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.