INTRODUCTION By F. J. Campus
When, towards the end of last year, the talented author of this volume informed me that he had decided to discontinue the *Saligao Bulletin,* I replied that his decision would sever another cherished link between me and the dear village of my birth. Some days later, however, there came another letter from him informing me that he intended to write a volume containing the life-sketches of those sons of Saligao, past and present, who had achieved eminent success in their respective spheres of life. This was good news indeed. But added to this information was a request that I should write an introduction to this volume. It was an embarrassing request, I am now blind, unable to read and write, and any literary composition, however trivial, is now to me a painful. On the other hand, there was the prospect of associating myself, in howsoever insignificant a way, with the names of the most distinguished sons of Saligao, many of whom I knew and admired in my young days. That the volume was to be a souvenir of the impending centenary of the church in which I was baptized was a further inducement. After some hesitation I decided to accede to the request. Before I proceed to deal with the contents of this volume something has to be said about this author. To the present generation of saligonenses in India and aboard the author’s name and his talents and achievements certainly need no introduction. But this volume, though not a *monumentum aere derennius,* will live at least for two or three generations hence. It is for the benefit of its readers, these future sons of Saligao, that the paragraph that follows is primarily intended. Mr. C. H. D’Souza comes from a well-known family of Nigvaddo, Saligao. He was born in 1897 in Calcutta, where his father Ottoline D’Souza was a leading pianist. He had his school education forst at Kurseong and then in Calcutta from where he passed his Senior Cambridge Examination with Honours and with a scholarship of Rs. 15/- p.m. for two years. In 1916, deciding to take up Mechanical Engineering for his career, he joined the Sibpur College of Engineering, Calcutta where he won an entrance scholarship of Rs. 20/- p.m. for four years. There being no degree course in Mechanical Engineering at the Calcutta University at that time, he had to take the diploma course which he passed with first-class honours, standing first among all the students from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. He thereby won the Sussex Trust Scholarship of Rs. 150/- p.m. for three years and in 1920 was sent by the Bengal Government for practical training at the workshops of the famous of Ruston and Hornsby of Lincoln, England. Here, in addition to his scholarship, he was able to earn sufficient wages which enabled him to maintain himself comfortably. While in Lincoln he took part in various sports and captained the Ruston Hornsby hockey team and was sent up for the County Cap. With his hockey team he played in several villages of Lincolnshire and thus came into contact with the life and beauty of rural England. In 1923, on the completion of his practical training, he went to London and thereafter a 2-year course secured the degree of B. Sc., Hons (London.) and with it the Associate Membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (London). In 1925 he returned to India but, inspite of his high qualifications and practical training, he could secure only a subordinate post as Plant Draughtsman at Matunga Workshops, G.I.P. Railway. Within two years, however, Mr. D’Souza was found too good for this post and his name was put up for the superior service before the Public Service Commission. He was successful and was thus one of the first four Indians selected for the rank of officers in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Indian State Railways. From 1929 to 1952 Mr. D’Souza held various responsible posts in the Mechanical Department of the G. I. P. Railway and acted for some periods as the head of this department. He was responsible for the design and construction of the first seven air-conditioned coaches in India in 1950 and then the next twenty two in the year of his retirement, 1952. They were equal to the best luxury coaches on the Continental Railways, known as Wagon-Lits. Because of his high qualifications and experience Mr. D’Souza was admitted as a full member of various Institutions of Engineers in England and America, such as the Consulting Engineers of England, etc. In 1949 Mr. D’souza won the Stewart Dyer Award of 15 pounds for the best paper presented before the Institution of Loco Engineering, London, on “The Design of an Indian Railway Passenger Coach”. After his retirement Mr. D’Souza practiced for ten years in Bombay as a Consulting Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Adviser and was responsible for establishing, besides several small scale industries, the first Wagon Building Factory in Western India for Mckenzie Ltd., In 1950 he represented India at the International Railway Congress in Rome and took part in the discussion of the safe running of trains at high speed. Since his retirement in Goa in 1962, he has been a member of the council of the Association of Engineers, Goa, and a Consulting Engineer to the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industries and Caritas (Goa). He spends his leisure in writing books, technical and non-technical. His *Saligao Bulletin*, now unfortunately defunct, was highly esteemed by Saligonenses in India and abroad. We shall now turn to the contents of the volume before us. The author tells us that the writing of this volume has been to him a labour of love. To judge from the mass of information that he has collected, it must have been hard labour indeed. I would boldly call some of it real research, even though I can imagine Prof. Patrocinio D’Souza raise his eye-brows at my temerity. It is not suprising then that with this mass of information at his disposal and with the help of his facile