Poet Joseph Furtado -- a man before his time

 

Poet Joseph Furtado -- a man before his time

As a little girl whenever we came to Goa on holiday with my Dad Wing Commander Anthony Michael Furtado, he would recite one of poet Joseph Furtado’s works for us. His favourite was when we all sat under the huge mango tree at the rear of the property overlooking the emerald green Pilerne fields.

The Mango tree

 “ Thou art so tall oh mango tree,

 I am so small oh mango tree, 

thy mangos ripe they fall---”  

The words still ring in my mind so many decades later -- simple, clear and true and I have alluded to him in my first novel -- “Above the Ricefields of Pilerne” which can be purchased from Amazon.

Even as a child I remember his house diagonally opposite ours, in Volvaddo, was in ruins. Today a huge Gulmohur tree sadly grows out of the living room.This was the house where he spent his childhood, and is today in complete ruins. Only a handful of us Furtados, the oldest residents of Pilerne, remember him, because my father and Grandfather spoke about him to us as children. In fact I am the proud owner of a first edition of his book of poems ” Songs in Exile” that he personally signed and gave to my grandfather, who passed it on to my father, who gifted it to me. Yes! I have it taking pride of place on my grandfather's book stand which also belongs to me now!

From an article published in The Himal, Augusto Pinto said, hardly anyone knows that Furtado, who passed away in 1947 at the age of 75, was one of the first Indian English poets of his time. But as always a prophet is never recognised in his own country and Joseph was ridiculed throughout his life as he did not conform.  Fortunately, many of his poems still survive – barely – in just one slim volume in the rare-books section of Goa’s Central Library.

Joseph Furtado's patrician looks and flowing beard. 

A handsome man with patrician looks and a long flowing beard it is curious that a boy from a little village became a proficient poet, writing in English. According to Philip Furtado, the poet’s son, his father’s early education after passing the primeiro grau – the Portuguese primary-school exam – and apart from a year at a Latin school in Saligao in north Goa, was conducted mainly at home. But Furtado also wrote in Portuguese, later switching to a third language after enrolling in an English-medium school.

In 1890, he found work with the Great Indian Peninsular Railway in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. From there, he went on to become a draughtsman in the engineer’s office, a fairly important position. It was during this period that he began to read the classics of world literature, and subsequently began writing. Furtado published his first collection of poems in 1910 but he was not reviewed by the local press favourably. By 1927, when A Goan Fiddler was published in England, he already had four volumes of poetry to his credit. A Goan Fiddler had a preface by Edmund Gosse, then the most influential critic in England, and the book received warm reviews. Furtado subsequently published The Desterrado (1929), Songs of Exile (1938) and Selected Poems (1939), as well as a historical novel entitled Golden Goa! (1938). For a man writing in a third language, Furtado had a remarkable ear for the sounds of English words and how to use them.

Like most of us Goans, Furtado had to seek his fortune far from the land of his birth, with his railways job taking him on to Nagpur, Calcutta and Bombay among other places. But Goa was always close to his heart. Certainly the poet writes of the sights, sounds and smells of his childhood with love. Figures such as Pedro the cowherd, Ruzai the tailor and Vishnulal the goldsmith come alive in his verses. But these word pictures of his were not sentimental, or patronising, due to the poet’s ability to see the essence of humanness in his subjects. Furtado’s verses also shed critical light on the society of his times. 

Many of Furtado’s poems also have an autobiographical ring about them. During the 1920s, he came back to Goa to settle down, but became embroiled in a dispute over a village creek, where he championed the cause of the villagers of Pilerne. This made him the target of a brutal assault by some goons and influential people. Sadly during the attack, none of the neighbours came to his aid and history says in disgust, Furtado left his village for good. This perhaps accounts for the undercurrent of bitterness in “The Desterrado” and “Songs of Exile.” 

Social concerns are apparent in most of his poetry, but rarely is Furtado preachy. It is in his only novel, Golden Goa, that his social vision and political views became quite overt. The plot revolves around a love affair between a Christian and a Hindu during the decadent Portuguese rule of the 16th century. The story contrasts the good works of the Jesuit missionary and later saint Francis Xavier on the one hand, with the horrors of the Inquisition on the other. Here, Furtado takes a series of potshots against the foreign rulers. At one point, quoting the British civil servant Robert Sewell, he writes, “The Europeans seemed to think they had a divine right to the pillage, robbery and massacre of the natives of India. Not to mince matters, their whole record is one of a series of atrocities.” He continues: “If humanity is proof of civilization, Indians at that time were more civilized than the Portuguese.”

