. She ex-
plains that to the Western gaze a bikini on the beach is regular fare while
a sari is erotic. However, she is acutely aware that the reverse is the case of
the Indian gaze. (“Contacto Goa” 3). The absence of a derogatory tone in
her reflection on Western and Indian perceptions is commendable. This,
in my opinion, is an intercultural stand where an individual sees the Self
and the Other, is conscious of the differences in position, and yet accepts
them without judgement.
Travels are journeys undertaken – from the homeland to alien coun-
try, from the Self toward the Other. European travellers came to Goa and
re-interpreted their experience of the land and its people in their writings.
18 “...rien d’indien dans cette demeure”- Bonneau’s original translated as “there is noth-
ing Indian in this house”.
19 “Goa n’est pas l’Inde” – Bonneau’s original translated as “Goa is not India”.
111
Their travel tales are true, but only to a point. As people travel in unpre-
cedented ways in today’s world, the Self encounters the Other in newer,
more varied forms. Skilful navigation of meeting points between cultures
is a real challenge thrown open to all modern day travellers.
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114
Reconstructing Goa through travel narratives:
a study of select writings
from Manohar Shetty’s Goa Travels
A KSHATA BHATT & N AFISA OLIVEIRA 1
Today, travel writing encompasses a wide range of writings diversi-

fied by intent, content and style of narration. Whether it is a self--
conscious travel memoir which seeks to amalgamate the partic-
ular with the universal or a travel blog written with a backpack-
er’s enthusiastic immediacy, every narrative of travel literature is
a palimpsest which contains perceptions about geography, demo-
graphy, landscape and mindscape, all of which are coloured by
the writer-traveller’s vision. Goa – the land of many metaphors
– has often found a place in the written word. Undoubtedly a fa-
vourite of wanderlust dreams since time immemorial, Goa has
barely experienced the dearth of curious travellers and explorers.
Yet, this essay argues, the contemporary image of Goa as vivid
in glossy tourist brochures invariably plays to the galleries – its
sun, sand and susegaado – neatly fitting into a fourth ‘s’ that
has come to define Goa’s touristic identity – stereotype. This ‘all-
encompassing’ popular paradigm, however, fails to do justice to
the inherent variegation and verve which is a part of Goa’s larger
narrative – its diverse cultures, dialects, festivities, peoples and a
systematic syncretism which is unique to a land that has endured
dynamic dialectics. Working through the baseline of select writ-
ings from Goa Travels: Being the accounts of travellers from the
16th century to the 21st century, this essay wishes to study and
analyse the reconstruction(s) of Goa through the travellers’ lens in
view of Goa’s increasing tourist influx and visibility on the global
map.
1 Bhatt is Assistant Professor at the Dhempe College of Arts and Science (ak-
shatabht89@gmail.com), and Oliveira is Assistant Professor at the Goa University
(nass2u@rediffmail.com).
T
HE phenomenon of travel has been an integral part of the human
journey. Whether it was a mandatory seasonal migration, a need to
know the unknown or a conscious effort to map the geographic terrain in
which humans found themselves, humans carried a story as they travelled
– a new knowledge coloured by perspective and imagination. Not all travel
stories, however, got documented in the written form. Some transmuted
as lore – oral records that were passed on from one generation to another.
However, although not embossed in the written word, travel stories have
always been a part of the larger human narrative – of humans’ tryst with
their environment, of their desire to locate themselves in the vast and of-
ten confounding geography around them and of the need to map their
own identity vis-a-vis the terrain in which they found themselves.
Travel narratology
Today, travel writing encompasses a wide range of writings diversified by

intent, content and style of narration. As literary forms, we argue, travel
narratives defy rigid categorisation. For instance, it may be difficult to as-
certain whether a travel narrative which claims objectivity as its intrinsic
value has not been influenced by the preconceived notions or the biases
of the author. It is also, similarly, difficult and perhaps inappropriate to
write off a travel memoir as an authentic documentation of facts if one
looks at it as a mere record of personal experiences. Whether it is a self-
conscious travel memoir which seeks to amalgamate the particular with
the universal or the modern-day travel blogs which are coloured by wan-
derlust visions as well as the immediate visibility that online media de-
mands, the discursive matrices of travel accounts reveal that every docu-
mentation is informed by the writer’s sense of perception and purpose. Al-
though documented more often than not through first-hand experiences,
travel entries have been considered to be problematic sources of inform-
ation. This is perhaps because of the fact that in an attempt to delineate
travel experiences, the writer of these accounts willy-nilly tries to define
the ‘other’. This ‘other’ could be the landscape, the cultures or the peoples
one encounters on a travel experience. This endeavour of defining the
other, with or without political agenda, is often influenced by the ideo-
logical baselines of the writer.
116
Shetty’s Goa Travels | Akshata Bhatt, Nafisa Oliveira
Travel writing and the imperial agenda
Travel narratives written from early sixteenth century have been studied
by critics in an attempt to understand the complex rubrics involved in the
European imperial and colonial expansion. For instance, contending that
travel accounts are connected with important historical transitions, critic
Mary Louise Pratt in her work Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcul-
turation (2003) opines that written discourses of colonial travel narratives
not only encode, legitimise and underline the aspirations of European
economic expansion and empire but also expose an obsessive need that
the imperial centre feels to ‘know itself’ by presenting and re-presenting
its peripheries and its others. In doing so, these travel accounts do not
merely reflect places – they represent and reconstruct them, informed by
their own socio-political and cultural paradigms.
In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (2003), critics Griffiths, Ashcroft
and Tiffin further bring out the dynamics of the issue of representation.
They assert that “in both conquest and colonisation, texts and textuality
played a major part” (93). In enlisting the kind of European texts which
captured the non-European subject within European frameworks of re-
ductionist stereotypes, the critics mention “anthropologies, histories and
fiction” (93). The researchers of the present paper argue that travel nar-
ratives can also be considered as veritable literary frameworks through
which the colonial agenda was foregrounded. Masquerading as naive ac-
counts of personal experiences, travel narratives, intentionally or other-
wise, participated in the process of otherisation and the discursive recon-
struction of the colonies.
It is in light of this argument that this essay wishes to study select
entries from Manohar Shetty’s Goa Travels. Goa’s contemporary status as
a tourist destination is well-established. The glossy brochures aimed at
alluring tourists from around the world unapologetically play to the gal-
leries – selling the land as a place for fun, frolic and abandon. In the lar-
ger economic paradigm, these narrations informed by popular stereotype
increase Goa’s visibility on the global map. However, a lot is lost in this
metaphorical translation. Goa’s identity as a land of many metaphors –
of variegated cultures, syncretic traditions, diverse peoples and more im-
portantly significant historical transitions – is conspicuous by its absence
117
in the Brand Goa of the contemporary tourist’s imagination. In doing so,

these representations also participate in the ‘otherization’ of Goa by exoti-
cising it. However, in contemporary times, a lot of counter-narratives have
emerged which challenge and even deconstruct the stereotyping, voci-
ferously putting forth the view that Goa’s distinctness should not reduce
it to the status of the marginalised ‘other’ in the contemporary socio-
economic polarities.
In light of this, the travel-entries incorporated in Manohar Shetty’s
Goa Travels open up a new, multidimensional vista to the politic of
travel narratology. In the entries selected for the study, there is a semi re-
presentation of the land and the ways of its people. Through select entries,
this paper will revisit Goa through the travellers’ lens in order to gauge the
underlying narratives which have informed the multiple layers of Goa’s
identity over the years.
Study of select entries
As mentioned earlier, Goa’s scenic beauty often becomes the selling point
of the touristic agenda. This aspect of the Goan landscape finds repres-
entation in early travel narratives incorporated in Goa Travels: Being the
accounts of travellers from the 16th century to the 21st century (2014) too;
but apart from a sheer fascination with the topography, these accounts
also speak about the recuperative and restorative qualities of the land.
Pietro Della Valle, the Italian composer-musicologist who visited Asia in
the Renaissance period, for instance, records that,
In Goa, likewise, for the most part, the beginning of the Rain is
in the first days of June; yet sometimes, it anticipates, and some-
times falls sometime later, with little difference... [b]y this Rain,
the heat diminished and the earth, which before was dry and all
naked becomes clothed with new verdure and various colours of
pleasant flowers and especially the air becomes more healthful,
sweet and more benign (81).
The travel narrators, however, like their predecessors, were keenly aware
of the commercial benefits of the land and recorded the economic poten-
tial of Goa which may have contributed in the colonial extension of the
Portuguese imperial power in the land. Calling it a land which is ‘exceed-
118
ingly fertile’, Duarte Barbosa, the writer and offer in early sixteenth cen-
tury Portuguese India, speaks of Goa as a city which is
very great, with good houses, well girt about with strong walls,
with towers and bastions. Around it are many vegetable and fruit
gardens, with fine trees and tanks of sweet water with mosques
and heathen temples. Here the Hydalcam had a great revenue as
well from the land as from the sea (4).
The identity of Goa and its peoples as a palimpsest of variegated cultures

finds representation in the travel accounts. For instance, the seventeenth-
century French navigator François Pyrard de Laval describes a woman as
she appeared at the mass,
The scene is a medley of the Occident and the Orient, of the

Latin and the Indian... of the Catholic and the Pagan... Her gown
is gold brocade, which glows under a mantle of black silk gauze.
She comes riding in a palanquin, seated on a Persian carpet and
propped on velvet cushions (76).
Some of the travel accounts deconstruct the processes by which the early
colonisers consolidated their position in the colonies by assuming new
identities and restructuring social hierarchies in the terra nova. For in-
stance, Pyrard de Laval speaks about the arrival of the Portuguese colon-
isers in India and says,
Many of the soldiers were ex-convicts, released for the purpose,

and all belonged to the lowest class, but as soon as they landed
in India they became gentlemen [...] The real nobility winked at
this practice. If Indians could be induced to believe that all Por-
tuguese were aristocrats, or, at least, that all Portuguese in India
were gentlemen of quality, so much the better (72).
The view is reinforced by yet another Frenchman, the gem merchant and
traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier when he writes,
The Portuguese who go to India have no sooner past the Cape of

Good Hope than they all become fidalgos or gentlemen, and add
Don to the simple name of Pedro or Jeronimo by which they were
known when they embarked; this is the reason why they are com-
monly called in derision ‘fidalgos of the Cape of Good Hope’. As
they changed their status, so also they change their nature... (118).
119
When reading the various entries, a few thematic discrepancies become

apparent to the readers. Pietro Della Valle, while discussing widow burn-
ing (Sati), mentions in his excerpt that it was prohibited by Afonso de Al-
buquerque when he took the city of Goa and that it was a reproach to
the British Government that not until the year 1829 was the practice of
widow-burning forbidden by law in British territories. Perhaps he wishes
to indicate that the Portuguese were ahead in reform as compared to the
British. In the seventeenth century, there arose colonial rivalry among
the European imperial powers who were vying for supremacy. Consider-
ing the fact that travel books were vital to imperialism, emphasising on
this legal move would be a positive step on the part of the Portuguese to
expand and strengthen their colonies. “Civilising” the natives would in-
clude eradicating any anachronistic and decadent practices such as Sati,
a custom which unquestionably was a social evil which needed to be ad-
dressed. Even today, the law bequeathed by the Portuguese has been gen-
erally regarded as fair, if not fine.
In the vein of law and morality, several writers have constructed the
identity of the imperial subject as depraved and in need of being tamed.
Jacobus Canter Visscher (1692-1735), the Dutch minister who arrived on
the Malabar coast in 1717, claims, “There is no place in the world where
[the] law is less regarded than here” (160). Most of the European colonial
powers through interpellation would convince the colonized nations that
they were primitives in need of civilisation. This ideological hold was the
strongest weapon of colonialism. While these derisive accounts would
constitute the Empire for its readers, they would justify the cause and
presence of imperialism on the other. In their respective pieces, François
Pyrard de Laval, historian José Nicolau da Fonseca, and the German ad-
venturer J. Albert de Mandelslo question the chastity to be found in the
place. To quote Mandelslo,
The men there are so jealous of their wives that they permit not
their nearest relations to see them: for chastity is so strange a vir-
tue in those parts, that there is no woman but contrives all the
ways imaginable to pursue her enjoyments, never minding the
breach of those laws which God and nature hath imposed upon
them, though the frequent misfortunes which happen upon that
occasion should engage them to be more curious and reserved
120
(114).
In his paper on “Travel Writing and Ideology”, H.S. Chandalia opines,

