GOAN BUSINESSMEN-2 By Valmiki Faleiro Pedro Paulo de Souza was a legend in his lifetime. He monopolized imports of tobacco to Goa. The Portuguese had brought the tobacco plant to India from the Americas in 1560. Goa’s soil was unsuitable, so it was grown on the plains of the Deccan Plateau. But, like some other plant species the Portuguese brought from various corners of the globe – that were propagated by Garcia de Orta in his gardens in the ‘Praças de Norte’ (colonies around Bombay) – India-grown tobacco could not match world standards. Pedro Paulo (PP) imported the best of Brazilian and Virginian tobacco. PP was a thin, tall but sprightly man who traveled, as the more adventurous did those days – the late 19th century – on horseback. The story of how he built a vast land-estate is amazing. I heard it from Goa’s Senior Counsel, Adv. Manohar Usgaonkar, during the course of a professional consultation. Usgaonkar has a prodigious memory. What he recalled from his childhood helped his clients, and us, solve a mystery. Together with a friend, Jyoti Konkar, I was buying a property from Melita Pinto do Rosario and her husband, Fernando, of Porvorim. Melita was PP’s granddaughter. The land, where Nestle’s KitKat factory stands today in Usgao, admeasured some 1,78,000 sq. metres. It comprised of several erstwhile comunidade leases (‘Aforamentos.’) Problem was the sum area of the leases fell short by some 25,000 m2 of the property’s aggregate area. Hence the meeting with Usgaonkar, the Vendors’ advocate. He told us the story of Pedro Paulo and suggested we search the comunidade Register of Leases, armed with a list of names of PP’s close relatives. The mystery soon unraveled. PP, it seems, had a plan, a dream. From the moment his horse set out from his house in Aldona, for the weekly market in Ponda, he wanted it to trot all the way only through land that belonged to him. He wanted to acquire a broad corridor of contiguous properties right from his Aldona gateposts to the market of Ponda! How could one achieve such a seemingly impossible dream? PP was a resourceful man. When import consignments arrived at his warehouses, he had the biggest and the best tobacco leaves set aside while being sorted. The prized leaves were never put on sale, even at a premium. Their value: beyond money. On his weekly horseback visits to Ponda, PP would carry a bagful of his prized tobacco. While returning, he would stop at the house of a Comunidade president of a village en route, and present his priceless ‘saguade’ (gift.) “Bhatkara,” he would then exclaim, “I have no much land in your village that I so love!” Promptly, several ‘Alvaras de Aforamento de terreno’ (lease deeds of comunidade land, granted on payment of an annual fee or ‘foro’) would then start getting processed. Agricultural leases could be granted upto a maximum area of 30,000 m2 per lease. PP’s grandiose plan necessitated not a few but a multiplicity of leases, which he got, thanks to his prized tobacco leaves, in the names of himself and his family members, in villages along the route from Aldona to Ponda. ‘Aforamentos’ by law could be remitted with a down payment of 20 years’ lease fees, to turn the land freehold. PP remitted them all and built a huge estate of private property. He might not have realized his dream in full, where his horse, from Aldona to Ponda, strutted exclusively through his land, by the time he breathed his last on Nov. 23, 1907. To get an idea of the kind of estate he built, consider this. In the Inventory proceedings at the Senior Division Court at Mapusa in 1973, sixty-six years after he died, the portion of the estate as yet unsold by his descendants listed several properties ... in the villages of Pale, Usgao and Surla – all on his horseback route between Aldona and Ponda. Just one of these properties in Usgao that I know, was worth Rs.1.20 crore in 1993. Multiply that by ten for today’s value. PS: Never knew Goan coconut trees sprouted “branches” that “decided to do a salsa” on overhead power lines, plunging IFFY into darkness. Thought our coconut trees grew ramrod straight. Got this gem from the Editor of a tabloid another Editor described as “taxi” journalism – yellow and black. (More on Goan Editors another day.) The bloke who discovered coconut trees with branches was crying about never being invited on a jaunt to Cannes. Goan journalism, ah! Must check from my Malayalee friends if there’s some long-lost breed of coconut that grew branches in Kerala, ha! (ENDS) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ====================================================================== The above article appeared in the December 2, 2007 edition of the Herald, Goa
