SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 2024
Frazer Andrade
Jane Borges, currently lives in Bombay in the once predominantly Catholic neighbourhood of Cavel. She has however spent most of her childhood in Muscat, Oman. She is a senior journalist, author and an oral historian. Until last October, Jane worked as the deputy editor of the Sunday Mid-Day newspaper. The first book she co-authored was the non-fiction Mafia Queens of Mumbai: Stories of Women from the Ganglands with S Hussain Zaidi. A chapter from the book was adapted for the Bollywood film, ‘Gangubai’ by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Her debut novel, ‘Bombay Balchão’ was published in 2019. Jane is also the co-founder of ‘Soboicar’, an oral history archive chronicling the lives of Christians, who migrated from the Konkan to South Bombay.
“Back in 2014, I had moved briefly to Muscat, Oman to work with an English daily as a features writer. I had grown up here as a child, and wishfully hoped that this city would open up to me. But, once here, I realized I was missing home and wanted to return desperately to Mumbai. This homesickness was all consuming,” says Jane further mentioning that, the one good thing that happened in all of this was that she started writing short stories that reminded her of her home in Cavel.
“The more I wrote, the more I realized that there was a pattern to my stories, and that it was turning out to be novella of sorts. I came back to Mumbai in 2016, and jumped headlong into journalism, briefly shelving that book,” she says. It wasn’t until two years later, after she met literary agent, Anish Chandy, who showed interest in the book, that she began relooking at it. By then, she says her interest in the city’s built and intangible heritage had grown manifold, and she was able to make sense of why such a book, which documented the story of a vanishing Catholic neighbourhood over 70 years, was relevant. It made her see Cavel in a different light, which made her look at her novel as an exercise in documentation, even if it was fiction.
“Soboicar’ is an oral-visual memory archive project chronicling the lives of Christians from the Konkan region who once made Mumbai their home”, explains Jane as she further elaborates, “The name of the project alludes to Bomoicar—the Konkani name given to the Bombay Goans—and is prefixed Sobo, meaning South Bombay, because this is where most Christian migrants, many of whom were Catholics, first settled, in the early 19th and 20th centuries.”
The project emerged out of a personal curiosity. Jane’s family hails from Karwar, Mangalore and Goa, while she currently lives in Cavel in Kalbadevi. Her co-partner in the project, artist, writer and art therapist, Sheena Maria Piedade’s family comes from Goa and has an ancestral home in nearby Dabul, where her grandmother grew up, in a building in which her family members still live. She recalls both Cavel and Dabul once being massive parishes, but today suffer the fate of being forgotten, as the Catholic population there has dropped by half of what it had been earlier. “Sheena and I felt an urgent need to preserve the social, religious and cultural identities together with practices of these dwindling neighbourhoods” she says.
Both found a mentor in Malvika Bhatia, who was already leading an oral history archive, The Citizens’ Archive of India (CAI). She decided to partner with them on the project, and guided them through the process of conducting audio and video interviews, and archiving photographs and other material memory.
“We decided to restrict the scope of the project to the Christians of Goa and Karnataka, and other parts of the Konkan—particularly the Catholics—and focus on their migration story only. It helped that both Sheena and I belonged to the region and were familiar with the Konkani language. Geographically too, as Soboicars ourselves, we chose to concentrate on the south and central parts of the city, because this is where most of the migrants had initially settled” says Jane, further stating that they hope to open this archive for researchers and scholars, who are keen to study and understand the changing complexion of the city of Mumbai, and how Christians from the Konkan region of India played a significant role in it.
Further, she states that since her project engages Christians, she is able to say that the community in South Bombay has moved out for better work opportunities and in search of a healthier lifestyle, which includes good housing, clean air, greener spaces, better living conditions, which cramped and crowded cities like Bombay often fail to provide. One of Jane’s observations is that Heritage activism has taken off in Mumbai in a big way, and there are many young people at the center of it. There have been heritage walks and sessions coming up, which have been considerably boosted by people’s growing participation. “People are curious about the city they inhabit. And I feel that is a great start. We will all have to discover ways in which we can become equal, important stakeholders in preserving heritage”, states Jane. At this point, Jane and team are self-funding the project. However, they hope to apply for fellowships in the future, so as to help sustain the initiative.
Jane recalls one of her fond memories while working on the project, “Recently, when I was in Panjim, tiatrist Michael Gracias informed me about the legendary Cyriaco Dias, whom he thought would be a perfect fit for our project. I had a ticket for the day after, and wasn’t sure if Mr Dias would agree to give me an interview at such short notice. But he was more than willing, and spent close to five hours with me in Calangute, sharing stories from his years in Marine Lines, where he engaged in Konkani theatre and fought for Goa’s Liberation. It was heartwarming to see a veteran like him believe in our project. It’s these small things that matter,” she admits further mentioning that people have been forthcoming and very willing to talk about their life. Jane urges young Catholics in Bombay to be curious about their present, past, family, food, heritage, language, people and their roots.
