The 18th of April is celebrated as World Heritage Day, every year. This day is celebrated to create awareness amongst the people about conserving and protecting our heritage all over the world.
Being an architect by profession, I always thought of heritage, only in terms of ancient structures, buildings, monuments and forts. But of late, after listening to various heritage activists, l have become conscious about other aspects of heritage. These include age-old customs and traditions, culture, dressing habits, socio-political life, dance forms, food habits, folklore and folk songs of the people belonging to various communities all over the world. Also, water bodies, forests and greenery along with the animals are a part of our heritage and need to be conserved. This was the reason, on World Heritage Day, I remembered an 85-year-old lady named Piedade Fernandes alias Premavati Vengurlekar (after marriage) and her elder sister late Esmeralda Fernandes, and decided to write about them. These sisters belong to the Goan Christian Gaudi community and originally hailed from the village of Verna in Salcete, Goa. My every visit and interaction with Piedade (until the present) and Esmeralda (in her lifetime) have been enlightening, as both of them have always imparted knowledge and shared information with me about the heritage of their own community which is worth sharing with everyone. In my growing up years, Piedade and Esmeralda, along with some other ladies were employed as domestic help at my parents' ancestral house in Vollant, Vasco. My late parents, Adv Gerald and Dr Luiza Pereira, although hailing from the privileged class and being Christian by birth had become Communists and were liberal-minded. Hence, they employed people from various communities like Gaudis as well as Hindus in their service. They taught my two elder siblings and me, to respect our domestic help and not to believe in class discrimination. Hence we could interact freely with our domestic help and get to know their ways of life better. I distinctly remember, in my childhood days, my family had even spent quite some days on vacation at Esmeralda's residence in Verna, to interact with the other people of her community. Back then, the sisters Piedade and Esmeralda, at times would sing some beautiful folk songs/ couplets or one of them would narrate some anecdote to me. Sometimes they would also describe some of their traditional beliefs and customs or narrate some interesting folklore. I visited Piedade recently and got her to sing those songs/couplets and narrate the folklores etc. once again to me, to brush up my memory, so that l can write them down correctly. Some of the songs sung by the two sisters, in their own dialect are as follows: (When the fish vendor would come door to door to sell fish.) *Vhodlem avo ge Sumta adleam ge Vhodlom aan gharan na Sumta nakai ge (Avo means mother, while aan means father) As a child, whenever l was reluctant to rise early, l remember Esmeralda reciting this particular couplet: *Alshi kodea Bikna bajun haaya Na go bai Yeri haaya. (Yeri means raw) Then there was this particular song sung in the rainy season when the earth is green with natural vegetation. *Talkulea bhaji Keli ga Deva Durbollea ghova dilli. (Durbol means weak) Probably this was sung by them to emphasize the importance of eating naturally growing, nutritious local vegetables. All the above songs/ couplets were sung to beautiful tunes by these sisters. Coming to the traditions of this community, back then, in some aspects, the Gaudi community, probably followed a sort of matriarchal system. Hence Esmeralda, being the eldest daughter in her family and not her brother, acquired the title of 'Gaokan'. She continued being the 'Gaokan' even after her own marriage to a boy from the same village in Verna. Another interesting fact is that the surname of her mother's family was the same as their own 'Bacar' or 'Bhatkar' (the landlord, who belonged to the privileged class). Also, Esmeralda was the 'modon' (godmother) of the landlord's daughter, who was named after her. Likewise, many other Gaudi families too, had their surname, the same as the surname of their respective landlord who did not belong to their community. With the arrival of the planting and harvesting seasons in the cultivation of paddy (rice crop), Esmeralda's landlord would come to our place in Vasco to take her to Verna. Esmeralda, attired in the traditional striped, red coloured Gaudi saree, draping it in 'detli' style (where the pallu of the saree is knotted together on the left shoulder to cover the upper torso) would go with the landlord to their native place to exercise her rights of 'Gaokan'. She told me then, that she would be the first person to plant the sapling of rice in the planting season and also the first person to harvest the paddy, immediately after she performed some rituals at the 'roin' (anthill) which was close to the fields owned by her landlord. It was believed, the snake God (Naga, the King Cobra), lived there and had to be appeased before undertaking any activity in the fields around his abode. Or else, they would not get a good yield, as the Naga would be enraged. I learnt from Esmeralda that the Gaudis, being the original inhabitants of the land, worshipped nature and lived in harmony with nature and its inhabitants. For that reason, the 'Gaokan' was given a special 'mann' (respect) in their village by all the villagers which included other communities. Piedade once told me that, in their childhood, there was an anthill with a snake living in it, right in their house. Every morning, their father would keep some milk in a 'dono' (a cup made of leaves) for the snake. Except for that activity, they never