Published by the Oxford University Press in 1982
Contents
Thoughts of an Eccentric Doctor 10
Grove of Coconuts Near Benaulim 22
Mrs Monteiro Showing Her Family Album 26
Part One ECLECTIC SKETCHES
Culture
Bred among odours of ordure
I missed the chance to nose
A pure damask rose.
Now fully grown I realize
We were only taught to use
Green fields as lavatories,
And therefore, I have come to associate
All kinds of hues
Merely with animal or human waste.
A tinge of minivet-scarlet
Is no reminiscence of that bird,
But of betel-spittle stains
Left by movie fans
On walls of cinema halls,
And by pimps and harlots
In red-light lanes.
Siris leaves possess
An autumn flavescence immeasurably less
Than expectorations of asthmatic old men
Coughing doubled-up on loose
Squeaky string cots whose
Rans of twine
Are bro —
Ken as their thoughts
A takin-gold evokes
Not in the least
Memories of dawn or some rare beast,
But scats of stray dogs
Like pagoda heaps
Among scattered slippers
Of scores of worshippers
At a Vashnoi temple-feast.
Tourists note
Fresco-amber
In Ajanta art.
I know this pigment from
Pools of bovine piss
At any vegetable mart.
Chamoli Village
The noria over the well lies dry.
A slick of green scum
Films the pond.
Boys flicking switches
Come riding buffaloes
With dung-crusted hides. Pass by
The millstone crushing
The last grain to meal.
A girl runs behind a cow
And gathers its fresh droppings in a pail.
Smoke crinkles out
From mud huts where
Women in faded saris
And glass-bangled wrists
Stoke meagre fires.
Time hobbles here like a spancelled calf.
Seth Agarwal
With his mouth opening and closing like a gavial
Computing the previous day’s profit and loss, we find
Seth Madangopal Chunilal Agarwal sitting cross-legged
On the divan in his old, ancestral shop,
Poring over his ledgers through an ill-fitting
Pair of gold-framed spectacles, ankles and foot-soles
Dirt-laminated. Hе
(In a mulmul dhoti and home-made vest
Through which you may see
His belly pouting on all sides
Like a ginger rhizome)
Is founder and proprietor of Agarwal & Sons,
‘Grocers & Grain Merchants, Johri Bazar, Jaipur’.
Retail and wholesale dealers of adulterated
Mustard oil, asafoetida, powdered red-chilly,
Turmeric, cummin, fennel, nutmeg, gingelly,
Liquorice, lentil, dried boletus, pigeon-pea,
Wadi and papad. Renowned
Hoarders of vanaspati, sugar, wheat and rice. Adept
At cheating a rural clientele at the scales.
God swell Seth Agarwal’s belly and his sales!
The Mountain Pass
Bands of nomads
inch up the steep
towards its gargoyle mouth
dragging
herds of stubborn goats
and mules who will not budge
till lashed.
Bent-backed, the women
pause midway
burdened with baskets
of geese and children, watch
sloomy-eyed
coveys of listless swifts
dart in and out of arcane
crannies of rock and scarp.
Kites circle and scream
wind-wafted over the cliff’s
neck which wears striped
scarves of minatory clouds.
Night comes
stealthily
as they reach the pass; then
tired wing
limp hoof
drooping lash
all vanish one by one
in the oral darkness
of its sempiternal yawn.
Truck Driver
From a chest beneath his seat
He takes out sticks of incense
Lying with a bottle of country liquor.
Lights one and thrusts it in a chink
Among the glass-framed gods
Above the windscreen.
Offers a prayer before the day’s
First pressing of the accelerator.
His freight may be bags of cement,
Sheep, buffaloes, apple-crates,
Gravel, hardware, anything.
He needs less
The grease he carries
In his tool box
To keep the wheels
Of livelihood moving
Than the crisp notes tucked under
Cyclostyled forms to lubricate the
Palms of beadles: an excise clerk
At the tollgate, a sub-inspector
At the inter-state barrier,
A head-constable at the check post.
