[Goanet-News] Goanet Reader: That is not a Portuguese house (Raya Shankhwalker)

[Goanet Reader]

That is not a Portuguese house

By Raya Shankhwalker

          In my opinion, Goans display a great lack of
          awareness of who we are, how we came to be, and
          what our culture actually entails. This incapacity
          becomes particularly evident when we survey the
          degeneration that's apparent in virtually every
          dimension of our cultural expression.

In my experience of ten years as a practicing architect in
Panjim, I have seen so many examples of heedless obliteration
of carefully planned urban infrastructure.

This wonderfully situated riverside town was very well
planned in a gridiron pattern, with a broad riverfront avenue
and promenade that is still partly lined with shady rain
trees. Its streets were amply broad, with wide sidewalks and
nicely curved shallow surface drains that connected to a very
good underground storm water drainage system.

All through the city, large and small public squares and
gardens provided recreation space, for evening walks and
other activities that make and define a successful and
civilized urban environment.

Over the last four decades all this has been systematically
dismantled. The broad riverfront avenue died where the
colonial rulers left it at Campal -- the Indian planners
continued only a small two lane road.

          Those excellent surface drains were soon replaced
          by deep gutters which only haphazardly connect to
          the underground drains, which themselves have never
          been augmented. Those excellent, precious gardens
          and squares are badly maintained if at all -- look
          at the criminal destruction and neglect of the
          Municipal Garden right in the centre of town -- and
          few adequate public spaces have added even as
          Panjim has become affected by relentless
          development.

The once broad sidewalks have now been reduced to accommodate
more parking space, and in a couple of cases have become
obstructed by public toilets. In the process the
direction-less civil authorities have steadily degraded the
basic pleasure of walking in the streets of this town which
still features a recognizably pedestrian scale.

Along with the chaos and mayhem that accompanies Indian
urbanization, has come a crippling wave of destruction of the
highly appropriate aesthetic which has evolved in Goa over
centuries. Our world-class patrimony of exquisitely nuanced
small traditional houses, with their soaring pitched roofs,
and of colonnaded shopping streets, is steadily giving way to
faceless concrete blocks that obliterate the natural scale of
the town and its streets.

          The very soul of beautiful, unique Panjim is being
          taken down to be replaced by block after block of
          ugly multi-storied buildings that have
          zero-aesthetic or cultural relevance to the
          setting, to Goa or the Konkan. To a depressingly
          large extent, in many parts of this city there is
          no difference between Panjim or Patna.

I realize now how fortunate I have been to be born into and
spend the initial years of my life in a typical centuries-old
ancestral house in this little city that is so beloved by its
inhabitants. My earliest memories are of growing up around
and playing in the large central aangan (courtyard) with its
brightly painted tulsi vrindavan, with the unforgettable
fragrance of fresh parijat flowers strewn all over its beaten
mud floor lingering in the air.

Looking back with an architect's training, I can see that
those few years also helped me form powerful sub-conscious
bonds with the house and the land that produced it

My ancestral home is typical of Hindu homes of its vintage
and scale. The Shankhwalker house -- which shares its
location with the Mhamai Kamat house -- is one of the
earliest houses in the urban evolution of Panjim.

It has a typical plan of a central courtyard with wide
covered verandahs all around, and many small and large rooms
and halls on the periphery. This accretion of private rooms
was a response to conservative Gaud Saraswat Brahmin (GSB)
mores -- the households focused inwards in order to offer
privacy to the women of the family.

So the courtyard developed as a fabulous indoor-outdoor
space, providing partly shaded indoor living, while bringing
in lots light and ventilation to the house. It is an
outstandingly appropriate response to the oppressively hot
and humid tropical weather. I remember vividly the feeling it
offered me as a child -- a safe haven to play in inside the
house which still connected me to the clouds and open sky.

          Christian homes of the same vintage have large
          facades with a rhythmic arrangement of windows,
          with Western detailing and halls filled with
          intricately carved Indo-European furniture and
          imported chandeliers. The scale and proportions of
          these houses are so exquisitely refined that it is
          difficult to find a single badly proportioned
          period building in the whole of Goa.

