Margao disrobed
Jose
"Attached is a review of Soaring Spirit by Valmiki Faleiro."
Very interesting review of Soaring Spirit with Images of Goa interspersed. Liked your very much.
Three take home points about the book ( based on your review ):
a: Valmiki is an artful 'disrober' of Margao. One obviously needs to be a native of Margao and have a feel for the pulse to convey a story, albeit dispassionately.
b: Ben is a habitual picker of low-hanging mangoes, be it in Margao or in Velim (:-)
c: Photographs and Illustrations, oftentimes either make or break a book from the reader's perspective. You have provided, IMHO, apt guidance for future publications. The publisher is quite accepting of valid and constructive critique. I am sure he will utilise it beneficially.
Thank you.
jc
Frederick FN Noronha * फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
Soaring Spirit --- Margao disrobed
A review by Ben Antao
As one who grew up in Margao (1945-54) and served as an altar boy in the Holy Spirit Church, I looked forward to reading the book Soaring Spirit written by journalist Valmiki Faleiro. And when the publisher Frederick Noronha kindly airmailed me a copy last week, a sense of curiosity washed over me, badly enough to make me want to read the book as soon as I unwrapped it. And what do I think of it?
Wow! Faleiro has disrobed Margao in a meticulous fashion that only a native of Margao like him could do. The houses round the Church Square that had seemed dark and remote while I was a student at Almeida’s Catholic Educational Institute for six years (1946-52) came alive in a fluent narrative written with obvious love by a son born and bred in the red soil of Margao.
I say red soil, advisedly and knowingly, for I wore out a lot of shoe leather participating in Mocidade Portuguesa, in the red church square, before and after school which operated from two locations: one of the Barreto houses across Padre Jose Vas (now saint) square on the Agostinho Vicente Lourenco Road in the backyard of which is the Dr Arcanjo Menezes Nursing Clinic on Bernardo da Costa Road and on the first floor of the old Camara building at the northwest corner of the square (Mons. Claudio Alvares Road and Mons. Ganganelli Rebelo Road). In the Barreto premises were held Grades one to four and in the Camara grades five to seven (the old SSC). Sadly, today both these places are in ruin, the Camara an eyesore.
Principal Roque Santana Almeida from Assolna was a fanatic for Mocidade Portuguesa, a restless soul that becalmed only after his school was rated as Numero Uno in Mocidade Portugesa among all the schools in Goa. And who was his physical education instructor? Why, Bernardo Vas of Borda whom Faleiro mentions as one of the early settlers from Rachol. I’ve fond memories of Bernardo Vas, both during Mocidade Portuguesa and afterwards when I did my Diploma in Commerce (typing, Pitman’s shorthand, accounting and business correspondence) at the Institute Andrade that he ran (1953-54).
“Almeida resided with student-boarders of his school in the Paixao Pereira house but had his meals at the Barreto house,” writes Faleiro. So that explains why I would often see him sitting in the verandah of the Barreto house at the corner of Padre Miranda Road in the company of a lady whom I’d suspected was his girlfriend. Perhaps she was since Almeida was a bachelor.
Back to Soaring Spirit. Faleiro provides a diagram of the church square with details of the houses around it, beginning from the old Camara along Mons. Ganganelli Rebelo Road all the way to the corner of Tambarinheiros Road, then turns around to St Joaquim Road to Padre Miranda Road, with details of houses on the Calcada da N. Sra da Piedade (Monte road), and continues south on Agostinho Vicente Lourenco Road all the way to the old jail (now court house), and back to Floriano Barreto Road to the south side of the square where the houses of Alvares are situated, made memorable by the gunshots firing incident on election day of September 21, 1890.
The wealth and economic power of Salcete was concentrated in this entire area during my student days, which the author captures with felicitous detail that fascinated me to no end. As if guided by instinct he throws out nuggets of personal impressions that help to illuminate the houses and the church square. I shall add my own impressions where I can to flesh out this review.
The Camilo Alvares house on the north side of the square was the spot, says the author, where on Good Friday the Veronica’s lament was sung in front of this house. I recall this vividly, having written about this in my memoir Images of Goa (2011). Below is what I wrote in a chapter titled Good Friday Services.
