It turned out to be occupied by some minister, who lolled indulgently behind a desk. He was Luizinho Faleiro, before he became a big wheel, but who was even at the time odious. We chose seats. Greasy khitmutgars passed amongst us, proferring cups of tea and soggy biscuits. Luizinho grinned a sepulchral grin, as if privately awaiting the demise of one or another of those who had just seated themselves. Then, as if disappointed by the absence of such drama, he coughed and began.
"I have called you here," he announced brusquely, "to comment on…" and there followed some dull government programme or the other. Luizinho, with another graveyard grin, then collected his belly, cleared his throat and barked: "Take down!". And then proceeded to provide what I can only call dictation. To the credit of about a third of his audience, they did not whip out a notebook to scribble. The rest, shamefully, played the part of stenographers. It was my first encounter with the Establishment's view of the Press, and of the willingness of that part of the state's press to permit such a relationship.
Luizinho was merely following tradition, just as surely as the passage of the full barges bearing iron ore, which announced themselves with a dull throb as the red mineral made its way to the mouth of the Zuari and the hungry ore carriers berthed there. For they were — and are — one and the same. Government functionary and river vessel — both vehicles of the powers that seek to control 'aparanta'. Does it work? Should it?
It does in fact work. Teotonio de Souza, before he departed from the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, had chatted with me on a few occasions. He had been, then, as critical of the Church as he was of the gradual change he saw in Goa's politics and middle-class political consciousness. He had told me, up there in the haze of one Porvorim afternoon, how he had been amused to read that "Goans are largely a T-shirt wearing population".
That comment came from one Arun Sinha, who was then, and as far as I know continues to be, editor of The Navhind Times. Teotonio seemed at first mildly intrigued by this person's interpretation of the Goanness of Goans. But then the historian also revealed a resigned bitterness about what else he perceived in the journalist's prose. "One wonders," he wrote later, "if to be wholly Indian one has to chew 'paan' and spit it all around, or replace T-shirts or G-shorts with kurta-pajama or safari suit."
It is part of a misguided mission which propagates itself apparently tirelessly and without mercy — that there are caricatures which continue to be attributed to Goans. Very often, they are invented by bureaucrats and self-styled "professionals" who want to teach Goans to be less easy-going or less un-Indian. I suspect that one Manohar Parrikar, the current Big Wheel in the circus that is Goa's government of the day, is just as keen to socially re-engineer the Goan masses. Nor is he the first, nor most zealous of those who have wished to do so.
The trouble for the correspondent in Goa — zealous or cantankerous or otherwise — is that one never seems to escape the impression that, in a certain way, de-colonisation has not yet been digested. It is not that the departure of the Portuguese is regretted (there are exceptions, of course) but the question of why, Portuguese colonisation remains so strenuously berated. How is one to internalise this truth, seek to convey to our readers the paradoxes that abound in our reading of this beautiful, bewitching 'aparanta'? How can one negotiate for oneself the editorial space to do so?
I do not mean this to be a disheartening preface for the hapless correspondent who finds herself deposited in Goa, without the benefit of an immediate acquaintance with Peter's (St Inez), Joao's (opposite the now notorious Hotel Neptune), or Martin's (whose staff has long since relapsed into slumber). Given the dismal state of the print media in India today, the days of the full-time state correspondent seem to be distant memories (my friend and comrade Prakash Kamat has on the other hand proven to be remarkably resilient!).
The simple truth is that the "Goan culture" that is so venally peddled aboard the tourist boats that shamelessly and noisily ply the Mandovi off Panaji (how I wish they would cease) is far from easily definable. Cultures never do remain isolated or static, and certainly not the seaborne cultures of which Goa, Govapuri, Gopakapatnam, became a part.
And it is indeed true that the mechanism which supported the 'Estado de India' nourished a very unique place, one which internalised the life-affirming concept behind a word redolent of the very essence of Goan-ness, a word that resounds with wisdom — sussegado.