By Tony de Sa

The Goa of the sixties and seventies was a stark contrast to the Goa of today. Goa had just been freed from the Portuguese yoke, and frankly speaking, the things we take for granted in Goa today, electricity, piped water, tarred roads, telephones, internet connectivity, were simply not there. When the Portuguese left Goa, the only development which had taken place was centred on the townships of Panjim, Margao, Vasco da Gama and Mapusa. So, life in Goa, especially rural Goa, during that period was something totally different from what it is today.

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It is June 6, 2019. I'm on my way to Mapusa, which I do several times a day, since my village Moira is practically a suburb of Mapusa. It rained last night for the first time this year after a long, hot summer, signalling the onset of the monsoons. The roads are wet and slippery, so I have to ride my scooter carefully. As I round the turn at the Mapusa Tar bridge, I run into a traffic jam. The road is choked with milling crowds, two-wheelers and four-wheelers. People are massed around a shop selling large plastic sheets. I navigate the throng while muttering a few choice curses at the people buying these sheets, which they will use, to protect their houses in the monsoons.

That evening as I sit in my balcão, a glass of the season’s last uraca, liberally laced with lime juice cordial and plenty of rocks, I mull over the day’s events. The incident with the plastic sheet buyers still rankles as I had to encounter them again on my way home. Why the dickens couldn’t these people be sensible about getting protection from the monsoons in summer like we used to do in the old days? I mused about that and fell into a kind of reverie.

In the old days, I’m talking about the period covering the early sixties to mid-seventies, my parents’ sole preoccupation in the months of April and May was centred on the pausacho prumente, which loosely translated means provisions for the monsoons. With good reason. The monsoons were fierce then not like the wishy-washy rains we get today. In the months of June, July and August, it would rain sometimes for days on end without let. It was in those days that the song ‘Come September’ came alive for us.

The heavy rains meant that the house had to be protected at all costs. Most of our Goan houses of that period in our villages were bungalows, built of stone with mud or lime mortar used in place of cement. Some of the houses were pure adobe and the walls were coated with lime plaster. During the rains, exposed walls would absorb water and there was a risk of collapse.

The walls were protected by tying a zodd. Bamboo sticks were tied vertically from the ends of the rafters to the ground, one to every rafter or every alternate rafter along the length of the wall. Then sticks were tied horizontally, in two or three lines depending on the height of the roof. To these were tied woven palm fronds called mollam. These mollam were in great demand so if they were not available, dried palm fronds would be tied to the latticework of bamboo sticks. Since the eaves were generally about a foot or foot and half wide, the walls were protected from the onslaught of the rains. Of course, as the years went by, and cement became available and labour for tying the zodd became scarce, people simply plastered the exterior walls with cement and that eliminated the need for a zodd.

The other concern was the roof. The wooden rafters and battens are susceptible to invasion from termites. Often a rafter may look perfectly fine from inside the house, but an inspection from the top of the house would show that the rafter had been totally devoured from within by hungry termites. My house had Mangalore tiles and so the problem was reduced to having the rafters and battens examined for damage and replacing them, along with any damaged tiles. But those houses with country tiles had to have the tiles removed and the bamboo rafters and battens checked, and replaced if necessary. This was done proficiently. The workers would climb the roof and remove two lines of tiles from top to bottom and stash them aside. Then they would work on the adjacent line, removing the tiles, sweeping them out and replacing them in the blank lines. Thus, they advanced horizontally, from line to line and the last two lines were filled with tiles which were stashed. The bamboo framework of the roof was tied together using coir ropes. They literally ‘stitched’ the bamboos together. Hence in Konkani when someone is repairing the roof, people use the expression ghor xiumta which transliterates to ‘stitching the house’

We used to love watching the workers working on the zodd (palm frond protection) and the roofs. It was fascinating watching them at work. The carpenters on the roof did not use modern drills, but drills which have a bow like the bow of a violin in which the string is twisted around a cylinder which has the drill bit – a nail flattened like a diamond at the tip and sharpened. This cylinder goes into another cylinder which the carpenter holds in one hand and moves the bow back and forth with the other. Occasionally, they would drop a hammer or a few nails and we’d rush to pick them up and climb up the ladder to give them the fallen items. The best part was their mid-morning break when they would come to the house for a bowl of rice congee with kalchi koddi which we also had along with them.

An important aspect of the preparation for the monsoons was the lay in stock of firewood. There was no gas, no electricity and no running water. So, we had to make provisions for firewood to last at least four months. Logs were bought by the cartload and they were split so that they could be used in our fireplace. Along with firewood, we also kept a stock of dried leaves to fuel the fire.