“Western travel writing coincides with the colonial expansion of the em-
pire.” In keeping with the assertion of the West that the colonised nations
were in need of being civilized and that consequently it was almost an
act of kindness bestowed upon them, descriptions of the people as “hea-
thens” and “pagans” is explicable. One particular writer stands out in this
regard, though there are others who have written of Goa in a patronising
manner. Richard F. Burton scathingly remarked, “It would be, we believe,
difficult to find in Asia an uglier or more degraded-looking race than that
which we are now describing” (177). He goes on to declare, “This race is
decidedly the lowest in the scale of civilized humanity we have yet seen”
(180). Demeaning the colonised people may have been a necessity in or-
der to assert their superiority and justify civilizing the so-called “savage”;
or it may have been a total preoccupation with the Self and misconstruc-
tion of the Other.
However, Denis L. Cottineau de Kloguen, writing in the 1800s, differs
in his description of Goa saying,
It is certain that the authors of the life of St. Francis Xavier them-
selves, though Portuguese, give a dreadful account of the state of
morals in Goa... [O]n the contrary it would be difficult to find a
community of the same number of individuals, pursuing a more
regular, tranquil and moral conduct, than that of the present in-
habitants of Goa; very seldom, indeed, does there happen any
misconduct among the females, not only of the first respectabil-
ity, but of the great majority of the population... quarrels are very
rare, and murders, or even duels, are still more so... (173).
It is pertinent to note that there are differences in the narrative of vari-

ous authors. This may be related to the target-readership that the writer
wishes to address, the purpose of the account as well as the writer’s in-
dividual personality. Some writers may have been more concerned with
enabling the Europeans back home to imagine this Empire of which they
were in control. Travel narratives are indeed what David Spurr has called
“the rhetoric of empire”.
The change in the global political scene may have led to a change in
the tone of travel writing as well. One can find in Graham Greene’s ac-
121
count of liberated Goa, a different portrayal of the state from the ones
above. There is an objectivity apparent in the narrative and the author
avoids being judgmental. His understanding of the state and the people
is profound. His observations range from, “The far-ranging Goan has loy-
alty to his village you seldom find elsewhere,” to “Goan hospitality will not
cease till the cellar is empty” (251-254).
The pieces towards the end of the anthology differ in tone, as well as,
in narration from those in the beginning. There may have been an inclina-
tion in the traveller to integrate with the Other and internalise the experi-
ence, rather than othering the outside world. In the same vein, Hemendra
Singh Chandalia opines,
Besides the quantity and variety, travel writing in the twentieth

century has grown into a more complex kind of writing where
it mixes adventure, landscape, emotion and longing with a con-
scious exploration and depiction of an ideology also. A journey
outside, more often than not, corresponds with a journey inside
the self... Having come to the end of the journey, he records the
experiences of not just the physical distances negotiated, but
also the mental and spiritual experiences felt by him. At times,
his entire personality undergoes a transformation and returns a
changed man with a new understanding of life, a new ideology.
In ‘The Contemporary Traveller’ sub-section of Goa Travels, the journal-

ist Homer A. Jack gives a vivid description of his experience in the piece
‘Hunting Satyagrahis’. His analysis of the event stems from logic and an un-
derstanding of human nature. He says, “I think it correct to assume that
people everywhere are more preoccupied with problems of food and fam-
ily than with politics” (244).
Another narrative in this section, by Helene Derkin Menezes, is reflect-
ive of the shift in focus from the political to the personal in the history
of travel writing on Goa. In her entry, ‘Like no other place on earth,’ she
muses while on a holiday, “This is nirvana. How can something so simple
be so indulgent?” (272).
The shift in the tone of travel narratives is an indication of the writers’
desire to assimilate the unfamiliar, to accept the other, and to arrive at
an understanding of a different culture. Not a culture that is ‘higher’ or
‘lower’, but distinct and perhaps having a charm of its own.
122
Conclusion
In speaking about the issues of representation in colonial and travel dis-
courses, the editors Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin as well as Mary Louis
Pratt speak about the dichotomic otherisation in European literary dis-
courses, stating that in establishing the colonial subjects as the other
these texts establish the colonial masters as the centre by implicitly giving
them the power to re-present and represent. In fact, this is true of most
travel narratives – in context of post-structuralist perspectives, it would
be an error to believe that travel narration carries an innocent reflection
of the world which it describes. In fact, it may be internally fallacious to
categorise travel narratives into rigid genres of fact and fiction for one can
see an inevitable interplay of both. What is also evident in these travel
narratives is a fact that the critics mentioned above underline too that in
representing the ‘other’, the narrators of travel writings actually attempt
to define the ‘self’. In this sense, travel writing is not just an external pro-
cess of recording; it is also an internal process of self-validation. The travel
entries in Goa Travels also display similar matrices. In fact, it is interesting
to note that there is a robust competition among the European travel nar-
rators, as they describe colonies other than those that their own countries
have colonised.
In this sense, there is a constant shifting and re-shifting of centres
and a process of otherisation not just in the master-subject paradigm, but
even in the master-master paradigm. What is conspicuous in its presence,
as is in the larger imperial discourse, is the silence or rather the “mute-
ness” of the signified. Although there are entries in which the ‘empire
writes back’, Goa Travels opens up a larger paradigm in travel research to
talk about the implicit process of reconstruction of places and creation of
spaces that happens willy-nilly in all travel narratives.
Filipina poet and critic Dinah Roma-Sianturi raises some pertinent
questions about the future of travel writings when she opines,
Recent travel theory books are often introduced in a growing

standardized manner. It begins with a reminder of how there has
been a resurgence in critical attention to travel writing over the
past decades alongside commentaries on how the belated recog-
nition of travel writing genre has been on account of its hetero-
geneous nature. It crosses boundaries and unsettles the conven-
123
tions of other disciplines. It is both fact and fiction. It was for a

long time viewed [as] amateurish and sub-literary until finally, the
introduction touches on its so-called “imperial origins”. And it is
here [that] the arguments begin to tread on sensitive grounds. The
key question that confronts contemporary travel theory involves
the very question that launched a long-standing investigation [of]
the genre. Can it divest itself of its imperial origins? Can it, des-
pite being reminded of its violent beginnings, move forward and
achieve discursive maturity (qtd. in Youngs 3).
Today, as pertinent discourses of post-modern narration, travel writings

have not remained self-enclosed. The important presence of travel narra-
tions, more often than not informing tourism trends, cannot be ignored.
It is pivotal to view travel narratives not merely as literary documents but
as significant socio-cultural commentaries which can impact and relev-
antly shape the reconstruction of a region’s identity. In light of this, travel
entries from Goa Travels: Being the accounts of travellers from the 16th cen-
tury to the 21st century can play a noteworthy role in facilitating a further
discussion on the role of travel writings as a distinct genre in the larger
twenty-first-century human narrative.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Post-Colonial Reader. Rout-
ledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003.
Chandalia, Hemendra Singh. Travel Writing and Ideology. Academia.Edu.
www.academia.edu/8213786/Travel_Writing_and_Ideology
Pratt, Marie Louis. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Francis
& Taylor. 2003.
Shetty, Manohar. Goa Travels: Being the accounts of travellers from the 16th cen-
tury to the 21st century. Rupa & Co., 2014.
Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel
Writing and Imperial Administration. Duke University Press, 1993.
Youngs, Tim. “Introduction”. The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing.
Cambridge University Press. 2013.
124
Anne Bonneau’s Radio Travelogues: a portrayal
of the archetypal and stereotypical Goan
N ATASHA M ARIA G OMES1
Since travelogues are a subjective appraisal of an objective real-

ity, they are a fertile ground for psycho-sociological analysis. This
paper makes an attempt to explore French journalist Anne Bon-
neau’s radio travelogues on Goa and to highlight the image that
modern travelogues portray of today’s Goans and Goa. Bonneau’s
travelogues are structured around the archetype of the musician,
artist, local artisans and tribals, but the image of the Goan stereo-
type – the fun-loving, susegad Goan – is ever present. This essay
points out that some Goans themselves perpetuate this stereo-
type in order to feed the tourist industry.
T
HE young and the retired, the hippy and the neo-hippy, the hedon-
ist and the religious have all flocked to Goa, the fabled land of sun,
spices and scenic splendour since time immemorial. Despite the slump
in the global tourism industry in the last couple of years, the number of
tourists who visit this tiny state is still close to double of the local popula-
tion.
Goa’s unique past and consequently the cultural outlook of its people
make it unlike any place in India. It is not surprising therefore to find that
tourists and travellers alike have documented their journey throughout
the length and breadth of this quintessential holiday destination. With the
development of transport and the advent of Web 2.0, almost anyone with
a device and internet connection can author a travelogue.
At this juncture, it’s important to distinguish the pejorative nomen-
clature of the enjoyment-seeking ‘tourist’ from the positively-charged la-
bel ‘traveller.’ In non-fiction travel writing, it is generally believed that
while accounts of beach-life, sightseeing, shopping, cruises and casinos
fuel the tourist discourse, the traveller seeks to explore something new
1 Assistant Professor, Department of French and Francophone Studies, Goa University.

natasha@unigoa.ac.in / gomes.nats88@gmail.com
and they often discover the authenticity of a place though empathic in-
volvement. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the British ‘Prince of Paradox’, likens
a “tripper” to an incomplete traveller and emphasises that, “The traveller
sees what he sees, the tripper [tourist] sees what he has come to see” (ch.
15).
Travel literature dates back to hundreds of decades when the world
was terra incognita. From the earliest cavemen and women to the hyper-
connected individuals of today, humans have been wired with the desire
to explore and seek out something new. “Of the gladdest moments in
human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into un-
known lands” (Burton 16-17). According to the editors of The Cambridge
Companion to Travel Writing, “Traveller’s tales are as old as fiction itself”
(Hulme and Young 2). These journeys to the unknown or the lesser-known
are an integral part of our shared human consciousness and have been
the crux of our oral and written tradition.
However, not all journeys are considered as ‘travels’. In fact, travel
writing has been given the ‘Ugly Duckling’ treatment in comparison to
the other literary genres. Jonathan Raban, the British travel writer, likens
“travel writing” to “a notoriously raffish open house” as it “accommodates
different genres. . . private diary, essay short story, prose poems, rough
notes and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality” (254-55).
Not surprisingly, even though travel writing has existed for over cen-
turies, it is a literary genre that has been hotly contested as critics and
historians have time and again questioned the ethnographic and literary
value of travelogues. Hulme and Youngs point out that it is only recently
that analysis of travel writing has gained popularity in academic circles
and “scholarly work on travel writing has reached unprecedented levels”
(1).
Travelogues are part of Travel Literature as they include a traveller’s
personal narrative. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary,
a travelogue is a “lecture on travels, usually accompanied by the showing
of pictures or a film, usually short, about a foreign or out-of-the-way place,
especially one that emphasises the place’s unusual or glamorous aspects.”
Travelogues can take different forms: books, blogs, vlogs, movies, audio
podcasts and graphic novels.
126
Anne Bonneau’s radio travelogues | Natasha M. Gomes
The earliest travel writing on Goa dates back to the fourteenth century,
a time when there were still many undiscovered territories, a time when
people travelled by foot and by sea for long distances and a time when
neither Google Maps nor Google Translator existed. Travel writings were
autobiographical accounts and helped define the uncharted territory and
the ‘Other.’
Since travel literature is essentially based on the traveller’s experi-
ences and accounts, they are fertile grounds for psychological analysis as
these memoirs and travelogues are coloured with the authors perspect-
ives and preconceived notions. In an attempt to categorise and define the
‘Foreign’ or the ‘Other’, the traveller often mirrors ‘Self’ – his or her own
culture-specific and individual lens of viewing the world. Even today’s
seasoned traveller backpacks with stereotypical notions, but the proactive
encounters with ‘self’ and the ‘other’ either crystallise these stereotypes or
help the traveller see beyond and discover the archetypes of a place.
This essay attempts to analyse Anne Bonneau’s audio travelogues on
Goa and highlights the Goan archetypes and stereotypes found in her
narratives. The nine 20-minute podcasts chosen for this study were first
aired in French by Radio France Outre-Mer in 2010 and were part of Bon-
neau’s radio show titled Instantanés du Monde [Snapshots of the World].
By focusing on the psycho-sociological analysis of Bonneau’s Travelogue,
this study attempts to answer two fundamental questions: What role do
travelogues play in influencing perceptions of the target audience? What
image do modern travelogues portray of today’s Goans and Goa?
Literature review
Archetypes
“Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.”
There is ancient wisdom in this Chinese proverb that states we make in-
ferences and judgements based on past experiences. Modern psychiat-
rists like Carl Jung developed the concept of “archetypes” after having
worked intensely on dream analysis and on symbols in the ancient world
and myths. Jung believed that apart from the “personal conscious” and
“unconscious” elements of the human mind, the human “psyche” is also
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made up of the “collective unconscious” which is a universal inheritance

