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Monuments connected to the founder of Old Goa, Alfonso de Albuquerque, recall the city’s Portuguese past and tell new tales about its present.
As the scene unfolds, it is old. It was a pleasure island, the site of the seaside palace of the Sultan of Bijapur. Alfonso de Albuquerque wrested it from him in 1510, twelve years after Vacso da Gama discovered the sea route to India. The treasure was appropriated and the harem, absorbed by the Portuguese in the hope that this would, besides providing comfort to the soldiers, lead to the spread of their faith.
“Avela e belasi” (fair and beautiful) was how Albuquerque described his female captives. A new city was founded on the remains of the old. It was called Velha (old) Goa. In time, the area around which the palace stood came to be known as Holy Hill. It only followed the course of the history of medieval civilisations when one empire with its new faith replaced another. At that time the Lodhis reigned in Delhi. Lutyen’s city was built on some parts of the Sultanate more than 400 years later. It was called New Delhi, although the city planner suggested “Oozypur” owing to the sweat-inducing nature of its climate. There was an Albuquerque Road in it too, which is now called Tees January Marg. New history obliterates the old.
Even in the new city of Old Goa, Albuquerque has almost vanished from memory with the end of colonialism. And the Velha Goa that he founded has largely to be imagined. It was not destroyed because of a political upheaval, but deserted three centuries ago during an endemic plague. Today it is hard to imagine that it was at this verdant site that history entered a new phase. The defeat of the Moors in Goa in 1510 was as profound as the conquest of Spain and Portugal by the Moors six centuries earlier. The era of colonialism had begun.
Yet, the story as it is now told is new. Old Goa is being rejuvenated both in narrative and by restoration. The narrative starts on the launch as it comes up the Mandovi river, much as Albuquerque’s men of war did: the flutter of the sail and the bark of military command is replaced by a whirring outboard motor and the pleasant chatter of tourists come on chartered aircraft to avail six days and seven nights in the tropics. A magic eight hours of non-stop flight and they find they have punched a sunny hole into the five months of dark, damp and freezing weather, further numbed by the wind-chill factor, of Europe. Most think it is unbelievable that they are on the warm shores of the Arabian Sea. Some rub their eyes, other pinch their skin to accept their December tan as real.
It is the ripple of the river and the flow of the heavy tropical breeze over their freshly darkened skins that is the truth for the moment. They alight from the launch, white smiles against bronze faces, at the point at which former Portuguese governors of Goa did and advance fifty metres up the bank to Viceroy’s Arch. The gate was built shortly after the Portuguese conquest. A plaque records that the monument was rebuilt by Francisco da Gama, Governor of Goa from 1597 to 1600, in the memory of his great-grandfather, Vasco. This was a hundred years after the explorer discovered the sea-route to India. Francisco had placed a stone statue of the explorer in the niche atop the facade and an Argonaut at the rear. St. Catherine’s bronze statue stood above both, on top of the recessed pediment. One wonders whether Lutyens was inspired by this small gate when he made the layout for the massive India Gate and departed from Roman prototypes by placing a shallow dome on top of the arch. The canonised lady’s effigy disappeared when the arch was rebuilt, yet again, in 1954. She was the patron saint of the city as Albuquerque had defeated the Sultan of Bijapur on the day of her feast.
Our guide points to the latest reconstruction in laterite, a porous rock comprising aluminium and iron, and green granite. The awestruck tourists from England-mostly the women-fail to realise that the steps they take are on the footprints that commenced an era of the colonial dominance of one continent by another. The Portuguese sailors had no sophisticated equipment to guide their course. Their ships found their course by following the building winds of the south-west monsoon and the captains relied on the acumen of Arab pilots from east Africa. When they landed on the Indian shores, they were challenged by truculent “heathens”. The effigy on the rear balustrade of the arch depicts the triumph of Christianity over “lesser faiths”. According to our guide, the lady standing with the point of her sword firmly against the flesh of a reclining bearded man depicts St. Catherine’s triumph over a defeated “heathen”, rather than the fulfilment of a dream marking the discovery of the route to riches.
An Argonaut is one who sailed with Jason on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. The Greeks were pagans but, heathen or not, having gained a foothold on the land that might yield the spice that could be traded for gold, the Portuguese took a page out of the dawn of European history, when the civilised worshipped Zeus, and set the symbol of the risky search for wealth-the Argonaut-on top of the first Imperial monument built in Asia.
