CARNIVAL AND GOOD FRIDAY OF A BYGONE ERA

 

 

 

 

CARNIVAL

 

One of the features of Goan life is the spirit of joie-de­-vivre, which finds full expression in the Carnival season prece­ding the Lent. These are the days when the sun never sets in Gos. This homeland has a three-day riotous fiesta, which might find a parallel only in Venice or Trinidad.

Carnival was always celebrated throughout the world in some form or other. But recorded history dates it back to the famous Saturnalia festival during the hey-days of Roman Empire. The cities, which have had the most glorious carnivals, are Paris, Munich, Rome, Cologne, Buenos-Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro etc. But the queen-cities of Carnival are Nice, known for its myriad-colored, illuminated floats and long dancing processions of masqueraders, and Venice for its colorful elongated boats, Gondolas with Technicolor lanterns, gliding in the waters against a backdrop of shades, riot of color and light. The Gondolas carry loads of merrymakers giggling, laughing, yelling, gesticulating, mimicking which would put to shame all the buffooneries of the circuses.

 

Detached observers agree that carnival in its most vulgar and brutal form was found in Portugal till the edicts of 1817 imposing some restraints on it. The mock-battles were not merely of cartridges or bombs consisting of wheat buck or sawdust but in course of time degenerated into rotten eggs and tomatoes or any other vegetable. This climaxed in throwing away of all old things, ferro-velho and beating the passers-by with brooms and big wooden spoons. It is because of this manifestation of the ebullient spirit carried to extreme that towards the end of 19^th century a funny, comic character went about in an old cart to deliver parodies of sermons asking people not to indulge in such orgies. It is because of such exaggerated forms that Portuguese authorities have often clamped down ban on celebrations of Carnival. Yet Portugal had its carnival in its entire splendor with flower-bedecked floats, masqueraders etc.

The word "carnival" derives from the Latin ‘carnem levare’ which literally means, "putting away the flesh", thus signifying restraint from all manifestations of the flesh. That is why carnival in Italian was the name originally given to Shrove Tuesday when it was customary in olden days to resort to confession. Thus shriving one from sins. In French speaking regions, on the other hand, the connotation of ‘Mardi Grass’ (Fat Tuesday) is extended to all the three days of the Carnival, Tuesday being the last day on which all the fats had to be eaten or thrown away to signify that the lean days of Lent have begun.

 

If you wish to enjoy, pack up your cares and woes, and come to Goa, though now here you may not have the some loud demonstrations of the golden yore. Yet Carnival, like Christmas, continues to be a landmark in the calendar of activities in Goa. In olden days it was held to mark the beginning of the New Year or spring. These are three glorious days of revelry and excitement, of boisterous merry - making in which the irrepressible spirit bursts forth in a frenzy of profanity. There is mirth writ-large everywhere.

The Carnival corresponds more or less to the Holi festival of the Hindus. During these festivals a spirit of unbo­unded lightheartedness pervades the entire society in Goa, by throwing colored waters and powders as if on ‘Rangapan­chami’. If for ‘Gakulashtami’, the Hindu feast, you sing ‘Govinda ala-re-ala’, you can now burst out in a song to King Momo.

 

If on Fat Saturday, King Momo is received triumphantly, the funeral of King Momo-known in some European cities as that of Bacchus-on the last day of the Carnival, is-like the cremation of Kama, God of love in the Hindu mythology, signifying the burning away of worldly passions, though Love as such, or rather the spirit of Love endures even after death; ‘L' amour dure apres la mort’.                                                                             .

With the Christian Goans, Carnival is almost a ritual. Preparations would start by December or January. Young boys and girls plan in advance their fancy-dresses for the occasion; cut papers to make ‘cocotes’ which are like cartridges stuffed with bran, husk or saw-dust with powder to be pelted on the passers-by on the occasion; purchase masks and colored streamers; store colored waters in tins and, bottles, and wait for the great day to create a rumpus. But even a week before the Carnival, a handful of boys and girls, dressed in costumes and masks or dominos, visit their friends’ places and have light fun. These are known as ‘Assaltos’ (assaults). The hosts fete them with drinks and snacks, and have a warming party, prelude to the great event. When the ­time comes, Goans are ready for the post riotous revelry and, merriment. Some Hindus also join with their Christian bre­thren in the fun.