common to all humans. This collective unconscious governs the way we
perceive the world. These collective unconscious structures that are hard-
wired into our brain are called archetypes. The archetypal patterns con-
stantly reoccur in dreams and creative acts including film and literature
and they can be a character, a human characteristic, a theme, or a symbol
(18-103).
In Anatomy of Criticism, the influential Canadian literary critic and
literary theorist Northrop Frye brings out the archetypes found in some
famous literary texts. These archetypes are symbols that reoccur time and
again in a majority of works – from ancient times to the present. For ex-
ample, the hero, the caregiver, the mother earth or the trickster. When
archetypes are present in a text, they appeal to the readers at a very basic
level and the narratives ring true. The primordial images are the mani-
festation of the archetype and they may change depending on the ex-
ternal, personal and cultural factors. For instance, the archetypal “Wise
One” (Jung 175), like Gandalf or Dumbledore, is sometimes portrayed as
having a robe and a long beard (Ramaswamy 140-1, 127-8), but it could
also be an old woman like the Fairy Godmother or a creature like Master
Shifu, one of the Kung Fu Panda characters.
Archetypes v/s Stereotypes
Archetypes are the original mould from which all others copies are de-
veloped. It is the beginning product. Apart from the general archetypes,
certain archetypes are specific to certain populations. Eg. Mother India,
Uncle Sam and Britannia.
A stereotype is a caricature of an archetype and therefore an end
product. When certain traits are oversimplified these images take the
form of stereotypes. The brutal years of slavery and years of racial se-
gregation that followed in America have also created a culturally specific
collective unconscious of African American stereotypes like the Mammy,
Sambo, Sapphire and Jezebels. There are many demeaning stereotypes of
the Blacks as beings morally corrupt. In a diverse country like India, the
dimwitted Sardaji, the effeminate Bengali, the shrewd Marvadi and the
Goan drunk are a few stereotypes among many others.
The traveller often attempts to negotiate this terrain between arche-
128
types and stereotypes. If the travel writers don’t tread carefully, they are
most likely to fall into the trap of stereotyping the ‘Other.’
Goa described in travelogues
A considerable amount of travel literature exists on Goa and it helps the
modern readers understand Goa’s multi-layered past. These travel writ-
ings are extremely rich in description and they have historical value be-
cause they paint a picture of Goa as it changed hands from ruler to ruler.
For instance, the Moroccan traveller, Ibn Battuta offers accounts of the
island of Sindbahar, a.k.a. Goa, at the end of the Kadamba dynasty (Roy
129).
To the earlier readers, these travel narratives were a crucial piece of in-
formation as it defined the vastly unknown world. Once Goa came under
the rule of the Portuguese, it was frequented by several Europeans. Like
Jan Van Linschoten, the Dutch traveller, many Europeans have chalked
out the luxurious architectural set up of the city in addition to describ-
ing the scenic beauty of Goa Dourada – the Golden Goa (Parr 79-117).
The sixteenth-century French traveller Vincent Le Blanc felt that the Goa
mirrored the opulence in Europe (qtd. in Fonseca 146-7).
European travellers like Ralph Fitch (1550-1611), Johan Albrecht de
Mandelslo (1616–1644), Denis Louis Cottineau de Kloguen, Edward Ives,
Garcia de Orta (1501?–1568), Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689), Jaco-
bus Canter Visscher and the English doctor John Fryer (circa 1650–1733),
have all lived in Goa Portuguesa and the place left a deep impression on
them. In their narratives, they have described the beauty of the landscape,
different facets of the city, the buildings, the battles between the neigh-
bouring dynasties, the daily habits of the people: their culinary habits,
their dressing styles, their visits to the church and their general preoccupa-
tions. Travellers analysed their surroundings in relation to their perceived
notions and customs and in an attempt to define ‘the Other’.
Many a time, the travellers also described unknown customs and re-
counted sordid aspects of Goa like the brutal Inquisition. In his travelogue
titled Goa and the Blue Mountains or Six Months of Sick Leave, the Vic-
torian explorer and writer Richard Burton described the population of the
place in very derogatory terms. The cultural arrogance of the imperialist
writer is quite evident in his sharp criticism of the native culture and their
129
barbarous customs. Duarte Barbosa and the Pietro Della Valle described
the horrifying practice of Sati (Shetty). These travel writings played a role
in influencing perceptions of Europeans. Since the locals had practices
that were different from the Europeans, they were often labelled as ‘bar-
barian’ and their practices labelled as ‘backward.’ As Mia Waliszewski
highlighted, “...[it] supported the inherent superiority of Northern Europe
over other societies.”
Carl E. Thompson, in his Travel Writing (2011), opines that “All jour-
neys are in this way a confrontation with, or more optimistically, a negoti-
ation of, what is sometimes termed alterity” (9).
Modern travellers’ narratives attempt to portray the Goa of today: an
erstwhile European colony, the neo-hippy culture, the Goans way of life
which is different from any other places in India. Carl Thompson, notes
that,
. . . since there are no foreign people with whom we do not share a

common humanity, and probably no environment on the planet
for which we do not have some sort of prior reference point, all
travel requires us to negotiate a complex and sometimes unset-
tling interplay between alterity and identity, difference and simil-
arity (9).
Just like the travel writers of the pre-Liberation era, the contemporary
travel writers seek to describe ‘the Other’ and have their unique voice
heard among a vast sea of voices.
Travel narratives range from the humorous to the serious and can be
documentary, literary, journalistic and promotional in nature. When the
travellers just scratch the surface and over-simplify the attitudes of the
locals, they pander to stereotypes. But when a travel writer manages to
convey the true essence of the place, the travel narrative often includes
archetypal symbols and characters.
Anne Bonneau’s Audio Documentary
Drawn by the desire to explore cultures where traditional occupations and
a traditional way of life still exists, Anne Bonneau, the host of Instant-
anés du Monde, a French radio show on Outre-mer 1re, has for the past
seven years documented the sounds and the voices of people living in
Asia, Africa, and the islands in the Indian and the Pacific Ocean.
130
A majority of her podcasts are based on different places in India. She

goes off the beaten path and visits the vineyards of Doddaballapur in
Karnataka and the tea plantations in Vandiperiyar in Idukki district of
Kerala, the tribes in the forests of Netorlim, Goa, among other places.
We also learn about the Chettinad architecture, the sacred elephants of
Guruvayoor and the mud horses of Aranthangi (a town and a historical
municipality in Pudukkottai district in the state of Tamil Nadu).
In a radio interview with Dominique Roederer, the host of Paris sur
Mer, Bonneau likens her podcasts to an audio documentary as opposed to
a news report or “reportage”, as she believes that her work is an artistic en-
deavour to portray a country, a region and a place (1:55-2:20). L’Inde Eter-
nelle: A place which evokes vivid images to Europeans: images of palaces
and maharajahs, but also a place which is precariously poised between
the past and the present. A place where the last generation of local ar-
tisans and craftsmen still exist and a place where the new generation is
slowly evolving to mirror a homogenised society (3:25-4:00). She believes
that her work is a tribute to their way of life and a homage to the last gen-
eration of seasoned men and women who have continued to practice a
trade and a profession despite the influence of globalisation.
Accompanied by a local interpreter, this French journalist generally
spends a few weeks observing, feeling the pulse of the place, interviewing
people, recording conversations and myriad sounds. On returning to the
radio studio in France, she collaborates with her team of sound techni-
cians and voice-over artists to create a cohesive radio podcast.
Unlike many other audio travelogues, her radio series are in the third
person narrative and they are interspersed with snippets of conversations
involving some famous and many not so famous locals. The francophone
listeners are transported to another world as they hear these people share
a part of their lives, their thoughts, aspirations, feelings and life goals. The
locals retrace steps into their past and recount anecdotes. Their dialogues
are dubbed into French, but one can still hear the musicality of the local
language in the background. Bonneau not only constructs her narratives
based on these varied interactions but her podcasts though ostensibly
titled as a name of a place are generally structured around a theme that
she wishes to address.
131
A snapshot of the Goans and a way of life

Seven years ago, in the rain-drenched month of June, Bonneau went
about exploring Goa, a former Portuguese colony on the west coast of
India. She oscillates between portraying it as an outsider and an insider,
and as a consequence skilfully weaves a larger social context, into a com-
pelling character-rich narrative. She negotiates the terrain between arche-
types and stereotypes, by juxtaposing her narratives with several inter-
views.
Being a keen observer, equipped with a palm-sized microphone, a re-
cording device and a set of headphones, Bonneau captures the daily life of
the typical Goans and their preoccupations with the rains. She not only ro-
manticised the monsoon season with the poetry of her language but also
intersperses the podcasts with the sounds of the pitter-patter of the rain-
drops, the monsoon breeze, the rustling of leaves, the baker’s horn, and
a farmer ploughing the field with his two bullocks. She encapsulates the
essence of the place by describing in detail the dark ominous clouds, the
orchestrated opening of the umbrellas at the Mapusa market as the heav-
ens began to pour and the locals skilfully manoeuvring their umbrellas to
avoid poking others in the eye (Margão). One is teleported to a particular
moment in time because of her uncanny art of narrating what she feels,
sees, smells and hears.
A cross-section of the Goan society is portrayed in the audio snap-
shots: from the bespectacled Goan Catholic lady donning a dress
(Chandor), a Catholic priest (Saligão), Jazz lovers (Sangolda), hawkers on
Baga beach to the woman who sells Goan sausages at the Mapusa market
(Margão).
In an attempt to paint a realistic picture of the inhabitants and a way
of life that is slowly disappearing, Bonneau’s podcasts uncover Goan ar-
chetypal characters among the stereotypes.
The creator: the musician and the artist
Bonneau brings to the fore Goan musicians in the podcasts titled San-
golda and Siolim. The cross-cultural aspects of Goa are evident in the
music that is created and sung by its people. Goan music is a fusion of
Western and Eastern forms of music. The Goan musicians, driven by an
intense craving to play music, are an embodiment of an archetype. The
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proof of the importance of the Goan musician lies in the fact that they
have contributed to the flourishing of the Jazz in India and played a stel-
lar role as sound technicians in the Bollywood industry.
During the tourist season in Goa, it’s not uncommon to listen to live
music. According to Jazzman Colin D’Cruz, music runs in the veins of
every Goan as they love to listen and play music (Sangolda). He states
that the highest number of music bands in the country come from this
state. “Goa, C’est la musique!” he emphasises, “quand vous naissez, on
joue de la musique, quand vous partez, il y a de la musique, quand vous
vous mariez, on fait la musique, et bien sûr, quand vous mourrez, encore
de la musique.” ‘When you are born, we play music, when you leave you
play music, when you get married, we play music and when you die, we
play music’ (Sangolda, 18:35-18:55).
The Artist type encompasses painters, photographers, designers, en-
trepreneurs etc. Like the Musicians, they also feel the need to create some-
thing new and express themselves fully in the given time and age. The
artists in Bonneau’s podcasts are Goans who have returned back to Goa
after a journey abroad. Over the years, they have carved a niche for them-
selves with their signature creations.
“Goa, C’est un paradis pour les artistes.” “Goa is a paradise to an artist”
(Panjim, 0:02- 0:12) believes Alex Fernandes, a photographer who lived in
Mumbai and the Middle East for several years before moving to Goa. He
wanted to introduce a style of portraiture in Goa that was unique so he
began with a series of photographs based on iconic local Konkani theatre
personalities called tiatristes, and the musicians of Goa. Fernandes no-
ticed similarities between the stock characters portrayed by the tiatristes
and the caricatures of the popular Goan cartoonist Mario Miranda and
believes that these images are archetypes of the Goan people.
Wendell Rodricks, the famous fashion designer, learnt his craft in Paris
and moved back to his ancestral village in Goa away from the ‘visual at-
tacks’ of the urban life (Colvale). The poet-painter Tanya Mendonsa from
Calcutta worked in France for 20 years before she reconnected with her
Goan roots and moved to Goa (Moira).
The rebel and the advocate
Before he shot to fame as a pop star, Remo Fernandes, an archetype of
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a rebel, was inspired by the hippies and was on a pursuit to live a life of
pleasure. As an Indian hippy in Europe, he played music on the streets, in
the metro, in the restaurants in addition to doing odd jobs to sustain him-
self. He always believed that he would work as an architect and would play
music as a hobby. But his days in Europe changed his perspective of who
he was and what he wanted out of life. Music was his life and he began
writing songs about his motherland. Nostalgia is what drew him back to
Goa: the sights, the sounds, the sun and the warmth of the people. No
sooner did he release his first few albums then Bollywood made a beeline
to his front door, in Goa.
A musician with a social conscience, for the past 25 years he has been
using music as an instrument to bring about social change and awaken
the Goans to the blatant destruction of the paddy fields, beaches and their
lush landscape. In his latest soundtrack, he sings with hope that the riches
of his beloved Goa can be preserved, “Goa Goa, Oxem Sodanch Uronk
Zai.” (Siolim)
Victor Hugo Gomes, an alter-globalist and the curator of the ethno-
graphic museum in Benaulim, is also an archetype of a rebel and an ad-
vocate. As a local who lives in close proximity to nature, he believes that
our ancestors were truly wise and they had a sustainable way of life which
the youngsters of today are trading for modernism. He talks about several
varieties of rice and of fish that were found in Goa, but have slowly dis-
appeared. In an attempt to preserve the diversity to of the land, Gomes
has started breeding the traditional varieties of freshwater fish and being
inspired by the Norwegian seed bank has created one of his own, here in
Goa.
For him, the heritage of Goa isn’t Portuguese, the language or the
monuments, but the traditional gaunkari or comunidade system in which
the community worked together and shared the profits. This system, he
believes, has been systematically destroyed by various governments.
Marketing strategies by multinational companies have prevented the
Goans from valuing the local produce. Coconut oil and traditional sea
salt have gained a reputation for being unhealthy. But he points to the
fact that our ancestors used sea-farmed salt and traditional coconut oil in
their cooking and they lived until a ripe old age.
134
He is against mechanised farming in Goa, because he believes that

