The Goan village of the 1960s was circumscribed by proximity to the elements, schooling its community for interdependence on nature. Houses, lifestyles, food production and consumption ingrained this wisdom. In a scenario of current living styles, it may sound tedious, but considering the extent and the damage caused by continuing climate change, this sorted lifestyle offers its insights.
Daily life was guided by jottings inscribed by margins in which were written notes on famine, drought, epidemics and floods. Death and penury were continual even for privileged classes. Failure of the rice crop for a season or two could undo all. If a milch animal died, there would be no milk. Trees had to be nurtured; rivers and ponds had to be dredged; and dykes needed to be strengthened every year. Wild grasses in properties required uprooting to tame the land and make it habitable.
Seasons modified the functionality of the big house. The month of May engrossed it in a self-preservation and food production mode. The wooden frame of the roof was repaired; beams and rips were replaced if necessary; tiles were cleaned of dried moss; and the molle or woven coconut leaves were hoisted up in the vulnerable areas where rain winds directed showers. From its inner recesses of the bamboo silo with its resident colonies of moths, hessian bags were opened up to prepare the rice seeding. The rice seeds were germinated in a huge copper urn. The rice fields had to be ploughed, carefully manured and bunded afresh.
Traditional adages woven around rice cultivation and its role in bonding the community underline its role. Ami tumi ekam, xitan kelli lokam. (We were one people, but scarcity of rice made us separate communities). The topography of the fields in many ways explains this cooperation. Fields were carefully monitored open tracts of land, where trees and other forms of vegetation were not allowed to take root. Water in rice fields was always held in motion by a hydraulic technology used to create and suspend motion as movement of water was essential. Rice required stagnant water with aeration. Oxygen for the roots was supplied by a system of drainage or circulation of water from one field to another, unmindful of the ownership of land. Openings and sluice gates ensured this operation. In some places, fish spawn was used to same effect.
Art – Savia Viegas
The sprouted seedling would be randomly sprayed in one bandhi to be transplanted all over the field in neat rows after it grew sturdy and strong. Rice production was labour intensive and favoured teamwork. Mae, my mother, worked with the women in our field transplanting, and coming home weather-beaten, after working six hours a day (in two shifts), in ankle-deep water. The team worked sometimes with a common krait or a Russel’s viper twirling in the water near their feet. Mae maintained vigilant accounts which recorded the balance of payments paisa by naya paisa.
Partnering was a rule of every harvest. Women wage-workers and tenants worked at transplanting and harvest. A male or two were employed for threshing and working the bullocks. Every October, a tentative list of a hired team was drawn so that the ripening sheaves of rice would be harvested without a time slag. This included the cutting of the sheaves, threshing both physically and by bullocks and winnowing to clean the chaff. The operation stretched to the late hours and the team had to be supplied food replenishments from the house — canjy, lunch and evening tea.
To celebrate the harvest, a special rice preparation called atwol in ample quantity and served to the workers in large slices. Atwol was made with rice, lentil, jaggery, coconut grating, turmeric leaves and elaichi. The soaked rice and lentil along with the other ingredients were cooked on an open fire till it thickened. Spread on a flat board, it was sliced and served. It was a veritable feast for there were no limits to the helpings. The house was alive with the hustle and bustle. Rooms in the house were emptied to allow the rice grains to air dry with a constant walk through to turn them. This chaddo was the responsibility of my sister and myself. Payments for workers were in cash and kind. The same team was hired again to home the hay and build a haystack for the milch animals. This time a preparation called ghodshem — a thick rice gruel — was prepared with coconut milk and served in bowls.
This system in use for generations fractured somewhat when the demand for Indian labour in West Asia grew. Middle-aged wage-workers, subsistence-farmers and fishermen began to acquire passports and travel for domestic, construction and other jobs. The younger generation directed their sights towards the Arab world with skill development and planning. The dependence on rice for locals changed. Labour from the hinterland filled this vacuum. Teams comprised Christian, gaudas and Hindu workers who came during transplanting and harvest. The home was then shared with 15-20 migrant labourers who cooked and lived in the same space, primarily using one large room, sharing the kitchen and using temporary sheds for bathing and toilet. I loved listening to the narratives of these workers from other villages as they returned home after the day-shift and went about doing their domestic chores, grinding, washing and cooking. Their nuances, their voices and their stories, I believe, shaped me as a writer!
Art – Savia Viegas
During a bad year and particularly the bad harvest of 1967-68, the talathi of Salcete went from door to door, requesting surrender of grain from rice producing families. Mae, on advice from seniors, under-declared our rice production. Promptly the rest of the produce was packed in hessian bags and taken up the ladder by an enterprising worker. The worker, resident with us for a brief season, also carried up his ricebags. The rat-trap was set. A week later, we spent a sleepless night as pitiful cries emanated from the ceiling. We suspected a ghost but it turned out to be a trapped civet cat.
