The village of Reis Magos in Goa‘s Bardez taluka is exquisitely located on the waterline across the bay from Panjim, and is named after the three biblical Magi Kings. Among its treasures are the eponymous church and fort.

The beautiful Church of Reis Magos, built in 1555, is among Goa‘s oldest. Symbols in bas relief around the steps leading up reveal the existence of an earlier Hindu temple at the site. The handsome east-facing façade must be seen in the warm glow of the rising sun (first image below). The annual feast at the church in the first week of January is an important event in the Goan calendar.

The Reis Magos Fort was built by the Portuguese in 1551 soon after their conquest of Bardez and later revitalized in 1703. When the Marathas took over Bardez in 1739, the Portuguese used the redoubts of Reis Magos and Aguada to barely hold on.

The archival photo adduced below discloses the glorious setting. Too bad the barbarians are now at the door, shovels in hand and trucks of concrete in tow.

Church of Reis Magos, Goa
5D, 35L

Seen from Reis Magos fort
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Devotion
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Reis Magos Fort - first rays of the sun
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Art by Mario Miranda
Reproduced with permission of the Mario Gallery

Reis Magos Church and Fort c. 1900
© Souza & Paul (Central Library Archives)

Legend has it that a group of sages on the island of Divar in Goa undertook penance to propitiate Shiva. It took seven crore (sapta-kot) years for the Great Yogi to take notice of their exertions. When He finally showed up, the sages petitioned Him to take up residence in the village of Naroa (also called Narve). Thus came about the great temple of Saptakoteshwar in Naroa-Divar, one that enjoys a special place in the Goan psyche for its singular role in our land’s turbulent history.

Saptakoteshwar weathered intrusions first by the Bahmani sultans, and later by the Portuguese who destroyed it. The first mass conversion of Goan Hindus to Christianity took place here on August 15, 1560, cleverly engineered by the Portuguese on the day of Gokulashtami, traditionally the most important celebration at the temple. The provenance of one of Goa‘s popular folk tunes, Hanv Saiba poltodi vaita, can be traced to this event.

At the original temple site in Naroa-Divar today stands the Chapel of Our Lady of Candelaria, and nearby lie the remains of the temple tank. The ancient linga has its own tale of woes to tell, even serving as a pulley for a nearby well. Finally it made its way across the river to be reinstalled at a new site which came to be known as New Naroa, today’s Narve in Bicholim taluka. The temple was restored by Shivaji in 1668.

Saptakoteshwar Temple at Narve, Goa
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Saptakoteshwar
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Saptakoteshwar Temple by Mario Miranda
(Reproduced with permission of the Mario Gallery)

Temple musician Dattaram Ramkrishna Narvekar
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The Church of Nossa Senhora de Saúde (Our Lady of Health) in the village of Sancoale, Goa, was built in 1606 and destroyed in a fire in 1834. All that remains today is the shell of its façade. It enjoys a delightful setting by the Zuari river, and the ruins provide clues to what must have been a magnificent edifice.

I photographed the site several times over a number of years. The first image below was taken handheld on a dark monsoon morning from the bridge across the Zuari river.

Nossa Senhora de Saúde at Sancoale, Goa
5D, 300L f/4 IS

First rays of the rising sun
5D, 300L f/4 IS

The remains
5D Mark II, TS-E 24L II

Ruins of Nossa Senhora de Saúde
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50 f/2 MP

Frontispiece
5D, 24-105L

The mere mention of jackfruit stirs fond childhood memories of Goan summers. The baby jackfruit meant breakfast to us brats unshackled from the tyranny of the school year. You slit the fruit open with your hands, scooped up the fleshy nuggets and then spat out the seed.

The Konkani word for jackfruit is the same as the Sanskrit panas. In Goa, two varieties obtain, differing in the nature of the flesh: the pulpy rasaal, and the firmer, crispier kaapo. The fruit is abundant along India’s Konkan and Malabar coasts. Look up the Wiki link above for details.

A more generous fruit would be hard to cite. The flesh is eaten as is, or used as the main ingredient in several traditional preparations. The chewy saatth, prepared by grinding and flattening the pulp and then drying it in the sun, is much relished in Goa and other south Indian states. The roasted seed is a wholesome snack and jackfruit chips make for irresistible nibbles. To cap it all, the neighbourhood cow is ever grateful for the skin tossed her way.

Jackfruit mountain near Thrissur, Kerala
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Low hanging fruit - Mayem, Goa
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Jackfruit tree at Nunem, Goa
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In one short verse, the great Goan poet Bakibab Borkar (1910-1984) captured the essence of what it means to be Goan1:

Please Sir, God of Death
Don’t make it my turn today,
not today
There’s fish curry for dinner.

