The Goan Character
(Taken from Frankly Speaking - Collected Writings of
Prof. Frank D'Souza)
The Goan character is rooted in paradox. The Goan is
a practical dreamer with an ear for music and a nose
for pork chops. Caste-ridden at home, he is a
cosmopolitan abroad, at ease in the capitals of the
world, possessed of a savoir vivre, which is the envy
and despair of culture-snobs elsewhere.
This tension of opposites in the Goan gives him a
vital, flamelike quality, which marks him out as a man
among men. Pious and superstitious at once, infinitely
adaptable and profoundly clannish, deeply attached to
his picturesque homeland and yet afflicted with the
wanderlust, the Goan character is a museum of
incompatibles. The Goan 'beatin' (spinster) who will
spend hours on her knees before the image of her
favourite Saint in fervent prayer, will reach out with
equal zeal for a handful of chillies and salt to cast
out the evil eye from her pet nephew. The lips that
mumble in prayer can on the slightest provocation
burst into the most shocking profanity.
As for the Goan's adaptability, put him in a luxury
hotel, and he is the perfect waiter. Put him on the
ship and he becomes the exemplary steward. Put him in
the kitchen and he will mix his ingredients with a
touch of genius to turn out dainty lyrics for the
dinner table. Give him 7 yards of cloth and he will
make a man-about-town of you. Stand him in the pulpit
and he will comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable. Place him in a lecture room and he will
hold the West in thrall and the gorgeous East in fee.
Child of distinctive culture - the synthesis of East
and West - the Goan is suspended between two worlds,
and this is the melancholy burden of his existence.
Socially at home everywhere, spiritually he belongs
nowhere. Wherever he may go, he carries in his
knapsack, along with his customs and traditions, the
baton, not of the marechal but of the maestro.
Only Assimilative
The Goan has emigrated to the four corners of the
earth, but a siren music in his blood always sings him
back to the village of his fathers. The circumference
of his interest is everywhere, but its centre is Goa.
The
Goan fondly imagines that he is original, when he is
only assimilative. Like the chameleon, he takes on the
colour of his surroundings. He has the unique gift of
being all things to all men without ceasing to be
himself - indefeasibly Goan.
Sipping the choicest Scotch in the lounges of
fashionable hotels, he carries in his veins the memory
of fiery 'fennim'; while he can relish caviare with
the most fastidious of gourmets, his palate yearns
nostalgically for a dish of his native "sorpotel". He
will manipulate a knife and fork with the same
sangfroid as he will use his fingers to pick a
succulent drumstick.
The Goan is a bon vivant. At his "fcstas" spirits flow
freely and tables groan under a variety of spectacular
Goan dishes, and yet he is no stranger to pate de foie
gras and chicken a la kiev. A connoisseur that he is,
the Goan has an exquisite appreciation of the good
things of life - a wine, a liqueur, a cheese, a cigar,
a woman.
The Goan is creative and critical at the same time.
His critical self-consciousness casts a blight upon
his creative instinct, and as a compromise he
cultivates an irony with which he punctures his own
ideals and illusions. He smiles in his sleeve at his
own enthusiasms. That is why, save for a few
exceptions, his best poetry is in his prose. The Goan
has, as a rule, cultivated the graces of prose rather
than wooed the 'raptures of poetry. He has no faith in
leadership, unless it is his own. The Goan is no
hero-worshipper. He sees through his great men with
the same uncanny penetration as their own wives see
through them. He is quick to detect feet of clay. He
will set you on pedestal today and use it as his
footstool tomorrow. Put him in a movement initiated by
somebody else, and you can trust him to put a spoke in
the wheel. Fiercely individualistic that he is, he has
yet instituted the model of corporate life - the
"cudd" (club), which is an admirable recreation in
distant climes of the distinctive atmosphere of his
native village.
Exuberant, Convivial
Pricked by the oestrum of the Latin culture, the Goan
is exuberant, convivial, magniloquent. He is the life
and soul of every party, for he is a brilliant
improviser, and can add to the gaiety of any
gathering. He is a born raconteur. Given the right
fillip to his spirits and an audience (even of one),
he will pour forth streams of talk, redolent of the
rich flavour of the mango, the nostalgic aroma of the
jackfruit, the acrid whiff of the cashew, to the
accompaniment of lordly gestures. The Goan needs
elbow-room and soul-space for his talk. For the Goan
is a born actor, he must dramatize every scene, every
situation. The Goan 'teatro' is the temple of his
social religion.
The Goan is an anima naturaliter Catholica, but an imp
of irreverence frolics in his mind, cocking a snook at
all pretensions. The Goan loves pomp but abhors
pomposity. The Goan will bend reverently to kiss the
sacerdotal ring, and smile maliciously at the pastor's
misdemeanours immediately his back is turned. Idealist
and cynic, he can fling a bridge of golden words from
earth to heaven and sling mud at an adversary with
equal gusto.
