Two roads diverged in a wood; Robert Frost took the one less travelled and that singular decision has immortalised him, ever since. I found myself in a similar situation, my choice was easy. Since Frost had taken the road less travelled, I chose the one less frosted; it sure was broken and pot-holed.
What is it that made so many travellers take this road? Was it William Wordsworth? Let me find out. I wander along, lonely as a cloud and arrive on the banks of Lake Airi. But neither clouds nor daffodils nor their relatives did I find. A solitary ploughman is ploughing on though, in the distance. And he made the difference.
As I strain my eyes, I see Conceição Paulo Cota, (Coinção-paul to all) the weather beaten old farmer and pastoralist, perhaps the last of his breed still active in traditional farming. He lives on the banks of the lake. The Cota clans dominant in the locality have mostly toiled in the sun to perfect native agricultural practices, since time begun. The new generations have moved on regardless, today one can find practically every profession among the younger members.
The lake is filling up, the waters are muddy. The sun breaks through the haze to spread its warmth on the hill yonder. The jacanas seem lost as the lilies have not yet spread out their pads on the surface, for them to trot on.
A flock of Whistling Teals sings in a virtual symphony as it swoops low over the waters. It is too early for the avians needing visas, to arrive.
Coinção-paul invariably has a story to tell or rather several stories, steeped in an era gone by.
I always look forward to listen to him evoke the past. He walks in through the ploughed up sludge, un-yokes the oxen and walks over. He is among the last survivors who can still sing the ladainha in Latin something that was common a few decades earlier; he is quite proud about it.
Do you know who taught me the ladainha with all the hymns? I shrug my shoulders. Your grandfather Antoninho did. He reveals. He talks in glowing terms about him and how a stern look would get him and others to the right words and tune. This was a facet of my grandfather I did not know. I was six when my grandfather died. He was seventy-eight; he died some sixty four years ago. Coinção-paul was thirteen. He sends me on a trail of reminisces about my grandfather.
It was in the mid 1970s. I was a boarder at Lar de Estudantes Altinho, Panaji. I accompany my colleague Crisanto Fernandes, now a retired civil judge, on way to meet his great aunt Emirentes Carvalho Fernandes, residing in a leafy neighbourhood at Campal.
On learning my name and that I am from Calata, she reacts by saying she knew my father Antoninho, who was a regular visitor to her house since his niece was married to a son of the other half of the house. My grand father. I had to correct her.
Actually our houses though in different villages are practically opposite each other separated by a body of fields. Intriguingly, she asks whether my grandfather still prescribed a cure for cataract. He was dead, I had to inform her.
Later, on inquiries with my father, I learn a lot of people suffering from cataract did come to see his father. He would nip the shoot of a herb called Khuro and the liquid that oozed out was applied to the nail of the little toe on the belief, that a nerve of the toe was linked to the eye and somehow such medication was said to be effective.
It was not an uncommon practice, so I was told. The treatment was without charges. There is no evidence that it worked. Perhaps it was a placebo. Curiously, more recently Prakash Volvotkar a friend and a fan of holistic medicines mentioned to me, that a nerve from either little toe is connected to each eye.
I am unable to substantiate its veracity. Macedonio Braganza, a fellow villager had after retirement as a senior officer at the MPT, taken up practice as a lawyer. Before his death he would come and sit with me, occasionally.
One day he asks me; do you have the books that your grandfather maintained? What books? Don’t you know? He goes on to explain. “Your grandfather was the private and voluntary record keeper of the village. He would maintain the dates of birth, marriage, deaths and other relevant events. In those days when hardly anyone was literate and as such could not maintain records, he fulfilled the need. Whenever anyone in the village needed a certificate of birth, marriage or death, he was approached. He would refer to his books; copy the details on a piece of paper to be handed over to the registrar or the parish priest who would then trace the records. These services were gratis but invaluable.
Some two decades ago, Carlisto Rodrigues a schoolmate and now Deputy Sarpanch of our village, came over, accompanied by a man who had come from the UK and was looking for my grandfather. He was the son of Joaozinho Gonsalves from my neighbourhood, who had migrated to East Africa. The family later settled in UK. His late father had advised him to contact my grandfather in case of any difficulty. But my grandfather and father had expired, long since.
He was carrying a document titled Escritura Particular, a deed neatly handwritten about devolution and partition of his ancestral estate, drawn towards the end of the nineteenth century. It bore the signatures of the interested parties and the name of Mariano Socrates Gracias who had drawn it.
I could only envy the calligraphy of my great grandfather. Usually, when I read or write, I have soft music playing in the background. On completing my column I was wondering what the title ought to be. Just then Mary Hopkins hops in. .....Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.......
(Radharao F. Gracias is
a senior Trial Court
Advocate, a former
Independent MLA, a political activist, with a reputation for oratory and interests in history and ornithology)