Fontainhas, Panjim

If you choose your time well then you will arrive at the Church Square of Panaji when the bustling market is on. My first visit was not timed well at all. I saw a large empty plaza, with one end taken up by imposing steps that lead up to the church of Immaculate Conception.

I’d arrived at the hottest part of the day, in the humid weather at the end of the monsoon. I climbed those steps slowly, keeping to the edges, seeking little bits of shadow. Eventually, when I got to the top, I realized that with the sun vertically overhead it was not possible to find shade. The ornate doors of the church were closed, and I felt like a bit of a fool as I walked back down. I have been back to the square at better times, but I bear a little grudge against that church and I haven’t tried to go back inside.

But if you bear right and walk along Rua Emidio Garcia with the aim of losing yourself in the side streets, you’ll come to a picturesque enclave called Fontainhas. The lovely bungalows here are often called Portuguese style, but that is quite wrong. Perhaps the arches and tiles have been borrowed from the Portuguese, but the thick walls and bright colours are typical of houses in peninsular India.

These pleasantly curving roads lined with low buildings and trees had only a few restaurants when I first walked through them a dozen years ago. Since then, every time I visit, the number of restaurants has increased, many houses have turned into hotels, or home stays, and the pleasant little shops which mainly provided meeting places for the locals have filled up with upmarket kitsch for tourists. It brings more money into the locality, but drains off, slightly, the uniqueness which I’d found so charming when I took these photos.

As I wandered I came across this statue of Abbe Faria, a central figure in Alexandre Dumas’ door-stopper of a novel called The Count of Monte Cristo. The real Abbe Faria (1756-1891 CE) is no less fascinating. He was a Brahmin Catholic (this is Goa!) who left Goa for Lisbon, then traveled to Rome to study to become a priest. He was invited to preach a sermon in the Sistine Chapel in the presence of the Pope, and later to the court in Lisbon. Back in Goa, he developed his theories of hypnotism, was part of the Pinto revolution against Portugal, escaped to Paris, where, strangely, he became part of the counter-revolutionary royalist conspiracy. He was imprisoned for many years in the Chateau D’If (the part of his life fictionalized by Dumas) before he returned to Paris, obtained a position as a professor of Philosophy, and became briefly famous for his work on hypnotism. If anyone knows of a detailed biography of the real person, please do let me know.

I spotted this lovely window and wall on that first walk, and then traced it out on another walk many years later. The colour of the wall aged well. I wouldn’t mind going back there again to see whether it needs another coat of paint now. That line of hooks on the wall mystified me. I wonder whether there was a forgotten function to it, or whether it marked a ghost window: a place where a window had been before it was walled up.

Strolls through Fountainhas will always lead you to interesting things. Like this house, which had a pay phone. The person who made a little business out of it was clearly loathe to lose any customers. I hestitated in front of the sign. Should I ring the bell, ask for change, and take a photo or two of this astute businessman? But it was time for lunch, and I wandered off.