Goanet had carried an interesting item by Erwin Fonseca about the 50th.
anniversary of the opening of the Mapuça Market, designed to have been
the best of its kind in Asia, having gone practically unsung. The plaque
testifying its inauguration by General Manual Antonio Vassalo e Silva,
Governor General of the Portuguese State of India, is fixed so high at
the entrance that it has survived the ravages of the new era. I would
like to add my own reminiscences. As a Goan living in Bombay I had
visited Goa in May 1960 and again in May 1961, travelling the detour via
Majali and Polem. It was not uncommon to see men in the market dressed
in French linen suits and ladies in Goan or western splendour. I myself
had shown up in suit when I had to obtain a photograph for my Portuguese
Documento para Viagem to return to India, having entered the market for
a popular snack at C. de Souza's.. There was never graffiti on the walls
nor even a piece of paper or vegetable or banana peel on the ground.
Shops downed their shutters for the afternoon siesta but few ever locked
them.
I used to rent a bicycle in my village which often was without a lock.
It was perfectly safe to park the cycle unlocked in the market and leave
it there even for two hours. Nobody would touch it although there were
no security nor policemen on duty.
Few years ago a jewellery shop owner told me that when they had to leave
the old market the municipal authorities gave them a premises in the new
market without them having to bribe anybody.
Bars in the Mapuça Market and elsewhere in the city were much fewer than
of today and were always brightly lit with an Indo-Portuguese ambience
unlike the numerous dark and dingy bars of today which are crude Bombay
imitations.
Those were the days when the Goan possessed something, however small in
this world, which he could with pride call his homeland.
John Menezes