these machines are not adapted to the Goan terrain. He farms his own
land and recorded all the traditional Konkani names for describing the
17 stages that the paddy goes through before it reaches a person’s plate
as rice. In his ethnographic museum, he showcases the traditional tools,
implements and crafts of the people of Goa. His sole aim is to preserve
what he can for the future generations (Benaulim).
Local artisans: the poder, the choriskar and the ramponkar or nustekar
The poder or the baker
It is difficult to imagine Goa without the poder, the aroma of freshly baked
bread and the signature sound of the baker’s horn at dawn and at dusk.
In the podcast titled Margão, Bonneau explains that the Goans are so
fond of their bread that they have acquired the nickname pão – the Por-
tuguese word for bread. Like in France, bread is an essential part of the
Goan household and every village has at least one local bakery.
The Goans learnt the art of baking bread from the Portuguese. Even
till this day, many artisan bakers like Gil Gomes from Margão still con-
tinue to use the traditional method. The flour is prepared in the morning
with fresh yeast, kneaded and shaped in the afternoon and baked in the
evening using a wood-fired mud oven. The bakers go from house to house,
twice a day, on their cycles, selling this freshly baked bread.
These cycles are fitted with bamboo baskets and a typical baker’s horn.
Gil Gomes, a baker from Margão explains that it’s hard work, and during
the torrential monsoons, the ‘baker’s boys’ wear raincoats while they go
on their rounds. Due to the way of transporting bread during the mon-
soons, the bread tend to pick up moisture and the ones which do so have
to be discarded. But despite the losses, in the words Gil Gomes, “We are
managing.” It’s an occupation that has managed to survive all these years,
but the future is bleak because of the onslaught of globalisation, lack of
skilled bakers and the changing nature of the Goan diet.
The choriskar or sausage maker
Bread is best eaten with baji – a vegetable preparation of pulses or pota-
toes and spices – or with choris (sausages, in Konkani). According to Bon-
neau, this spicy pork sausage looks like a rosary chaplet sausage but the
135
name is similar to the Spanish chorizo and the Portuguese chouriço. It’s
perhaps another culinary legacy that was granted by the Portuguese to
Goa.
In the local Mapusa market, she meets a sausage vendor, Florence
Lobo, seated on a low stool in front of the sausages. She dexterously
counts the “chapelet de saucisses” and sells it to her customers while skil-
fully balancing an umbrella to shelter herself from the drizzle (Margão
6:14-9:25).
This choriskann proudly states that the choris is a Goan delicacy; it
can be eaten with bread or can be used to flavour pulao and biryani. The
pork is cooked in spices and then boiled in local coconut vinegar. They
are dried and they last for months. It is frequently eaten, especially during
the monsoons when fish is expensive and not easily available in Goa as
the inclement weather makes fishing operations difficult at that time of
the year. She adds that the Goans like their pork and, those who live out-
side Goa, often buy sausages in bulk. Florence Lobo further states that at
first the foreigners are overwhelmed with the spice but over time they too
develop a liking for this Goan choris.
The ramponkar and nustekar or fisherman
Goa is known for its fish. During the monsoons, all fishing activity comes
to a halt for several weeks. Bonneau observes that the fish markets are
then empty except for a few local fishermen selling dry fish. Fish is impor-
ted from the nearby state of Andhra Pradesh. The local nustekar explains
to Bonneau that during the monsoon, the sea is dangerous and the an-
nual fishing ban is important because it gives the fish time to breed and
grow.
The Goan tribals
The Kunbi, Gauda, Velip and the Dhangar communities are tribals who
many historians believe were the original settlers of the Konkan area in-
cluding Goa. Deep in the hinterlands of Goa, in the mining belt on the out-
skirts of the Netorlim forests, Bonneau interacts with the Dhangar com-
munity, an erstwhile nomadic shepherd tribe that lived with their cattle
in the Deccan and the Konkan area (Netorlim).
The Dhangars used to live in the forests and their cattle grazed in the
136
ample wastelands away from cultivators and their crops. After the 1974
census, the government demarcated land for this tribe and this, in turn,
would drastically change their traditional lifestyle.
With Victor Hugo Gomes, the curator of the local ethnographic mu-
seum mentioned above, as her guide, Bonneau is introduced to the tra-
ditional crafts and structures that this community created and built. This
tribe lived in union with nature. They used naturally found materials to
build enclosures and their homes. She intricately describes one of the few
traditional goatli – goats shed that still exists today. It’s built at an eleva-
tion with a roof of sticks and dried coconut fronds.
Each family owns a herd of goats and designated members take the
cattle out for grazing every day. Many have replaced their mud houses
with concrete ones. It’s only in the last few years that their settlement re-
ceived electricity.
But by and large, the youth of the Dhangar tribe have abandoned their
roots, the vast and rich trove of traditional knowledge. Many work in blue-
collared jobs and scant importance is given to learning the traditional
crafts like making natural ropes or playing the traditional flute which was
made of bamboo and bees’ wax. The oldest man in the community hap-
pens to be the only person who knows how to twist the plant barks to
make coir and how to play the instrument which the shepherds tradition-
ally used to calm aggressive animals and to help stray cattle find their way
back to the herd in the thick forest. The death of this patriarch of the com-
munity would mean the death of a vast specialisation of knowledge and
the world would be poorer in that eventuality.
Tourism-dependent Goans
A third of Goa’s population depends on tourism. In a podcast titled “Goa

en technicolor”, taxi driver Pascal laments that there were no tourists that
year so he and a couple of other drivers simply whiled away their time
playing a card game called rummy. The idle laid-back taxi driver is a sym-
bol of the dwindling tourism industry in Goa.
Pascal further points out to the fact that most of the tourist locations
in Goa are reeking with garbage. In a bid to rectify the issue, the taxi
drivers of Baga and Dona Paula have taken it upon themselves to clean
137
the surroundings. He believes that the tourist locations are natural sites
and have to be preserved.
According to Rajan Narayan, the editor of weekly Goan Observer news-
paper, tourism in Goa developed by accident. The hippies discovered Goa
in the 1960s because of the Vietnam War and the political and social tur-
moil in Europe. They came to Goa because they sought an alternative way
of life. Since the mid-1980s, over the years, the number of charter flights
– earlier from Germany and Scandinavia and then from the UK and Rus-
sia – increased because over time this state was considered to be a low-
cost tourist destination. Unfortunately, along with the tourists, the Rus-
sian and Israeli drug lords may have also set up home in Goa.
Narayan opines that tourism is the only activity which is economically
viable for Goa because, unlike the British, the Portuguese colonial rulers
didn’t create many higher education and technical institutions. The ripple
effects of this can be felt even today. Goans, he points out, don’t want to
work and consequently, the blue-collared jobs are taken up by migrants
from the neighbouring states.
The Goan stereotypes
Bonneau’s narratives are not devoid of stereotypes. These oversimplified
traits of the Goans that one notices in Konkani tiatrs, Bollywood and in
Mario de Miranda’s caricatures. Interestingly, we notice that some of the
locals themselves perpetuate stereotypical notions of Goans.
It is a known fact that Goa is a haven where alcohol flows freely. Bon-
neau’s narrative alludes to the stereotype of the Goan and their love for
the ‘bottle’. When she visited the Jazz musicians in Sangolda, she noted
that alcohol flowed during the jamming session. Alex Fernandes, a well-
known photographer, mentions that alcohol is an integral part of the
Goan susegado or laid-back culture and that it is not uncommon to find
Goans who are sloshed at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. This trait, he adds,
the Goans shared with their former Portuguese rulers (Panjim).
Another stereotype is that majority of the Goans sing or play a musical
instrument. When Nelly Pereira, a famous Jazz singer, quips that 90% of
Goans sing, as a local she is feeding the image of a stereotype (Sangolda).
She recounts that her father used to often tell her that in Catholic com-
munities after the evening rosary was recited, the family would gather
138
around and sing mandde and dulpodam with the violin, the banjo and
the guitar. This image of the musically-inclined, mandde-singing Goan
Catholic is also present in Mario de Miranda’s caricatures.
The interviews highlight the fact that the locals themselves have a role
to play in creating and maintaining the stereotypes. These stereotypes
play a role in maintaining Goa’s image as a tropical paradise.
Conclusion
In a way, Bonneau’s work is a tribute to the people of Goa. It leans more to-
wards ethnocentrism than exoticism. She defines ‘the Other’ to the franco-
phones through a series of archetypal characters and brings out the com-
monalities between the European and the Goan.
She visits a range of places, some in the hinterland – Margão, Mapusa,
Siolim, Netorlim – and not the beaches, in search of people working in tra-
ditional occupations. Her audio documentaries preserve a slice of Goan
life. She presents her listeners with a rich auditory atmosphere and inter-
sperses her elaborate accounts with conversations from the locals. Being
an outsider, she verbalises her experiences by describing what she sees,
feels and smells. The perspective of the locals helps the listener under-
stands the societal and cultural undercurrents of the place. It has to be
noted that some of the iconic locals that she interviewed all had a link to
Europe in general and France in particular.
Her multi-layered narratives transport the listeners in time and space
and they highlight archetypal characters while stumbling occasionally to
certain stereotypes.
To the Goans, her travel documentaries are a subtle plea to value their
heritage and preserve the traditional occupations and consequently the
savoir-faire that goes along with it.
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141
Footprints of the colonial past: Goa in
V.S. Naipaul’s A Million Mutinies Now
PALIA G AONKAR1
Nobel Laureate and well-known travel writer V. S. Naipaul dedic-

ates only a very few pages to Goa in his book India: A Million Mu-
tinies Now (1990). Rather than focusing on the obvious beach life
and cheap liquor, he points out to the simplicity of the Goan land
and to its history. Nevertheless, he does not fail to mention the
“fracture in reality” of Goa, similar to any other Indian land, us-
ing the metaphor of the Mandovi bridge that had collapsed in the
mid-1980s. His emphasis on the undeniable post-colonial pres-
ence makes Goa appear like an unassuming window to the past.
T
HERE can be two impressions of a certain place – the tourist’s ver-
sion, and the traveller’s version. The tourist’s version often speaks
about the attractiveness of the place i.e. what stands out. A traveller’s ver-
sion, on the other hand, will mention the attractions, but not necessarily.
A traveller will more often than not make a learning experience out of the
visit, and not just a pleasurable one. She or he will go beyond what is ob-
vious and look at the place in the way a critic looks at a text.
Travel writing is a venture that a traveller undertakes in order to re-
cord the travel in writing and literature. Often, travel writing encompasses
a huge variety of writing: blogs, reviews, articles in travel magazines and
other periodicals, and then, very emphatically, the travelogues which are
published by authors as books. Travelogues or travel memoirs describe
the journey of the author to a new place. More often than not, a travel
writer is a passive observer, who tries to create a picture of the place vis-
ited, for her or his readers. Such writings may or may not be accompanied
by photographs, which implies that a writer has to be skilful at her or his
descriptions of a place, and has to be, without doubt, faithful to the im-
ages that are being recorded.
1 Research scholar, Dept. of English, Goa University. palia.gaonkar@gmail.com
Goa in Naipaul’s A Million Mutinies Now | Palia Gaonkar
Such a record has been given by Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul in his

book, India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). Naipaul is known for his con-
nections with the post-colonial view of literature, and his travel writing is
often viewed through the same lens. Naipaul has covered the length and
breadth of India and put his observations down in his travel trilogy, of
which the above book is the last publication. The first thing that one no-
tices while reading Naipaul is that he prefers to take the less sophisticated
modes of travel; which is true in the case of many travel writers. The more
an outsider takes up to the common ways of the place visited, the better
is her or his record of the place. When one comes down to the level of
what is ‘local’ to the place, the understanding of the place, its culture and
tradition become solid. Understanding the local is important especially
in the case of tourist destinations because what is conveyed by tourists
gains popularity, but often a corrected version is found penned down by
a traveller.
Goa, as it is a highly sought-after tourist destination, is often portrayed
in media as it appears to the tourists, and seldom as it appears to the loc-
als. The present research is taken up to analyse a traveller’s perspective
of Goa, in this case, the traveller-author being V. S. Naipaul. In India: A
Million Mutinies Now (1990), Naipaul dedicates a few pages to this small
state in India. He makes very few but key observations about Goa, which
tell a different tale than what is often told by tourists.
Before exploring Naipaul’s perspective of Goa, this essay attempts to
chart out an explanation of key concepts, that of travel writing and post-
colonialism, and further tries to locate the place of V. S. Naipaul in this
tapestry. To this end, the following section takes up a brief literature re-
view.
Travel writing and postcolonialism
Carl Thompson in his book titled Travel Writing (2011) reiterates the
policy concept of Granta, the reputed British literary journal, that “travel
writing is a genre especially reflective of, and responsive to, the modern
condition”, immensely influenced by globalisation, where travel has be-
come a fact of life (2). Migration and travelling have become activities
of day-to-day importance in the modern world. Boundaries have to be
crossed, for myriad reasons. The “modern condition” necessitates dis-
143
placement of a person from the spatial as well as mental comfort zones.