Mae had tears in her eyes as she opened the last tin of Polson butter somewhere in the late 1960s. A new drought was created by the unavailability of the relished butter and the Amul products had not yet made inroads to the villages. It was replaced for a while by the visits of a vaid, who besides leafy-herbal medicines, brought along homemade thup-loni in a large ceramic jar and sold it by measure. The saltless taste was vastly different from that of Polson butter. Substitutes like honey and molasses, a bye-product of cane-sugar process, were used as breakfast and tea-time spreads. Large scale cattle-farms did not exist in Salcete, and a few small farmers kept a milch cow or two. Land-owning families hired shepherds to tend a few milch cows. The surplus was retailed to secure their salaries. Rice was abundant so the shepherd shared the family meals. My earliest memories were of a gauda/kunbi named Santan. He used to make a meal of the mice caught in the rat-trap. Holding them by the tail, he would bash till they stunned. Tied to a stake and put into the fire, the charred denizen was salted, anointed with coconut oil and chili flakes before it became a meal.
Gangaram, an Andhraite who replaced him spoke Telugu and broken Hindi. Mae’s Saxtti Konkani, Portuguese and accented English conversations summed up a lost in translation story. Dumb charade was the communication game we played seriously. Fed up of our rice, curry and vegetable, Gangaram one day attempted telling Mae that he wanted to eat eggs. He gesticulated wildly, cupping his hands and mimicking a hen.
“Kombdi-kombdi-murgi-murgi Maa!” the swarthy Andhraite said.
Mae shook her head not understanding. Mae, how did you not understand, my sister and I chorused in unison later. “Of course I did,” my mother said, “but I will be damned if I feed the precious eggs our hens lay to Gangaram!” We never slaughtered the chickens as we did the pigs for meat consumption on special occasions. It was the eggs that provided nutrition. A kilo of beef and a kilo of bones served a week for soup and special meat recipes. But besides this nitrogen the real protein came from the fish which was a staple diet both in the curry as well as fried as a side dish. Frogs commonly known as jumping chicken woke up, creating deafening mating calls in the thick of first rain torrents. Now frog hunting is banned but it was a seasonal preoccupation to ensure protein on table. Knowledgeable hunters would peck the softened earth with spears looking for hibernating land tortoise to garnish a rice and curry meal.
The fatted pig was only slaughtered after months of wait — on special occasion, a feast, an engagement, a baptism or a wedding. The table was laid out in full gourmet style and nothing was missed in drink, meat and dessert. As far as the big animals were concerned, the butcher brought an animal weekly to the village slaughter house, the tinto. This happened once a week and occasionally a kilo of beef entered the family kitchen to provide the essential nitrogen.
The hens and the ducks in the yard had names and performed dual functions of cleaning the yard and laying eggs. Hens pick termites, a relic of the land having been under sea in prehistoric time and a blight in the present day. The ducks raised a cackle, attacked snakes and were a huge deterrent for cobras inhabiting the backyards. Xamai often made massad for three consecutive days when we children had a cough. The blue and white pottery bowl was taken from the glass cabinet in the wall. Two egg yolks were carefully separated and mixed with three spoons of sugar. The frenzy of beating the yolk and sugar was so vigorous that it changed colour from mustard to white. Flambeed with whisky or brandy, the egg flip as prepared and served with such panache that it made you feel very privileged and special.
In the herd of five cows we owned, Mimosa was my favourite, I was a few months old at her birth and we played together growing up. She was deep brown with a large moon on her forehead and had the most adorable doe eyes. We grew up together! One night Mae walked with Niku who had replaced Gangaram and a torch and brought Mimosa back who had strayed in the neighbouring village. The bulls had begun to chase her. All the while I was in tears praying that she should be found. The petite and diminutive Mimosa began to swell. Mae kept her home when she got very heavy. I was probably eight or nine at the time. Late one evening, I found her in the yard with her legs stiff and her eyes upturned in pain. I began praying while consoling her. Mae came home and swung into action assisting her with hot water fomentations. It took hours before she birthed a male calf. We called him Buddhu, a word Gangaram always used for the animals as he unharnessed them and got them ready for grazing.
“Hoi, Hoi! eh Buddhu sambal ja”.
That day and the next day we made poss, light and fragrant, the loveliest sweet made with the first cow milk after birthing. It was rich in colostrum, and loaded with nutrients and antibodies. Mildly sweetened with sugarcane jaggery, coconut milk, turmeric and elaichi, it was steamed and served as a rare delicacy.
A few years later Gangaram’s fateful line played in my head as I scoured the landscape of the village on foot, field after field, under an unrelenting October sun. Buddhu had gone missing. We found him in the last field defining the border of the village — bloated, having been bludgeoned to death for having strayed into a field of ripening rice!
Monsoon created a new world as seeds of lady finger, various gourd varieties bottle, ash, ridge, spine, pumpkins, brinjal, string beans and gherkin sprouted in the backyard. Beyond the pale would bud the wild veggies, herbs and fruits among amid the weeds, gardens and forest outskirts. A pattern of food consumption ensured that the stocks were adequate. The night meal for my father’s generation was always ragi porridge with or without coconut milk and a dash of sugar or molasses The gourmet meals that we see featured in Goan cuisine were a fantasy as far as the earlier epochs were concerned. Daily life was frugal and simple and the dining table groaning with sumptuous food was the still life one encountered during a feast, a baptism or a wedding.