However, it is the popular tale of the guide that unfolds for most of the group as they start up the slope and are immersed in the 450-year-long story of the Christian period that followed. They are taken straight to the highlights of Holy Hill: The Se Cathedral complex and the Basilica of Bom (child) Jesus. These have altars gilded in gold and chapels for the two St. Francis, of Assisi and Xavier. Few on this trail question whether it is religion that follows wealth or wealth that follows religion. It took the prosperity of Goa and the education imparted by the Jesuits to get people to embrace Christianity rather than the proselytising zeal of Francis Xavier, who despite his talent, had to call for the inquisition in aid of his efforts.
One is, therefore, grateful that there are guides of the calibre of Armando Durate, of the Goa Tourism Development Corporation, who fast on Fridays, carry a rosary in their pocket and live and breathe Goa and exist only for it. If one does the round with Armando one is separated from the group that is looking for the two-hour cultural tour before rushing to the main item on their agenda of current culture, that is, the beach.
Although the road from the arch reveals the beautiful Church of St. Cajetan to the left as one comes up to the plateau on which most monuments stand, it is about two kilometres to the west that the story, as Armando relates it, starts. The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary was built at the place where Albuquerque stood to review and direct the progress of his troops in the battle against the forces of Bijapur. The victor wished that the spot be consecrated. The wish was fulfilled 34 years later. The chapel that was begun in 1544, was completed in 1549. It is a curious Iberian structure. There are two towers reminiscent of a fort or a granary and it is only the cross on top of each that gives it away as a church in the Manuline tradition.
The building is in disrepair. The timely intervention of Lisbon-based Fundacao Oreiente promises restoration. The painstaking work already reveals a foliage pattern of decoration of the walls in terracotta colour with distinct cross-cultural influences of European Christianity and Old Goai craftsmen. This is much in line with the cross-cultural influence of Muslim precepts and Hindu craftsmen in Akbar’s Agra. The Portuguese ships and troops (marines in today’s parlance) moved north-eastward, towards the main gate of the palace some two hundred metres from Albuquerque’s point of review. A hand-to-hand fight ensued. A plaque records“Here in this place was the doorway through which Governor Alfonso de Albuquerque entered and took this city from the Mohammadans on the day of St. Catherine in the year 1510 in whose honour and memory the Governor George Cabral ordered this chapel to be built in the year 1550 at the expense of his Highness”.
The Church of St. Catherine that was built on the orders of the conqueror in 1510 was enlarged, and again rebuilt a few times over, the last in 1952, on the remains of the first structure. It is a petite building dedicated to a gentle lady. Quite appropriately, it has a brick-and-lime plastered facade and none of the towering classicism of the other churches in this complex.
But this was not the end of Albuquerque’s exploration in the moment of victory. The informed Armando takes us along the historic trail to Heaven. At the highest point of Holy Hill stands the Church of Our Lady of the Mount built by the victor. A curious escalator, a combination of ramp and step, leads up to a glistening white structure of lime-plastered laterite that is the Iberian interpretation of the Corinthian Order. One cannot help wondering whether Le Corbusier would not have economised on the space and bulk of the controversial ramps of Chandigarh’s secretariat if he had studied this form of ascent conceived in 1510. The site commands a breathtaking view of the swaying palms of Velha Goa, of the river almost to Panaji, and of the island of Divar.
Surveying the panoramic scene one appreciates the artistry of the building in white and terracotta tiles, a formula so successfully transplanted from the Mediterranean coastline. This gives Goa’s old architecture the soothing touch that is so much in sympathy with its landscape of undulating headlands that enclose its bays and lend magic to its waters. As a result, the contemporary builder’s concrete that rises above the palms jar by comparison and the decline in the countryside saddens the heart.
Looking back at Heaven, it turns out that this too is in disrepair. This is hardly surprising. The rainfall in this region is 320 cm per year, the bulk of it concentrated in three months. The humidity can run at over 80 per cent for eight. The summer temperature records a maximum of 32.7 degrees C and the winter, 32.2 degrees C. Ideal weather for the nether regions that breed destructive fungi and voracious worms. But fortunately, Heaven, too, is under restoration under the aegis of the Fundacao. Revealed under the lime white-wash that was used to preserve the internal walls is a foliage decoration, a pointer to the motif used for the embellishment of the walls of Our Lady of the Rosary a quarter of a century later. The project has a wide base and extends to its gardens.
Charter groups seem to keep away from the four monuments associated with the person who commanded the battle that led to the foundation of Catholic Goa. What is curious is the tranquility that resides within the shell that these form for the Pearl of the Orient today. As one absorbs the comfort of the winter environment one hopes that what must comfort Albuquerque’s soul is the saying “Quem vie Goa, excusa de ver Lisboa”. Certainly those who see present-day Lisbon will agree that Goa far surpasses it in beauty. One hopes that may always be so, and that the spirit of these jewels and of mother nature will convert those builders who are mindlessly destroying this legacy.
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