It is important that the memory of this distinguished Goan literary poet be kept alive in Goa and in his village of Pilerne. But the poet himself would surely have appreciated it, if a fresh collection of his best works were published and made available to the public.

( research for this piece is from JSTOR Journal of South Asian Literature1983 Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University and The Himal)

Dr. Marianne Furtado de Nazareth

Growing Starfruit in Hoskote

 

The rain has made the trees fruit in abundance

The first time I saw star fruit growing was in my husband’s brother’s farm in Bannerghatta. It was a large tree and loaded with fruit. It made a wonderful squash and that was that. I never thought to plant them in Hoskote till I went to buy some fruit trees in Lalbagh and found them there five years ago.

Just for fun I decided to buy two saplings in grow bags and put them down in the farm. Over the years they have given a few fruit but I left them for Narsimappa’s boys who loved them as long as they gave me a dozen to make some squash for home consumption. 

The star fruit flowers are very pretty and tiny

 Then this year I decided that all the fruit trees needed to be well fed with the cow dung which the solitary cow produced and wow! We have a bumper crop. Plenty for me and the boys and probably for him to sell to the cart wallahs. The trees are not grafts. At least I cant see any grafting done on them. 

They have delicate pink, small flowers which are produced in bunches on the branches. Soon the flowers turn into star shaped fruit and hang like little lanterns on all the branches, among the feathery leaves.   

They grow large if left to mature on tree.

This year the rains came just in time and galvanised the trees into flowering profusely, aided by the added nutrition and it was so thrilling to see them loaded with fruit. Absolutely loaded, I had not seen so many fruit on the branches before.

To avoid losing out on the fruit by arriving too late to the farm, I decided to take out a bag full of greenish ones to make pickle instead of squash. Anyway being diabetic I cannot enjoy any of it. 

Sharing my stash!

I gave some of the fruit to my two great star cook friends -- Sri Devi who is my tenant and Keerti my Shalimar apartment friend. Immediately we got two luscious bottles of pickle. So I know its better to get them when they are green for the ladies to work their magic.

Yesterday we decided to try the Lalbagh  Nursery for graft Allahabad guava trees and after ages -- yaay! They had them in stock and a star fruit and a lime which will go down near Narsimappas house so that they get looked after. Saw tons of fig trees but I was not too thrilled because the bats come for figs and so far we are safe from them with our mangoes and chickoos. 

Turning yellow and ready to pick!

Rainwater harvesting going back in time

Old traditional methods being used to build the RWH tanks

 No one wants to sell our property  to outsiders in our little village of Pilerne. Keep our village for ourselves, we don’t want those North Indian bullies here,” said one of the village folk who had come in from Mumbai himself. Ofcourse the difference is he is a Goan by birth and he built a house for himself and has shown his back forever to Mumbai.

The reason most village folk don't want “outsiders” in the village is because they pull down our heritage homes and build ugly and ungainly flat , which they in turn sell to the crass and loud Dilli wallahs. So far only one set of villas have come up facing the green fields of Pilerne and the people living there are retirees and very conscious of village traditions. Read -- they are careful not to step on the village folks toes.

Lined with a slurry of laterite

So when another Pilernekar told me about a couple from Delhi who had bought a home, my face fell, as I expected the same rash of ugly flats. The Parish priest told me she wanted to connect with me cause we were one of the oldest families of the village. I did not want to meet cause newbies are a pain. But, she piqued my interest by sending me a picture of the house they had bought and her plans to convert it into a beautiful art gallery cum residence.

The house in Moikkovaddo

Ever since Leenika and me, have become firm friends, with her sharing all the new developments happening in her property, infact we went to visit the house, when we were in Pilerne. Amazing, the amount of money they are pumping in, as the main idea is to showcase its sustainability. She is using ancient practices to rain- water- harvest and my mouth fell open when I saw the ‘kalyani’ like ponds she is getting dug in the garden. 

Traditional methods being used

Whatsapp groups in Goa have connected her and me to local artisans and she is using local labour to build the ponds. They are ready, just before the rains and soon will get filled with all the rain water she could ever need to raise her water table. It will raise the water table of the whole area and stop the water tanker mafia in their tracks.

Knowing my interest and love of all things sustainable, she keeps me in the loop with every development. How I wish my parents were alive, to see what she is doing with the property. Money well spent and such a boon for everyone in the village, to have a trail blazer like her buy in Pilerne. Someone who wants to give back, not exploit.