This ‘unsettling’ situation gives rise to a number of new sensory exper-
iences, which have been captured by artists in various forms over the
years.
Travel writing is a personal account of the experience of a place, which
is perhaps new and interesting to the traveller. In the Introduction to The
Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (2013), Youngs defines travel
writing as “predominantly factual, first-person prose accounts of travels
that have been undertaken by the author-narrator” (3). This implies that
the person undertaking travel writing has to be not only a writer but a
traveller in that. The subject of travel writing is the people, the place and
the peculiarities that one comes across as part of the travel experience.
Nevertheless, a contradiction to the above statement cannot be denied,
which Youngs seems to have tackled by adding the word “predominantly”.
Travel writing is, as mentioned earlier, a personal account, and therefore
subjective; the objectivity of these accounts is sometimes questionable.
This is noticed in the accounts of the travellers in the pre-colonial era,
wherein, to use Edward Said’s term, the ‘oriental’, was made up of unciv-
ilized people. One can, therefore, infer that what a traveller sees in a new
place largely depends on where she or he stands in the power structure.
Since post-colonial theory sets out to dismantle the established power
structures (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 117), V.S. Naipaul’s travel writing is
largely from a post-colonial perspective. Blanton (2013) gives a chronolo-
gical account of travel writing in the twentieth century and remarks that
it is difficult to ignore V. S. Naipaul, writing in the mid-twentieth century,
as he takes a “central place in the post-colonial period” (n.p.). Further-
more, in an article in The New York Times titled “The Irascible Prophet: V.
S. Naipaul at Home”, Donadio (2005) comments that Naipaul’s writing is
about “the clash between belief and unbelief, the unravelling of the Brit-
ish Empire, and the migration of peoples” (np). Himself being the product
of displacement, Naipaul’s journey in writing parallels his journey of self-
discovery, where he looks for an identity and a sense of belongingness.
Ray (2005) describes Naipaul as “an Indian in the West Indies, a West
Indian in England, and a nomadic intellectual in a postcolonial world”
(208).
144
Naipaul’s travels in India are depicted in his trilogy, An Age of Dark-

ness (1964), India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) and India: A Million Mu-
tinies Now (1990). The theme of these three books attains maturity as he
progresses from the first book to the third. Saradhambal (2015) puts it as
“[H]is vision of India is transformed from anger and disillusionment to
understanding and accepting the reality of the country of his origin, and
strikes a deeper connection with it” (55). It is in his last book of the trilogy
that Goa finds a mention.
One of the most sought-after tourist destinations, Goa, is popularly
looked up to as a place of pleasure. But it does not seem so in V.S. Nai-
paul’s India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). For the Nobel Laureate, Goa
appears more like a multidimensional archive, with its history and culture
influenced by Portuguese colonisation.
Goa in India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)
Naipaul’s description of Goa is dominated by postcolonial symbols, in the
sense that his focus hardly moves away from the overt Portuguese influ-
ence seen in Goa. The words of T.S. Eliot, “the present moment of the past”
(Bartleby n.p.) comes alive in this brief discussion, as he frequently delves
into the historical background of the place. He begins with an incident
that explains how, post-Liberation, a Goan Hindu has developed faith in
Infant Jesus. This is possibly a subtle reference to the conversions that oc-
curred during the Portuguese rule in Goa. He also points out to the fact
that people flock to Goa more out of faith than to appreciate the architec-
ture of the cathedral of Old Goa. He remarks:
[a]fter 450 years, all they had left behind in this emptiness and
simplicity was their religion, their language (without a literature),
their names, a Latin-like colonial population, and this cult, from
their cathedral, of the Image of the Infant Jesus. (Naipaul 165)
In the “General Introduction” to The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (2003),

it is stated that “postcolonialism is a continuing process of resistance
and reconstruction” (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 2). In this regard, there
are two significant observations that V.S. Naipaul makes about Goa in
his travelogue which reflect the conflicts and paradoxes often seen in
post-colonial societies. Firstly, his encounter with the broken Mandovi
bridge and his consequent travel by ferry from one bank of the river to
145
the other is a powerful metaphor, which he describes as the “fracture in

reality” (163). With that image, Naipaul probably points out to the fact
that postcolonial societies such as Goa spend years coping with the after-
effect of colonisation and newly-gained independence. It is evident, that
“[p]ostcolonial societies are still subject in one way or another to overt
or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination, and independence has not
solved this problem” (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 2).
Secondly, he is amused at the choice that Goa made in keeping the rel-
ics of St. Francis Xavier but removing the statue of Camoens, the sixteenth-
century Portuguese traveller poet, whose statue was replaced by that of
Mahatma Gandhi at the Old Goa junction. Camoens in his verses had de-
scribed the adventures of Portuguese colonial expansion at large but was
“the first great poet of modern Europe to write of India and Indians” (166).
His significance seemed to be totally lost in Goa, which implies that “India
had its own priorities and values” (167).
It is crucial here to point out certain anomalies that can be seen in Nai-
paul’s observations with regard to Goa. His days in Goa seem to have re-
volved only around Old Goa, as if the place summarises the entire state it-
self. It seems Naipaul has taken the identical characteristics of the names
of the places (of the town and the state) and the smallness of the state as
well as its name, quite literally. There is no mention of any other place that
he visited in Goa; after his discussion on Goa and its colonised history, he
moves indifferently to another state in a matter of six to seven pages.
On page 164, he describes the Basilica of Bom Jesus as the cathedral
wherein “Saint Francis Xavier was buried”. It is indeed strange of Naipaul
for having put it that way since his discourse seems to be more about Old
Goa than any other place, and not knowing that the relics of St. Francis
Xavier are in fact reposed at the cathedral, and not “buried”.
Time and again, Goans have reasserted that an authentic Goan ex-
perience is beyond the obvious portrayal of the place in the media. Al-
though Naipaul does move in that direction, his exit from Goa in his writ-
ing is quite abrupt. His focus is limited to Old Goa, its architecture and
related history. From a contemporary and celebrated writer such as Nai-
paul, one would expect more than just that. Nevertheless, it is better than
the touristy version of the Goan tale.
146
Conclusion
Being a native of Goa, the researcher found Naipaul’s account of Goa in-
complete and rather hasty. His references to the Portuguese colonisation
and its influences on Goa are narrow to a fault. Naipaul appears to pick
one place as a representative microcosm to comment on the macrocosm
that is Goa. The influence of the Portuguese colonisation of Goa is prom-
inent in the state, but not overpowering. And hence it is important to visit
those places in Goa which have preserved their original identity in times
of colonisation. Most of Goa resides in the villages, and it is from the vil-
lages that the culture and traditions of Goa can be comprehended. Geo-
graphically, Goa is a small state, but its diversity is highly prominent.
Goa, often ‘mis-portrayed’, and it needs reliable and responsible travel
writers to give a faithful and wholesome picture of its profusion.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Post-Colonial Studies
Reader. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003.
Blanton, Casey. Travel Writing. Routledge, 2013.
Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and Individual Talent”. Bartleby.com., n.d. www. bar-
tleby.com/200/sw4.html
Donadio, Rachel. “The irascible prophet: V.S. Naipaul at home”. The New York
Times. The New York Times Company, 2005.
India”. HuSS: International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sci-
ences, Vol 2.2, 55-58, December 2015.
Naipaul, V.S. India: A Million Mutinies Now. Electronic Edition. Picador, 2011.
Ray, Mohit K. V S Naipaul: Critical Essays. Atlantic Publishers, 2005.
Saradhambal, K.S. “Construction of an Origin: A Study of V. S. Naipa-
ul’s Trilogy on India.” ResearchGate.Net, Dec. 2015, www.research-
gate.net/publication/299551664_Construction_of_an_Origin_A_Study
_of_V_S_Naipaul’s_Trilogy_on_India.
Thompson, Carl. Travel Writing. Routledge, 2011.
“VS Naipaul”. The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 2008.
Youngs, Tim. “Introduction”. The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing.
CUP, 2013.
147
An object of the Occidental gaze: analyzing
Tomé Pires’ description of Goa
in Suma Oriental
A MBIKA K AMAT1
Suma Oriental is one of the many travelogues by early explorers

and a text which later formed one of the foundations of Oriental-
ism in the colonial age. The essay attempts to understand how the
Portuguese colony of Goa has been objectified in Pires’ account
as a land yielding great revenue. Besides, the social structure, cus-
toms and nature of people are described with the preconception
of European superiority.
S
INCE time immemorial, travelling has been considered as an out-
standing achievement. In the past, travelling long distances and
reaching distant countries and continents was indeed a herculean task
as there were limited means of transportation. Great risks were involved
in travelling, whether it was by road or by sea. Travelling and finding new
routes to travel was a prerogative of adventurers and also of those who
could not sustain themselves in their homelands and chose to migrate for
better prospects.
With the Europeans establishing the navigating and trading mechan-
isms, overseas trade came to be preferred as an upcoming professional
branch in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. Colonisation was an
outcome of this process as there was an increasing awareness of the huge
profits which could be reaped from such trade. Trading missions, initially
sent by individual companies by risking their capital, later came to be sup-
ported by rulers of the respective territories. The settlements set up in for-
eign lands were brought under the jurisdiction of the domestic political
power. With royal sanction, travelling and occupying high positions in the
1 Research Scholar at the Goa University. ambikakamat22@gmail.com
Tomé Pires’ description of Goa | Ambika Kamat
imperial venture became a symbol of esteem for the elite. It became a cul-
tural norm to move out of the comfort zone and experience life in an alien
land amongst unfamiliar people and culture.
This essay aims at analysing description of Goa in The Suma Oriental
of Tomé Pires: An account of the East from the Red Sea to Japan, written in
Malacca and India in 1512-1515, which was translated and edited by Ar-
mando Cortesão in 1944, in the light of Orientalism. Suma Oriental is one
of the many travelogues by early explorers which later formed the found-
ation of Orientalism during the colonial age. The paper plans to unravel
how the Portuguese colony of Goa has been objectified in Pires’ account
as a land yielding great revenue. The social structure, customs and nature
of people are described with the preconception of European superiority.
Defining ‘the Orient’
Europeans were the first to discover sea routes to various places in the
world. Trade, territorial conquests and spreading religion were prime mo-
tivators of travel in the sixteenth century. The European travellers dis-
covered that there was a stark difference in their culture and those of
the lands to the East of them. Their complex nature, many times, made
these cultures incomprehensible to them. However, these travellers could
not resist contrasting these cultures with their own and defining them
through a comparison. They imagined a distinction based on imaginary
geographical divisions in form of ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’ which
they related to certain attributes and perceptions. Edward Said in his book
Orientalism observes,
The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of

Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of
its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of
its deepest and most recurring images of the Other... the Orient
has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image,
idea, personality, experience (1).
‘Symptoms’ of Orientalism
Said considers travel records to be an integral part of the ‘analysable form-

ation’ of works on and those affiliated to the Orient. For Said, the ‘strategic
location’ of the writer is crucial in analysing Orientalism in the text.
149
Tomé Pires was an apothecary to Prince Afonso, son of King John II

of Portugal. Due to his merits, he was chosen as a leader of the first of-
ficial European Embassy to China. He came to Goa in 1511 at the age
of 43 as Factor of Drugs (Borges and Helmut 24). As an agent of the im-
perial venture, he describes the endeavours of the King of “subjugating
the kingdoms in the heart of the Moorish dominions” (Pires 1) in lofty
terms. This is, perhaps, a reference to Albuquerque’s conquest of Goa on
November 25, 1510, as recorded in P.D. Xavier’s Goa: A Social History 1510-
1640 (1993), when to avenge his failed attempts of conquest, Albuquerque
“ruthlessly put to death a large number of Muslims including women and
children. He wrote to his sovereign, “...By it, we got a foothold in India and
destroyed the dockyard of the Moors... It is the chief port of India for the
Deccan, Vijayanagara, and Europe” (Xavier 7).
Pires lauds the colonial schemes of utilising religion as an instrument
of domination and specifies the kingdoms which have been conquered so
far. “Upon all these your highness wages war, carrying your banners into
their lands in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Pires 2).
One of the symptoms of Orientalism is a ‘flexible positional superi-
ority’ which the Westerner assumes in his all possible relations with the
Orient, may it be as an ambassador or an explorer in the service of the
royalty like Pires or in any other role such as “the scientist, the scholar,
the missionary, the trader, or the soldier” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 90).
Even Armando Cortesão, a historian, colonial administrator and the trans-
lator and editor of the book cannot resist asserting the supremacy of the
European explorers in his foreword to the book. He claims that the Suma
Oriental is a ‘history of geography’ (Pires xiii). His statement is based on
the assumption that Tomé Pires, a European, was an authority on the geo-
graphical documentation of the territories in the East given that he pos-
sessed the qualities such as rationality, objectivity and scientific tempera-
ment which have conventionally been associated with an Occidental ex-
plorer. All such assumptions are founded, as Said rightly comments, on
“the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all
the non-European peoples and cultures” (Said 7).
Objectification of Goa is a predominant thread especially in the first
half of the description in Suma Oriental. The travel account sounds more
150
like documentation of a site to be or in process of being conquered. Pires

perceived Goa as a promising piece of land which had strategic signific-
ance for the Portuguese in the process of annexing other territories.
On the mainland it had cities and towns, many tanadarias yielding
large revenues and having highly cultivated lands, which are still in the
hands of the Moors; ... since the great city of Goa, which is the key to all
(the rest), is now in the power and service of the most high lord, it will not
be long before the remainder follow it (Pires 56).
P.D. Xavier notes that when Goa was under the rule of the Adil Shah,
there were officers called thanadars whose duties included “collection of
commercial and agricultural taxes. They had their own private army and
carried out police and judicial functions as well” (11). Charles Borges and
Helmut Feldmann in Goa and Portugal: Their Cultural Links (1997) refer
to Suma Oriental to conclude that the tanadarias were “offices of the chief
local police with military authority to collect imports and customs levies”
(24). Thus, it can be deduced that the thanadars were influential author-
ities in the financial and political system of the Adil Shahi regime as they
had tremendous control on funds collected through taxation and also had
militias at disposal.
Pires’ description expresses anxiety as many large stretches of fertile
land were still under the control of the Muslims; however, he is also hope-
ful about conquering the nearby regions by establishing a stronghold in
Goa. Pires is fully aware that subjugating seaports helped in acquiring the
surrounding provinces.
Pires also intelligently points out to the political instability and dis-
cord amidst the neighbouring provinces of Goa which in turn make them
vulnerable to downfall. He speaks of the resistance which Goan rulers
were planning to put up and the favourable conditions for military war-
fare from their perspective: “It (Goa) was especially suited to the business
of raising armadas which was carried there, on account of the wood and
of the craftsmen” (Pires 57).
Orientalism is based on exteriority. Representation is a product of this
exteriority. In the process of analysing exteriority, noting the explicit gen-
eralised statements and labels is vital. Pires rejoices in the success of the
Portuguese who managed to annex the territory in spite of all the hurdles
151
and comments, “Just as the Moors used to go on conquering kingdoms,