[1] Great Goans by Mario Cabral e Sa and Lourdes Bravo Da Costa, N.N.A.P. Publications, 1991.

Fish is the Goan’s raison d’être, and to say that our seafood cuisine has no equal in the world is a statement of fact, not a boast. When two Goans meet, the conversation opener is always “What fish did you have today?”

Entire communities in the coastal fishing villages were once committed to the occupation. The advent of commercial fishing and its big trawlers in recent times has considerably weakened the older socio-economic practices. And with access to education and alternate career choices, the children of traditional fisherfolk have taken to casting their net on Facebook instead. There is still enough critical mass of fishing culture left in Goa to perhaps last another generation or two.

The photos in this sequence were taken in Siolim and Siridona, and convey a sense of the informal market setting in a Goan village.

Catch of the Day
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Fresh fish for the early bird
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Sorting
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Traditional fisherwoman in Siolim
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A classic Goan village scene - in Siridona
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50 f/2 MP

In Siridona
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50 f/2 MP

The Goan fish market - by Mario Miranda
From 'GOA with love'

These are candids of Goan ladies taken during a leisurely morning spent in the villages of Narve and Chorão.

Crossing
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Waiting
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Walking
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One of the very few surviving structures of Goa‘s Muslim era, the Safa Shahouri mosque in the town of Ponda was built in 1560 during the reign of Ibrahim Adilshah, sultan of Bijapur. The photograph below was shot on a serene winter morning in 2007. Notice the Goan touch, such as the tiled roof and the laterite masonry at the base and around the tank.

Safa Shahouri Mosque (1560) in Ponda, Goa
5D, 24-105L

Although I hadn’t seen it at the time the photo was taken, I thought the marvelous sketch of the mosque made by the recently departed Mario Miranda provides an interesting point of artistic interpretation. It is taken from the book Inside Goa (1982) by Manohar Malgonkar with illustrations by Mario, and reproduced here with permission of the Mario Gallery. Mario’s work may be purchased online at http://www.mariodemiranda.com.

Illustration by Mario Miranda from 'Inside Goa'
(Reproduced with permission of the publisher)

Arabó is a tiny ward of the village of Dhargal on River Chapora in north Goa. The name, a Goanized form referring to “Arab,” furnishes a clue to its past. Arab merchants sailed here in their dhows in mediæval times trading goods with the locals. It is a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place, a sleepy outlier not yet (thankfully!) listed on any map or travel brochure.

Arabó piques contemporary interest on at least two counts. One is the subject of this post – the Desai House, unique in the state. Arabó is also the birthplace of the great music composer, the late N. Datta (Datta Naik), whose collaboration with the poet Sahir Ludhianvi gave us many enduring film melodies (see the end of this post).

The Desais are among the earliest Gaud Saraswat Brahmin families of Goa, and were for some time feudatories to the Bhonsales of Sawantwadi. The Desai House presents an incongruous sight with its striking exterior of exposed laterite and turrets on either flank. The original house belonged to a Muslim merchant who sold it to the Desais. The structure seen today dates back to around 1890 when the Desais gave the house a makeover.

These photographs were taken over a span of several years. During the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi in 2007, I was invited by the Desais for a private tour of their home.

Desai House in Arabó, Goa
5D Mark II, TS-E 17L

Notice the holes punched in the laterite to accommodate gun barrels.

Facet of the laterite exterior
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50 f/2 MP

Balcony in the foyer
5D, 24-105L

The interior layout hews to a traditional Goan Hindu design with its characteristic Rajangan (quadrangle).

Rajangan - the central courtyard
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To this day the Desais accord space and reverence to the Islamic flagpole left behind by the earlier Muslim owner. Every year on the occasion of the Moharram festival, the local Muslims are guests of the Desai family.

Islamic flagpole
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Inside one of the turrets
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Top view
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This sketch, reproduced in Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu by A.B. de Bragança Pereira (Penguin Group, 2008), depicts the original house. The tree is still there (see first image above).

Sketch of Desai House

PS: Selections of N. Datta here and here.

This is the third and final installment in the Taj Mahal sequence.

The Taj is seen at its refulgent best in the moments immediately after sunrise and preceding sundown when the marble glows in the honeyed light of the sun. Outside of these two fleeting windows, the exterior of the monument takes on a flat, white patina that is less interesting to the photographer. A monochromatic treatment is appropriate to the first image below, taken mid-morning from the balcony of the Amarvilas hotel.

Taj Mahal
5D, 300L f/4 IS

Thou shalt not clean or spellcheck the sign outside the entrance to the mausoleum.

Photography Prohibted (sic)
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