Art – Savia Viegas
The villages had a system of feeding the poor. Wednesday was magtolle day and the beggars would come asking for rice, chillies, coconut or money any celebration had to have a beggar’s repast. Many of them had their heads shaved.
As the rainclouds let loose their bellicose anger, vegetation prospered enticing with forms of life that had lain as seed, bulb or dried spore. Wild herbs, vegetables and fungi sprang to life in appointed spaces. Mushroom foraging was a discerning art which brought in a seasonal delicacy.
The bounty of the monsoon could be viewed in the matolis which decorate the festive pandals of Ganapati in western India. Many Saraswat families prepared special feasts featuring monsoon vegetable spreads. At a recent housewarming at Chetan Acharya’s new home, the family had a buffet of exotic preparations of wild edible plants and the video featuring them went viral. Some of the preparations were of thero, Pivuchi bhajji, wild banana suckers, the core of the banana sapling, gotti xero and lut. Other varieties include bamboo shoots, talkillo, leaves of drumstick, flowers as well as the drumstick itself. Hog plum is another favourite monsoon product that is popular among Catholic and Hindu families.
The unbroken coastline of about 105 kms of the Indian Ocean, meandering rivers and artificially created waterbodies plus a vigorous water table provided year-round fish protein. The sea, the rivers and brackish waters and fresh water ponds support diversified ecological features and forms an integral part of the central west coast of India. Life without fish was something that made Goans rich or poor fret. Pae, my father would always prepare kismur in the monsoon with dried salted fish unable to stomach his brown rice without the essential sea protein.
A plethora of fishing tools and techniques assured this food throughout the year. The most visible was the Kharvi (the kharvi community which plied small voddem and cast the nets known as Rampon). Before the emergence of purse seiners and mechanised fishing boats they looked after the marine gourmet needs of the community. The fisherman who put his boat to sea and brought home the catch. The catch was made available through several outlets, home vendors, village markets and the central town market. Communities of fishermen plied the business in the food chain by traditional fishing till purse seiners and mechanised fishing created a dent in the eighties.
Art – Savia Viegas
Rows of carefully-tended coconut trees around the house, on dykes abutting fields or coconut groves yielded the vital ingredient to Goan meals, desserts and oil — copra. Nurture and care of coconut trees was a chapter in upbringing which was compulsory. Distance of a few meters between each tree was adhered to when planting and the pit had to be fumigated before planting. Reinforcements of salt, ash and mulching were imperative for the canopy to stay firm, healthy and yield well. They had to be protected against weevil.
Rice and coconuts had to be always in surplus, for it fed the house, paid for labour and some commodities, and brought in a cashflow at every quarterly plucking when the coconut merchant paid a good price. Many of the artisans, carpenters, wood carvers, masons and daily wage-workers would take part-payment in rice and coconuts, helping the semi-feudal domestic units of rural Goa to create better living spaces without much of a cash flow. Surplus cash was not a feature of an agrarian homestead so when Mae admitted me to a boarding house, she cajoled the Irish nuns to accept some kilos of rice every month as part payment for my board fees.
The feni is distilled from coconut sap and cashew juice. The coconut feni was made year-round while the cashew urac and feni were summer bounties. The processes for both were similar. The sap was collected twice a day from the coconut trees and fermented for a week before it was distilled thrice. A huge earthen pot placed horizontally was heated and the condensing fluids were channelised through a pipe into a pot. The last firing yielded a decoction—the feni. The cashews were trampled upon and the extracted juice on heating yielded urac and feni.
At the best of times, we had about 500 coconut trees of the Benaulim variety known for their excellent yield but lofty height, a precarious task for pluckers. The plucking took a whole day and Mae supervised, counting missing coconut in each bunch and billing it to the tenants. The team of pluckers took part of the payment in coconuts as did the women who delivered the crop home in headloads. Our plucking team leader was Harishchandra, a Hindu. Thin and wiry like a reed, he did the jobs when his team shied from. Three trees which had grown very tall in our Gavonn Grove terrified all climbers but Harishchandra, who plucked them each season, would often boast that he could see the waves of the Indian ocean from the top. The site was more than a kilometre away from the sea.
Coconut plucking and toddy tapping were pernicious occupations in the monsoon and the climbers aged. Drinking and neurological disorders packed their bones by the time they were in their mid-fifties. Harishchandra died falling off a coconut tree as did Rosa, our gardener’s husband. A steep fall defined the unsung requiem of many a plucker. Broken ribs, shattered spine, cracked hips, smashed jaws — the injuries were legion. But once a coconut climber always a coconut climber. Recently an octogenarian undertook that climb, ‘just for old-time sake!’, he said.
