Premise: Dom Teotónio by Maria Elsa da Rocha, translated from Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro reviewed by Helga do Rosário Gomes

Dom Teotónio by Maria Elsa da Rocha

Translated from Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro 

Reviewed by Helga do Rosário Gomes

Much has been written of the Indo-Portuguese culture of Goa and of the Goan, who grapples with the complexity of being raised in a Catholic and Portuguese-like environment, a culture that only be described as a divergent child of the original Hindu culture. Embedded in a deep-seated caste system and consequent glaring socio-economic differences, separated from her Hindu brethren by partially adopted European habits, the Goan Catholic straddles, melds but often also forcibly creates divides for herself. 

Starting from the early nineteenth century, a slew of Indo Portuguese writers has attempted to elucidate these conflicting identities, but none have woven such warm, flawed, struggling, often bigoted and yet quintessentially Goan characters as my aunt, Maria Elsa da Rocha. So many things favoured Maria Elsa’s becoming a writer of stories that were so different from those of her peers. Stories that deceptively flowed like the long rivers of Goa and lulled you into a ‘sossegado’ (peaceful) state until an undercurrent woke you gasping for breath. In life as in her stories, Maria Elsa duelled with her privileged status and large land holdings while so many were scratching the earth. As a young woman, she joined the legions of teachers of the Escola Primária (a network of Government run primary schools) and was posted to distant and seemingly quiet villages and dusty towns and even to Damão, a Portuguese enclave in Gujarat. But, even in the strait-laced society of that time, a bright and observant young woman could still wield the proverbial mighty sword, to spin a kaleidoscope of stories of superstitions, disease but also furtive romances and bandit-ridden roads. Raised in a family where dusks were spent lounging in spacious balções (as the extended porches of Goan homes are known), her ears tingled with long and tall tales offered by those with endless time on their hands. From here, springs ‘Dom Teotónio’ based on a narrative by her maternal uncle of the wedding of his father to the daughter of a Viscount. While Maria Elsa spins us into a world of opulence, luxurious palanquins, brilliant chandeliers and Zardosi panu-baju, she also exposes the meanness and bigotry of Dom Teotonio which furiously surfaces when the artisan Raiu fails to deliver the tiara that his bride will wear at their wedding. Here we see the disdain and disrespect that upper class Catholics held towards working class Hindus where they could desecrate a home or a place of worship with meat, a tainted legacy of conversions and the infamous Inquisition. 

While in the digitally connected world of today it is it is hard to imagine that women’s voices and stories were heard then, Goa afforded Maria Elsa many platforms. She narrated her stories to a multitude of listeners of the Portuguese radio program Renascença (Renaissance) aired by the All India Radio. Families gobbled their dinner so that the clank of crockery and cutlery would not mar Prof. Rocha’s powerful narration in Portuguese interspersed with Konkani. In the town of Margão, Maria Elsa was given free rein to contribute to the homespun newspapers that upper crust families produced. 

Maria Elsa’s stories, so true in their excellent translations by Paul Melo e Castro can serve as a blueprint for preserving the Goan way of life at a time when it faces relentless assault while also impressing the need to discard the sins of bigotry and economic injustices. 

Read Maria Elsa da Rocha’s Dom Teotónio translated from Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro in Out of Print 38, December 2019.

Reviewer Helga do Rosário Gomes is author Maria Elsa da Rocha’s niece who authorised the story and is able to contextualise the historic references from the perspective of their family history.

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