CHENNAI: From the well-worn chairs at a dinner table to faded scribbles on a wall, every house is filled with memories of occupants, now long gone. After moving to Goa, 28 years ago, writer Heta Pandit discovered her new house in Saligao called ‘Goddgodo’ or thunder in Konkani. “The previous owner of the house, Sunny D’Mello, had a booming voice like thunder,” she says in an Instagram reel.
Most houses in Goa, a state often associated with weekend getaways, have nicknames and legends that stay alive by word-of-mouth, explains the writer. For instance, consider the second step of the Sanvordekar house, which visitors skip while entering the house. “In Goa, the dacoits were a polite lot, they would come by appointment at a particular date and time. Once, they saw a beautiful lady sitting on the second step of a house, hair open, ornamented, nine yards silk sari, vermillion on her forehead. They knew it was Goddess Shantadurga and they turned back,” says Heta.
With tales of 20 other houses, Heta’s recently published coffee table book Stories from Goan Houses, has photos by Daniel D’Souza. As part of the Saligao Balaco offline sessions, Heta, in conversation with author and historian V Sriram, shares these oral histories in the cosy Madras Literary Society.
Lingering legends
“I fell in love with houses from Goa in 1983,” shares Heta. This love has advised her two books on Goan Homes. The pages of the book come alive with oral histories — the Kundaikar house, which gets its name from a tale of a widow who saved a village from a flood by placing her infant near the sluice gate where the river was raging, or the Nadkarni house which still keeps coconuts out for ancestors of ‘once thieves’.
Many names of towns and areas in Goa find roots in Portuguese names. As Heta explains the ‘lim’ in Candolim replaced the Kannada word ‘halli’, which means ‘hamlet’ as the Portuguese could not pronounce it. “We are in denial about a lot of things in Goa. We refuse to believe or remember that the Karnataka kings ruled over us at some point. Even Panjim is actually because the Portuguese couldn’t pronounce Panjahalli. Histories have survived because of historians,” she adds.
Much like Goa, our city also has its turf war between Chennai and Madras. “The story of Chennai and Madras will never end. Everybody has their favourite story of why the city is called Chennai or Madras. Nobody has the correct or wrong answer.” says Sriram. Taking a jab at ‘Whatsapp University’s’ origins of names, he cites the example of Chintadripet being called St Andrew’s Kirk. “Chintadripet began in 1735 and St Andrew’s Kirk was in 1817, 70 years afterwards. Everyone has gotten onto the religious bandwagon and they are all tearing the city names apart.”
Call for conservation
Discussing the need for stakeholders, citizens, and the government to maintain heritage buildings, Heta says there are concerted efforts to abandon public colonial buildings by the government. “All are deliberately emptied overnight and abandoned and they await them to collapse…a deliberate attempt at reducing this memory of the colonial era to rubble. But the Goan heritage has survived despite the government, they have themselves realised the value of this,” she says.
According to Sriram, Chennai’s conservation efforts were not as smooth. Adyar and Cooum rivers — which acted as a security feature to keep passersby out of Madras Town, and put to use for the handloom industry — are in dire straits. While many attribute their state to the colonists, much of it is our contribution, he says.
For Heta, generating awareness and love is at the core of conservation. “You make people aware of the value of what people have and encourage them to love it. Everything starts and ends with love,” she says.
