Stranger than Fiction... By Valmiki Faleiro
This may read like Ripley's "Believe it or not," but is entirely true. Maria Assumpção Hortencia Olinda Faleiro was the youngest of my father's siblings. Following the experience of her eldest sister, married to a 'Sá' from Divar, she and another sister remained spinsters. Instead of a child, Sá gave his wife VD. Tia Olinda was brilliant at school, but the family had lost its breadwinner, her father, when she was barely a year old. Even then, reading had made her very knowledgeable. She was equally intuitive, and intense in her love for children, animals and plants. Her pets included a goat and two cats, who shared her bed. We kids detested her nocturnal company, but not her dreams: she had an extrasensory gift of 'seeing' occurrences, while asleep. I will relate three incidents. The year: around 1925. Both her brothers, Antonio Vicente, the elder, and my father, were products of St. Mary's school in Bombay. While my father went to St. Xavier's and thence to Grant Medical College, before joining the (then) 'Indian Army Medical Corps,' T. Antu became a telegrapher. Tall, athletic and handsome, he was selected for the cavalry welcome to the visiting King, George-VI, at the especially built 'Gateway of India.' (Prized souvenir mugs with pictures of the King and Queen would be smashed to smithereens, together with trophies and other memorabilia, in his drunken stupors later in life.) T. Antu worked for the British government. He came home only on annual leave, always after informing home in advance. One dawn of that year, T. Olinda told the household that 'Mano Antu' was arriving that very morning. Nobody believed her. She said he'd be home by 8a.m., a railway coolie in a red top and white dhoti carrying his trunk, he following, an umbrella in hand ... she had seen that in a dream that night! Lo and behold, around eight, the scene was exactly as it had appeared in the dream... trunk, coolie, umbrella, all. It happened that a British boss transferred T. Antu and a Tamilian telegrapher out of turn, from Simla to a harsher, higher altitude station, favouring their British peers. The two conspired and beat the daylights out of the boss. T. Antu fled to Portuguese Goa, heaven knows where the Tamilian hid. The early '60s. It was my birthday. I must have turned four or five. Up early, I heard of T. Olinda's dream that her maternal family patriarch and uncle, "T. Mat-Xavier" had died. Matias Xavier Sá, of Piedade-Divar, had been a highly ranked officer in the Baroda-Bombay 'Great Indian Peninsular Railway,' now Central Railway. Most Goans in that railway owed their jobs to him. He ran a 'comesalidade' (hostelry) for Goan boys in that city. It was at his initiative that my father and uncle were educated in Bombay. Nobody dismissed T. Olinda's dreams by now. By 9.00 a.m. arrived the trusted servant from Divar, with the "participação" (intimation.) Without even opening it, she shot rapid-fire Qs: had not so-and-so shaved her dead uncle's stubble, so-and-so dressed the body, so-and-so placed it in the coffin, and carried the coffin to the parlour? The messenger almost fainted. Every detail was true -- he had been there, and she had not! (Like most in the family, "T. Mat-Xavier" died in his mid-90s, and exactly as 'seen' by his niece that night, in real time.) After the Simla episode, T. Antu's maternal aunt's brother-in-law, Santan Cota, North India's most renowned bandmaster, took him to Calcutta. Antu was, it seems, an ace violinist, pianist and dancer. Prof. Joaquim Silva, who tutored me in French, would relate how Margao damsels boasted for years if asked for a dance by Antu Falleiro (a privilege.) And how he saw the same man stagger on the streets, in his twilight years. Playing music at nightclubs and cinemas (from printed scores, which came with the film footage, in that age of 'silent cinema') and angst (Santan Cota allegedly underpaid him), T.Antu got into drinking. He quarreled with his benefactor and returned home, then played in Bangalore and Madras for some years. When almost an irredeemable alcoholic, he returned home to spend a few last messy years. But, as T. Olinda never tired of reminding me, a budding agnostic, no matter how drunk, he never sat at a meal without reciting grace, nor slept without his night prayers. Reflecting his tumultuous life, T.Antu slept in an easy chair at night and in bed by day. 22nd August 1953, precisely 53 years ago, almost to the day. Around 3.30 a.m., T. Olinda awoke in cold sweat: a dream showed Antu on bended knee, at the easy chair, hands folded in prayer, dead. She quickly woke the others, lit oil lamps (electricity hadn't yet arrived) and went over -- to find him exactly in the position she saw in the dream moments before... P.S.: He would have turned 58 the next day, was the youngest to die in family history, but like most before him, died in the same month as that of his birth. Strange, but true. (ENDS) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the August 20, 2006 edition of the Herald, Goa _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
