Last week I bought two items on eBay, both of them were sketches of the Strangers' Home at Limehouse in London, which appeared in the Illustrated London News of 1870. At first thought, Goans may wonder why I would be interested in a Strangers' Home which existed in London of the 19th century. The Strangers' Home, built near London's dockland area was a boarding house for Asian and African sailors who docked at London Port. These sailors were left to fend for themselves, the ships employing them generally abdicating any responsibility for their wellbeing while they were docked.

The living conditions of Asian sailors were abysmal; fatigued from months on the sea, diseased and impoverished, they were often seen walking the streets without so much as a coat to protect them from the vicious onslaught of the bitter English weather. Their misery goaded a Victorian England's sense of justice into action and the house was built with donations from philanthropic souls. We know that Goan tarvottis working on British India ships stayed at the Strangers' home and in 1872, the London Times newspaper reported 23 men from Bombay and Goa resided there. The Strangers' Home is part of the Goan's rich maritime history.

In many ways, we Goans have failed to create a visual repository of our past. This becomes all the more important as we suffer from a great deal of self-flagellating questions about our identity. But what is identity? Is identity just an examination of such cultural baubles as our music, food and language? Or should we investigate deeper? An examination of our historical past is of the utmost importance if we are to piece together any semblance of a Goan identity at a more profound level.

What were the lives like of these people who lived in these conditions? How did they unfold to form our collective consciousness? Just a glance at the etching of the Strangers' Home, reveals the diversity of people the tarvotti would have had to contend with. There were Africans, Chinese, Punjabis, Bengalese and a host of sailors who would have seemed alien to the tarvotti setting out from the more cloistered confines of Velim, Assolna or Chinchinim. This mingling was already expanding the Goan psyche, broadening the tarvotti world-view beyond the hemmed-in horizons of the village. He came back with stories larger than life sometimes true and sometimes embellished, his tales moving the humble Goan soul to yearn for an unseen world which seemed endlessly wide. The thus agrarian farmer dependent on the vagaries of nature was being infused with the spirit of the sea-explorer, engaging with the elements in constant battle and learning to negotiate with a foreign world.

This negotiation was fraught with anxiety and at times, danger. Violence was all too prevalent onboard the ships and in the docks. Being cloistered with other men for months on end with only the blue of the sea for company and memory of land for comfort, fights broke out frequently. Quite a few Goans spent time in jails, sometimes in countries as distant and as foreign as Cuba. Jailed for minor infractions or major crimes, the tarvotti was invariably at a disadvantage when it came to putting together a defence. In July of 1911, Francisco Carlo Godinho was charged with the murder of an Alice Emily Brewster? on board the SS China. Allegedly Alice's haughty and insulting behaviour had put off Francisco, a steward onboard the ship. A reading of Francisco's trial in The Times makes it immediately clear how biased the case was against him. All the while, Francisco pleaded that he could not participate in his defence for while the evidence had been translated into Hindi, he only understood Konkani.

However precarious the lives of these men were, it was a danger tinged with excitement. No longer bound to the parochial realities of solitary villages, Goan tarvottis influenced every sphere of our lives. A representation of our identity must include a visual repository of our past and a deeper understanding of what forces shaped Goan lives, defined our moral values and formed our collective consciousness. Only then, can we put together, much like a jigsaw puzzle, a map of who we really are, what we stand for and what we hope to achieve in the future.

For a view of the exterior of The Strangers' House, click here. For a view of the interior, click here

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