Viva damão!

“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…” goes the popular Wham! song. Come to think of it, don’t we all look forward to Christmas and yet, when it’s Christmas Day, look back, reminiscing?

I remember Christmastime in the early 60s in Daman, before fridges started popping up in our kitchens, when people would start collecting free-range eggs weeks in advance, carefully pencilling in dates on the eggs before storing them under layers of rock salt in Cream Cracker biscuit tins (like they did turtle eggs in June).

Back then, the ovens weren’t electric. They were made of clay—panela de barro—fueled with dried coconut husk, sold by the gunny sack. 

Sugar was ‘controlled’ by the ration-shops, so just like the ants, we too would ingeniously start hoarding sugar, even going to the extent of using the quota on the ration cards of domestic helps, who, did not need sugar, preferring hot toddy to tea.

Damão’s housewives invented Cozy Christmas more than half a century before Cozy became a thing

From around December 10, housewives, in groups of about six, would start gathering in the kitchen of one of their houses every night, after putting the husbands and children to bed, and, with coffee and gossip to keep them going, would make traditional Christmas sweets like boroas, queijadinhos, and bolinhos do coco. 

Coconut and egg yolk are the common ingredients of our Christmas sweets. In Portugal, the wine industry used the whites of eggs in their process (before the advent of synthetic resin) and the residual yolks gave birth to the delicious sweets industry.

But I think no other sweet symbolized the fusion of the erstwhile colonies better than Bolinhos do Porto, which is made of just four ingredients:

🥥 Coconut—India 🇮🇳 

🥚 Egg-yolk—Portugal 🇵🇹 

🍫 Cocoa—Africa 🇦🇴 

🧊 Sugar—the universal ingredient

“But the times, they are a-changing” —Bob Dylan 

Home-made sweets are giving way to off-the-shelf sweets just as caroling’s given way to canned music, and Christmas cards to email and text messenger services.

But have cheer—here’s good tidings! There is one thing that has solidly withstood the test of time, tide, and fad:

It’s the humble Bolo de Sura—a modest cake made of flour, eggs, jaggery, and toddy (for leavening) from which it gets its name (‘Sura’ is toddy in Portuguese). 

In the days of plenty, Bolo de Sura was made for giving away to the poor on Christmas Day. To this day, a slice of this poor-man’s cake adorns every platter of sweet that is exchanged among neighbours and friends, rich and poor.

Just like the Yule Pudding of the English, the Bolo de Sura is Damão’s very own Christmas cake, symbolizing the very spirit of Christmas. 

The Happy-Ever-After Christmas Gift 💝 

When we moved from our rented bungalow (now Regal House) in Damão Pequeno (Small Daman) to E/44, our ancestral house in Praça (Fort Area), we didn’t have neighbours close by, so I kept my mother company in the kitchen.

I’d watch her fingers in fascination as she turned dough to art, manifesting her signature sweets like the Bolinhos do Porto, which she had learned to make from her Portuguese friends—wives of Portuguese officers posted in Damão—who probably substituted grated coconut for shredded almonds.

Instead of gossiping, Mum would reminisce about her own Christmases; her favourite Christmas song—“Adeste Fideles” (“O Come All Ye Faithful”) as a choir girl; and especially, about the blue Christmas card she kept locked in the drawer that held her jewelry. All while I sipped black coffee and got drunk on her stories, imbibing every little detail and committing every ingredient to memory. 

Looking back, Mum had been unconsciously passing on her gift of storytelling to me, Christmas by Christmas. ❤️ 🙏 

November 1st—All Saints' Day, and the eve of All Souls’ Day (Dia de Finados)—morphs solemnity with somberness.

After the evening mass, as dusk sets in, the bells of Bom Jesus church begin to toll while the congregation silently winds its way along the moat outside the fort, leading to the cemetery—to place flowers, light candles and say prayers at the gravesites of their dear ones.

I have participated in this ritual for decades, but it was only in 2005 that I accidentally stumbled upon a custom unknown to most of the people of this town.

As I cruised down Bairo Badrapor that night, I noticed, through the swirling fog, that most houses had brightly burning candles 🕯️ on their front porches, while the rest of the town had diyas, 🪔 because it was Diwali.

Badrapor, November 1, 2005
 

Here was an uncanny similarity to what I had read in my French textbook in school, about the way All Souls’ Day was commemorated in the countryside of France. 

But there was no French connection in this erstwhile Portuguese colony of Damão. Could there possibly be a chance this custom had somehow found its way to tiny Badrapor, which was the landing ground for the Portuguese over 400 years back? How come the rest of the population of Daman, so steeped in custom and tradition, wasn't aware of this?