For the traffic cop too he
Keeps tips handy if challaaned
For the billowing nimbus
From the silencer pipe, or
The chassis that
Squeaks from a road-shaking
Fardel of goods.
Once highwayed
He shows his pneumatic stride.
You should be there to feel
The gargantuan ease
With which he gobbles up miles
On his voyage of tar.
At night the truck runs
More on the hooch in his system
Than on the gas in its tank.
Aubade
A rhododendron
red sun
arrow-glancing through
anole-green
leaves of the neem
Aubade bee-eaters shift on telephone wires
and cobalt pigeons
shuffle in the eaves
as I go forth wife-bidden
to buy eggs from the market.
And the first person
I encounter
is our dhoban’s child
easing unembarrassed
over the pavement
in front of his timber
laundry.
He gives me a furtive look
and smiles, showing all his ivories.
Groups of old men
from the direction
opposite
briskly walk towards
waiting fields, chatting
and chewing
margosa datans on the way.
A cyclist squeals past singing
hum tum kamre me band hon
aur chabi kho jaye,
and, at the junction
of Uday Marg and Prabhu Marg,
bhajans from Lakshmi Temple
and the interminable
akhandpath of the gurudwara
seep into my unwilling ears.
In the bazaar
wavy, corrugated
iron shutters
of Stylo Tailors
and Parvana General Stores
are drawn up partly.
I collect eggs from the stall,
return home and wait
impatiently for breakfast.
Tonga Horse
Crop held high, thong tracing
sickles in the air, the tongawallah
cracks the whip on his blinkered face.
A born tracer wont to harness
he hauls now
a woman with two daughters and three
massive trunks of steel.
Even Hanuman would resent the weight.
Tarmac and cobblestone
have frayed
calks of his shoes, bars
in his hooves ache.
A tug at the reins
and a lash and
the senile ungulate breaks
his trot into canter
awkwardly shaking
hackles, poll, mane.
The slave and the indigent between them
usually hold bond.
Not in this land
of baffling mores. Ask any
bull, camel, ass. Here the poor
yoke the dumb for bread
and flog them for a song.
Police Official
In any firing
It’s the crowd
Or a lowly constable
Who gets the boot.
He goes scot-free, seen only among
Stacks of gold biscuits
In a smuggling haul
On the front page of your daily;
Or beside a busted locker
Spilling currency notes
In an income-tax raid.
The British trained him well
In the craft of torture.
Undertrials will testify
He is skilled
In maiming hands and feet,
Gouging out eyes, anal insertions.
He has gone beyond
Pillory and pilliwinks.
Could even teach
The Mafia a thing or two, such as
Planting evidence
Faking witnesses
Delaying investigations
Disregarding court rulings
Acquitting criminals
Convicting innocents.
Defy him just for the heck
And he could engineer
A spate of dacoities and murders
In your colony.
Get your neighbour’s
Teenage daughter kidnapped,
Or keep you in jail
With gyves on your feet
On trumped-up charges.
He is the custodian of law.
Channo’s Tandoor
In Ghaziabad
From mid April to June when the loo blows
All the wives of Multani Mohalla make a pact
‘Lentils and vegetables we’ll cook-but chapatis, never.’
Let the griddles lie cold in the kitchen
For who can bear to sit so long by the fire
And cook in this summer heat?
And they all flock to Channo’s tandoor
Carrying lumps of kneaded dough in brass pans
Covered with a wet cloth.
And Channo’s wife makes small balls out of this dough
And sprinkles dry flour over them from a paraat.
She then ranges them in two rows in front of her husband
Who slaps and flattens them between his hands
And makes them saucer-round
And sticks them to the inner wall of the tandoor
Which is blazing and candent like a volcano,
And the baked ones he takes them out with his tongs.
The Channos have a son who goes to school
And two daughters who do not.
Now the older is picking lice in her sister’s hair.
In the verandah, over a cot, sits Channo’s father
Puffing at his narghile which gurgles.
He eyes around him the crowd of chirping women
And suddenly yells at his son,
‘Tell me Channo, what use are women these days
If they cannot cook for their families?’
