George Menezes

I am 100 years old, or so I feel, sitting on the banks of the River Mandovi. Not far from my ancestral home on the island of Divar. In Malar to be more exact.
I’m sitting where the old sluice gate or “manos” used to be. And I’m confused about where it has disappeared. At my age I get terribly confused. Maybe it has got to do with something about Goa and liberation that everyone is talking about.
There is a ripple in the water and as I watch it I see a mermaid rising majestically out of the River and swimming gently to my side.
“Good morning bab” she says moving her head vigorously in an attempt to dry her long and luxurious hair.
I am tongue tied. My experience with women has never included something as fishy as a mermaid
“Good morning” I say rather hesitantly. She gives me a smile that is as expansive as a bridge over the Mandovi river.
My roving eye moves all over this beautiful woman. Stopping at the navel. The rest of her is still resting in the River.
“Do I know you” I finally ask. Not as stupid a question as I imagined, because it opened up a flood of memories.
“Bab” she said with a gentleness that brought me back to my childhood “I am Mafaldina
the ayah who looked after you and your brothers and sisters when you were babies”
“Oh my god” I said “After all these years? We loved you so much. And we owed you so much and we never got a chance to say goodbye”.
“In the 40 years you were with us is there anything we did to hurt you”.?
“No Bab” she said “not at all. I got fed up of Goa and the environmental damage that was being done to my village. I had nowhere to go so one quiet evening I decided to end it all.
I came to this sluice gate and quietly dropped into the river like a stone
You are a good woman Mafaldina I heard a voice saying and I won’t let you die. And presto I was transformed into a mermaid
It is a beautiful life, Georgebab, being in the waters of the Mandovi not far from the chapel of your ancestral home and free of all the tensions dealing with all those who’ve destroyed my precious Goa. The netas, the babus, the builders the corporate houses whose greed is causing me terrible bouts of asthma because of the poison that reaches the rivers.
But I have other problems. Unlike in your country, in the River-world there is a reverse gender problem. There are no male mermaids and the youthfulness and beauty that God has given me now is a waste”
“You are mistaken” I said “you are worshipped by people like me, for whom beauty and truth is just being what you are”.
“I am aware of that” and she said, her eyes lighting up the dusk that was descending upon the village.
She laughed. “I searched “ Gurgle” and discovered that there is a bestseller called the “Little mermaid” and that the net is full of illustrated books about mermaids.
Strangely today I remember that you were a very tactile person. Touch was very important to you. So it is to me.
In a way I represent Goa. So much history, so much wealth, incredible beauty all for the asking but never within reach.”
“I wish that that would not have happened”
“I have the powers of granting you some wishes. What do you wish for now?”
“I wish for Goa to be free” I said gently
She couldn’t stop laughing and her beautiful hair caught the wind and danced around her incredible face.
“You were always a little mad” she said. In a few days we are celebrating the liberation of Goa 50 years ago. And you’re yearning for freedom?”
“These are just phrases people use depending on who uses them” I said. “We are liberated. We are de-colonised. We have been forcibly annexed. I could go on
Do you know that except for those who govern us or rather non-govern us, and the migrants in the slums everybody, yes just everybody, including well-to-do settlers would be happy for Goa to be another Macao, a gambling appendix of good old Portugal?
But to be truthful we have had our bouts of freedom. When we voted for Statehood. When we voted for Konkani to be recognised as our mother tongue, and recently, when we were willing to stand up against the Development plans hatched by the holy and corrupt brotherhood of the State and the Centre.
But things are getting bad and I sometimes wish that my boss Air Marshal Erlich Pinto, who once saved me from a vengeful and false annual appraisal report, and who did a warning strike of Goa should not have stopped the bombing when he did. If he had at that time dreamt up a list of all those people who would destroy Goa, he could have gone ahead and done some selective bombing to eliminate them.
But these are just dreams. And as the poet O Shaughnessy wrote “We are the music makers and we are the dreamer of dreams wandering by lone sea breakers and sitting by desolate streams”
“Yes “she said you Menezes’ were always dreamers but let me share a secret with you. We have a Mermaids Manch and if things get worse in my beloved Goa, the members of my Manch will send Goa a Tsunami that it will selectively destroyed what needs to be destroyed”
“All it takes is for a few good men to truly believe that the history, culture, the warmth, the openness and the hospitality and the integrity of its people will never allow Goa to be destroyed” I said.
See you again” she said “and may your dreams come true”
“Thank you and God bless you Mafaldina” I said. “You have given me courage. Can I do something for you in return”?
“Indeed you can” she said “there are places in my flesh that itch terribly under my scales. Can you give those places a good scratch before you go”?
“Done” I said. “At my age there are not many women I can touch. But Goa and a Goan mermaid I have the freedom and the right to dream about.”