Saligao Serenade

[Editor's Note: This essay has been compiled by Fr Nascimento Mascarenhas from old documents, magazine cuttings, jubilee souvenirs, and myriad other sources. If you recognize an unacknowledged source, do let us know and we will rectify the lapse.] 

 Engagements and marriages are also tied down by the traditions in Goa and surrounded by a cluster of quaint rites and observances. A week before any wedding there is bustle all around in preparation for the Buim Jevon or Bikareanchem Jevon (Beggars’ Lunch) and so called, because all the poor as well as the rich who are invited for it are made to sit on the floor on a mat (souém) and eat.  The menu consists of rice, jaggery, sweet (onn) a mixture of gram and plantain vegetable, puris made of rice or wheat flour and an aromatic curry of all types of spices washed down by a glass of feni (the local brew).  Dessert is bananas, mangoes or jack-fruits. Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor's Note: This essay has been compiled by Fr Nascimento Mascarenhas from old documents, magazine cuttings, jubilee souvenirs, and myriad other sources. If you recognize an unacknowledged source, do let us know and we will rectify the lapse.] 

A tradition, superstition or a custom is at home in a place, like a plant. It draws vitality and life from a certain fertile environment and will not grow or flourish anywhere else. And in Goa, including Saligao, with her brooding beauty and peaceful atmosphere, has been the responsive soil and setting for some very picturesque folklore. Probably the hard and lonely but contented life some of the peasants lead, worked on their imaginations and endowed the little-known and the remote with grand importance. The village folk were in every respect sons of the soil, with pliant and impressionable minds. With their hopes sown in the fields; their fears fanned by every passing wind, superstitions and legends formed an essential part of  their everyday life. At least, this was the prevalent scene while I was a young lad growing up in Saligao in the early 1950s, before I decided to become a priest and joined the Seminary of Saligao towards the end of that decade, at the age of 17. Read the rest of this entry »

by Fr Nascimento Mascarenhas 

As I wrote in an earlier essay, when I was a young lad growing up in Saligao, the children always waited eagerly for the onset of the monsoons. The pitter-patter of the first rains on the tiled roofs was cue enough for us kids to run under the gógó of our house for an impromptu bath-acid rain would be something that future generations would have to contend with! Friends from the neighbourhood such as Mohan, Naran and Surya joined me in singing their version of the rain song in Marathi: “Êrê êrê pausa, tula detô paisa, paisa zala khota, paus zala motta. Ega ega sari, mhajê moddkê bari, sar allê dhauvun, moddke gele vavun.” The magic of the first rains also inspired Oslando de Souza from Arrarim to compose his immortal song, “Poilo Paus“. Read the rest of this entry »