But Channo cares not to reply.
And all the wives of Multani Mohalla
Keep chatting as before.
Thoughts of an Eccentric Doctor
Droves of patients quietly await their turn
In queues outside the dispensary, or scurry
With investigation slips in hand for tests-
Sputum, blood, urine, stool. Yes,
To want to be cured is a part of cure.
That’s why they come. Nonchalant I attend them
Like a rural quack, half-skilled in human ills,
Whose nostrums cure at first but later kill.
They invest me with all the powers of a god
Believing I can shoo away affliction
By mere word or drug or shot. Who said
Time is a virus and styptic? Pacemakers,
Valves, vascular grafts, where’s the need
To prolong life in a shopkeeper, labourer, clerk?
And, for that matter, why should executives,
Bureaucrats and politicians live in good health?
Sickness leaves most healthier than before.
Let there be a manifold increase in disease,
I tell my colleagues. Not capsule, bolus, pills,
Pain is what I prescribe as the placebo for our ills.
The singe of flame is felt if ourselves we burn
When suffering ceases humans cease to learn.
Grandmother
They live on her charity.
A gymnosoph
With trisul and shell of gourd
For alms, calling
‘Jai Shankar’ every morning;
A stray heifer
Loafing the neighbourhood
With a halter dangling;
The mangy street-dog.
She plucks basil
And jasmine from the olitory
For gods squatting in a row
On the mantelpiece:
Brahma Vishnu Mahesh.
In between prayers
Hurls invective
At the sweeper in the courtyard
Who scrimshanks with his broom;
Or screams
At the skivvy in the kitchen
Sifting bran from flour;
The pantheon impassive, quite
Oblivious of offence.
Rickshawallah
His rickshaw rests on the road
He squats under a margosa tree.
Penury brought him to a city
Of crooked streets.
From time to time nods
His head in the June afternoon
Like a lone maize cob
Deserted in a harvested field.
Haze over the sky and his thoughts
Fly homewards like glumes of paddy
In a squall. A hamlet on the Kosi
With groups of sinking huts, a scraggy farm
Where wife and child live
Bonded to a Bhoomihar. Now
Is a time of floods.
Shadows cross his mind.
Whom will Kosi swallow
In its next fluvial heave?
He lives from rupee to rupee
Only half-appeasing hunger. A passerby
Nudges him for a ride.
Alley, lane, highway,
The whole town is his beat.
Always on the move here, always fixed.
He is one more spoke
In the felly of his rickshaw wheel.
Heart Patient
He fears the fluctuations
Of the sphygmomanometer
He fears the auscultations
Of the stethoscope
He fears the valleys and peaks
Of his cardiograph.
He is cautious on walks
Lowers his voice when he talks
‘I have a weak heart’ he says
As he settles down to breakfast
Separating yolk from albumen
Of a boiled egg
And flicks away
The pellicle of cream
From his glass of milk.
Temple Scene
Ghazni’s hordes may have pillaged
Gold from its sanctum or between
Architraved pillar and pilaster
Disfigured scroll and frieze. Tourists
May have swiped its icons for antiques.
Peace prevails now.
An old banyan broods like a rishi
Upon the socle. Its stilt roots
Drop mats of hair over the moonstones.
A frangipani leans over a well
Profuse with flowers. Doves
Roost and dung in corniced eaves.
Iron clamp and dowel preserve
The ancient stance of stone.
Festival alone
Breaks this tranquil spell. Siva’s
Devotees cram the temple’s vestibule
Panelled with terracotta myths
Of apsaras, chariots, beasts.
Let’s hear what the Brahmin tells.
Parvati’s lover, ascetic, dancer
Whose limbs embody
The rhythm of the universe
Crescent-crowned, Bull-rider, Skull-bearer,
Bless this shrine!
Old woman, what rotten fruit have you brought
For the God of five poses?
The trabeate hall is heady
With fumes of camphor, O Sankara!
Hear it reverberate with bells.