Curiosity taking the upper hand, I parked and walked up to an elderly woman standing on her candlelit porch and asked her the significance of the candles. She explained that the candles were meant for the departed souls who would be visiting their homes on the eve of All Souls’ Day between dusk and midnight.

As I settled behind the wheel of my car on that serene November night, I could suddenly see the spirit behind such customs and traditions, the flesh and blood of the surreal. I could not help but look up at the star-studded sky and then beyond, just for a flitting moment, into eternity. My lips formed those three little words that my soul was whispering —Rest In Peace. 🙏 

The Letterbox 📬 
Now my parents share the same grave, and I’m homesick for heaven—because that’s their permanent address, and their grave is just a letterbox. 

Six I-Love-You red roses are all I’ve been placing in the letterbox—every 24th (my mother's crossing-over day in July ’22) of every month, on my way to church for the evening mass. Been praying for them—for me, really—thrice a day, every single day: on waking, at 3pm, and before I fall asleep at night—to be with them again. 

If life could be played again and again, like a mega hit song, I’d play it nonstop forever—with Mum & Dad in the backing track. 

PS: I love ❤️ you both, through eternity. 🙏🏼 

Signs 
My special needs son, Noé, senses when I’m grieving over my mother’s passing. Last year, while driving home from the cemetery, I missed her so much that I asked her for a sign, as I always do.

When we returned to the flat around 8pm, I wasn't surprised when a butterfly 🦋 flitted over me and Noé as if welcoming us home. It was then that Noé took hold of my mobile and tapped at random on the first song he chanced upon on YouTube.

As the music began to play, he took my hands in his and swayed in slow time. I caught my breath at the 55-second mark, the verses leaving me speechless, and the tears bringing me solace.

I have a loving mother

Just up in Gloryland

And I don't expect to stop

Until I shake her hand

She's waiting now for me

In heaven's open door

And I can't feel at home

In this world anymore

I can't get enough of these reassuring signs. After placing red roses on her grave, on her third anniversary 24/7, I went on to church ⛪️ for the evening mass, and later that evening, drove to her house with Noé and inserted a long-stemmed rose 🌹 into the bolt of her front door.

As usual, I was on the lookout 👀 for signs via my faithful messengers: birds, 🐦 butterflies, 🦋 dogs. 🐶 

A few days later, on the eve of my birthday, I received this WhatsApp message from my brother...

This time, the sign turned out to be threefold: 

• It was BIG! 🐂 

• It sat on the porch where she’d sit every evening! 😳 

• It was delivered on the eve of my birthday 🎂 

It was like, “What more proof do you seek, son? Is this sign big enough? I’m with you 24/7.” ❤️ 

🎯 And a few weeks later, as if to drive home the point, this beautiful creature tried to kiss 😘 me through the glass of my car window—and wouldn’t leave till I drove off. ❤️ 🙏

 Like old wine in new bottles, we’re old souls in new bodies—maturing spirits, that’s what we truly are; and all that we have, is our soul.🕯️

It’s that month of year again—when I get to tell, “I told you so!” 

It’s when I remind my tribe that it’s the darkest month of the year—whether it rains ☔️ or not. ☁️ 

I’d hate it more than July, but for September’s promise of sunshiny October. 🌻

As for August, the Portuguese saying says it best: “Agosto, mes de desgosto!”

Every evening after sundown, I drive Noé, my special needs son, in my beat-up little red car 🚗 through the gutted lanes of my hometown, at a bulldozer's pace, going nowhere.

The more I drive, the more the streets seem to reflect the rugged last lap of my personal 'Way of the Cross': the craters, the boulders, the pipe-bursts, the gutted cables, poor visibility in the muddy-brown haze, street lamps that only intensify the darkness, and the road rage that’s only getting worse.

And it doesn’t even feel strange anymore that I feel like a ‘Estrangeiro’ in my own hometown.

The more I grumble and my car rumbles, the more Noé enjoys the ride. Guardian angels are masters of disguise. 👼 

And so I keep driving—for Noé, for me; driving to the tune of Jesus Take The Wheel (my anthem)—because, on life’s highway, there's no U-turn. 

In school, I hated Hindi and maths; history, civics, and religion were boring; English, insipid—because I’d already read all the stories in the text book before school reopened; English Grammar, even worse—guess it’s the blue-eyed cousin of maths; PT, disgusting; craft, a waste of time—I envied the girls, doing needle-work; ditto for drawing.

