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Tri Continental Film Festival 2008
July 25 - 30, 2008
Goa, India
http://www.moviesgoa.org/page/tri_continental/
http://www.moviesgoa.org/tricon/schedule_2008.pdf
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Goan Festival, Archbishop Lanfranc School
Archbishop Lanfranc was a radical figure in his time and a friend of William
the Conqueror. But when Lanfranc opposed his marriage to Mathilda of Flanders,
he so infuriated William that he was sentenced to exile. An order that was
stayed at the last minute.
So it was at least partly befitting, that the Goan Festival was held at the
Archbishop Lanfranc School in Croydon, for those of us who are self-exiled from
Goa. The pastel blue pamphlet promised “to express and experience our culture
and heritage.” It would be my first Goan gathering in the UK and I was looking
forward to it.
I was not disappointed on arriving at the Lanfranc School. There was the
familiar smell of sorpatel and pulau wafting in the air and, the m/c and band
on stage sounded comfortingly familiar. I made a bee-line for the food stalls
and bought enough chorizos, prawn para, fish mole, xacuti powder, rechad masala
and mango miskut, to feed a small army unit or at the very least my own family
for a couple of months. The young boy selling me the chorizos spoke English
with a very British accent. But for the chorizos in his hand, I would have
taken him to be British had I met him at the supermarket.
I sat with a group of Goan East Afrikanders. They belonged to the first wave of
Goan immigrants to the UK. They were almost a community in themselves, having
known each other in East Africa. Seraphino Antao, the Gazelle of Kenya, chatted
away breezily. He was the Goan who put Kenya on the map by winning two gold
medals at the 1962 Commonwealth games. I could almost be sitting at a country
club in Mombassa. Later, I met up with a group that had come from Swindon. I
could tell they belonged to the more recent wave of immigration from Goa. I got
talking to one of them, a charming young boy who had been in the UK for just
four years and was now attending college. He made me sigh with longing for Goa.
I wondered if the boy selling chorizos would having anything in common with the
boy from Swindon? Other than both of them being of Goan descent, I doubt it.
In diaspora we seek the familiar; a familiar face, food, music. But we are
forced by circumstance to live with the unfamiliar. People we work with,
neighbours on our street, parents at our children’s school, members of
associations we join, who may or may not be Goan or even Indian. These people
interact with us at a more personal and deeper level. It’s important to be part
of a cultural community but its also important to keep revising our definition
of what constitutes a community.
It was a long drive from Lanfranc School in Croydon to W.Drayton, made bearable
only by the thought of the chorizos I would cook once I got home followed by a
good English trifle for desert. Just as our diets have embraced change over the
years, so inevitably will our communities.
selma