Come pilgrims, come, orbit round
The ambulatory, stopping by
Each transept turn.
by turn. Beyond the camerated rock, behold
The ashlars flash, the finials burn,
For the God of dualities. Him
Whom we worship
Whose body is ashsmeared, snake-entwined,
Whose wonings are the niveous peaks of Kailasa,
Whose head is Ganga’s source.
What? Only small coins, sister?
No currency notes for our Creator?
The world has enough for each man’s need
But not enough even for one man’s greed.
Five rivers that quench the northern soil
Lie dry and sterile and choked with sand
Lord Krishna is strangled in a serpent’s coil
And Yamuna’s water leaves a stench through the land.
This is the day of doves
The day of the hermit,
Mendicant, troglodyte,
For He the blue-necked has swallowed
The venom of the universe.
Wash his feet with the milk
Of green coconuts.
Let him peep through
Marigolds and jasmines.
Old man, do you make an oblation
Of a skimpy, soiled loincloth?
Sambhu’s curse be on you!
Kali sat smacking blood in a shrine
And Durga was riding a tiger’s back
And Kali said, ‘This blood is wine’
And Durga said, ‘I’ll hunt with my pack’.
He who came
In the form of fish, turtle, boar
Will appear on the earth
Once more as Kalkin
For the seed is in the tree
The tree in the seed.
O frangipani
Rain your blossoms in the well!
O banyan
Turn your branches into roots!
Part Two GOAN VIGNETTES
Cycle Fishseller
Thrice a day he visits the neighbourhood
Singing
‘During the monsoons
Goans harvest the land
After the monsoons
They harvest the sea.’
Blows his horn
Shriller than a loud-hailer.
Though the catch is not fresh
From the meshes of the rampan¹
It saves housewives
The ordeal of trudging to the fish market
In Margao.
As he cycles away you realize
It’s because of him all the kitchens
In Navelim, Dicarpale, Aquem Baixo
Smell of mackerel eight months of the year.
The Horticultural Aunt
Her cottage stands in Inez square
She looks like one of your maiden aunts
But talk to her and you’re aware
She has a horticultural air
And a real love of plants.
You see them bloom in pots and crocks
The Kaffir, Calla and Spider Lily
Of parent or of hybrid stock
Ranged along her garden walk
And pergolas draped with bougainvillea.
She dwells on bonsai art for hours
And shows her neighbour Nancy Pereira
Fruit dangling from a dwarf tree’s bowers
And then with watering can she showers
Lace, staghorn and the Monstera.
Topiary a palace-gardener taught her
The hedge is clipped to lions and bears
And as the day grows hot and hotter
Her birdbath with a dish of water
Is visited by squirrels in pairs.
Her orchids draw the birds and bees
Around the year like Wandering Jews
She carefully tends the ‘Hybrid Teas’
A hammock between two cashew trees
Is slung for her midday snooze.
Soccer Player
I met Joe d’Silva in a bus
From Agacaim to Panjim
There was but one seat for both of us
Joe squeezed and I sat with him.
A student of a local college
Joe was a loud and hearty talker
He loathed all kinds of bookish knowledge
His one and only love was soccer.
‘We’ve just played the Collegiate Cup
Last week and licked them seven-one
Our team is sure moving up
We’ll have all the others on the run.’
‘When did you learn the game, Joe?”
I asked. ‘Since nativity morn
My head was round as a football oh
My mother said, when I was born.’
A comb then he took out from hip-pocket
And started combing back his hair
‘My dream’, he said, ‘but you may mock it
My dream is to be a Dempo player.’
Majorda Jaycees Princess
Miss Veronica Dias
Was crowned Princess
At the October dance
Of Majorda Jaycees.
A unanimous choice
Of all the judges.
(So well-schooled in social graces,
Sparkles when she smiles.)
She danced in ten different styles,
No other girl bore her grudges.
Now her Mum and Dad
Are on the lookout
For a rich suitor from the States.
Or if that doesn’t work out
They will settle for a match
From the Arab Emirates.