pen, the versatile author has been able to present to saligao a volume that should be a source of pride to its people and serve as an incentive to its present young generation and to the generations that will succeed it. The volume will certainly be a most appropriate souvenir of the first centenary of our church. On going through the life-sketches of the eminent Saligonenses of the last century, the reader will be surprised that little Saligao, with its purely rural surroundings, devoid of any educational facilities beyond instruction in the 3R’s, Should have produced men of the stature of Francisco Salvador Pinto, Padre Geronimo Caetano D’Souza, Mgr. Joaquim Jose D’Abreu, Dr. Jose Ribeiro and Dr. Claudio da Gama Pinto. These men, who were born during the early Victorian Age, seem to have been cast in the mould of the great Victorians. Only one of them, Dr. Gama Pinto, had the opportunity to prove his mettle in the International sphere, as has been so ably described in this volume. The others could but rise to the highest levels attainable within their cramped surroundings. I knew two of these in my young days, Padre Jeronimo Caetano and Msgr. Joaquim Jose. They both had the stamp of intellectuality impressed upon their brows. The young Joaquim Jose at his examination for the priesthood, held in the presence of the archbishop, entered into a heated argument with his examiner and was about to overthrow him when the Archbishop intervened with his *“Basta, basta.” *Padre Jeronimo Caetano was one of the outstanding intellectuals of the Church of Goa and the finest pulpitorator that Gos has produced. As he ascended the steps of our pulpit an air of tense expectancy filled the church. I can still recall the strange, unconventional sentences and the stentorian tone with which he opened his great Good Friday sermons. At his oratorical best, he would make one fancy that a Vieira or a La cordaire had reappeared in our pulpit. Goa will hardly ever see the like of this great son of Saligao again. The life-sketches of the distinguished men of the succeeding generation reflect the great change that had come over our village when the growth of its population and the decay of its rural economy compelled many of its ablest and most restless sons to emigrate to British India, East Africa and elsewhere. As is well known, the most successful of these emigrants, as a body, were those who settled in Karachi. This is evidence by the life-sketches of their sons, Cincinnatus D’Abreu, Joseph Vaz, I. C. S., and the D’Mello brothers. I remember having met Cincinnatus D’Abreu, and Joseph Vaz once or twice in Saligao when I was very young. Cincinnatus D’Abreu had an impressive personality and yet an easy manner about him. In his ancestral home he played to us the first phonograph ever brought to Saligao. Roque D’Mello, who went down heroically with the S. S. Maloia, had been my contemporary at St. Xavier’s College and was a bright student. He and his younger brother Tony, the prince of Indian Sport, were the sons of Pedro Joao D’Mello of Sonarbatt. Their brilliant eldest brother was a Colonial Civil Servant. Unfortunately his life-sketch is missing in this volume, presumable for want of sufficient information. Of our emigrants to East Africa, the most successful were the businessmen M. R. D’Souza, Vitorino Saldanha and A. Figueiredo. The life-sketch of Vitorino Saldanha, who as a boy caught bulbuls and sold them in the weekly market at Calangute, reads like a saga of self-help and phenomenal success. It deserves to be studied by our young men of today, especially by the less favoured ones. A life-sketch of a different genre but which should arrest similar attention is that of Antonio Joao D’Cruz, an emigrant to Burma. He came of illiterate parents but through sheer self-help he turned himself into a well education, accomplished and well-groomed gentleman and rose to a high position in the Postal Department in Calcutta. Not only this, he taught his good-looking, though, insufficiently educated wife, Rita Maria, to speak perfect English within a couple of years of their marriage. We now come to the life-sketches of the eminent Saligonenses of the present generation. They are mostly children of our emigrants who, having availed themselves of higher education now easily within their reach, could join the professions of their choice or take up other careers of equal status. It is an impressive array of talent and achievement which the author places before us: an Archbishop and a Bishop, the First Lady of W. Bengal, a Major-General and a Brigadier, brilliant educationists, doctors and engineers, an Income-tax Commissioner, an economist of international repute, a painter of European renown, a noted pianist and, last but not least conspicuous, the Foundress of a Religious Congregation. Their life-sketches have indeed been an eye-opener to me, as they will be to many another who reads this volume. I could add to these life-sketches interesting personalia about these outstanding persons and their background, but I have already transgressed the limits of my space. I shall only add that all of us, who have sprung up from the same ancestral soil as they, look up with pride at the heights they have reached and at the things they have achieved. Saligonenses at home and abroad will surely be grateful to the author for this very informative and heart-warming little book. Likewise I, who have for so long been away from my beautiful homeland and whose days are now fast nearing their end, am grateful to the author for this opportunity of associating myself with such a book. Floreat Saligao -- FN +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490 Updated: http://goabooks.wordpress.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ This message comes via the Google Groups "Saligao-Net" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/saligao-net?hl=en Please post regularly to keep the e-village active! -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