they are now losing them” (Pires 57). In describing the failure of the rulers
to protect their territories from the Portuguese, Pires subtly underlines
the lack of military strategy among Oriental rulers. Though they had the
necessary resources and skills of shipbuilding, the leaders were at fault in
not having the foresight and sense of utilising the opportunity.
Pires generalises while assigning a term for the ‘enemies’ of the Por-
tuguese. He calls all the non-Whites ‘Moors’ irrespective of their ethnicity,
whether it was African or Asian.
Pires refers to Goa as ‘the heart of India’ with a flourishing trade in
spices and horses. He appreciates the native seamen and their seafaring
skills which, according to him, could be exploited since Goa had been an-
nexed to the Portuguese territories.
Many a times, he also distinguishes the people of Goa based on their
religious affiliation and employs terms such as ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’.
“There are a great many heathens in this kingdom of Goa, more than in
the kingdom of the Deccan” (Pires 58). It is likely that he uses the term
‘heathen’ for Hindus or those following the indigenous set of beliefs as
Muslims have been specified distinctly in the course of describing the
Deccan.
Pires provides a detailed account of the Goan social fabric. He men-
tions, the
rich heathen landlords or revenue collectors ... (who) are very hon-
oured men with large fortunes; and almost the whole kingdom lies
in their hands, because they are natives and possess the land and
pay the taxes. Some of them are noblemen with many followers...
and are persons of great repute, and wealthy and they live on their
estates (Pires 59).
While scrutinizing the Goan religious affairs, Pires specifically describes

the Brahmins, maybe because in the caste-ridden society they were at the
helm of the affairs. He enlists the characteristics of this community which
was devout and did not compromise the tenets of their religion at any
cost.
They have priests or Brahmans of many kinds. There are some

very honoured stocks among these Brahmans. Some of them will
152
not eat anything which has contained blood and anything pre-
pared by the hand of another.... They are clever, prudent, learned
in their religion. A Brahman would not become a Mohammedan
(even) if he were made a king. (Pires 59)
Pires states that endurance is a prime quality of Goans while describing

their temperament especially when subjected to torture. “They can bear
a great deal, and when they are being tortured with different tortures they
will die rather than confess anything they have made up their minds to
keep to themselves” (59). This description does indicate that Portuguese
as the colonisers of Goa did employ forms of torture to subdue the natives.
One of the ways of justifying the colonial rule was by portraying social
evils practiced by the natives. Towards the end of the description, Tomé
Pires refers to the practice of Sati among Goans.
It is mostly the custom in this kingdom of Goa for every heathen

wife to burn herself alive on the death of her husband.... And if
they do not want to burn themselves to death, their relatives are
dishonoured and they rebuke those who are ill-disposed towards
the sacrifice and force them to burn themselves (59).
However, there seems to be some confusion in Pires’ understanding of the

practice of Devdasis and sexual exploitation of widows. “And those who
will not burn themselves on any consideration become public prostitutes
and earn money for the upkeep and construction of the temples in their
district” (Pires 59). There seems to be a tinge of generalisation and exag-
geration in this part of the description. Xavier notes that the practice of
Sati was prevalent in Goa till 1560, even after the Portuguese had legally
banned it. He refers to Duarte Barbosa, Pires and Careri witnessing Sati
along the West coast of India. However, region-wise official figures are not
available. Sati stones can be found even today in villages such as Bhuim-
pal and Surla in Sattari, Paliem in Pernem and Colamb in Quepem. Mar-
ried women have been worshipping them for generations and passing
down their details through folklore (Kerkar). However, no specific records
are found to corroborate Pires’ description that practice of Sati was so
widespread during 1512-1515 when Pires wrote Suma Oriental nor formal
records of dating of all the possible Sati stones are available. There is also
153
a possibility that some horrifying incidents may have prompted Pires to

write about the practice and draw a generalized conclusion.
The Devdasi system is “a religious practice... whereby parents marry a
daughter to a deity... The marriage usually occurs before the girl reaches
puberty” (Chattaraj). Pires, linking the Devdasi system to widows, seems
to have got caught up in a major misunderstanding. It is definitely true
that the widows who escaped self immolation were condemned to live a
life of suffering, given that many a times they were confined to dark rooms,
their heads were tonsured and they had to face sexual exploitation. How-
ever, Devdasis were young girls married to the deity before they reached
puberty and not the widows abandoned by their families. Moreover, “be-
cause these women were married to the deity, they could never be wid-
owed; thus they were known as nityasumangali (“eternal wife”...). They
played a ritual role in marriages because it was believed that a bride
blessed by a Devdasi would not be widowed” (Rinehart 288).
To conclude, the essay analysed Tomé Pires’ description of Goa in
Suma Oriental in the light of Orientalism propounded by Edward Said.
The analysis was based on the parameters such as strategic location of the
writer; objectification of Goa; generalisations about the colonised and jus-
tification of colonisation by foregrounding certain social evils of the nat-
ives. Suma Oriental, written in early sixteenth century, is one of the many
travel accounts written by Westerners which contributes as much to the
practice of subjugating the Orient in “scholarly discovery, philological re-
construction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological descrip-
tion” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 90) as it is a product of the same ideo-
logy.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Post-Colonial Reader. Lon-
don: Routledge, 1995.
Borges, Charles J and Helmut Feldmann. Goa and Portugal: Their Cultural
Links. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1997.
Chattoraj, S. “The Devadasi System: Genesis and Growth”. Interactive Media Lab.
University of Florida.
Kerkar, Rajendra. “Saving History, Not Sati”. Times of India. Panjim, 2 Nov 2014.
Web. 1 Oct. 2017 timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ city/goa/Saving-history-
NOT-SATI/articleshow/45016268.cms
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pan, Written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515. II vols. London: Hakluyt
Society, 1944. archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-136385-182
Rinehart, Robin. Contemporary Hinduism: Ritual, Culture and Practice. Santa
Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Gurgaon: Pen-
guin Books, 2001.
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155
In fact, this is only fiction:
unusual ‘visitors’ who came Goa’s way
F REDERICK N ORONHA 1
Goa, with a high profile as an international tourist destination, has

been the setting for some unusual fictional work. This region has
been ‘visited’ by characters like Bahadur, India’s attempt at build-
ing a comic superhero, and Tintin, the reporter-adventurer whose
global travels taught children about their world at a time when dir-
ect forms of colonialism were on the way out. There has also been
debate over how depictions in films have shaped the global, na-
tional, and even local understanding of Goa.
G
OA, a travel destination for millions of visitors each year in recent
times, has generated a colourful if a little-noticed range of ‘fic-
tional’ work, which depicts the region in strange, unusual and mystical
ways. Just as the travel writing of earlier centuries shaped the global per-
ception of Goa, today too it is these new depictions that set the tone.
Kachka defines a “fiction travel book” as
a book in which a place is as important a character as the prot-

agonist; it’s a book so informed by the writer’s culture that it’s im-
possible to read it without uncovering the life of the author behind
it; it’s a book that has shaped the way we see a certain place; it’s a
book whose events and characters could be set nowhere else.
In the context of Goa, in addition to the above type of fiction travel books,
one comes across texts in which a fictional character visits this region.
One could also study texts where Goa is the setting for a story which is
1 Assistant Professor (2017-18), Department of English, Goa University and Research
Scholar. fredericknoronha2@gmail.com
In fact, this is only fiction | Frederick Noronha
fictional yet believable. The issue of stereotypes has been discussed else-
where in this volume.
At times, fictional travel stories have been difficult to distinguish from
travel literature. This was the case with the Venetian merchant-explorer-
writer Marco Polo (Wood) or the fourteenth-century travel memoir The
Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which was at one time thought to have
been written by a person with the same name (Manuscript...). The reverse
is also true when a place gets ‘visited’ by completely fictional characters.
Goa has grown into a widely visited tourist destination in recent dec-
ades, on account of government promotions as well as other factors. In
2017, provisional figures for tourist arrivals in Goa were set at almost 6.9
million domestic tourists and .8 million foreign tourists, totalling 7.7 mil-
lion visitors, a figure which amounts to over four times the State’s entire
population (Department of Tourism).
Goa’s beaches, or thinly dis-
guised versions of them, have
been ‘visited’ by Bahadur. The lat-
ter was the comic book superhero
often seen fighting dacoits, pub-
lished by Indrajal Comics and cre-
ated by Aabid Surti in 1976. The
fictional Bahadur’s story is set in
‘Calunge Beach’ in 1988. While
there is no specific indication that
Calunge is closely connected with
a similarly-named beach in Goa,
the reader is left without the need
for much guesswork. This 32-page
comic contains a story of gang-
sters, drugs, full-moon parties in
fancy dress, a murdered clown and even protests against tourism (Uppal
and Brahmania). In its story-line, the Chief Inspector at ‘Calunge’ is Rui,
and there’s a gang war going on between Rocky and Yusuf. Calunge has,
we are told,
miles of clear sands and sea, and warm sunshine (that) attracts
157
foreigners from colder climes. Earlier, it was popularised by the

flower-children – the hippies. But later with the easy availability of
hash and drugs, it became the haven for drug addicts and smug-
glers (1).
Sounds familiar?
Bahadur incidentally was meant to be India’s answer to the big four
foreign comics that then ruled the country -- The Phantom, Mandrake,
Flash Gordon and Tarzan. Bahadur’s storylines obviously got its cues from
its foreign counterparts like Phantom, especially when it came to mix-
ing up fact with fiction. For those who came in late (Samudrala), The
Phantom was created by the American writer, theatre director and pro-
ducer Lee Falk in 1936. Initially, Phantom was to find his home in a ‘fic-
tional’ ‘Afro-Indian country’ which Falk called Bengala. Later its name
was changed to Denkali; the place was filled with rajas and, initially, even
‘Singh’ pirates and Bandar pygmies (Sanghvi). Inspite of these coincid-
ences, Phantom remained a “comic book hero for the masses” in India
and was the character a generation and more of Indians grew up on in the
latter half of the 20th century.
Beyond the commercial and mainstream world of comics, Goa in-
spires the creation of ‘literature’ in other unusual ways too. For instance,
the tourism boom here has led to the creation of artistic if counterfeit
covers, some apparently inspired by tee-shirt designs, that playfully seek
to pass-off their creativity as books from the Tintin series. The once
widely popular Tintin comic albums were created by the Belgian cartoon-
ist Georges Remi (1907-1983), using the pen name Hergé. His work is said
to have resulted in creating one of the most popular European comics in
the twentieth century.
In Goa, a series of Tintin ‘covers’ exist in the online world for books
which were never actually published. These include ‘Tintin in Goa’, ‘Tintin
Loses the Plot in Goa’ and another variation of ‘Tintin in Goa’. The first
(Tintin--fake) shows an apparently intoxicated yet shocked looking Cap-
tain Haddock seated at a cosy table by the beach with Tintin. Surrounding
them are coconut palms. A dazed Tintin is smoking what appears to be a
giant chillum. The second (Tintin Loses...) has a bottle-clutching Captain
Haddock, grabbing by the arm a Tintin clad in hippy style, as the fictional
158
boy-reporter appears to be himself consuming alcohol. The homes in the

background depict the old Goan tiles, and one can also see banana trees
and silhouettes of coconut palms. The third (Les Aventures...) in the series
has Tintin riding a large, Enfield-like motorbike with a garishly dressed
Western woman tourist seated on the pillion.
‘Goa’ does get a number of other travellers from disparate other

fictional worlds too. One’s interest in this field was sparked as a post-
graduate student of the then just-launched Goa University, almost a gen-
eration ago. At the newspaper organisation where the present writer was
then employed, a colleague came across a German soft-porn magazine
Praline depicting “the wild, man-hungry girls" who supposedly make
"Carnival in Goa ... something very special” (Tourism 4, Qtd in Desouza).
Another university fellow-student then pointed with surprise to the
fiction of Chamberlain’s Gates of Fire, and how it depicted Goa. Chamber-
lain’s is one of the relatively early fictional works in this style of writing,
dating back of the 1980s, soon after the hippy boom. It describes Goa as
“an explosive mixture of violence, sex, drugs and mysticism”. The latter
part of the book is set in Goa. The protagonists reach Goa (Chamberlain
286) with Jeff seated on the “first-class deck of the Goa steamer [looking]
out over the glittering sea”. His companion Laura, doing “some sort of
meditation” in the cabin, has asked him to leave. She has been through
"an affair with a Sikh and ... all this guru business". There are hippies on
the lower deck dancing and smoking drugs. In no time, Jeff gets an offer
for casual sex from a young blonde speaking English with a French ac-
159
cent and, because of the crowded setting of the steamer, they talk about
hooking-up at Anjuna. Yoga, conflict among travelling couples, misunder-
standings as the West encounters India, and comparisons of the place are
among the more tame themes focussed on in these pages. The place en-
countered is described thus:
Goa looked more like Christianstadt or Montego than the dreary

India Stan had expected... The taxi sped down shady palm-lined
avenues where massive houses, built in an era of splendour, lay
decaying now behind bright hedges of bougainvillea and hibis-
cus. Across rice paddies that looked like magnificent green mead-
ows, whitewashed spires of Christian churches loomed above the
coconuts. Laura could have sworn she was in Mexico (290).
The region gets described in what might superficially appear to be a flat-

tering manner:
Goa’s a good place. Good Christian smugglers, not those Hindus.