But a local boy has just no chance,
For Miss Veronica Dias
Was crowned Princess at the dance.
Eugenio’s Love Song
The hotel at Aguada beach
And Oberoi’s Bogmalo
Are quite out of my wallet’s reach
Esmina Carvalho.
But there is a little taverna
Known as Lovers’ Nest
Under the shady palms of Verna
Where you could be my guest.
The old cook Joe
Whom there I know
Has an eye with a merry twinkle
And I could order Dobrado
And a plate of mussel and winkle.
I can’t afford no richer meal
‘Cause am no princely fellow
So will you make a lifelong deal
Esmina Carvalho?
A Datsun or a Mercedes
Or other expensive car-
I never possessed one of these
For flimsy sure they are.
I do own a Beauty Black
An Indian motorbike
And it can carry you on its back
Anywhere you like.
I can’t afford a richer ride
‘Cause am no princely fellow
Say then will you be my bride
Esmina Carvalho?
Primary Teacher
Every morning you see her
In a new dress, traipsing along to school.
Tinted glasses and a polychromic parasol
Shield her from the sun.
Her sartorial passion far exceeds
Her pedagogic zeal.
Often cuts classes to keep
A date with the hairdresser.
In the absence of the principal gossips
Beyond belltime in the staff room.
Otherwise teaches Craft and English.
Raucous children parrot alien jingles,
And Jacks and Jills and Humpties Dumpties
Tumble from their lips. Now and then
Corrects Spelling and Grammar
And an essay, ‘My Favourite Doll’,
Assigned to girls and boys alike.
In Craft shows them how to design
A boat, a mat or an umbrella.
But it’s the Xmas homework-
A mini-crib for Infant Jesus, a Bethlehem Star,
And a Santa Claus of cotton and eggshell—
That overawes kids who promptly transmit
These tasks to older folk at home. Annually thus
Miss Philomena Rebello grades grannies,
Mothers, sisters of pupils and promotes them all
To the next, higher class.
Newspaper
Fan The headlines do not impress her much.
She buys the local paper for ads, not news.
‘Born to Jean and Fausto Baptista
A baby girl’, or
‘The concelebrated requiem Mass for the
Soul of Avelina Pinto’ interests her far more
Than the Commonwealth Meet.
She pauses at the operetta at
Clube Vasco da Gama.
Scans for the movies in town, or
The late dinner and dance at the gymkhana
(Gents Rs 15 per head, ladies free).
The exhibition-cum-discount sale
Of drapery and garments
In the foyer of a tourist hotel
Is the last item to engage her attention
Before she folds the newspaper
And all its earth-shaking happenings
In the world.
Anjuna Beach
I
I A noon-grey sea flashes quarrels.
I stand on rugged rock, far
Beyond the bar and sandy
Beaches of Candolim and Calangute;
Cragmartins above the spinneys of palm
Scissor wings. Pools form
Where an irregular ring
Of boulders trap the tide,
Combers through fissures there
Spout jets of foam. Sandpipers scamper
For molluscs upon the strand
Littered with chiton and volute. Robber
Crabs crawl on half-sunk
Ledges of rock in shoals
Paved with shingle and flinty
Stone. An osprey with falcate
Claw scans the wave. The littoral
Is all high ground, tangles
Of saxicolous shrubs
Black with berries or
Ragged with growths
Of crab’s eye and hogweed.
Fish trawlers and ships appear
Vaporous apparitions
Over the horizon line.
II
Here and there I encounter
Stragglers in ones and twos; male,
Female; self-styled gymnosophs,
Swedes, German, French,
Nature’s confreres; swimming, bathing or
Returning home, you wonder,
Why witness a magic show
For sleights of hand
And vanishing tricks?
The greatest voodoo was before your eyes.
Brownheaded Seagulls
In the wake of trawlers
You see them pick mackerels
From the wave’s surface.
Mirrorlets coruscate from their primaries.
September to March these
Visitors keeah raucously
Over the rampans of fishermen.
Freewheelers, superb in their glide.
If a Goan beach
Is an eye’s dish,
Tourist, remember
Seagulls garnish it.