The Goan has had, from force of circumstances, to pick
up a number of languages, Indian and foreign. But
polyglot though he is, when Goan meets Goan, he will
greet him exuberantly in Konkani, for that is the
language of his heart. But the Goan is not all tall
talk, however. He has
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his pregnant silences, when brooding in the dark, he
hatches gunpowder plots to blow up his enemies. They
mostly end in smoke - the plots, I mean, The Goan is a
virtuoso, for he commands with consummate ease all the
steps in The music of life. Grave or gay, wild or
fantastic, the Goan, has the mood to match every
moment and the background music for it.
A Pilgrim of Eternity
The Goan is easy-going by temperament. He works by
fits and starts. He is seldom capable of sustained
activity. The Goan does brilliantly at University
examinations, when all his concentrated energy flows
out in a single jet, but he is generally indifferent
to research, which requires patience and perseverance.
He has insight but not industry. The Goan lad takes
more kindly to hockey and football, which demand
sudden spurts of physical activity, than to cricket,
which is a weariness of the flesh and a vexation of
the spirit to him. His motto might well be "Never do
today what can be put off till to-morrow". The Spanish
"manana" would admirably epitomize this trait in the
Goan's character. He has an infinite capacity for
avoiding pains. Not that the Goan lacks ambition. He
would set the Mandovi on fire, but is not prepared to
bum the midnight oil. His genius is a bright but
fitful flame, not a steady fire.
All his achievements are uneven. He has his !lights
and falls; the same fingers that will pluck the heart
of an exquisite melody on the violin, are equally
adept at beating a wild barbaric rhythm on the drum.
Perhaps it is his natural habitat with the faint
diffusion of languor in the atmosphere which has
induced in the Goan a love of dolce far niente. Tickle
mother earth in Goa with a hoe, and she will smile
with a bounteous harvest. Nature has been kindly
disposed towards the Goan, and the Goan has been
kindly disposed towards the rest of creation. He would
suffer fools gladly so long as they do not tread on
his corns. His reaction to life is just a mental shrug
of the shoulders which can be interpreted as "Let
sleeping dogs lie". When roused, he can be furious,
but generally his bark is worse than his bite.
No Businessman
The Goan has little aptitude for business, for his is
a generous expansive nature which accords ill with
book-keeping. He disdains to hitch his star to the
wagon of commerce. Not that there have been no Goan
commercial establishments. But they have not been able
to stand the stress and strain of modern cut-throat
competition, for the innate refinement of the Goan
will not let him go the whole hog of the gospel of
business today, "Devil take the hindmost". The Goan
stands for personal values-for love, friendship and
comradeship-in a world stained with the slow contagion
of commercialism.
Cradled amid natural scenes of surpassing loveliness,
the Goan has developed an emotional susceptibility
which finds expression more spontaneously in music
than in the plastic arts. For music is the mother
tongue of the feelings, while the plastic arts demand
a long and arduous apprenticeship to technique, the
Goan has poured all his sentiment and sentimentality,
his dreaminess and nostalgia, his vivacity and
heartache, into the folk-song, which has a haunting
appeal of its own. Tremulous with pathos, vibrant with
joy, the folk song is freighted with memories around
which the tendrils of the Goan heart have entwined
themselves. The paintings of the Goan are marked by
lyric grace and charm as well as by dramatic
intensity. The Goan is tender, wistful, dreamy, as
well as fiery and passionate.
The Goan folksong represents a happy marriage of
indigenous theme and Western harmony. Brought up in
intimate and vital sympathy with Nature, the Goan has
a singular grace of movement which manifests itself so
admirably in dancing. He can glide to a waltz, twirl
to a quick step, wriggle to a shake and execute with
captivating elegance all the movements of the native
"mando" which is a characteristic expression of the
Goan genius, languorous and vivacious at once. The
Goan regards his body as a supple instrument on which
to play the psalm of life with all its vibrant
intensity.
As Rich as Life
Goa has not yet been infected with the hurry and
bustle of modern life, which leaves man no time to
stand and stare for fear of the speeding automobile.
The Goan represents a gracious survival of a more
spacious and leisurely day. His step is unhurried, and
there is a glint of far horizons in his eye. The best
Goan represents the triumph of culture over
civilization. Not for him the shoddy values and the
hurly-burly of modem materialism. A pilgrim of
eternity, he has learned that life itself can be
cultivated as a fine art.
With all the contradictions of his nature, the Goan is
as rich as life, luxuriating in all its exquisite
moods and moments. Combining in himself a Christian
piety with the gay abandon of the senses, a robust
individuality with a delightful clubbableness, a lyric
impulse with a critical sense, a dreamy fancifulness
with a refreshing down-to-earthiness, the Goan has a
distinctive character of his own. He has the eye of
the artist, the heart of the poet, the soul of the
musician, but alas, not unoften, the tongue of the
carping critic. He warms both his hands before the
fire of life and is not oly genial in himself, but
also the cause of geniality in others. His joie de
vivre is contagious, but beneath all the gladness
there is a gentle undercurrent of melancholy,
enriching and deepening the music of his life.
In the last analysis, the Goan character defies all
analysis. It is a subtle essence, the quintessential
product of centuries of a distinctive culture.
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