Inherited memories of Goa
This beautiful state means different things to different people, but my week here has managed to evoke some strong memories that aren’t even mine.
In 1967 a handsome young resident of Bombay’s Shivaji Park received a bit of good news from his employer- Bank of India. KK, as he was called because of his initials, was told that his hard work that comprised of being a top student of Government Law College while working full time as a clerk had paid off. The 26-year old former footballer was promoted to the rank of officer in what was still a private bank that catered to an elite clientele. The catch was that he had to leave the city he was born in (but not raised in) to move to the newly-liberated former Portuguese territory of Goa.
This jovial young man took the offer with both hands and moved with his sparse belongings to the state which obviously had a strong Portuguese influence. How would it be for a Malayali man who never drank a drop of alcohol or eat any meat or fish in his life? The teetotaler’s charm and personality along with his openness won him many a friend in Goa. The three years my father spent in Goa were some of the happiest of his life. He never stopped talking about those days.
From his anecdotes, the first thing that struck me was his narration of an incident after he had reached Goa. A local friend who met him in Bardez took him for a cup of tea to a small eatery. My father was told to leave his bag outside. “No one will touch someone else’s belongings,” the new acquaintance told him. “They are still scared of the brutal police regime that the Portuguese imposed.”
At the bank, the most important matters of the day were fish prices and the local football season. Everything else was secondary. My father treasured his time so much in Goa that funny incidents would be repeated for decades. This was his favourite: He shared an apartment with a couple of Goan friends, and a relative of a flatmate came visiting from southern Goa. My father and his friends were fast asleep when this man came to their home and started knocking. “Who’s there,” a flatmate asked. “I’m Joaquim (pronounced as Jokim)” came the reply. In a semi-awake state, the man inside yelled, “It’s the middle of the night and you’re joking!” This exchange lasted a few minutes with the visitor constantly repeating his name and the resident getting furious that someone was playing some sort of joke at an unearthly hour. Finally, the visitor’s relative woke up and let him in.
I was too young and too disinterested in Goa to ask more about the state from my father. But incidents and his memories from Goa did come up from time to time. On a November evening in Kovalam Beach near Trivandrum in 1996, I asked my father if this was the most beautiful beach he had ever seen. He smiled and replied that the beaches in Goa were more beautiful, adding that a beach in a place called Calangute was the most beautiful he had seen. We’re obviously talking about the 1960s here!
Oh how badly I wish I knew more about his time here in Goa. How the places I visit looked like in the 1960s, just a few years after the territory became a part of India… As someone who was principally opposed to alcohol, he would tell me how much fun he had with Goans his age, who accepted him despite him not drinking with them. In 1970, KK was transferred back to Bombay.
There were just two things he wanted after coming back to Bombay. A family of his own and success as a banker. He ended up getting both, but Goa and his fondness for Indian Catholics stayed with him for the next three decades. KK’s closest friend and mentor was an East Indian man named Remedios, who took him often to his cottage in Manori, a small village that was far from Bombay city limits in the 1970s. I grew up hearing stories of Remedios Uncle, a man I do not remember meeting since I was just an infant when he passed away. From what I know, he was the principal of the Bank of India staff training college in Malad in the 1970s.
What has happened to the inclusive India of my father’s youth? The age of films like Amar Akbar Anthony…
Sitting on a beach in Vagator in Goa at this very moment, it warms my heart to know that a young Malayali man from Bombay came here more than five decades ago and was accepted and loved by the Goans.
My father only visited Goa once after 1970. In 2001, he came back to the state as an accomplished international banker with his wife and son. Never a sentimentalist, on that visit he did not particularly want to visit his old haunts or look up his old friends, but surely those golden days of his youth would have been on his mind when he came back to Goa with us.
What would I give to meet some of my father’s old friends and acquaintances so that I could know more about how he was in his 20s and early 30s! I am sure that a 26-year old version of me would have been the best of friends with the man who moved to Goa in 1967.