Cortalim Ferry
Many a tourist is bound to carry
The sights and sounds of Cortalim ferry
An ore-barge
With a cargo large
Cruising sleekly down the Zuari.
Blue-hulled, broad launches ply
Daylong between
Agasaim and Cortalim.
Their decks are shives of a busy street
With bikes and cars and crowds replete.
As keelers dock them, bus pliers cry
(As if there’s a big fiasco)
Margao! Margao! Vasco! Vasco!
And every walker the waftage spills
The bus at the traffic island fills.
The ride is a safari
On a night dimly starred
When up-river boats gleam like game
In forests of the dockyard.
And spans of the Gammon
Spread the arms of a demon
While ships in harbour beyond
Glow as lions on guard.
Dicarpale Hill
Miles below the sky, yet high enough
To overlook farms, hamlets, trees
Of Mandopa and Aquem Baixо,
And the Mandovi Express every evening
Emerging from Chandor with its blue and cream
Carriages rolling towards Margao
In a dream.
Standing atop I realize
How badly they have mauled you.
Your foot amputated for
The National Highway Number Four, shoulders
Pierced by giant stilts of pylons,
Thigh quarried for laterite stone.
They will dismember every Goan hill
As they have dismembered you, Dicarpale hill.
Grove of Coconuts Near Benaulim
On a high ground
Along a paddy field
I see their caudices
Cicatriced by climbers
In search of fruit.
Fifty to sixty
They stand in a line
Like bevies of tall
And svelte college girls
Gregarious and giggling
On the campus, with breasts
Of tender coconuts, waywardly
Waving their fronds
Of hair and whispering
Gossip to the winds.
Mormugao Harbour
I
Multihued hulls
Of private craft and trawler
Buoy in the cove near Baina;
The marina is a cusp of blue water
Quick with keels.
Giant hands of hoisting grabs
Lift the ore out of the holds of barges
Moored at the quayside.
Conveyors fill the coffers
Of Japanese ships with brown gold.
II
If Calicut’s past
Is redolent of spicy tales
Yours is gory.
Even now the Cape
Points like a dagger
Into the heart of the sea.
Who knows
How many argosies, galleys, dhows
With pirates, matelots, slaves,
Christians and infidels
Coasted these shores and scuttled,
Settling their scores?
III
Now the port is a tranquil anchorage
Of tankers, liners, freighters;
The breakwater below the swashline
A long promenade into the sea.
Hardened concrete, rubble and rock
Check the onslaught of the wave
Backed by boulder and armour block.
IV
Were da Gama
To return to your strands
He would find only these
The same away from home:
Air heavy with piscine tang, crabs
Teeming in fissures
And crannies. And the breakers
That wrecked Sidon, Carthage, Tyre,
Still dash and foam.
Baga River
May be the vespers
Of nuns and priests
Sojourning in the white
Retreat House above
Intermingle with the sibilance
Of your wave may be
The fallen boscage adds
Fancy tinges to your face may be
It’s the flitches of sky
Your waters catch
Through the canopies of trees may be
It’s just your propinquity
To the sea
But wimpled Beck! Your beauty
No stream can match
And is all
Witchcraft to me.
Monsoon Snippets
I. Metamorphosis
But a week ago
This hill that was
A rugged
Topaz of dry grass
Is now a nowy
Smaragd of green.
II. Dragonflies
They hover over a pool’s brink
Above the oval leaves of nenuphar
Nymphs instar settled
Among the bindweed, adults
Shimmying at random.
Thorax-skewed
Horse-stingers; males
Grasping petioles of females
With their claspers and
for hours
Mating in tandem
in mid-air.
III. Women Sowing Paddy
Between tall palms
Swaying over levees
Which surround the fields
Bent-double they sow rice seedlings
Ankles sunk in the slush
Their tawdry vestids a contrast
Against acres and acres
Of green paddy tilth.
IV. At The Greengrocer’s
His stall is almost bare
Nothing but green fingers of okra
Sixteen gumbos to a rupee, and
Ridge gourd or amaranth.