Draw your breath—singing (yes it was a subject 'taught' in the ruins of the Old Church) was a lip-sync exercise for me—like a fish 🐟 out of water —because my vocal range was somewhere between those of the boys and the girls in my class, leaving me with nothing to do but pretend to be singing.

But I did like two subjects:

🧪 Science—I always topped, right up to the SSC;

🌍 Geography—I loved Physical Geography, perhaps because it's scientific, and was at peace with Political Geography because I liked studying peoples and their cultures.

Who'd ever have guessed that I'd go on to win the Writers Bureau 🇬🇧 Writer of the Year award and worse still, the UKSC 🇬🇧 as a singer/songwriter?! 😱 

I was in such disbelief when I saw the announcements on my computer screen 🖥 that I refreshed it a couple of times—like when our German Shepherd saw his image in the mirror 🪞 for the first time and thought it was another dog—before calling my entire HR team into my cabin to verify it was true. 😂 

But one person wasn't surprised. While I didn’t believe in myself, that person always believed in me: my mum. ❤️ 🙏 

After Dad (born in Indore; brought up in Bombay) got married to my mother (a Damanense) in January 1954, he took Mum on long-stay forays into the Indian Union—his safe haven in the event of an invasion, which everyone knew was going to happen ‘sooner or later’.

Meanwhile, as the leading couple of Damão, they’d been nominated by the Portuguese government to represent Damão in Portugal. 🇵🇹 

They chose not to go as they didn’t want to be away from their aged parents for even a couple of months. ❤️ 

Because despite those being good days, those were uncertain times: Bright tomorrows—if tomorrow came.

So, people told themselves that ‘today’ is, after all, yesterday’s tomorrow—and lived life one happy day after another.

Until that fateful day on 18th December 1961, when tomorrow did turn up at the crack of dawn, but it wasn’t the bright tomorrow of yesterday.

Only decades later, I realised how ‘tomorrow’ never came for four-year-old me, as I sat watching Yanni Live At The Acropolis on Doordarshan with my parents. 🎹 

And I wept silently, my tear-streaked face camouflaged in the flickering blue light from our Weston TV set.

In the aftermath of the Liberation, the first shipment to arrive by road was a truckload of bananas. 🍌

From mainland India, with love.

It must have been around 9 in the morning when my parents called me out on the porch of our rented house (now Regal House) to see the loaded truck cruise up and then down Rua Nacional before offloading at the Mercado Comercial. 

The residents of the main street were out that sunny December morning, cheering and gloating at the symbolical gesture of plenty, and yet more to come.

“Sent by Nehru as a goodwill gesture,” people joked. Overnight, Nehru had become the butt of all jokes, sending Bocage back home to Portugal.

A couple of days later, the residents of Rua Nacional were out on their porches again, this time cheering and waving out at the Gujarat ST bus 🚎 with its silver-painted top and the yellow map of green Gujarat on its green sides, as it made its majestic entry into town.

Soon, I found myself on that bus one afternoon, on my first trip into the erstwhile União Indiana with my favourite aunt, Felomena, and her friends, to Vapi, to buy all the Indian sweets we wanted—a very scare delicacy during the Portuguese rule, with only Utam’s shop selling just 3–5 varieties: ‘dudh penda’ (peda), gram flour ‘mageje’ (magaj), ‘burfim’ (burfi), ‘alva’ (halwa)and ‘jalabee’ (jalebi).

And that was it. Party over.

The first taste of scarcity was sweet: Sugar, was a commodity more strictly controlled than birth control.

Very soon, the Control Shop became the go-to store—not only for sugar but, oil, kerosene, wheat, and even rice. 

In a decade or so, housewives were trading “How-To” secrets with each other at the bazaar, where the trending phrase and conversation starter was “Que caristia!” (What scarcity/dearness).

And the default rejoinder was, “Meu Deus, melhor não falar!” (My God! Better not talk!).

Improvisation was the name of their new game:

“Try jaggery for sweetening tea. It’s not that bad. And it’s not as dear as sugar.”

“Beat Dalda ghee 🧈 in a bowl 🥣 with warm, salt-water🧂. It tastes almost like Polson butter.”

And my mother made the switch from Colgate toothpaste to Monkey Brand charcoal powder to ease the financial burden of her dentist husband whose military patients had all gone back forever—to the land of plenty.

Paradoxically, while everyone felt the pain of scarcity where it hurt most—children’s stomachs and parents’ purses—a few unscrupulous people working in civil supplies, lived a life of plenty.

The scarcity has greatly eased over the years. 

But of late, scarcely a day goes by where I don’t wish I could go back to those not-so-easy days of bare necessities.

Because easy days don’t always equate to easy times. 

And these aren’t easy times.