In her study of print politics in
nineteenth and twentieth century Goa, Between Empires: Print and Politics in Goa, Rochelle Pinto observes that “[i]f
there was a single dominant perspective through which Goa’s Catholic elite
viewed their nineteenth century, it was as a condition to be mourned.” These
elites, through newspapers, novels, pamphlets, and books gave vent to this
sentiment and, thereby, also produced a “prolific output [that] not only served
as a critique of the Portuguese colonial state, but it also stapled the
nineteenth century into historical and cultural frameworks that would outlast
their moment of origin, to become resilient filters through which the century
and its aftermath would be received.” Pinto’s observation is crucial in understanding
Maria Aurora Couto’s latest bookFilomena’s
Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family and a Culture.
Couto is no stranger to
Goans, as her writings and her persona are well known and celebrated. In 2010, the
Government of India also honoured her with a Padma Shri for her contributions
in literature and education. This book is a biography of her parents –
Francisco (Chico) Figueiredo and Filomena Borges – making it as much a ‘daughter’s
story’ as her first book, Goa: A
Daughter’s Story.
If
her first book on Goa was a cultural history of the elites, suggesting in the
process that this elite culture embodied Goa in all its diversity, her second
book has a much more restricted focus. Filomena’s
Journeys does not actually set out to reconstruct the entire historical
milieu in which the story of Couto’s parents is situated. The literary flourish
with which Couto reconstructs not just the life of her parents, but also the
social and cultural interactions of the elite class is remarkable, her prose
matchless, and the book reads like a well-crafted novel. While recognizing the
privileged location of her parents, Couto also dwells on the ill-effects of the
selfsame privilege on the class of landed Catholic elites as well as the tenant
class. Because of her ability to create a vivid picture before the eyes of her
readers, Couto’s book will be immensely helpful for students of Goan history in
understanding the society of the elites, particularly of Margão and Panjim. Yet,
the overarching metanarrative and texture of Filomena’s Journeys is one of a world that was lost, a world much
loved, and cherished by Goa’s Catholic elites.
Although Filomena and Chico
came from a bhatkar (landed),
Catholic family, later circumstances, especially Chico’s alcoholism, brought
hard times on the family. Thus, despite Chico’s resistance and protest,
Filomena decides to move the family to distant Dharwar in Karnataka. Chico’s
inability to adjust to changing times and his frustration at not finding any
outlet for his musical talents, though he taught music at the Lyceum in Panjim
for a few months, only makes matters worse. Chico struggled to make a mark in
the field of music and his anguish at not finding his dream fulfilled forms a
major and important part of Filomena’s
Journeys. During these difficult times, it is the patience and perseverance
of Filomena – the eponymous protagonist of the book – that keeps the family
together.
It is clear that Chico’s untimely death caused
great suffering for the whole family consisting of seven children. It was
Filomena who made ends meet, took great risks, and was always the rock of the
family. Couto’s aim appears to depict the brave and strong woman that Filomena
was, one that is captured on the snapshot of the cover: strong, determined,
gazing out with a steely resolve through a grainy, monochromatic picture. But
one cannot help but notice that Filomena, for most of the book, remains in the shadows;
the whole story is told in a manner that treats the father as central. Indeed,
it is Chico who emerges in boldly etched and sharply defined detail.
It
can be suggested that the reason why Filomena gets pushed into the background
may be because of the fact that Couto preferred to keep a distance from the
narrative and the story, as the memory of her father’s eventual death was
painful for Couto, as suggested by the third-person narrative. This distance
seems odd at times as the author, who is herself a very crucial element in the
story, refers to herself in the third-person: “Maria Aurora remembers his [her
father’s] capacity for self-absorption, moments when his gentleness was lost to
despair and frustration, and she wishes her father had been able to step out of
himself more often than he did.”
