Who speaks for Goa?

Seven years ago I travelled to Portugal for the first time and attended the Goan Diaspora Convention in Lisbon. Listening to Goans from Lisbon speak and make presentations I learned at that moment that there were many ways through which one could learn about Goa and Goans, and not all of these methods required that one actually be present in the territory of Goa itself.

Because of its long history with Goa, Portugal remains a site where Goan identity is produced. Given its peripheral location in the world it is not necessarily a privileged location for the production of Goan identity, but it is by no means an insignificant one. Over the course of years I have come to see how ties between the two places continue to ensure the production of ways in which Goa is understood, presented and represented. In other words, a Goan culture is produced as much in Lisbon, as it is in Goa.

One production of Goan culture was made obvious to me when I went out to dine at a restaurant that offers Goan food, ‘Jesus é Goês’ (Jesus is Goan). The quirky name stems from the fact that the owner of the restaurant, Jesus, is in fact Goan.  The food that an ‘ethnic’ restaurant serves is one way in which people learn about a culture. But this is not the cultural production that struck me. What struck me were the murals on the wall of the restaurant.

The walls of the restaurant pulsated with colour and a variety of figures who commanded that you stop and take notice of them. Across one wall a Puranic Shiva sitting in a tea-cup used a fork to paddle his way away from a funky Sri Yantra through an ocean of some, no doubt ambrosial liquid. One the same wall, a venerable tortoise supported a meditating baba who contemplated a samosa that seemed to have just appeared in front of him. Further away was a blue hand with an open mouth that seemed to pant from the chillies that were crossed on the plate in front of it. This was definitely a representation of Goa for the Goa-illiterate branco and my head was spinning from all the meaning I was taking in.

To begin with, despite the clear Catholic reference in the name of the restaurant, Goa is quite clearly represented as a Hindu space. However the Hinduism represented on the walls is one that has more than a fair share of influence from the hippy aesthetic. Growing up in the Goa of the 1980s I grew up to resent the challenge that the hippies brought to the Goan status quo and resented the spin that they put both on Goa and India. Here on the walls of this Goan restaurant in Lisbon, however, I had to acknowledge that the hippies had perhaps won the war. Their vision of Goa was now a part of how many segments of the world saw the territory.

This reinterpretation continues with the image of Ganesh head that presides over the restaurant. The cute pinkish kitschy elephant head would be familiar to, and warm the insides of any person from western India. Look closely, however, and one realises that the halo around Ganesh’s head is the crown of thorns that would have sat more appropriately over the head of Christ.

This is the kind of stuff that would make any traditional Indian secularist’s heart trill with delight. I am not known to appreciate this Hinduism meets Catholicism, we-are-all-brothers form of secularist propaganda largely because it is invariably so contrived. In this case, however, it really does come together effortlessly, perhaps because the ‘fusion’ is not so obvious. You need to look really hard, or be more than a couple of gins down for the crown of thorns to pop out at you.

Also populating the world on the walls of this restaurant is a strange animal. Quite unlikely the representation of any one figure, this animal reminded me of the composite animals that are very much a part of the subcontinent’s artistic tradition where the portions of elephants, crocodiles, lions, peacocks are brought together to create fantastical creatures. Commenting on contemporary Goan art some years ago, the art critic Ranjit Hoskote had noted this tendency among the then emerging set of Goan artists as well. In his essay Hoskote had tried to draw a link between ancient art forms and the contemporary, but I was not convinced. Even if these artists were either consciously or unconsciously continuing  an earlier tradition, they were still producing these images outside of a context of daily life. Here on the walls of Jesus é Goés, however, was this fantastical creature bounding around and decorating a quotidian space, very much like its ancestors decorated the temples of yore.

Amidst all of this largely Hindu kitsch, there is also a sign that refers to Goa’s Catholic tradition in the form of two garlanded and flaming hearts struck through with a knife. References, no doubt,  to the sacred hearts of Mary and Jesus it seemed as comfortable here in a Goan restaurant, as it would have in the kitsch Catholic art that populate Central America, or any other part of the Catholic world for that matter.

There is a certain Goa that is being presented to diners at Jesus é Goés. It may not be a Goa that Goans may recognise, but it is a Goa that nevertheless has a certain validity because it reinterprets various strands that in fact exist in Goa. That Goa is framed as primarily Hindu is true, and this remains problematic. However, it is also a fact that the presence of this Hinduism is not necessarily an imposition but the result of an engagement. This interaction is not necessarily piously reverential, but able to joke with it, play with it and in the process emerge with something that is actually interesting and stimulating.

(A version of this post was first published in The Goan on 6 Dec 2014)

Letters from Portugal: Cooking ‘Indian’ in Lisbon

They say that when you step outside your country, you are in fact an ambassador of your people to the world. This must be true, for why else, would they ask you for example, which are the best Indian restaurants in Lisbon? You are expected to know, whether intuitively, or through sniffing out to satiate home-sickness, the institutions and elements in a foreign city that incarnate the homeland when one is away. The problem with this little Indian however, is that he stoutly refuses to go to a.n.y. Indian restaurant in Lisbon. He will have none of it. The reason for this refusal to visit or patronize the Indian restaurants in Lisbon is quite an involved story.

To begin with, these ‘Indian’ restaurants in Lisbon are something of a play-on-words. Invariably run by Bangladeshis, or Pakistanis, they could more appropriately be called South-Asian, or sub-continental kitchens. To call them ‘Indian’ is to stretch political boundaries to unholy limits on the one hand, and to further encourage continental (European that is) fuzziness of the world outside of Europe on the other.To further complicate this mess is the fact that these ‘Indian’ restaurants serve up a strange mélange. They call it Indian, but the food served is really that strange version of Punjabi food, that perhaps even those in the Punjabs (on both sides of the Radcliffe line) do not consume on a daily basis. Within this state-of-affairs therefore, one would hardly go to an ‘Indian’ restaurant to relive the flavours of one’s home, or capture the blessed scents of one’s maternal kitchen.  One would rather just cook up, or valiantly attempt at any rate, to concoct the ambrosian delights that mother manages to unfailing produce each day. If the process of cooking itself is therapeutic, then what could resolve the aching nostalgia for home, than to pound, grind and fry one’s pining away? Furthermore, there seems to be a curious pattern to the dishes that are served up in these restaurants. Order as many dishes as you like, the flavour of these dishes seem to vacillate between a restricted set of flavours; perhaps four to five. When one eats as a good amount of sub-continentals do, by mixing various foods together, reveling in the surprises that explode in one’s mouth, this lack of variety can be quite a buzz-kill.

There is one more reason why one would not like to go to a sub-continental kitchen when in Lisbon (or in any other part of the great ‘White’ world for that matter). Invariably, your companions summon the waiter and indicate that they would like their food spicy, ‘Extra spicy!!’ One gets the impression at these events that the point of the meal at the Indian restaurant is not to enjoy the varied and often delicate spicing that sub-continental food can provide, but to prove, through a trial by fire, just how ‘native’ these white folks really are. Not amusing. Not amusing at all!

If you do want to know where to get the nicest, Indian food in Lisbon however, you are in luck. The nicest, sweetest smelling dal is served up at the canteen of the Hindu temple in Telheiras.  To go by, on a cold winter’s day, and plunge your fingers into the dal-chaval, and wolf down the accompanying veggies is to transport yourself in an instant, away from the world of the Atlantic, to a place only you know, realizing in that instant, the meaning of the term ‘comfort-food’.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated 19 Feb 2012)