 

During the Carnival a pageant of gaiety and color whirls through the streets. Colored waters are squirted on friends with the help of ‘chiknolli’, a bamboo syringe now substituted by plastic pistols. ‘Cocotes’ are Hung on people in a spirit of mirthful mock-battles by rival groups, which leave the roads littered with white powder. Youth is also provided with cardboard shields to defend themselves from the chaff-filed bombs. Outside, crackers explode, crackers, which appear to be the very be-all of Goans activities. Even when they pray, they must first burn crackers to wake up the­ Gods, lest they should not hear the prayers! Buntings and myriad-colored decorations are seen everywhere. Young folks on both sides of the streets hold streamers and let them go when a car passes by. Off and on a local troubadour or a group of masqueraders saunter about, singing and dancing on the streets. Some masqueraders impersonate beggars, haw­kers, and fortune-tellers. Children go about hanging on tins their improvised drums, whereas others move out, arrayed in fanciful attires. The Masks, like, Carnival itself, have a religious descent. In the pagan antiquity and in medieval ages the cult of the Dead was maintained through these masks. Those who impersonate the dead wore white masks. In Goa a few sculptors discovered their own, talent in making mud - moulds for the masks. Isn't it better to wear real masks for these three days than to use masks of hypocrisy the rest of your life?

Boys also move around with powder and scent to throw them on damsels. The young man who lacked courage to propose to the girl, after whom he had secretly yearned for long, assumes under a mask an unusual boldness. If the girls of your choice run away from you otherwise, you may put on a frock or a ‘kapodd’ -Goan equivalent of sari –and approach them with powder or scent till they giggle or scream and escape your, arms.

 

Another fascinating feature of this festival is the ‘Fell’, a walking folk-play in Konkani, like the early dramas of Britain or France. It is the ‘Regedor’, as the village authority, who censors all plays before they are exhibited in front of the ‘balcao’ or under the shade of the tree of those who can pay the piper and call the tune. The leader, ‘Mestri’ has 4, to 6 plays on his card, which, like a Menu, he shows to the landlord­-customer. The Saxtti district is well known for its Fells. It has become an institution by itself. The Fell goes from one village to another and, like the inter-village football matches and bullfights; it helps cement the inter-village bonds of amity and, understanding.

 

During these days the village is agog with excitement. There are varied sounds making for a strange cacophony of violins, cymbals, drums, whistles, catcalling and what not! In the absence of a truly Konkani lite­racy drama, the ‘Fell’ acts as a corrective to the foibles and follies of Goan society. In disguise they may even have a dig at the ‘Regedor’ under his very nose. The themes are varied ranging from local incidents to historical episodes. The ‘dolkax’ (drum) is a sort of an over-character who helps to keep up the play, whereas the whistle of the ‘Mestri’ does the function of the curtain puller. The dialogue is mostly in song, but it is interspersed with dances to provide color and variety to the show. The ‘dolkax’ and cymbals set the rhythm and the pace of the play, while the clarinet and the trumpet pro­vide the melody. The ‘fell’ is also staged at Christmas and Easter, at times.

 

Clubs and hotels like the ‘National Club’, ‘Vasco da Gama’ Club, ‘Harmony Club’, and ‘Flamingo’, decorated with balloons festoons, buntings and trimmings, hold dances for three or four days beginning with ‘Sabado Gordo’, Fat Saturday, where revelers with gaudy costumes and flashy caps to top them off, give went to their spirit in gay abandon. There is boozing and carousing, mummery and buffoonery in plenty. The matinee dances are called ‘matines japonesas’. They do not forget to elect the Carnival Queen as well. There may be other attractive sidelights, such as the impersonation and mimicking of a local character, or the carrying of tableaux or floats through the streets.

 

Carnival has also some 'enemies' hidden in the cassocks! In 1748 Pope Benedict XIV instituted during these three days "Forty Hours of Carnival" which even now survive under the garb of "Hours of Adoration" in the churches, to pray hard for the atonement of sins committed these days. The church condemns indeed only the sinful side of this festival. Whate­ver it be, Christianity had to tolerate this pagan ritual down the centuries, save a very few countries like Ireland where it is a blasphemy to speak or even think of Carnival!

 

Yet in Goa from Saturday to Tuesday, the merriment continues with growing excitement, which often oversteps the limit. And so it comes to an end all too soon. This festival repeats itself every year, save when there are signs of a dreadful epidemic; if the Carnival spirit is infectious, the disease can be contagious and so the ‘Regedor’ clamps down a ban.

As the ‘gumots’ and drums fall silent the revelers con­tinue dancing even after the midnight on Tuesday, unmindful of the fact that the Lent is begun. Only in the morning they go straight from the dancing halls to the Churches. Here amidst dozing and loud yawns, they can hardly pay heed to the message of the Christian ‘Ramzan’, beginning with Ash Wednesday: all joy is effervescent and must come to an end. "Remember, man, thou art dust, and unto dust thou shall return".

 

GOOD FRIDAY

 

The image of Goa is not complete without Good Friday. Goa is not merely the blessed land of ‘joie de vivre’, sung and depicted by bards and artistes, but also a place where once a year an ineffable gloom pervades the whole atmosphere. It is the Holy Week when the forty lean days of fasts, abstinence and penance reach a climax with the greatest tragedy of all times recreated before us: the Death of Christ. It is "good" tragedy for Life Eternal follows 'death' ephemeral. It is Redemption after Passion, Resurrection after Crucifixion. It is an eternal and mystical drama vibrant with universal message. The Passion of Christ epitomizes the basic tenet of all creeds that good is purified out of the crucible of suffering, i.e. feasts after fasts and gains after pains. ‘Ad augusta per angusta’. For instance, poetry or any work of art truly great like Dante's "Divina Commedia," can flow only out of intense suffering. That's why this Friday, in the face of all its mourn­ing and gloom, is called Good Friday.

