A typical Goan beauty is tall but not tall enough to threaten the man. She has a fair complexion, thick, cascading hair falling from the parting in the middle with a purplish shine, either natural or acquired through the rigorous application of hair-oil, and a longish nose, not beakish but straight and prominent to bear testimony that the wearer is of Aryan descent.

Maria Rita Agoustina Santimano, my maternal grandmother, was none of these things. She was smallish, dusky but she had a certain sensuality about her and her body in her younger days must have been described as voluptuous by the men of her time. Did the women in those days ever truly have a say in their love lives or were they property to be negotiated over? She came from a family of some wealth, her father owed large tracts of beachside property in Colva and by the time she was 16 her marriage to a man of 38 had been negotiated. She knew nothing about this man, except that he had worked for over 10 years in Kenya, Africa and that he too like her was of the Chardo caste, a consideration of the utmost importance in those days. On her wedding day she wore the wedding dress du jour, a white kapod with a vole over her head. She was the last generation in my family to wear the traditional dress.

My grandfather never returned to Africa after the wedding instead he took up a job in Poona, working as a clerk for a British military stores. Here he toiled away for 20 years in a job that no way rendered him prosperous and in the intervening years, despite the long periods of separation from his wife who remained in Goa, he sired three children. Of the relationship between my grandmother and my grandfather I know little about. Their own children seem unable to piece together any tangible evidence of a relationship between them. Were there picnics they went on? Were there places they visited together? Did the women of those days ever enjoy great romances or was their prime responsibility to produce children and get on with the business of raising families? It was the norm in those days to marry men much older than themselves, which might have assured them of some material security but what sort of dynamics did it create in a relationship with men who were twice their age?

My grandfather was a man of some learning. He had worked in a far-away country and this gave him a broader perspective on life than what the sheltered life of a parochial village in the South of Goa might have given my grandmother. They might have been intellectual misfits but I doubt such thoughts went into defining relationships. Relationships were defined by caste, how well one fitted into the family, how well one managed the household and the fields at harvest time and most of all they revolved around the children. Despite the utilitarian nature of relationships, it is impossible for me to think of my grandmother as being devoid of sexuality. I remember her in the prime of her life singing bawdy mandos and limericks which are so much a part of the fabric of life in Salcete Goa, where men and women join in at weddings and festa to sing of lust and love. I believe women of her time were very aware of their passionate, earthy side as much as their latter-day counterparts. In any case, by the time my grandmother was in her late forties, it was all over. My grandfather died of a heart-attack. By then she had already become a grandmother and assumed a new role.

In the last few years of her life, she suffered the most pitiable memory loss. There were days when she couldn't remember if she had ever been married or if she had had children. My mother had shifted her from her ancestral house to our house. No matter what she eventually forgot, no matter what her memory was willing to let go of in its battle with Alzheimer's, she never forgot her ancestral house, the household she had managed with an iron fist all these years. Till her dying day, she begged us to take her back. The house and the life it unravelled became the very embodiment of who she was as a human being.

On another note, this week marks 52 columns. Yes, a year has merrily passed by since I started writing for GoanVoice. I want to thank you for your support and the warm and fuzzy letters you send me each week, they mean a lot to me. Viva Goa.