You can buy anything here: privacy, protection, immunity -- you
name it. It’s a tradition or something (291).
The latter part of the book sets much of its action in Goa, painting it out to
be a place subsumed in crime and sleaze. But this is not the only kind of
depiction that emerges about Goa, along with the place’s obvious ascent
in the global tourist destination during the 1980s and thereafter. In the
world of film too, there has been some discussion about the projection of
Goa and how this shapes perceptions. Gahlot (85) mentions some of the
films shot in Goa, including international movies, big commercial films,
potboilers, quickies, and alternative movies. She argues that “films too
numerous to list have been shot in Goa”, and points out that “Hindi films
have had many characters with names like Pinto, Braganza, Fernandes,
Gonsalves, D’Costa and D’Silva; lots of Monicas, Rosies, Michaels and Mo-
nas” (86).
Trikal, a film by the director and screenwriter Shyam Benegal who is
credited with creating ‘middle cinema’ in India, has drawn praise for its
sensitive portrayal of a Goa. Gahlot says: "This was one of the few films
that accurately caught the ethos, lifestyle and language of Goa" (94). Renu
Iyer calls Trikal (or Trikaal) a film “which provides a layered account of
the changes wrought upon Goa and its various classes by different rulers
160
-- from the Portuguese to the Indian government” (191). Trikal has been
contrasted against the cliches otherwise widespread in Bollywood. Film-
maker Benegal has himself discussed films dealing with the “contempor-
ary Muslim experience” and others dealing with Anglo-Indians, the Brit-
ish, or a Goan Catholic family in Mumbai (Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Ata
Hai?), saying:
...I made a film called Trikal (1985), about a privileged Catholic

family set in a Goan village at the time of the Liberation of Goa.
The earlier diffidence that filmmakers felt in tackling subjects
dealing with minority communities was replaced with a new con-
fidence. Sterile representations of minorities, very much part of
the Indian cinema before 1971, were replaced by depictions of
ordinary people grappling with problems of life and change in a
modernising world. Several of the films I mention had a favour-
able audience response and some of them were reasonable box
office successes (Benegal 236).
But this movie, when watched with a critical eye, could itself face debate
over its own depiction of Goa. The film begins with the disclaimer: “All the
characters and situations in this film are fictitious. Any resemblance to ac-
tual events and people is purely coincidental and entirely unintentional.”
Nonetheless, the “revolutionary Ranes” mentioned in the movie carry the
same name as the clan from North Goa that was politically influential be-
fore and during parts of the Portuguese era, as also at the time the film
was in the making. There are other names which might sound familiar to
local audiences.
The film begins with the unlikely scene of an impoverished peasant
carrying an empty coffin balanced on his head, as he races through rice
paddies and coconut groves. Other workers are (symbolically, perhaps)
readying the grave for a funeral. In between these scenes, the rich scion
of a landed family is returning to Goa, and to the elite village of Loutulim,
after an absence of 24 years. Bells toll in the background. The old elite
is, as expected, Portuguese-speaking, depicted at times as eccentric, and
some of its members appear often inebriated. They are steeped in intrigue
or jealousies and bear names like Erasmo, Aurora, Renato, Milgrinia or
Ernesto. Some of their lives come with the hint of scandal never far away.
The old and fading elites in the movie are sometimes depicted in an un-
161
flattering light, even as tributes seem to be paid to their lifestyle, music,

achievements and the loss of their fast-vanishing world. One can notice
the contrast between the dis-empowered elites of the Goan world, and
its subalterns. At one point, one of the servants of the affluent family say:
“The masters keep changing, we always stay there.”
Robert S. Newman, the anthropologist who has studied a range of
issues on Goa from the late 1970s, described earlier in this book, has a
chapter in his two-book compilation on Goan themes, exploring the same
subject. He writes:
Goa has been repeatedly mythologized over the centuries and
Goans’ image has been consistently dominated by others -- first
by the Portuguese and occasional foreign travelers, then by the
anti-colonial forces in Delhi, then by hippies and those interested
in their lifestyle, and finally by Hindi language films (99).
There are other depictions of Goa too, as for instance in the eponymous
play by Asif Currimbhoy. He has been called a controversial figure, though
when his play was being staged in Bombay, the Times of India (Bombay
Edition, 17 August 1997) slotted him “among India’s best-known dramat-
ists writing in English”. Currimbhoy penned some 30 plays between 1955
and 1975, and his play Goa was read by a theatre group in 1997, three years
after his death. Currimbhoy swims strongly against the tide of perceptions
in this part of the world, when the play was written. When it was staged
at The Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Festival in August 2006, the event’s spon-
soring newspaper critic saw the play thus:
The characters are stereotypes -- Maria of mixed blood, her in-
nocent daughter, colonisers political and religious, aggressive na-
tionalist, pimp, smuggler, street loungers... Add to this simplistic
symbols -- cross, prayer beads, liquor and rose; and the two
rivals (Alphonso, Krishna) representing Portugal and India, greedy
for the land, while Rose stands for Goa. Symbols, unlike images,
are hardly capable of conveying multiplicities. The blurb claims
that the play raises questions about the concept of nationalism,
and political machinations which rob the people of freedom and
choice. This Theatrecian production did not go beyond naive
statements about these complex issues.... (Ramnarayan)
Other writers have also made Goa home to their fictional works. At the age
of 29, Colin Fernandes got his fiction published by Penguin India. Viva
162
Santiago is set in Goa, and it is largely the Goa of the expat Goan and
the national media stereotype. Its blurb reads: “Replete with the sights,
sounds and flavours of Goa, and a good dose of sex, drugs and rock music,
Viva Santiago is the story of Alonso Gonzalez and his colourful, dysfunc-
tional family.” Its location is Divar, and one can even run into the Bon-
deram flag festival on its pages. Fernandes has been a journalist at India
Today and The Hindustan Times, and features editor at Maxim India.
Authors like Paul Mann have written ‘fictional’ works that found
echoes in subsequent real-life cases like the death of the teenage British
tourist, Scarlett Keeling.
Other books which follow such depictions include Grave Secrets in
Goa by Kathleen McCaul. London-born McCaul, 33 when the book was
published, has been a journalist, a freelance reporter for BBC World Ser-
vice, involved with starting-up Iraq’s first post-invasion English-language
newspaper, and was a news producer for Al Jazeera English. McCaul
paints a mosaic of beaches, full-moon parties, deep religiosity, religious
rivalry, murder, mystery, corrupt policemen, and dubious politicians.
What entangles fact and fiction is how the book manages a close mimick-
ing of reality and allusion to real-life events, places and believable charac-
ters. “An Indian paradise with murder in its heart,” says the subtitle of the
book Grave Secrets in Goa. Chapter 1 starts off with: ”The head of the bull
had been hacked off cruelly; it looked like the work of a chainsaw.” By the
third paragraph, we’re into:
Goa. Paradise Lost. We’re getting used to news of drugs, Russian

gangs, murders of foreigners, corrupt land deals. But this crime is
entirely new to the state. Idol Theft.
Another book from recent times is Khushwant Singh’s -- a text classified

sometimes as fiction, and at other times as Asian/Indian literature, adult
fiction or erotica (Goodreads). Among the many sexual encounters the
protagonist Mohan Kumar indulges in, is one with “Molly Gomes of Goa”.
She is depicted as having claimed to be a trained nurse specialising in
physiotherapy, using massage to treat those with partial paralysis or hav-
ing limb ailments. Khushwant Singh was known to have a long fascination
with Goa. For instance, Amardeep Singh comments that some pictures of
“bikini-clad free-love kids in Goa” that Kushwant Singh “splashed on the
163
pages of The Illustrated Weekly were rather more like tabloid sensational-
ism than serious journalism”.
Stepping up the trend to a new level, are the depiction of Goa in adult-
focussed writing. Nagvenkar has highlighted the case of a fictional “toon
porn star” venturing into Goa. He writes
India’s biggest and outrageous toon porn star Savita Bhabhi has
set foot in the sands of Goa – of course, in cyberspace. And the
state government is not too happy. Already banned by the Indian
government, the website showcases the adventures of the seduct-
ive, sari-clad Savita, who is the face of Indian graphic porn art. The
latest edition of ‘Savita Bhabhi – The sexual adventures of a Hot
Indian Bhabhi’ has the much-married protagonist visiting a Goa
resort with her female friends and ending up in a series of sexual
encounters with resort owners, masseurs and sundry.
In conclusion, one could say that the image of Goa is often created by
forces external to the region. Leave aside being able to set its own agenda
and image, this region has till now found it difficult to even track and un-
derstand in what ways the perceptions of others continue to shape it.
Works Cited
Bailancho Saad. Tourism -- Its Effects on Women in Goa: A Report to the People.
Goa. 1988.
Benegal, Shyam. ’Secularism and Popular Indian Cinema’. In The Crisis of Sec-
ularism in India. Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney, and Rajeswari Sunder
Rajan (Eds). Orient Blackswan, 2009.
Chamberlain, Elwyn. Gates of Fire. Fontana/Collins. 1987.
Currimbhoy, Asif. Goa and Abbe Faria. Soraya Publishers. 1967.
Department of Tourism. ‘Tourist Arrivals (Year-Wise)’. Government of Goa, nd,
www.goatourism.gov.in/statistics/225.
D’Souza, Tony. The Konkans. Rupa & Co. 2008.
Desouza, Shaila. Organising Women for Empowerment: a study of an experi-
ment in Goa. Diss. Goa University. 2009. Web. hdl.handle.net/ 10603/2722
Fernandes, Colin. Viva Santiago. Penguin Books India, 2008.
Gahlot, Deepa. ‘My Top Twenty’. In Location Goa, Mario Cabral e Sa (ed.). Panaji:
Department of Information and Publicity. 2006.
Goodreads: Singh, Khushwant. “The Company of Women.” www.goodreads.
com/book/show/109201.The_Company_of_Women.
Iyer, Renu. ’Take One: Goa’. In Location Goa, Mario Cabral e Sa (ed.). Panaji:
Department of Information and Publicity. 2006.
164
Les Aventures de Tintin -- Album Imaginaire -- Tintin in Goa. nd. Online image.
Pinterest. http://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/ 860187597549659763/
Mann, Paul. The Ganja Coast. Pan Macmillan Australia, 2013.
‘Manuscript of The Travels of John Mandeville showing headless men, 1430.’
The British Library, 23 Sep. 2015, www.bl.uk/collection-items/manuscript-
of-mandevilles-travels- showing-headless-men-1430.
McCaul, Kathleen. Grave Secrets in Goa. Piatkus. 2012.
Nagvenkar, Mayabhushan. “Goa on alert! Banned ‘Savita Bhabhi’ is here.”
Yahoo! News, Yahoo!, 21 Sept. 2010, in.news.yahoo.com/goa-alert-
banned-savita-bhabhi.html.
Newman, Robert S. ’Goa At The Movies’. In Goan Anthropology: Festivals, Films
and Fish. Goa,1556. Forthcoming, 2018.
Noronha, Frederick, and Pamela D’Mello. “Goa in creative writing.”
Soc.culture.indian.goa, 16 Mar. 2010, groups.google.com/forum/
#!topic/soc.culture.indian.goa/24YS6cw9XTM.
Ramnarayan, Gowri. “Goa, in slow motion.” The Hindu, 14 Aug. 2006,
www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/goa-in-
slow-motion/article3197939.ece.
Samudrala, Ram. “The Phantom.” The Phantom movie review, www. ram.org/
ramblings/movies/phantom.html.
Sanghvi, Vir. “Mr Walker’s last mile.” The Telegraph, Kolkata, www. telegraph-
india.com/990321/editoria.htm#head2.
Shemaroo. “Trikal Past-Present-Future.” YouTube, 25 Sep 2017. youtube.
com/watch?v=lI6szXB7aR4
Singh, Amardeep. “Khushwant Singh’s Journalism: The Illustrated Weekly
of India.” Amardeep Singh, 4 Aug. 2006, www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2006
/08/khushwant-singhs-journalism.html.
Singh, Khushwant. The Company of Women. Viking Penguin India. 1999.
Tintin--fake: Tintin in Goa. nd. Online image. Pinterest. www.pinterest.
co.uk/pin/93027548537599553/
Tintin Loses The Plot In Goa. 2006. Online image. India Mike Forum. www.
indiamike.com/india/chai-and-chat-f73/tintin-loses-the-plot-in-goa-
t26088/
Uppal, Jagjit (story) and Pramod Brahmania (illus.). The Calunge Beach. In-
drajal Comics. A Times of India Publication. Vol 25 No 26. June 26-July
2, 1988. www.mediafire. com/file/mxfn0zzw3wb/V25N26-1988-Bahadur-
The+Calunge+Beach+%28SR%29.cbr
Trikal (Past, Present, Future). Dir. Sham Benegal. Blaze Film Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.
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Wood, Frances. Did Marco Polo Go to China? Westview Press. 1998.
165
Index
Agassaim, 86 Cambay, 49
aggarbatis, 36, 41 Candolim, 64
Ahmednagar, 17 cartaze, 47, 48
alvara, 37 Castisos, 100
Anjuna, 80 Castro, Maria João, 68
Arambol, 102 Ceylon, 17, 49
Archbishop Aleixo Menezes, 50 Chakravarti, Sudeep, 65
AVC (Assolna-Velim-Cuncolim), 8, 31, Chandor, 111, 132
33–42 Chardo (Kshatriya) caste, 34–36, 38,
Axelrod, Paul, 99 40–43
Chaul, 49
Baga, 132, 137
China, 8, 49
Barbosa, Duarte, 119, 130
chourisso, 105
Barreto, Adeodato, 22, 24, 25, 27
Christian, 16, 17, 35, 41, 73, 74, 106,
Bassein, 17, 49
111, 160
Bastos, Cristiana, 97
Cidade de Goa, 96, 100
Battuta, Ibn, 6, 61, 129
Cochin, 17, 47, 49
Benaulim, 80, 134, 135
Collins, Maurice, 72
Bengal, 21, 25, 49, 158
Colloquios, 55
Bernier, François, 96
Colva, 62
bhaillo, 62
Colvale, 63, 109, 133
bhajans, 111
Bollywood, 62, 133, 134, 138, 161 congee, 58
Bombay, 21, 56, 61, 64, 71, 92, 162 Consua, 92
Bonneau, Anne, 10, 102–106, Contacto Goa, 9, 94, 102, 103,
108–110, 125, 127, 107–111
130–133, 135–139 Cook, Captain James, 6
Borkar, Bakibab, 24, 27, 74 Correia Afonso de Figueiredo,
Brahmins, 40, 152, 153 Propércia, 25
Burton, Sir Richard F., 71–73, 75, 121, Costa, Constancio Roque da, 99
126, 129 Cottineau de Kloguen, Rev. Denis L.,
9, 52, 53, 55–58, 121, 129
Calangute, 64, 82 Coutinho Powell, Melinda, 64
166
Coutinho, João da Veiga, 65 Gadgil, Vidyadhar, 61