Filomena’s Journeys depends on the
memories of the author as well as the recollections of friends and family. To
that extent, one finds it a bit difficult to separate the life of Filomena and
Chico, and the details, feelings, and emotions that Couto adds as a writer. To
reconstruct a narrative from memories also involves research and understanding
of the cultural and social history of a bygone time. The issue of memory and
research brings us to the question of historical interpretations and
perceptions that Couto makes or suggests to her readers. However, like her
previous book, this book too does not seem to have been able to shake off brahmanical
frames of reference in perceiving and understanding the past milieu, a milieu
in which both her parents were born, raised, married, and had a family of their
own. The wider intellectual thought from which Couto draws is apparent in the
manner in which Couto discusses the “historic importance” of Raia, her mother’s
village. The pre-Portuguese dynasties such as the Kadambas and the Vijayanagar
kings (who are allegedly believed to have protected Hinduism against Muslim
onslaught) are invoked, along with the “Muslim rulers” as impacting the history
of Raia. Similarly, Hindu and Christian traditions, for Couto, create a
syncretic religious identity by the fusing of the mother goddess cults with
that of the Virgin Mary. “Filomena may have been aware of the history…only in a
subliminal way, as a woman who found strength in female deities – Santa
Filomena, Santa Teresinha, the Blessed Virgin… [and] the spirit of Kamakshi,
the mother goddess of ancient times…,” Couto suggests. This pre-Portuguese past
is erroneously assumed to be Hindu in various discourses of Catholic and Hindu
elites of Goa, and is not just confined to Couto’s work.
Couto also idealizes
the village and the tenants with whom her mother shared a mutually-respectful
relationship; the tenants “thought they had never seen any bhatkar’s wife who
looked so kind.” But what Couto does not factor in is that, much throughout the
history of Goa, as in other parts of South Asia, the village was (and is) a
site of caste-based humiliation and oppression. Instead, Couto asserts, “It was
a feudal lifestyle, but greatly blunted in close-knit rural society, for there
was warmth and affection all round.” During the course of writing this book,
Couto visits her mother’s former tenants, who fondly remember Filomena spending
the night in their houses when she would come to collect “the family’s share of
the produce.” Couto feels happy at the prosperity of her family’s former
tenants. Filomena may have indeed been a generous and sensitive landlady
towards her tenants and her tenants may have truly remembered her as such, yet
the tenants get represented as humble beings recalling with fond nostalgia the
past which was filled with hardships overseen by the benevolent bhatkar. The fact that Couto recognizes
the oppression by the bhatkar class,
but at the same time upholds a certain imagination consisting of the benevolent
bhatkar and the humble tenants,
negates the possibility of a radical critique of acts of omissions and
commissions of the landed as well as the tenant class.
The women in Filomena’s Journeys can be viewed as
simultaneously negotiating and subverting the strictures and mores of the elite
society. While the women were
subordinate in a patriarchal system they still could in many ways benefit from
the same. Take the case of Propercia, who was Chico’s cousin. Couto’s
celebration of Propercia, who through her writings advocated “the importance of
the Konkani language [and] the Indian woman,” does not take into consideration
the conflation of ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’,
as an undifferentiated historical and conceptual category. While noting the
importance and uniqueness of Propercia’s role as a woman public intellectual,
her support “of the importance of the mother tongue, Konkani, in primary
education,” suggests more than meets the eye. Education in Konkani was advocated
to maintain a hold on the labouring Goan Catholics, as Pinto notes in her book.
Couto’s
portrait of Filomena tries to establish the singular and herculean feat that
her mother accomplished. While it is clear that Filomena certainly faced
challenges in moving her family to Dharwar which she was unfamiliar with, she
does seem to rely on such resources like caste and family networks to aid the
remarkable move. While this does not diminish the issues Filomena faced, it
reveals that she was able to take stock of her situation in such a manner that
allowed her to effect change while also maintaining her ties with a privileged
system.
This
book could have benefitted greatly with a family-tree as the numerous names of
aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers,
granduncles, etc. become confusing. Though beautifully written, Filomena’s Journeys struggles to make
peace with the the past, with history, and with memories that deeply unsettle.
Filomena’s
Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture, by
Maria Aurora Couto (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company), 2013; pp. 290, Rs. 495/-
[ISBN: 978-93-82277-04-0]
(A version of this article appeared on Gomantak Times (Weekender), dt: February 2, 2014)