Across the road about ten yards away stood Veronica on a table, holding a rolled-up cloth in her two raised hands. Several people broke away from the line of procession, and converged on the red square for a closer and better view of this ritual. A solitary violinist struck up the strains of the lament that Veronica would sing in Latin. Her soprano voice soared to engage the immediate attention of the empathetic listeners, and as she modulated her phrasing in operatic style, she slowly unrolled the cloth to reveal a bloody face that brought tears to the eyes of the audience. For an indefinite moment her high octave resonance pierced the surrounding gloom, leading to a moment of silent meditation in the surrealistic presence of Our Lady in blue, and triggering a feeling of pride in Joe because the girl who sang the part attended the same Almeida’s school.
Faleiro writes about the Good Friday procession from the Monte chapel to the Holy Spirit Church. As a teenager I was super-awed by the sight of the four men bringing down via the stone stairway the huge life-sized image of Christ and the large heavy Cross. To give you a flavour of those times, below is a brief description of that event from my book.
Here at Montir the drama of the Calvary event was acted out weekly during Lent on Fridays through the Stations of the Cross, as a necessary spiritual preparation of the faithful for the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord. Since Lent also happened to be a time when the cashew trees were in full bloom, the hill was redolent with sharp and pungent fragrances rising from its tiered circumference. The red and vermillion ripened fruit with kidney-shaped gray nuts tantalized the eye and teased the palate. The view from the top was magnificent in the late afternoon, with the church’s white belfry clearly dominant in the landscape of dark green coconut palms below.
As expected, the Good Friday service at Montir was packed. It was long and the procession down the red gravel circular road was marked by the singing of devotional songs that served to inspire the people to reflect upon their faith and their vocation, as they stumbled and slid on the narrow route, in memory of Jesus who had shown the way in another time and in another land. For Joe, the highlight of this service was Veronica’s Song that captured the agony of Jesus on a cloth bearing his facial imprint. The men of the confraternity, who shouldered the weight of the enormous Cross, negotiated the descent with a fortitude that was a witness to their calling. The platform carrying the huge image of Jesus with the cross on the shoulder and followed by the image of Our Lady with eyes downcast was laid to rest on the side road by the church square.
Faleiro gives a clue as to why the men were able to carry, without faltering, the heavy wooden cross, which was made by Xavier Pereira (Camaran Vaddo), the grandfather of Chris Perry---yes, that Chris Perry, the famed jazz musician, whose brother Joe Pereira was my classmate in the Almeida school.
Coming back to the Holy Spirit Church, the author says the first church in Salcete was built as a chapel in the fortified township of Rachol in 1521 by the Domicans. Holy Spirit was the second church, first constructed by the Jesuits in 1564-65 and went into five re-constructions or editions, the last in 1675 which exists today.
When I was a pre-teen and serving Mass, one could see huge white beeswax honeycombs hanging from the ceiling above the transept of the church. This detail is missing from the book because Faleiro was not yet born then and couldn’t possibly have known this. But he tells that bees found shelter in the organ loft and the belfry. Again I quote from the chapter in my memoir, The Attraction of Ladainha.
This evening the altar room was specially prepared for the ladainha. A ceramic bowl containing water and coconut oil was placed in a saucer in front of the altar. A cotton wick inserted through a tiny hole in a piece of tin floating in the oil burned softly. A tallow candle was lit on each side of the lamp. Two feet above the altar was a large framed picture of the Sacred Heart, which was matched on the far left by a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. In the middle of the two pictures was a wooden ledge on which four tall beeswax candles were spiked. Each and every time that Joe had to put up the low ladder to light these candles, images of the huge, wax-laden honeycombs that hung from the high ceiling way up the main altar of the Holy Spirit Church in Margao had flooded his mind. He had never been able to shake off that weird association.
One detail I didn’t know relates to the mango trees around the border of the square. Apparently there were pipal trees on the periphery before the Vicar Fr Francisco Xavier Pereira of Verna (1906-41) cut down these trees and replaced them with mango grafts in 1932-35. During my time at the Almeida school, my sister and I had often plucked the tender fruit (toram) from the low branches to munch after school or marcar passos drills involved in Mocidade Portuguesa. Crows also helped themselves by pecking at the ripe ones on the top branches.
Our school used the red square not only for Mocidade Portuguesa but also for the annual track and field events and the game of hockey. Of course, the square was lit up with music and fireworks during the novena days of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception (December) and the Holy Spirit (May).
