------------------------------------------------------------------------
**** WWW.GOANET.ORG *** A N N O U N C E M E N T ****
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Launching Goanet-finance - Dedicated to Money-matters
Interested in Money-Finance-Stocks-Banking-Shares-Debentures-Finance ??
Sign up for your free subscription at:
http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-finance-goanet.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It seems like yesterday, but was many many moons ago.
A small boy sitting in a very large church. Sometimes the Wodehouse in
Colaba, mostly the massive Gloria in Byculla and seldomly the Francis
Xavier at Cavel/Dabul.
The booming voice of the Goan priest, the fine clothes of the
gathering in their Sunday best and of course the celebration in Latin.
The singing of the high mass, the choir giving full-throated musical
praise, the audience sometimes mumbling sometimes roaring in a dead
language not many knew or needed to learn except for scholarship.
I started grasping the rudiments from Grade 7 when I chose to take
Latin at school, leaving French for the Alliance in my spare time and
German to my Goan private teacher, Dad's good friend. Never enjoyed
Latin until I went to Law School and then for reasons other than
religion.
But the language always brought awe and a solid connection with the
One above. As if the rough robed Palestinian Jew somehow learned and
encouraged the language of his conquerors enough to make a Goan boy
worship Him nineteen hundred and sixty years later. Which in fact and
of course he never did.
It was snatched away rudely, not gradually through transition, by one
Pope who never thought of giving his global flock the choice. Now it
is brought back again, as if by that act he can undo the mistake. Or
perhaps bring interest in God back again to a world that is either too
busy or too smart to merely believe what is told to them from the men
in black and white.
If I sit again in Church, it will never be the same, Latin or not.
Just as when I go to Goa, it is never the same. My heart is not
mournful since I know things must change. But you cannot bring back
St. Pauli in modern day Panjim Kamat's and imagine no dirt and filth
around you. And not necessarily that of physical garbage alone.
