The wonderful and mesmerising memories of the Carnival of yesteryears are all that remain now. We cannot recreate those times, it is something which was of that period, but it left an indelible mark on everybody who is still alive.
“During those times there were various groups in Panjim. As a child I have memories about the floats and the participating groups. There were two main groups vying with each other for the prize – Fankit (Francisco) Martins on one side and Ruberths’ group on the other. But what was interesting was that there were no sponsors. The traditional Carnival was about people with ideas and simple things which didn’t cost too much of money, Margarida Tavora recalls.
“Traditional Carnival was about the spirit of people of that time. As a kid what I remember most was the involvement of parents every year in the fancy dress competition for children. Parents would take such a lot of trouble to have their children dressed for the competition. The competitions were organised by clubs such as Clube Nacional and Club Vasco da Gama,” Margarida says.
“In our case, my father would proudly give the names at the various clubs but who had to slog it was my mother and we as children loved it because we used to take pride to know that out of the five siblings every year at least two of us would take the prizes. Then we would go to Hollywood studio and click our photos. That is how I have my albums of the 50s today with all these photographs. Sadly, today parents have no time to dress their children for such contests. Times have changed and less and less of such competitions are taking place,” Margarida recalls.
“The other memories I have is of the assaultus where the young boys would sort of suddenly barge in, into any friend’s home, armed with the kneel (indigo powder), grash (shoe polish) or water guns and they would just grab you (in all good fun), and smear you,” Margarida laughs.
“During Carnival, the only thing, we as girls would be scared of while walking on the roads was, boys throwing some green fruit (karatim) at us, with full force which would actually sting and hurt badly. That prevented us from coming onto the streets. But it was such fun,” Margarida says.
“The third thing is the Carnival parade…. everybody used to look forward to it, even if one was not a participant. It was fun just watching from the sides. Then would come the dances. So for those three nights, we would dance the full night, eat bhaji pao at Tatos and Bhonsles in the morning and then sleep the whole day. The next evening we would get ready for another dance, participate again and compete for the prizes. The best band of course would be Johnsons and his Jolly Boys and then there would be all the others,” Margarida narrates.
“Unfortunately, what has come to pass today is big sponsors, big money, people with no spirits of Carnival at all, and not even an understanding of what it is. The Govt is trying to promote it commercially for tourism and frankly that has killed it. So now there is money but I feel that spirit is not there anymore, there is no way you can recreate that nostalgic Carnival of yesteryears.
On a parting note Margarida said, “I would like to tell everybody, Goans and non-Goans just live and be happy. We all have faced a very hard year. Let’s try to de-stress with the Carnival and I would say Viva Carnival and Viva Goa and have fun.”