In Goa, however, things have changed very much these ten years or so. Neither the Carnival nor the Holy Week is celebrated with that intensity of feelings, felt in earlier times. Yet the ceremonies of the Procession of Saint in Goa Velha - ­held only here and Rome - which procession in olden times come down from the Mount of Pillar, the liturgical scenes at Old Goa City, particularly the "Log Capes" procession, the singing of Veronica… continue to awe us in all its sublimity and magnificent glory. Similar catharsis revealed by Aristotle in his "Poetics" we go through at times, for example while witnessing a Sophoclean tragedy on the stage or listening to Bach's Passion music or Mozart's Requiem.

Time there was in Goa when during the Holy Week it was at once terrible and grand. Goa villages were wrapped up completely in a very melancholy atmosphere. Bells tolled mournfully breaking the sepulchral silence with notes more funebrial than those of death - announcements or of All Souls' Day. Nowadays the whole mourning is on a dimmed scale. Village folks unfold their black suits and dark veils. Rosaries and manuals in hand, they move out slowly to the Church, the old, adults, children and all. At home no one dare touch his or her belongings. As the people dressed mostly in black approach the Church, the enveloping pall gets more somber and melancholy. The Church is the spectacle of blackness. Somebody forgot to put oil in the lamps, candles burn, whiteness here and there... yet we have the dark curtain, the altar images covered with black or dark violet cloth, the barefooted "confrades" with improvised hoods, the priests with their heads all wrapped up in sorrow and penance. Not even the thought that the Resurrection is only three days ahead can relieve the tragic gloom, unlike the element of humor in great tragic plays, for instance the Grave-diggers' scene in "Hamlet." With silence all around, and gloom everywhere. The world shaking event is about to be enacted in every Church in Goa; the Crucifixion of Christ on the Calvary. As Christ was Crucified on a Mount, the enactment of the great drama is still done atop the hills inside a chapel in same places like Margao, Benaulim, Chandor, Curtorim, Baga, Salvador do Mundo, S. Jacinto whereas in olden times similar ceremonies were represented on other village hills like Pilar, Pilerne, Guirim, Velim, etc. as well.

 

Already earlier during the Lent, village folks had assembled in the Church to participate in the Stations of the Cross, and to re-live the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ: Christ's Agony in the Gethsemane Garden, the Scourging at the Pillar, the Crowning with Thorns, ‘Ecce Homo’, Carrying the Cross, Condemnation to Death, and the last Scene of Good Friday: We commemorate this day the Tragedy of Golgota: the Crucifixion. Shadows slowly lengthen. There is all enveloping dim darkness. Tense. The village congregation slowly turns static. Shades hardly move. Outside even the coconut-trees have drooping shoulders; leaves stop moving. Heat terribly oppressive. Sweat runs the bodies in black. Bowed heads. Mortification and penance!

 

The Crucifixion. The faithful can conjure up the vision of Christ’s Passion: nails pierce the flesh; every blow of the hammer tears the heart of the congregation. The clatter rattles, then, silence and suspense. The black heavy curtain slowly moves up. Tears glisten in the eyes of the faithful for what they see cannot be human: Christ nailed to the Cross, agony writ-large, flesh pierced, thorns tearing Him, blood, and suffering, suffering all the way. The sermon in the Church brings home to them what they have missed in sight: the real truth behind the mystical tragedy of the Crucifixion. Even the stones are moved. It shakes them profoundly, this sermon on the significance of the Crucifixion. Then the body of Christ is brought down by the priest in mourning robes and hoods, and placed in the coffin, Follows the procession: hooded 'confrades' of 'opamurca' priests and people-many of them with heads covered and barefooted, trudge the way to the entrance of the Church where another sermon is delivered, but this time dedicated to Jesus' Mother's Loneliness (Sole­dade) and grief. She is a picture of sorrow and agony. If the crucifixion ceremony takes place atop a hill, then the process­ion wends its way down to the porch of the Church.

Till late in the dead of the night, people continue to file past to kiss the Dead Christ in the tomb, and many of them going on visits to the chapels and churches of neighboring villages, with hearts contrite, in prayer, penance and pain. Thus Good Friday comes to a close in Goa. But the symbolic message remains with Goans, because Jesus ‘was not’, ‘will not’ but ‘is’.

 

 Ethel Carvalho

Email :ethel_carvalho@...

 

 

Photography by Menino Menezes / Augusto Morais