Sunday service in Goa

Four days of bird watching in a jungle in Goa made me forget the date. So, on the last day when we emerged and made our way to a large but shallow lake, I had completely forgotten that it was a Sunday. A small church in the Indo-Portuguese style was built on a slight rise on one side of the lake. It was the perfect vantage point for watching the large numbers of migratory ducks which had arrived for winter. As we admired the migrants, three ladies with baskets of flowers seated themselves near us and started stringing them together into garlands. Someone came by and opened the doors of the church. Even then I hadn’t switched to tourist mode, and had no thought of taking their photos.

It was only after I’d finished with the birds that I turned around and saw the crowds arriving for the Sunday service. Two girls in frilly skirts skipped up the steps. We were still talking about the birds when a truck came to a halt outside the church and a whole lot of women dressed in their Sunday best began to descend. Finally something clicked in my head, and I realized “Oh, a Mario Miranda scene.” I managed to take a single photo to salvage my Sunday morning. As we walked away the first voices were raised together in a choir.

Not + crosses

Goa can become rather touristy. But you seem to find a part where normal people live if you travel to South Goa. If you visit in the peak of the monsoon you make sure that you run into almost no other tourist. So we did what the locals found curious: we walked long distances on rainy days. One old man made his displeasure clear. He told me “Once upon a time foreign tourists used to distribute pens and chocolate to children. Tourists nowadays don’t do anything like that.” I was always intrigued by the advise that the once venerated Lonely Planet guide to India gave to all and sundry: “carry lots of ballpens.” I ignored the barb and asked “Do you know why they did that?” He gave me a severe look: “I never asked.”

Nor had I asked myself earlier why I never found any evidence of the Orthodox Syriac Church in Goa. Now I began to wonder whether the militant Catholicism of that time first eliminated what they would have considered a heretical faith before settling down to proselytising what they would have considered the only true faith.

It was a weekday, and church doors were firmly shut. We could not casually wander into one to seek shelter from rain. I looked longingly at the bench which was pulled up to the door of the small church that you see above. But The Family had already come to the conclusion that even if we sat on it our legs would still get very wet. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of bringing an umbrella in addition to a raincoat even after I noticed her doing that.