By George Menezes

My mother was an extraordinary woman. Born and brought up in Goa she spoke only Portuguese and Konkani. It did not prevent her from marrying and loving a man who was a Latin and English scholar. Both languages were Greek to her.

If today I can speak Konkani and Portuguese it is because I heard both the languages spoken everyday. Portuguese with my father and Konkani with Mafaldinha, our head-cook, midwife and bottle-washer, specially bottle-washer, because my mother bore a child every alternate year and stopped suddenly when she realised that the older ones were turning out to be teenage disasters.

My mother loved the Portuguese although she disliked Salazar and his unpalatable offerings of Christian fascism. When the time came she supported my father in his struggle to promote Konkani and his contribution in the liberation of Goa from fascist colonial rule.

When her third child joined a freedom fighter’s group that entered Portuguese Goa to plant the Indian flag, she locked herself in her room and prayed for His will to be done.

But her love for the Portuguese people, their language, literature and culture never diminished. If she had not died quietly and without a murmur in her sleep, she would have wanted to read “Camoes” and “Guerra Junquerio”, two of her favourite Portuguese writers.

She often talked about the culture of “boas families”, the noble families. Not so much of the whole Goa but of Salcette. Meaning I suppose, Margao and the surrounding villages. “Boas families” soaked in Portuguese culture which had not alas crossed the Zuari to touch the not so boas families of Bardez & Ilhas. Or so the Margao people believed.

Thanks to this culture, for years I learnt not to prop my elbows on the dining table, not to slurp my soup, lifting the soup plate away from my lap, and never ever dipping my bread or biscuits in my tea.

During our first visit to Europe in 1959 I gratefully sent my brother photographs of French men in a bar in Marseilles dipping their bread not only in their tea but in their soup. In fact, wiping the garlic butter sauce (oozing from the dish of snails) clean off your plate was a very cultured thing to do. Years later, dining with friends in Lisbon I found that my wife and I were the only ones who kept our elbows off the table and did not make the kinds of noises that all hungry, Portuguese people do when they are thoroughly enjoying their cod and onions in olive oil.

Today the “boas families” are battling with legitimate and illegitimate children, many of who are jobless drunkards or drug addicts. Not to mention Chief Ministers from “boas families” who have set “culture” standards for corruption.

We invite cousins for cocktails and they say, “Why are you taking so much trouble to organise something. We will drop in some day, no_” Some day_ And catch me in my underwear screaming at the old girl_ Some day when we are all dressed and about to leave for a funeral_ Or when there is no beer in the fridge and the dog has eaten the sandwich bread_

We invite Goan friends for a sit down dinner and they won’t tell you whether they are coming or not. “We’ll see, baba” they say “If Santan is not busy” Then they turn up without so much as an apology for not phoning, and the table beautifully set for eight people has to be converted into a local bus where, with the words “matxem bab”, two people occupy the same space at the same time. Never mind the laws of physics.

Today Goan culture is an absence of culture. People don’t return your calls. They don’t keep appointments and don’t bother to call you in case they are not coming. Chivalry and courtesy has been dead long ago and there wasn’t even an obituary.

Goan culture is a culture of braggarts. Pea-brained officers leaning on the pillars of their double barreled surnames and strutting around as if they were presidents of the companies they worked for.

Behind the veneer of stuffed sofas with lace back-covers, Macau furniture and cupboards filled with miniature bottles of alcohol you will find filthy toilets and pillow-covers pale green from a marriage of hair oil and fungus.

And as for the much touted Goan warmth and hospitality, it took me several lonely months of uninterrupted stay to discover that such a thing does not exist.

Thank God for some non cultured non-Goans who have come to stay.