In the ancestral homes of Assagao and I suppose in the rest of Bardez too, in the room just behind the hall, which the family matriarch claimed as her own, was a small cupboard built into the whitewashed wall.
It consisted of three or four shelves about two and a half feet wide and eight inches deep. On them were laid about six to eight feni bottles, some of them plain, formerly tinto and grandjo bottles, but two or three quite ornate old Bohemian lead crystal, like family heirlooms handed down the generations. Whenever I went on summer vacation to Goa, grandmother would take me to that room on an afternoon, take out her keys to that armoire and with a flourish open the two doors and allow me to make a choice between the Bohemians. I would choose the reddest liquid and she would nod her approval. Taking a small copinho and pouring into it with all the grace of a geisha at a tea ceremony, she would hand over the shot glass to me. Downing the fiery liquid would give me both pain and pleasure and off I would hop with new courage to the house at the rear to check on Catherine the daughter of the neighbor whose family lived in Poona and with whom I was inseparable to the consternation of grandmother who feared she might be blamed by my mother for my feni-fueled indiscretions. She need not have feared. At that stage in common with the dog who would be perplexed by the sudden stop of the bicycle he was chasing, I would be equally stunned if the teasing Catherine suddenly allowed me to take the liberties I was forever seeking. After all Granny's feni could give me the courage but not the know-how. Roland, Toronto. Roland Francis 416-453-3371
