Remembering old Goa, and a time gone by

You’ll love this”, Nisha said, as Remo started to sing. We were holidaying in Goa when she fortuitously heard of an open-air Remo concert. This was one of the joys of her beloved state she was determined to show me. It was entrancing.

More than the melody and the lyrics, it was Remo’s personality that captivated the audience. I was no exception. We were there well past midnight demanding encore after encore. When we did eventually leave, we were singing his songs.

Last week, I discovered Remo has a second, and so far hidden, talent. He’s also a beguiling author. Writing about his childhood in his autobiography, he paints a delightful portrait of Portuguese Goa. Nisha’s parents often spoke of it. It’s a side of Goa that has slipped into history and is now lost and gone forever. In his book, Remo has given it fresh life.

Remo compares old Goa to a Gabriel Garcia Marquez village. “The houses, the people, the states of mind, and above all the ghosts past, present and future he describes so poetically — that could well be the Goa I once knew and loved so well.” It was, Remo says, “a quiet, blissful paradise… I had the most ideal, happy, contented childhood I could ever wish for.”

Remo, whose full name is Luis Remo de Maria Bernardo Fernandes, grew up in Panjim. He calls it “a doll town”. His description reminds me of a little village in Europe. “Almost every house had a garden lush with tropical plants and flowers”. They were built of “plastered laterite stone, adorned with arched doors and windows and fronted by verandas”. Each year, after the monsoons, they were whitewashed.

“My father sometimes forgot to put his car into the garage and left it parked for the night in the street in front of our house, the windows rolled down, the key in the ignition. The possibility of robbery or theft didn’t even cross people’s minds.”

Nisha told me Goans were fun-loving. That image lies at the heart of Remo’s narrative. “People were merrier”, he writes, and they “sang louder” than almost anyone else. Every village had its taverna and it was always packed.

Just as many of us under the Raj sought to be British, the Goans emulated the Portuguese. It was the language Remo spoke to his parents. Lisbon was the city on a hill everyone looked towards. In fact, Remo adds: “I don’t think I’d even heard about this country called India.”

Yet, for all the Portuguese influence, Goans never forgot they belonged to Goa. “Cultured and even aristocratic Goans, despite affecting Portuguese customs and tastes in public, found it impossible to shed some of the deeper shades of their Goanness in private; so while they served and drank the finest scotches and wines in society, when alone they would drink nothing but feni.”

Remo’s was a rich family. “Tailors would come and live in our house for a week or a month”, he writes, “and would impeccably recreate the latest European fashions from Vogue… the fabrics would be imported from England and France and Italy.”

The pictures of Remo’s mother remind me of a 1920s debutante. You can easily see why his father fell in love with her. His grandmothers were women of incredible character. One of them

I RECENTLY DISCOVERED REMO FERNANDES HAS A SECOND TALENT. HE’S AN AUTHOR. WRITING ABOUT HIS CHILDHOOD, HE PAINTS A PORTRAIT OF PORTUGUESE GOA. REMO’S OLD GOA IS A WORLD THAT CEASED TO EXIST A LONG TIME AGO. HOWEVER, IT LIVES ON IN MEMORIES AND STORIES.

smoked and drank even though her husband, a doctor, did neither. In fact, she rolled her own cigarettes! The other had a penchant for “zooming around on pilot-motorcycles”. Even past 80, this is how she would arrive to meet her grandchildren.

Remo’s old Goa is a world that ceased to exist a long time ago. However, like Shangrila, it lives on in memories and stories. There it has acquired a halo and a significance that are almost irresistible. It doesn’t matter if at times that’s exaggerated or even untrue.

Like Atlantis, it’s become a dream that may fade but it’s unlikely to be forgotten.