Trying not to remember St Xavier's
Prominent Goan writer George Menezes
[EMAIL PROTECTED] pens his memories of his
days in Bombay, to be published in a proposed book
on Goans in the city, being currently edited by
journalist Reena Martins. If you have a
Bombay-linked story to tell, get in touch with
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
By George Menezes
When I think of my days at St Xavier's College, I cannot but
connect it with the time I got engaged to a city girl from
Bombay in 1956. My fiancée invited her best friends to meet
me at her home in Mahim.
When they were leaving I overheard them saying, "Are you sure
that you want to marry a guy with a receding hairline and an
'anda-gund' accent?"
To my fiancé's friends, from sophisticated convent schools
of Bombay, my blue Air Force uniform with a gold Pilot
Officers braid on my shoulder did not count.
Being bred and buttered in a small town like Dharwad with an
accent nicely described as anda-gunda was for them a real
disaster.
I felt the same way when I arrived at St Xavier's College
hostel sometime in July 1948.
My father who was a professor at Karnataka College Dharwad
had been summoned by BG Kher, Minister for Education, to take
over as Under Secretary Education at the Secretariat in
Bombay.
Before he moved the seven children family, he thought it
would be a good idea for his eldest son to join the college
where he had had a brilliant academic career winning gold
medals both at the BA and MA exams.
Before I cleared the waiting list and was informed about
getting a room at the St Xavier's College hostel, I spent a
warm and wonderful month sleeping on the balcony of the flat
of my cousin Julio Ribeiro, facing Byculla Railway Station
and literally watching Bombay's teeming millions go by.
Alexandra Terrace where Julio and his family lived
was in those days some kind of a barometer that
measured whether you really were a part of Bombay.
It was like a Matriculation Examination that you
had to pass to qualify as someone 'educated'.
You had to know the timetable of the trains that stopped just
opposite and become immune to the screeching of the trams
that stopped and started right in the middle of the road. You
had also to learn to be on first name basis with the
conductors of the double-decker buses that stopped just below
my balcony inviting dare-devils from the first floor to get
onto the top of the bus without taking the staircase to the road.
When I was informed by the college that they had a room in
the hostel for me, I remember Julio's mother Prima Maria
Luise picking up my small trunk and taking me by tram to the
college and leaving me in the room of Fr. Fell.
I was a little intimidated at the sight of a foreigner with a
long beard and a cassock. I had only seen such figures in
the holy pictures of saints that adorned my mother's altar
back home.
I don't remember the room except that it had an iron cot, a
table and a chair. All I remember is that Fr. Fell threw a
shirt on the bed, which I presumed, were the college colours,
and told me to turn up for hockey practice the next morning.
I had never played hockey in my life and that is how the
history of my feeling inadequate at St Xavier's College began.
The room was cool and quiet after the month I had spent on
the balcony of Alexandra Terrace. So quiet in fact that I
could not sleep for several nights.
Early the next morning, there was a knock at my
door. A tall guy entered my room and introduced
himself as my neighbour. As we walked together to
the college canteen to get our breakfast, he told
me, with passion in his voice, about his dreams for
Bombay and that he wanted to become an architect.
His name was Charles Correia.
And here was I, wanting to complete my BA and become a
Rationing Inspector in Dharwad. As you can imagine my feeling
of inadequacy jumped up a few more notches. In the next few
months St Xavier's College conspired to completely destroy my
self-esteem in unimaginable ways.
My classroom was a veritable theatre. Beautiful girls and
handsome men with baritone voices reciting poetry and quoting
the classics in a manner born.
Nothing could be more intimidating than having Gerson da
Cunha, his brother Sylvester, Mario Miranda, Carmel Braganza
and Moira Britto in the same classroom, being taught
'religion' by an intellectual genius called Fr. Duhr.
To cap everything they were all members of the college
Sodality, fervent Catholics, youthful torch of bearers of
Christ familiar with the lives of our saints and mystics.
There was an empty space next to this guy who kept
his head down most of the time and spent the entire
period doodling on his notebook. Mario Miranda does
not know this, but I stole a couple of pages of the
notebook that contained stunning pencil drawings of
most of our professors and some of our pretty
girls.
In my present state of financial inadequacy I am hoping that
Mario's notebook of drawings can be auctioned at Christie's.
When Mario asked me whether I could draw, my feeling of
inadequacy surfaced once more and I said "the only drawing I
have done is to draw water from the ancestral well during my
holidays in Goa." He slammed me on the back as if to
acknowledge my sense of humour and he said "there is still
hope for you."
When I thought that I was settling down nice and proper, two
things happened.
On January 30, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu
fanatic in cold blood.
Within hours of the news the whole city of Bombay came to a
standstill as if it had experienced a massive stroke. I
walked out to the gates of the college intending to take a
walk. There was not a single human being or a single vehicle
anywhere in sight.
This was my first experience of fear. I kept looking behind
me as I walked back to my hostel room. The whole place was
empty. It looked as if everybody had rushed off to the
security of the homes of their relatives. There was no food
in the canteen and even the roadside vendors had disappeared
from the scene.
From a distance I heard the voices of the Sodality members
praying softly and I thought I heard the faint, faint voice
of Gerson da Cunha saying, "what a fall there was my
countrymen, then you and I and all of us fell down and bloody
treason flourished over us."
I know what would have happened if I had been back home in
Karnatak College on that day. The Students Union would have
asked me to read a poem or make a speech at their condolence
meeting.
Here at St Xavier's I felt impotent. A country bumpkin in a
high-power city and in one of the finest colleges in the
country, I did not know how to respond. I went to my room and
fasted and cried for three days.
The weeping was natural and wonderfully cleansing. The
fasting was a forced choice (the canteen was closed) but
equally cleansing.
A few days later I learnt that I had failed miserably in my
religion paper. I took the next train home.
I dread to think what would have happened to my self-esteem
if I'd stayed for more than six months at the college.
ENDS
