Sitting in the hushed silence of the British Library with nothing but the glare of ugly fluorescent lights to intrude on me, the white pages of the Goa Trade Reports seem to be mocking me. These are trade reports going back to 1900, which the British had so meticulously compiled to keep an eye on Goa and safeguard their major investment in the West of India Guaranteed Portuguese Railway Company managing what they dubbed, the Mormugao Railway. Not only was Goa plagued by a huge trade deficit but it was a deficit almost cruelly ironic.

In 1908 for instance, while Goa had a measly export of 21 lakhs, it had a staggering import of 61 lakhs. In a dominion which could not boast of anything more substantive than exports of dried fish, betel nuts, manure, mangoes and manganese, it arrogantly imported disproportionally large quantities of hats, tobacco, perfumes, butter and wines. And in a year in which Goa imported just Rs 68,049 worth of industrial machinery, it nonetheless imported Rs. 1.2 lakhs worth of hats.

Whoever was wearing these hats, I can be assured my great-grandmother, the fair of face, green-eyed, Catarina Dias, was not one of them. Around this time, she was collecting the last vestiges of a moribund life in the ramshackle village of Shiroda and preparing to leave. Shiroda had been hit by plague, devastating the region and making life unbearable. Goa had a unique topography which allowed migrations from the hinterlands to flourish in the coastal regions with its plenitude of fish and dignified coconut trees. My great-grandfather had perished young, perhaps in the plague or perhaps afflicted by any number of calamities which befell 19th century Goans. What made the widowed Catarina, set off into a densely forested area, cross the serpentine Zuari river and head for the desolate village of Nuvem, on the outskirts of Margao is not known. Nuvem's topography is similar to that of Shiroda, both abound in coconut trees and the possibility of continuing in traditional occupations may have played a role in this migration. Here she erected a thatched dwelling with the help of her two sons.

This thatched and often cramped dwelling eventually became a mud-walled house which as luck and love would have it, neighbours my mother's house. My mother's father, Conceicao Miguel Gomes, was an Afrik'kar. The family owned a parcel of land in an area which was otherwise the abode of mund'kars, and as a result, they had been bestowed with the title of bhat'kars. When my grandfather retired, there was no revenue to speak of. The bits of jewellery which had accompanied my grandmother on her wedding day had long since found their way to pawn-brokers. A few years into retirement, he was dead. A thumping from the heart striking at his emaciated chest and he was gone.

My mother maintains to this day that it was financial stress. His youngest son was academically brilliant; the first man in the village to do his Bachelors of Science. I know my uncle is brilliant for I often marvel at the conversations that spill from this man, born into a village where silence reigned past seven in the night, where the Church priest was the epitome of a well-educated man and the bus prassa, a few kilometers away in Margao was the final frontier of their existence. The financial incapacity of this family meant my uncle's dreams of bringing his academic brilliance to fruition were stymied. The realities in the villages of Goa, though much romanticised by European journalists like Emile Marini as "so beloved by the Goans who live there, and for which Goan emigrants abroad sigh with nostalgia", ran afoul of this hyperbole. Goa's renowned historian Damodar Kosambi likened it to the "idiocy of village life," marred by malnutrition, hookworm, apathy, quarrels, violence, litigation and delinquency.

End of Part 1. Do leave your feedback at carvalho_sel@yahoo.com