While Salcette gears up to pack in another day of work, the villagers of Raia
will have their steam pressed silken shirts and colourful monsoon dresses as
they set out to the field and Church to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of
Snows on Monday, August 5Neshwin Almeida | The Goan ,Raia
Pic Credit: Sagun GawadeTrevy Fernandes is excited. This 13 year old is waiting
for that one day in the week when the village of Raia, where he lives, comes
alive with colour and smiles. It may be the damp and dreary monsoon, but in
Raia, the joy in the village is abundant. It is the Feast of Our Lady of Snows,
celebrated this year on August 5.The feast of the patroness, Our Lady of Snows
of the Raia Church, which is over 100 years old is a moment of joy as Raia
brings in the beginning of the harvest season and more importantly remembers a
feast celebrated only in distant Rome. “The first parish priest of Raia Church
was Fr George Caldaria SJ, of Italy and so the Raia Church is named after the
Italian church, the Cathedral of Santa Majorie in Rome,” points out former Raia
Parish Priest Fr Cipriano Da Costa who is now based in Calangute. Fr
Cipriano.“Celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Snows and more importantly the
great season of harvest, is very significant to our village. It’s a lot of joy
when the special sickle with a Golden handle is used to go and cut the Konos
and is brought the Church for the feast mass,” pointed out Ashley Fernandes
from Rachol-Raia. While the man draped in white embroidered capes known as Opa
e Murça set down into the field which belongs to the church and the land is
used only for cultivation for the Konsachem Fest and this is where the priest
blesses the crop and cuts the stalks of paddy. This field is grown in April so
that the stalk is ready in August unlike the rest of the paddy harvest that is
ready by September-October. The field where the paddy is grown is also named
after Our Lady and known as Saibinichi Conngi.Amborra resident Felicia Dias,
remembering the Novena of the Our Lady of Snows “Mother who comforts the people
come with sorrows, please grant the things we asked daily, necessary to me,
please get that for me, Mother of God, you were so humble with the same
humbleness I praise you..” pointed out that the feast is about celebrating the
Mother of Jesus who overlooks and takes care of the simple needs of all the
people of Raia and from all good things come.“Plucked by the Confraria, the
sheaf of paddy is taken into a procession to the Church and a small portion is
send across the Zuari River in a ferry to the Kamaxi Temple in Shiroda, as
legend points out that the Our Lady of Snows was a once a deity of the temple,”
stares a former member of the Confraria, Rozino Pereira.Trevy Fernandes is one
of the many kids who joyfully wait to take the extra sheaf of paddy home and
lay it onn their own altar at home to mark the Konsache Fest. In every home in
Raia, after mass, delicious godshem, sorpotel, sannas, pickle and peas pulao
are laid out for a scrumptious lunch. The feast in Raia has begun.