Almost every house had a huge copper pot called a bhann just outside of the bathroom. One of the bathroom walls had an opening, a sort of window, so that the bather could reach into the water in the copper pot with a tumbler and use it for bathing. We, at home, liked to have hot water at all times so the bhann was heated and kept hot the whole day. The fuel for the bhann was usually dried leaves, hay and any calorific waste from the house like old newspapers, paddy straw, etc. To collect the leaves, my mother, brother and I along with several women of the village would go to spots early in the morning, where dried leaves were found aplenty. We’d use a broom to sweep the leaves into the zabddo (a large net made of coir rope). There were several common places to collect the leaves and they were sort of reserved for certain families.

The harsh monsoons meant that we had to lay in stock of food as well. The prime item was salt. Salt used to come to Moira from various places by a boat which was moored by the river flowing past our house. The boatman used to come to our house and tell us that he had arrived with salt. We had our favourite boatman who knew exactly how much of it we needed. We would buy salt in a measure called a kudov. Around four kuddev would last us up to a year. The salt was stored in an earthenware pot or a bamboo basket which was coated with cow dung. It was kept in our backyard and protected by mollam and dried palm fronds. The basket was called mitachi koronn.  One could not buy salt in the market as we do today. When the new salt was bought, the remaining old salt was used as a fertilizer for the coconut trees. Now of course, everyone uses iodized salt which comes in a packet and can be bought in a grocery store throughout the year.

April and May were the months to buy onions for the monsoons. These onions were sold with their dried stalks intact. The stalks were plaited to form bunches of onions. Two bunches were joined into a pair. A bamboo stick was hung horizontally in the kitchen from two ropes let down from the rafters. The onion bunches were slung across the bamboo. As and when onions were needed, they were plucked from the bunches and used. This saved the onions from rotting and being gnawed at by rodents. 

April-May was also the time to preserve food. Canned food and frozen food were simply not available. Frozen food, because of the problem of electricity and canned food because of its general unavailability and prohibitive cost. So, my mother would buy salt fish and dried prawns from the market. There is nothing like the odour of dried prawns dry roasted on a pan to whip up the appetite. My mother would as far as possible make spicy pork sausages (chourisam) and pickled fish (parra and mole) for consumption during the monsoons. The chourisam, like the onions were slung from a bamboo pole over the randonn (open fire cooking area). This got them nicely smoked and preserved, and gave them added flavour. There were also pickles – mango, karvanda, lime – made, and kept in jars.

Going to Mapusa, then, was a difficult task, as we had to walk a good distance to the bus stop. The buses were few and far between. The bus fare as I remember it then was a mere 25 paise. The share cab fare was 36 paise. Still, many thought that this was expensive and preferred to walk to Mapusa.

The month of May was not all work. It was also a month of fun and frolic. Many of our neighbours who lived in Bombay or Poona would come home for their summer holidays. We used to look forward to meeting our Bomaikar friends as they always entertained us with interesting stories of life in Bombay. They would be good company during the holidays. We would group together and play games and sing songs in the evenings. The young boys and girls from Bombay came up with new games and ideas which astounded us country bumpkins sometimes. Then, there were the numerous Cross feasts commemorating village saints. These commenced with a ladainha (litany sung either in Konkani or Portuguese) and boiled gram served after the ladainha. Simple things but they gave us pleasure.

I often spent a few days in May at my mother’s ancestral house in Paitona, Salvador du Mundo. The people of Paitona loved to go to Calangute on Sundays. Some of us would go around from house to house to find people who might be interested in going to the beach. We would take a subscription and hire a caminhao, a small ‘bus’. At the beach we would first stroll about and when it became a little dark, we would sit in a chosen place and play games like twos and threes, and sing songs. Those were the days when the Simla Beat Contest in Calangute could draw a throng of around 10,000 people.

Back then, there was nothing much by way of entertainment. The occasional English movie at Alankar Cinema or El Capitan. The balcony tickets cost around Rupees 1.50 but even that was expensive for us as money was scarce. So, the greatest pleasure we derived was from reading books. We became voracious readers in trying circumstances. We often read by candle or lamp light. This earned us shouts from our parents; nevertheless, we persisted. We would share our books and anyone who had a book was a king. We raided school and college libraries, and exchanged these among ourselves contrary to the rules. There was no conveniently located library and, in any case, going to Panjim just for a library book was unthinkable. 

Another great pastime was listening to the radio. Practically every house had a transistor radio and we would tune in to Radio Ceylon (now Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation). Radio Ceylon ran a request programme every evening and it drew a huge fan club from all over India. My family too were great fans of this programme. The ‘Binaca Hit Parade’ was one popular programme. And then, we listened to Radio Goa on Friday nights and Radio Bombay, (if one had a powerful enough set) for the Saturday night programme, ‘Saturday Date’.

I pull myself out of this reverie. It’s 8.30 pm and time for a bath, dinner and re-joining the 21st century.

Tony de Sa has been a life-long teacher, and retired as headmaster at Sacred Heart High School, Parra. He has been actively involved with the Goa Headmasters’ Association as its vice president, and editor of Communicator, its in-house magazine. He is also involved with the scout-guides of Goa, at a senior level, and was awarded the Silver Star by the President of India for meritorious service.