Seeing me return empty-handed
He voices concern, ‘Were you a Goan
You would have bought
Kilos of red chillies in summer,
Onions and dried fish
And besides
Stacked a quintal of firewood
For the kitchen. Else how would you
Last through a season of monsoons here?’
V. Roadside Ditch
Not a puddle
Of water but some
Kettle of stale tea
Spilling its sides.
Only the swart water-bugs
Skimming its surface
Relish the muddy brew.
VI. Monsoon Laundry
The bay’s bowl is filled with nimbus.
For days it rains. Watching
Her damp laundry smell in the balcao
Emelia says, ‘During monsoons a wash
Is harder here than weaving
Penelope’s web’. On the third day
The sun squints through a bank of clouds.
In a trice sweat-shirts, jeans, frocks,
Counterpanes she slings on the line
In her backyard. A wind blows
And the overhead palms and mango trees
Shake off droplets like mangy dogs
Shedding fleas. The sky darkens,
Drenching again Emelia’s linen
In a mizzle of rain.
Mrs Monteiro Showing Her Family Album
The family during Novena at the Basilica
Of Bom Jesus.
Let me name you my half dozen uncles-forget
The nephews and nieces.
Bruno receiving trophy at a football game-
A real soccer maniac!
Still is the same.
Scenic shot by Edgar of Dudhsagar Fall.
Stanley masked aboard
A float during Carnival.
Not a blur. Its really the sea
At Dona Paula during a storm.
Lorenz with his toothy smile,
Cyril in school uniform.
Sal clumps and a fish-tailed palm
At a spot near Colamb.
Priscilla typing. Wow! Was she pretty.
Now works as secretary-cum-steno
To a mining magnate; Betty
Playing the piano.
That boy frowning is Bob.
He left for the Gulf
After chucking the job.
Edgar and I on a honeymoon cruise
Down the Mandovi, breathtaking
Swaly banks, riparian views.
Those are Laura and Danny,
Kids of my eldest daughter Joyce.
Can’t imagine I’m a granny
So soon. Time flies!
Carnival
In my days, said Coutinho,
Carnival was carousing and
Fun. Three days of
Bacchanalia, Sunday to Tuesday.
Masked we prowled the streets
Like bands of Comus, squirting
Perfumes on giggling girls. Some
Kissed them from beneath
Their masks, others held them fast
Till they screamed for their mothers.
Tinpan bands went door to door,
With unbridled flutes and
Off-key violins playing
Evening serenades.
What has it come to now? Merely
Thousands of bystanders lined up
Watching a motorcade of floats, parade
Of pin-up girls in gogo
Costumes, footsore dancers, and
Pop groups atop trucks shattering Y
our ears with strident speakers.
I tell you, King Momo no more belongs
To the people.
Puppet of sponsors,
He is just an aid to the adman now.
Wedding Bells
At the shrine of our Lady of Fatima, Walter
Leads Brenda da Silva to the altar.
The bride arrives on the arm of her father
Who is beaming, perhaps, for palming off his daughter.
Jean and Cathy, the bridesmaids, are giggling,
They think the bridegroom looks like a pigling.
The service was ministered by none other
Than Reverend Oscar, the bride’s big brother.
Solemn is the rendering during Nuptial Mass
In voices by the choir of Antonio Vaz.
And at the post-communion singing, Morgan
Ably accompanied Valentine at the organ.
Later at a club reception by the host
A Goan MLA raised a toast.
And all again congratulated Walter
For leading Brenda da Silva to the altar.
Canoe-ferry Girl
A pair of narrow, wooden planks
To serve as wharf. One barefoot
Melanous girl in coloured frock
Beside a canoe
Beckons us. Circumspect we
Climb aboard and are hardly
Settled before
She unties ropes
And with one long heave
Plies a bamboo stave
To steer us through the water. Adrift
Her first stroke of oar takes
The bark midstream without a
Scriggle or slap of tide. The second
Neatly docks usus on the far side.