The magical rain has begun to fill them!

She plans to build artists residences too at the back, small cottages, and will rent them out to visiting artists from across the globe. Well, she is putting our Pilerne on the map and all power to her and her lawyer husband. 

Picking malgobas from Grandads tree

 

Cant tell him not to --

Well the malgoba tree in the garden has been chopped to half its actual size, when the apartment block came up. Naturally the tree can’t give the 500 mangoes I remember being picked as a child. The floor of the store room in the old mansion was filled with these huge fleshy beauties and  Grandpa enjoyed calling us all to the table to sit around and eat as many as we pleased.

Dad was a strict father and knew my weakness for mangoes. He would look sternly at me and say-- “only one,” giving me the eye. Then Grandpa would calmly over ride him and say - “ Go and eat as many as you like. They are there for you to enjoy.” And Dad had to back off!

   The tree inspite of only half of it left, gives a few fruit, though not 500 like in Grandpa and Dad’s days! During Dad’s time we would get our Narsimappa from the farm to pick them, but later Bonny learned to pick them with the boys lobbing the fruit. Bonny used the koble ( said kobla -- a as in apple) and David and Andrew would stand around and like in cricket -- Bonny would lob the  fruit to them and Dad would place them carefully to leak their deek into the soil. The boys still remember those Sundays with fondness!

Our Raspuris are pretty damn close to Grandpas malgobas!

Yesterday Bonny daringly climbed up to take off the few that grow now on the tree. There are plenty of flowers that bloom, but sadly as all the insects are blitzed in the garden twice a week, there are no bees and insects to pollinate the flowers and give us mangoes. Fogging does that  -- obliterates everything except for us domineering humans. But covid has taught us a good lesson. We are NOTHING infront of mother nature. She has whipped us to our knees and I am glad, so glad.

The deek is acrid and if it splatters you on your skin wipe it off fast as it burns. The room where the mangoes were kept smelled of the strong deek for days, till it dried and after a week the store room smelled of ripening fruit. 

Our first round of picking Mallikas from Hoskote

A malgoba has thick leathery skin -- at least our variety has. You can slice it open and like Nana did for us, made squares of the cheek and pushed it inside out for us to scoop the cubes and relish the juice that ran down our chins. There is nothing in the world, except for our own Raspuris and Mallikas from Hoskote, as delicious as Grandpas malgobas. 

But as you can see, its a helluva job to pick them unlike our compact graft trees in Hoskote. So, the bats enjoy them every night.

The Star of Bethlehem is in bloom

 

As kids I remember so well when the Star of Bethlehem flowered, my parents called all the neighbours to come over and ooh! and aah! over the gorgeous blooms. The road just had large bungalows with single families living in them. And, we were all friends. The plant in a pot was brought into the house and displayed standing on a tall stool in the verandah.

Like a typical teen-- I thought my parents were crazy, handing out piping hot cups of coffee and biscuits to all who came over to admire their beautiful flowers. The flowers were a pristine white, absolutely spectacular to look at and their perfume was mind boggling. It was heady and filled the verandah, wafting around the guests, who made my parents happy.

My mothers plants thankfully have been put down in the garden and I make sure they are well fed and bloom and grow. This plant is now planted into the ground and has grown enormous and hangs on the old Christmas tree which is equally huge.

Over the past year I fed the plant well from the compost pit  and its position ensured that it is never over watered. When I saw the numerous buds appear, I knew we were in for a spectacular show this year. One year after Mum has passed. There were so many buds, hanging overhead and all over that I lost count and did not realise how fast the buds grow. In the footsteps of my parents I invited my tenants to come in their nightwear and admire the flowers. They did and the video is courtesy one of them.

The plant has large flowers that are pure white and resemble the shape of a star. They have a lovely fragrance that is exclusive to this species as they only blossom only at night. The fully open bloom takes approximately two hours after the unfurling starts at sunset, and the flower stays open till sunrise. Literally like Cinderella, except at the stroke of 5 am when light begins to appear it begins to die and closeup.

Although the actual scientific name is Saussurea obvallata, this flower is named after Brahma, the God of Creation, according to Indian mythology too. Its lotus-like flowers only open during night time.

The Star of Bethlehem is  a species of cactus. This means that the plant does not require much water and is self-sufficient compared to other plants. If you plan on planting this in your garden, you will find it extremely easy to grow, as it needs watering only every two to three days. However, it is necessary that you never overwater the plant. If my parents were alive they would have been really pleased.