Couto, Maria Aurora, 65 Gates of Fire, 159
Cuncolim, 8, 85 gaunkari (village community
Cunha Rivara, 99 organisations), 33, 98, 104,
Currimbhoy, Asif, 162 134
Geertz, Clifford, 32
da Orta, Catarina, 63 Ghosh, Amitav, 65
Dabul, 49 Gill, Vikram, 75
Dalrymple, William, 61 Ginsberg, Aimee, 63
Daman, 49 Goa Dourada (Golden Goa), 71, 129
Davorlim, 64 Goa Historical Archives, 47–49
de Laval, François Pyrard, 8, 9 Goa Indica, 37, 38
de Orta, Garcia, 8, 12, 14–18, 55, 63, Goa is not India, 9, 94
97, 98, 129 Goa Travels, 9, 10, 60, 61, 115, 117,
Deccani Sultans, 97 118, 122–124
Delhi, 21, 64, 82, 86, 88–90, 92, 162 Goa, and the Blue Mountains, 71, 129
Della Valle, Pietro, 118, 120, 130 Goa, Now and Then, 74
Dellon, Charles, 98 Goekarponn, 73
Desai, Lord Meghnad, 65 Goem, 73
devchar (spirit), 39 Gomes, Francisco Luís, 108
Devdasis, 153, 154 Gottsberger, Rudolf, 102, 106, 110
dhalo, 107 Goykar, 73
Dhangar, 136, 137 Grave Secrets in Goa, 163
Dharbandora, 85 Greene, Graham, 61, 121
Diu, 17, 45, 49 gulal, 38
Dona Paula, 137 Guzerate, 57
Dutch presence in Goa, 46, 47
Hamilton, Captain, 72, 73
English Jesuit Thomas Stephens, 50 Hapsi, 39
Estado da Índia, 49, 96 Henn, Alexander, 70
Hindus, 152, 160
Falk, Lee, 158 Hippie In Heels, 80
Fernandes, Remo, 109, 133
Fernandes,Jason Keith, 66 Ifeka, Caroline, 71
Ferry Crossing: Short stories from Indo-Portuguese, 109
Goa, 69 culture, 69
fidalgo, 49, 119 Indochina, 68
Fonseca, Angelo da, 25 Indrajal Comics, 156, 157
Foral de Usos e Costumes dos Inside/Out, 9, 60, 61
Guancares, 98 Instantanés du Monde, 127, 130
fortresses in Goa, 46 Itinerario, 98–100
French Jesuit Étienne de la Croix, 50 Iyer, Pico, 60, 66
Fryer, John, 129
Fuerch, Michelle A., 99 jambul, 57, 65
167
Japan, 8, 49 Mendes, Anabela, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18,

Jaywant, Sheela, 63 27–30
Jewish, 16, 17, 63, 96, 97, 104 Menezes Bragança, Luís de, 105
Menezes, Helene Derkin, 62, 122
Kakar, Sudhir, 65 Mesticos, 100
Kale, Pramod, 37 Mexia, Afonso, 98
Kapoor, Diviya, 64 Miramar, 64
Kathiawar, 17 Miranda, Mario, 133, 138, 139
Katkar, Kimmy, 64 Mocambique, 49
Kelekar, Ravindra, 24 Mocquet, Jean, 98
kokum, 57, 65 Modern Goan Short Stories, 73
Konkani, 133 Moira, 133
Kubiňáková, Karina, 72 Mughals, 96
Kunbi, 42 Muslims, 150
Nagaski, 49
Last Bus to Vasco, 9, 85–87
Nagoa, 92
Laval, François Pyrard de, 45–50,
Naipaul, V.S., 7, 10, 61, 142–147
52–54, 96, 98, 100, 119, 120
Naique, Prof. Ramchandra, 23, 25
Le Blanc, Vincent, 129
Narayan, Rajan, 138
leilão, 100
nau, 50
Les Instantanés du Monde, 9, 94, 102,
Nazareth, Peter, 65
107
Netorlim, 131, 136, 139
Linschoten, 56, 57, 71, 96, 98–101,
Newman, Robert S., 8, 31–42, 65, 162
103, 129
nirvana, 90
Lotus Production, 102
Lusophone, 14, 21, 102, 109 Old Goa, 92, 146
Orientalism, 70, 148–150, 154
Macau, 49, 68 Ormuz, 49, 57
Madeu, 39 Outre-Mer, 127, 130
Malabar, 8, 47, 49, 120
pirates, 47 pão, 104, 105, 135
Malacca, 45, 49 Palolem, 63
Mandelslo, Johan Albrecht de, 54, 96, Pandit, Heta, 65
120, 129 panditos, 98
mando, dulpod, 139 Panjim, 62, 74, 86, 92, 97, 103, 105,
Mangalore, 61 108, 111, 133, 138, 140
Manrique, Friar Sebastião, 72 Parobo, Parag, 65
Mapusa, 136, 139 Paz, José, 8, 12, 14, 20–24, 27–29
Margão, 22, 132, 135, 136, 139 Peace Corps, 31, 32
Mascarenhas, Telo de, 21, 22, 24, 25 Pegu, 49
Maugham, Somerset, 61 Pernem, 85, 153
McCaul, Kathleen, 163 Pessoa, Fernando, 28
Melo, Froilano de, 23 Phantom, 158
168
Pintos’ Revolt, 108 soldiers and seamen, 50

Pires, Tomé, 61, 72, 150–154 speakers of, 161
Polo, Marco, 6, 157 trade, 46, 49
Ponda, 56 translations, 21–23, 25
Portuguese, 9, 17, 41, 55, 59, 73, 75, treaties, 47
96–101, 107–111, 118–121, writings in Goa, 26, 27
135, 136, 138, 146–149, Punjani, Bina, 64
151–153, 161, 162
armadas, 48 Quepem, 31, 80, 153
capital in Asia, 72
channel RTP, 102 Rajasthan, 108
chronicles, 50 Rangel-Ribeiro, Leonor, 66
colonial government, 37 Rangel-Ribeiro, Victor, 65
colonialism, 22 reportage, 85, 131
colonisation, 145 Rodricks, Wendell, 63, 108
conquest, 70, 95 rosquilhas, 55
culture in Goa, 32 Rua Direita (main street), 100
Discoveries, 18 Rushdie, Salman, 66
empire, 52 Russia, 108
era, 103, 161
expansion, 146 Sahyadri Khanda, 99
face of Goa, 107 Saibin, 38
fleet, 45–48 Said, Edward, 6, 70, 144, 149, 150, 154
food, 54, 58 Saldanha, Mariano José de, 23, 25
former colony, 132 Saligão, 106, 112, 132
fortresses, 46 Sambhaji Nagar, 86
Goa, 17 Sangolda, 132, 133, 138
heritage, 134 Santa Cruz, 62
Indo-Portuguese Goa, 109 Santa Rita Vas, Luís, 60, 73, 78
influence on food, 55 Santa Rita Vaz, Isabel da, 108
influences, 59, 145 Santeri, 39, 40
language, 8, 12, 14, 22, 28, 78 Santo Estevam, 57
legacy, 80 Santoro, Kornelia, 63
lifestyle, 54 Sardesai, Rajdeep, 66
marriages with, 97 Sati, 98, 120, 130, 153, 154
naval organization, 8 saudades, 89
navigation, 45, 47–50 Shah, Adil, 151
Orientalists, 99 Shantadurga, goddess, 31
physicians, 98 Shetty, Manohar, 9, 27, 60, 61, 69, 117,
Portuguese Goa, 71 118
Portuguese India, 71, 119 Shrivastava, Rahul, 66
prosperity in India, 72 Singh, Dayanita, 65
publications in Goa, 24 Siolim, 87, 109, 132, 134, 139
rule, 65, 72, 96, 129, 138, 145 Slovush, Elena, 106
169
sontrios, 31, 36, 42, 43 tiatr, 37, 64, 105, 133, 138
Sousa, Martim Affonso de, 16 Timor, 68
Sousa, Nalini de, 102, 109, 111 Tintin, 156, 158
Sousa, Nora Secco de, 74 tribals, 136
Sousa, Prof. Eduardo de, 69, 74 Trikal, 160
Souza, Teotonio de, 65, 72 Tsang, Hiuen (Xuanzang), 6
stereotypes, 128
dimwitted Sardaji, 128 Vagator, 81
effeminate Bengali, 128 Vaidya, Dada, 103
Goan drunk, 128 vaidyas, 98, 103
shrewd Marvadi, 128 Vasco da Gama, 86
sura, 57 Velim, 8
Surat, 8, 49 Veni, Vidi... Goa, 78
susegaado (susegad), 10, 125 Viscount de Torres-Novas Goa, 99
Visscher, Jacobus Canter, 120, 129
Tagore, Rabindranath, 8, 14, 18–29 Viva Santiago, 163
Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 96, 119, 129
terra incognita, 126 Waugh, Evelyn, 61
The Colloquies on the Simples and
Drugs of India, 17 Xavier, St. Francis, 146
The Land of the Great Image, 72
The Suma Oriental, 10, 72, 148–151, zatras and feasts, 33, 40, 42
153, 154 Županov, Inês G., 16, 18
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Goa, Through the Traveller’s Lens

First published in 2018 and reprinted in 2019 by

Goa,1556, Sonarbhat, Saligão 403511 Goa, India. http://goa1556.in, goa1556@gmail.com

See Goa,1556’s catalogue at: http://goa1556.in

Isabel de Santa Rita Vás 12

Sushila Sawant Mendes 31

Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa 52

Glenis Maria Mendonça 77

Akshata Bhatt, Nafisa Oliveira 115

Natasha Maria Gomes 125

Palia Gaonkar 142

Ambika Kamat 148

Frederick Noronha 156

ings of the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century are subject to

structuring tension between colonial and cosmopolitan visions – “they re-

Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa attempts to understand the food his-

thrown up by cross-cultural contact.

ranging from travel writing as an historian’s conventional documentary

I SABEL DE S ANTA R ITA VÁS1

Writers and academicians who travel in the footsteps of other

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

Gerald Manly Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.”

1 Guest-faculty at the Department of English of the Goa University, Goa. isabelsr-

The comings and goings of scholars

Garcia de Orta: a 16th Century Portuguese physician in Goa

ities to be in Bassein, Kathiawar, Ahmednagar, Diu, Cochin and Ceylon.

Commenting on Garcia de Orta’s book as a literary, medical and cul-

Mendes and Orta: distance meets distance

The trans-disciplinary conference threw up lively papers and discussion

Rabindranath Tagore: world traveller

West Bengal, developed by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore and later ex-

A general study reveals that translating Tagore as a literary agenda

Portugal having been declared a Republic (1910), Goans took up

Perhaps this appreciation of Tagore beyond national and cultural borders,

done so as serious scholars and academicians drawn to the Goan land-

134, p. 213. Source MS original at Rabindra Bhavan at Shantiniketan.)

S USHILA S AWANT M ENDES1

American anthropologist Robert S. Newman grew up in the New

Background: Newman and Goa

Robert S. Newman grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a small New

Goans a particular set of appreciations or perceptions of the world around

Goa: The Transformation of an Indian Region.

Aims and objectives:

To study the anthropological writings of Robert Newman on As-

establishing Goa as Indian, for readers outside Goa, became an important

The AVC connection

AVC’s strong Kshatriya underbelly

Newman refers to the 1982 church conflict between the Mouradors

Newman’s writings on AVC also emphasize the Indian nature of Goan

Newman’s essays on AVC

The Hindu goddess appears in the dreams of both Catholics and

Purus Deckhecho in Assolna (Priolkar 79-82). Santeri is the common deity

Kale, Pramod. “Essentialist and Epochalist Elements in Goan Popular Culture”,

Portuguese control over the sea

The Portuguese wanted Indian rulers to accord protection to their trading

Sailing of native vessels was subjected to sailing permits or cartaze is-

Goa as the centre of merchandise

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his writings is the description of