Once on the rivage we wonder
If any barge over Mandovi
Could have rowed us as deftly.
The Porkers of Mrs Baretto
Hear her porkers squeal
As they probe with their tushes
The trunks of cashew trees, or wallow
In the paddy-field puddle.
A low tinshed
With wooden boards as walls
Serves as the sty.
A week ago
The sow spawned a litter of ten
But ate
Two of the farrow.
‘She is in distemper and
More hungry perhaps’, mused
Mrs Baretto filling the bin
Upto the brim with swill.
Afonso de Albuquerque
Ormuz, Malacca, Goa.
These were the three
Feathers in his cap.
I smile when I read
He wanted to ruin Egypt
By turning the Nile.
By far the most warlike
Wholesale dealer in spices Europe
Sent us-trading
Persian horses for cloves.
But it isn’t easy
To serve a King, Afonso.
Look what Manuel did!
Supplanting you with Lope Soares,
Your arch enemy.
And you died
An embittered man, away from home, adrift
Upon the brine of the Arabian Sea.
Vasco da Gama
Though this harbour town
Is named after him my mind is only aware
Of angularities in his greatness.
I see the captain
Of Sao Rafael, Sao Gabriel, Berrio,
Anchored on the banks of Quelimane or Rio do Cobre
With scurvy-stricken crews
Scurrying to erect padroes at Mossel bay,
Mozambique, Malindi
To commemorate his voyage.
At Calicut
How fatuously he bartered
Trinkets for cardamom with the Zamorin, and
What was the dispute
Between him and the Order of Sao Tiago
For ownership of Sines?
He was always on the lookout
For titles and estate.
No one marks the longevity
Of his faineance at Evora.
Admirals don’t hibernate
Long with their families.
Did he brag to Caterina there
(Who bore him six sons)
About an Arab vessel lateen-sailed
He looted and burnt with four hundred
Aboard, including women and children?
She wouldn’t have called him, I bet,
A mighty navigator then.
But some lousy, stinking pirate
And plunderer of merchant ships
Our schoolboys read of in comic strips.
Iberian Proselytizer
‘Safely shall you sail with us’
Vouchsafed Albuquerque, ‘Safely to Damascus’.
All the Turkish officers and families were
Much beholden. Midsea
He summoned his soldiers and addressed them:
‘I come armed with the Papal Bull. Slaughter
These Turkish swine. Throw their bodies in the water.
Marry their widows and marry their daughters.
Make them all Christians.
‘I carry the banner of the Cross and the Sword’,
Yelled Francisco de Almeida,
‘In the land of the heathens
All shall be proselytized-the Muslims,
The Hindus and even the Nestorians.’
But he rounded up only the callets of Cochin
And had them baptised.
So say the historians.
To Goa with Love
(A French hippie, La Fontaine, talks about Goa to Peter Saldana, a resident of Panaji.)
Said the foreigner to Peter Saldana
‘I relish Goan jack and banana
And the sorpotel dish,
And feni and fish,
And long drags at my own marijuana.’
‘Yes, my love for Goa is intense’,
Drawled this Frenchman from Provençе,
‘There’s plenty of scope
For drug and dope,
And for contraband the field is immense.’
‘I’ve travelled, indeed very vastly.
Let me assure you the Mediterranean is ghastly.
You pay a whopping price
For Monte Carlo and Nice,
But Goa is not at all costly.
‘Ah! Such a haven for holiday and rest,
And Goan folks do look after a guest.
You are all very kind,
And your cops don’t mind
Sleazy crooks like us from the West.
‘My landlady is Mrs Joyce Fernandes.
I tell her how wonderful her land is,
So picturesque, so cute
Are Anjuna, Calangute,
And how silvery at Colva the sand is.’
‘Since none of our girls is a prude
Those are fine spots, indeed, to be wooed.
As you know, cloth
Is eaten by moth.
We prefer making love in the nude.
‘But summer is here again.
Voila! I must catch the train
Stacked with a haul
Of hash for Nepal.
Shall be back in Goa after the rain.’