interfered or interacted with one another and all of them, i.e.her entire family and the snake coexisted in that house. Another anecdote shared by Piedade was about the presence of tigers close to their village. She told me that their house was close to the Sonalem zor (spring) near Mugrupoi in Verna. In the months of Summer, the weather being hot, all the family members would sleep outside their house on a 'maachi' (elevated structure) close to this spring, as it was nice and cool there. Sometimes at night, they would hear the sound of water being lapped up. If it happened to be a bright moonlit night, she along with her brother would quietly tiptoe to the spring to see a tiger drinking water in the spring who would then jump off back into the forest. Besides this, on several occasions, she and her siblings have seen tigers (not leopards) walking along the forest pathway, during the day. None of them interfered with one another nor harmed each other. In modern times with so many cases of man versus nature, this will definitely not happen anymore. >From Esmeralda and Piedade l learnt that, even after conversion to >Christianity, the Gaudi community, continued to observe their original customs >and traditions. Most importantly, they were very particular about their food >habits. Especially in the non-vegetarian section, they continued with the same >habit as their ancestors. They refrained from eating pork and beef and would >eat only chicken and mutton and freshwater fish.p They also relished upon >'konge' ( a type of mollusc like a conch shell) found in the marshy fields. >With 'ambil', a porridge of nachni (ragi) as the special dish, their staple >diet was rice with coconut curry. The cooked rice was quite hard, as it was of >par-boiled 'Korgut' variety, cultivated locally by them, in those days. The >rest of their diet consisted of some locally grown vegetables, as well as wild >vegetables. Piedade always reminisced about mangoes, jackfruit and cashew >(both apples and nuts), which were in abundance then and also the wild berries >like, 'kandam', 'chunnam' and 'charam' found during the Summer. She mentioned >that, in her early childhood, they would eat different varieties of mangoes, >directly plucking them from the tree. But later on 'Mankurad' mango was put >out of their reach by the landlord. He started to lease out its yield on >'rend' (a fixed rent), to the lessee, who plucked the mangoes for selling in >the markets of big towns for a profit. This system has continued till present >times. Talking about the folklore of Verna, there was this interesting one about a lake, that I remembered partly, as Esmeralda had narrated it to me a long time ago. Hence, on my recent visit to Piedade, l requested her to narrate it once again to me. As l have mentioned before, that the Gaudi community respected and worshipped nature, water bodies also occupied an important place in their lives. Any river or water body was termed as Ganga and worshipped like a goddess. Hence the lake in Verna, back then, was Ganga to them. This particular lake or the 'tolle' is located a little further away from Pore bhatt. Every year, the 'tolle marop' ritual/ ceremony which is the cleaning of the water body before the monsoons, would be performed. This is done to allow the free flow of the water from the lake into the river without any blockage. It was believed that by doing this, the lake (Ganga) could flow freely to her husband's place in the river and not remain blocked in her place of origin, considered to be her mother's place. Piedade told me that during this cleaning ritual, lots of freshwater fish like 'tighoor' (freshwater catfish) and 'kaddua' were caught and distributed amongst their community. This lake would be overgrown with white lotus flowers all over its surface except at the centre where a few red ones bloomed. The interesting folklore about the lake was that the area with the red lotus flowers was actually the abode of the goddess Ganga. On that spot, it was believed that she would provide gold ornaments to the womenfolk whenever they needed them to wear for a function, on the sole condition that they would be returned back in the water after they had done with the purpose. Once, a lady hid behind an ornament called 'bhangara kollo' (flower bud of gold), while returning back the rest of the borrowed ornaments. This angered Ganga and from then, she stopped providing any ornaments. Whatever may be the belief, this folklore teaches us that if we respect nature, it helps us, but in case we disrespect it, then it punishes us. I also remember Esmeralda for her traditional methods of treatment for quite a few ailments, where nature played a vital role. Once when she was suffering from jaundice, locally termed 'kaokoi' or 'kamin'. After branding her hand with a hot spoon (which was the common method of treatment then), she put the juice of the leaves of 'jino' or 'dino' plant (Leea indica) on the wound. Then, she covered it with a leaf of the same plant before tying a cloth around it. Although my mother was an allopathic doctor, Esmeralda declined the treatment offered to her and followed her own procedure of traditional treatment of the jino leaf. After about a fortnight by observing a 'pathya' (a proper diet ) for the said ailment, she was totally cured of it. These are some of the customs, traditions, beliefs, ways of life and folklore of the past, of the Goan Christian Gaudi community from Verna. They are indeed a part of their heritage shared with me by Esmeralda and Piedade. l am very grateful as well as thankful to both of them for doing so. Here are photos of Piedade alias Premavati and Esmeralda. https://imgur.com/a/djLKhUv ..Lara Pereira Naik Architect Vasco Goa.
