CHAPTER: INTERFACE
Just after a fish-curry-and-rice dinner, the men in the family fill their small glasses with feni (the pungent, potent local cashew brew)and a dash of lemon soda before they walk out onto the balcão. It is the perfect time at dusk just after the swarms of mosquitoes have subsided for the night and before the village sinks into black darkness. A good time to enjoy the cool sea breeze rustling the coconut palms in the twilight after a long day. People stroll by in the lane, peer over the low compound walls, most of them family friends for generations. Each waves; some stop to gossip.
The women stay inside; planning the next day’s meal.
...or perhaps...
“They would invariably start in the back-yard, some old disillusioned housewife crying foul over the neighbour's coconuts falling on her roof or their dog chasing her chickens. Then like a bad smell they would swirl through the house making their way to the balcão and in this swirling movement they would gather force like a tsunami and capture everyone in their vicinity including the men of the household who would elect themselves as Generals of the battle and little children who would enlist as foot-soldiers. The women would hitch their kapod unto their waist, the men would stand up-right in the balcão with a dando club for effect and the children would run about frantically not knowing really what was going on except that there was a fight raging with their neighbours and that for the next month at least they wouldn't be allowed to play with the neighbour's children.The women like dervishes would gain momentum in this cross-fire exchange of verbal vitriol making sure to bring to light every titbit of information that had been gleaned from various sources which was usually the neighbour's maid, such as the night Padre Vicar paid a visit while the man of the house was away and stayed long enough to sample those delectable bolinas the wife had made just that afternoon. The men of the house would interject into this fray frequently with foul obscenities usually calling into question each other's legitimacy. These fights would go on for hours on end until twilight would gently peep through the evening sky and the neighbouring audience watching in mute fascination would tire and close their thick, ant-eaten wooden windows.”
The relationship between the street and the house in Goa plays a lively role in orchestrating social dynamics. A simple road trip around Goa’s villages will familiarize you with 18th-20th century Indo-Portuguese houses where visitors are warmly greeted at the gate and ushered down the narrow lane to the entrance of ancestral family homes. The journey from the front gate to the front door is clearly defined, establishing a distinctively Goan pattern of public and private realms. At the front of the house is the feature that distinguishes the Goan house, the sopo or bolkanv (called so after the arrival of the Portuguese from the Portuguese word balcão), a balcony, a stalled and columned porch. The curved plan of seats in the balcão, its quasi-Tuscan capitals, shafts of cypris columns and swan necked volutes in the pediment were all Latin influences introduced in the houses where the notion of space, areas of transition and use of outdoor spaces still remained traditionally Indian. The interstitial space between the gate and the elevated veranda of the house, it is designed to be a place to “see and be seen”. The built-in seating on the balcão becomes an inviting place of gathering; a place to stay. The balcãos of Goa bring to attention the transition between the dwelling place and the city which is often lost in the front yards of the single-family homes in suburban North America today.
Before India’s exposure to the Latin lifestyle, the traditional Goan house consisted of small chambers which fit closely around the raaj agnonn, an open courtyard. To its front was the osro, a hall for guests, to its rear was the vasri, the dining hall, and to its sides, the kuddi, or the living rooms. In order to analyse the transformations in the house of the Christian Goan(referred to as the Catholic House) it’s important to take a brief look at the typical form of the Hindu household (referred to as the Hindu House). The essence of the Hindu House is the symmetrically balanced square plan, symbolic in local mythology of the four corners of the world which are assumed to be dominated by Agni the God of Fire. The flexible nature of both interior and exterior spaces of the house and the Hindu lifestyle reflects a world where concerns of privacy was not considered important. The courtyard is drenched in rain or stands dry according to the weather, sleeping areas became work rooms during the day, and the entrance porch welcomes visitors in the evenings. There is no prescribed name given to each room - no library, study, dining nor living area. The only exception to this rule applies to the preparation of food and sacred space -- the kitchen and the pooja room. The house is alive with activity -- children play noisily in corridors, women anxiously complete their chores in the passages -- no area is wasted, no room is owned. The benefits of these multifunctional spaces are strengthened by the absence of large ostentatious furniture in the Hindu lifestyle -- chairs and tables are replaced by mats, patts or baithaks.The courtyard is the interface between the public and the service areas and is used by the women of the household almost exclusively, whether it be washing laundry or decorating the ground with coloured powders. The entrance of the house is mainly used by the men of the house while the women are confined to the inner sanctum. Rudimentary and functional in nature, the Hindu houses, marked with minimal ornamentation, are introverted living areas which are moulded from the inside as a series of undefined rooms that transform in character according to use.
The Catholic house embodies the culture of the Europeans in both letter and spirit and this encompasses every aspect of their lives including the way they build their houses. The idea of individual privacy and space allocation for various purposes is a Western concept and it is clear that this foreign intervention was adopted by the Goans from the Portuguese. The simplest form of the Goan house is an outward-looking linear form with no conscious segregation between the sexes, but rather between the family and the service. The balcão at the front of the house leads to a hall that spans the entire width of the house, with a series of two rooms located abreast, to follow. The balcão is where the extended family spent a good portion of their time and became a focal point for the whole household to greet regular visitors. The sala, rather like the Victorian parlour, is reserved for formal introductions. The bedrooms are joined by a a wide passageway that holds the family altar, while the kitchen is located at the end of the house and is adjoined by servants’ quarters.
Very much like the Western attitude towards privacy, the hierarchy of private space in the Catholic house was determined by the distance from the public street. Dean D’Cruz, a native Goan architect, says: “The key aspect of traditional Goan architecture is its scale and relationship to the streetscape. The front of the building facing the road, being the most important, is treated with formality. However as one moves through the house, spaces and rear elevations start becoming much more informal.” Other forms of the Catholic house adopted the notion of “wings” and annexes which would provide the family with private rooms and semi-public areas which are separated from the main hall and the service areas. The basic I-shaped form grew to become an H-shaped form when each generation in the house wanted to make their own distinguishable contribution to the house therefore introducing two salas on either side of the entrance. By the middle of the 18th century, Goans had built houses with two levels in imitation of the Europeans , following the tendency of the Western cultures to split the house and elevate its private zones. The local lifestyle, however, did not easily adapt to the scheme and both ceremonial and living rooms alongside the bedrooms occupied the top floor, while the lower level remained empty, becoming merely a token of family grandeur.
Catholic Goan houses are a product of two very distinct cultures, with radically different attitudes toward privacy and community. Unlike the Europeans, Indians live in a hot, humid climate, in a world of proximity, in a house with fourteen around a dining table with a bevy of servants and few locked doors. They adopted a new culture, and while adapting to it, something remarkable happened -- a most bizarre lexicon of architectural elements was developed, one that was distinct and only theirs.