One of the chapels attached to the church was Capela de Batalhao, now Our Lady of Grace Church across the municipal garden. When our family moved to Pajifond I served Mass in this chapel whose chaplain was Fr Armindo Santa Rita Vas of Aldona, a kind and friendly priest whom I’ll never forget.
This review has been longer than I had intended, but Faleiro’s book goes into such exhaustive details about Margao and the Marganeses (the latter day affluent settlers), that I simply had to share my experiences for obvious reasons. If there is a fault in the production of this book, I’d attribute it to the black-and-white photos that would have come out sharply clear if the publisher had used a better and higher quality white paper. A book about the rich community of Margao, including the author, deserves better in my view. Still, the book is a splendid effort by a journalist and former president (1985-87) of the Margao municipality. Bravo, Faleiro!
April 24, 2015
Words: 1815
augusto pinto
Ben you've really let yourself go, not only conveying to us the flood of nostalgia that overcame you when you read 'Soaring Spirit' but also using it as a promo for your Images of Goa which is also a nostalgia trip and which is published by Cinnamon Teal if I'm not mistaken.
The mailing list is a forum where one can bathe in such luxuries. Other liberties one can take are being lax about spelling and grammar: look at Eugene's or my posts - in the hurry to say what we want to say, Fowler and the OED are often dumped down the toilet bowl and we leave things which should have been edited out hanging in the mail.
In fact the spell check and grammar check options can be a hindrance not a help. I remember how my fellow Moidekar FL who floated a press-note party called Su...Su something Party got knackered because of this.
After consuming a peg or three or five of his usual, he wrote a long tirade against Manohar Parrikar (he mostly tiraded) mentioning the then former CM several times in the course of the mail.
Not being in a position to give his letter a once over, he just blindly accepted all the suggestions his spell and grammar check gave him - and click, click, click, click... Manohar Parrikar became Menorah Paprika that day. To everyone's delight.
Writing for print forces one to work within word limits. Of course that gives you a different kind of trip as you wrestle with how to express all your brilliant ideas in the limited space.
Which reminds me that Melba M Antao once told me that I was too prolix and hence she didn't read me (a barefaced lie if ever there was one)
For which reason I shall end here.
Best
Augusto
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Ben Antao
augusto pinto
On 26-Apr-2015 4:39 pm, "Ben Antao" <ben....@rogers.com> wrote:
> FN: Sometimes, wedding videos too can be far-from-disinteresting, it seems :-)
> I don’t understand the metaphor of the “wedding videos”. Can you explain it, FN, so I may
> get the joke?
What men Ben! You want to put your big fat foot on FN's pot or wot?
Frederick is not going to tell you no jokes men. I mean he'll have to go selling bhinktams in the Mhapshechea bazaarant if he were to take the wedding video joke seriously, so forget it - OK?
So how's your Money Power getting along? Are you going to take jc's pochki advice regarding the title seriously?
I say you should just do your own thing and don't listen to all the fukot advice from these bekar thovois.
Has the weather begun to unfreeze? Do you wish you were back in Goa?
Love and kisses to all.
Seriously joking,
Augusto
Then wha
>
> Best regards
>
> Ben
> PS. In future, will post everything in the body of the text!
>
>
> From: Frederick FN Noronha * फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2015 10:55 PM
> To: The Third Thursday Goa Book Club
> Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Margao disrobed
>
> Thanks for this, Ben! Much appreciated.
>
> Two minor points of discussion/disagreement (not that it matters, each has a right to his/her views):
>
> * Almost no review can be too long to post within an email. If it's too long for this, then it would be even longer still for being posted as an attachment. (Attachments are larger in size.) Just paste it within the email, and it could be read better and by more people. See below....
>
> * Off-white paper is currently standard for book publishing. The paper used in this case is imported, hi-bulk, extra-light.
>
> But I agree that Pantaleao's many photos are indeed sharper in the original. In my view, the way to print them better would have been to use colour printing. But then, the selling price of the book would have gone up by 3 to 3.5 times, and postage would have gone up two fold. Which means, I would have to think six to seven times before sending out review copies and/or offering discounts :-)
>
> Thanks for your feedback and interesting review! Both to you and Selma. That was quick indeed.
> FN
>
> Soaring Spirit --- Margao disrobed
>
> A review by Ben Antao
>