The use of local materials, crafts and skills make the
Western influenced Goan house a unique architectural
expression. Its thick laterite walls and high Mangalore tile
roofs keep the indoors relatively cool, and balcaos provide
much needed spatial connection to the outdoors.

The bright natural colours that were used to paint the
facades every year before Christmas provide a stunning
pallete of colours to the countryside, juxtaposed to great
effect against the green hues of Goa's dense tropical
foliage. With the onslaught of the monsoon, the bright
colours slowly get watered down to assume a moss covered
surface, as if in response to the unforgettable greens of the
paddy fields, until it is time to begin the cycle once again.

          When I went to architecture school, and had an
          opportunity and reason to study the various
          typologies of Goan architecture, the bond that was
          nourished in the old family home in Panjim started
          to develop deep roots. The quest to know more
          eventually led me to undertake research in Goan
          architecture, and I spent many months traveling
          widely in Goa and Portugal doing comparative
          studies. This research project immediately
          unraveled several misconceptions about the Goan
          house and its evolution.

Houses like the one I grew up in dot the Goan countryside and
towns, and form an integral part of the Goan cultural fabric.

In recent times an incorrect, even absurd nomenclature has
gained popular usage to describe them. The catch-all phrase
'Portuguese House' is bandied about a lot -- anything with
stuccoed walls and clay tiles on its roof is addressed as one.

This terminology seems to have sprung up in very recent years
to coincide with the seemingly unstoppable demand from people
from the rest of India and abroad to own these. Ill informed
brokers have coined the term, which reflects a deeply
ignorant conception of the complex, multi-layered evolution
of architecture in Goa . It is wrong, even offensively wrong,
and it is extremely irritating to see the term actually gain
popularity instead of being discarded.

Over years in architectural  practice, I have received many,
many requests from prospective clients who want me to build
them that same old 'Portuguese House'. I always take great
pains to tell them that the kind of period piece that they
think they want are actually great mistakes of history.

          The original colonial architecture of Goa consists
          of minutely detailed copies of houses from the
          north of Portugal, which were built in local
          material without much thought to its climatic
          response. These were again faithfully replicated
          across the centuries, and gradually evolved an
          appropriate climatic and social response from the
          19th century onwards. To continue this trend into
          the new millennium would be completely stupid.

Thus, the ceaselessly mushrooming  supply of contrived,
pseudo-heritage 'Portuguese Houses' threatens to perpetually
mar the Goan countryside with extremely bad and aesthetically
bankrupt iterations of a badly understood hybrid
architectural vernacular.

Here it is important to remember that, inspite of using
foreign models, Goan master masons and craftsmen built the
original Indo-European houses using a wealth of
highly-evolved indigenous design and aesthetic concepts. It
is this reliance on traditional knowledge that is, in the
final analysis, responsible for this stunning collection of
well proportioned houses that have kept away the rain and
sun, while catching the prevailing breezes, and always
perfectly framing the views of nearby paddy fields and mango
laden orchards.

          Goans must question their established notions of
          history to understand who we are and what we have
          achieved. It is this restless, challenging,
          questioning attitude that is slowly waning away
          from us, a people who literally built this
          shimmering landscape by erecting a monumental
          network of bunds and sluices to reclaim rich
          agricultural lands.

I wish I could plan a blueprint for a sane architectural
approach in Goa, to encourage people to question the
established norms of building, to work towards a Goan
contemporary expression for the 21st Century that draws from
the unique socio-cultural context of Goa and yet embraces to
the clarifying principles of modernism.

A few years ago, I (along with some colleagues) worked
closely with the city authorities in my beloved birthplace of
Panjim to help revitalize the soul of the town through a
series of initiatives that ranged from façade restoration
and improvement of sidewalks, to development of the gardens
and squares. The results continue to speak for themselves
though much of our job remains to be done.

--
Contact the writer: shankhwalker at sify. com
shankhwalker at satyam.net.in 9822581065 0832-2412171

This article was published in a souvenir published for a Portuguese
cultural fest held in Goa (called the "Semana"). The book is priced at
Rs. 350 and available at Singbal's in Panjim. Thanks to VM
<vmingoa at gmail.com> for making available the text to Goanet Reader.