The Godinho Jacques House

On our first visit to the house of Dona Maria dos Anjos Godinho- Jacques at Majorda village in Salcete District we saw the kitchen. Ah! If only one could give a sample of the scents and the sounds of that divine kitchen on these pages! If only one could describe the physical dimensions, the boundaries, the extension! For it is a kitchen that has no fixed boundaries, no overt extensions, no measured dimensions. A kitchen where the inside spills over to the clay courtyard outside and the outside floats over into the inside.

Out in the sun, long red chillies are spread on a grass mat. Their sharp aroma tickles our noses as their strength will soon torture our tongues. A great big copper pot, painted black, is burning itself into a fevered pitch rather importantly. Small wonder, for it is holding the day's harvest of boiling paddy in its belly. The golden brown paddy is being turned with a giant wooden ladle by a lady in an apron. When she thinks the paddy is done she will run into the house and hold up her ladle for all the household to see. She will hold her tongue, they will hold their breaths and Dona Maria will hold an opinion.Elevationw

Satisfied, the lady in the apron will then spoon the paddy out into large cane baskets while it is still steaming hot and fragrant. The old iron stove feeds on firewood and bits and pieces of sun-dried coconut palm fronds. A clay pot pasted on to the stove keeps water hot for instant use. A cast-iron chimney coaxes the smoke away from the kitchen, away from the baskets that hang on the loft and an open window that brings fresh air and sunlight in. We assume that Dona Maria has lived here all her life.

No. Dona Maria has not lived in this house all her life. In fact, the house as we see it now did not exist when the original house (now next door and with another branch of the family) was built about three hundred years ago. Dona Maria spent all her childhood and youth at her father's in Panaji. This house, built from the Eastwing of the original house, retained the main Reception room and Master's bedroom upstairs and was constructed in 1878. It came to Dona Maria from her mother. She did not know much about the house, she said. Her charming hospitality wafts through our hearts just like the warm smells of her kitchen, proving otherwise.

We have walked through the gate along a meticulously carved pathway and past a formal garden to our left. The well-planned, well executed garden does not quite fit in we think and we are right. Most gardens that we have seen so far in the houses of Goa have been giant jigsaw puzzles with the pieces in charming disarray. There is an elaborate and rather presumptuous gatepost (with finials of gargoyles, dogs, lions, uniformed soldier-boys or a scroll) and a compound wall going around the garden but no well-laid-out manicured formal garden. The plants and shrubbery in the other gardens are a pot pourri of ornamentals simply planted at will. It is not the carefully selected array of colours and shapes, the short-ones-in-front-of-the-tall-ones that could only have been done by the personal touch of Aline Godinho-Jacques, Dona Maria's daughter-in-law. Aline teaches at a school in Vasco-da-Gama, 30 kilometres from where she lives, when she is not at home gardening in her spare hours.

"There is a lot of dust coming into the house now, I think. Before, there may have been perhaps one bus or a bullock cart that went past the road. Most people walked or went about in bicycles. We keep the French windows shut all day to keep the dust out but we use every room in the house. If it is not in use, it will go to seed".

We have walked up the pathway, past the garden and have stood at the doorway, wondering about the electric doorbell under the exquisite scroll design above us. If only they made electric doorbells to match Baroque doorways! Baroque? A hundred years after the Baroque style of architecture had taken root in Goan soil? Yes, Baroque but with its own distinctive additions, individual modifications and adaptations. No copy-cat Baroque this. It was built to suit a warm climate ( the ventilators), the torrential rains (the roof tiles), the social status of the owners (the door) and his individual sense of thrift and economy (the balusters).

Front DoorSquashed between the twirls of the scroll is the date of construction. 1878. What an exciting year for Goa! A year when houses like these cost up to 1000 British Pounds each and according to an official survey were "1 house to 3.368 souls". It was also a year that was exceptionally well-documented. Documents that tell us that the landed gentry were educated, well-read and welcomed cross-cultural influences into their lives, their work-places and their homes. That men left their homes to work abroad- Portuguese Africa, Mozambique, Macau, Korea, Brazil, Portugal, East Africa -and they brought back with them designs for house facias, furniture, windows and doors. It was that time when many wealthy men had town houses where they spent their workings days and country mansions to relax in over week-ends. For this small population in Goa, it was a time for cultivating the land with paddy, coconut, arecanut and fruit trees. For cultivating the arts and crafts with the limited knowledge acquired on travels abroad, for celebrating the joy of life with parties at home. It was a time of peace and prosperity and a time to show off wealth and family.

Doors then would be expected to be typically four-panelled or eight-panelled. Not so in Goa! Doors were simple and with good reason. The land-owning gentry in Salcete commanded great respect in the villages of the district. Although they formed a small segment of the whole population of the village, these were people of immense power and influence. Along with the large land holdings, some of them individually held positions of power in the civic administration or were doctors, lawyers or priests. Most people in the village were in one way or another dependant on the land-owing gentry. Dependent on them for their livelihood, their living standards and for advice on important matters - marriage alliances, property disputes and health. The main door in these house at that time would have been left open.

Guests would arrive at the house days in advance when there was a christening, a wedding or a birthday. They would stay on, coming in and out of the house in obedience only to the dictates of their mood. It made more sense therefore, for a house built on thrift and sound economics, to have the front door made simply out of boards. For it was shut at night time and not on display.

A fierce gargoyle in red, green and maroon pieces greets us from the white china mosaic floor. We have tip-toed past the gargoyle, not wishing to upset any old ghosts. (Trifonio Godinho-Jacques, Dona Maria's son and an advocate practising at Margao has promised us a view of the grand Ballroom upstairs if we do not stir up things!) The way up to the first floor is on a wooden staircase that resounds with our footsteps. The balusters on the staircase spell a-d-a-p-t-a-t-i-o-n.

BallroomGrand and elaborate balusters on staircases inside a house were typical of the Baroque period. To save costs, some houses have a cut-out version of these bottle balusters with a decorative element painted on each "bottle" as a substitute for the carving. This house has a floral motif that is almost banal. It is the Ballroom upstairs that leaves us gasping for breath. Painted in crisp cornflower blue, with the breeze from the beach blowing in, it is a hushed whisper in stone. This is the grandest and most impressive room in the whole house. Just as it was meant to be when it was first conceived.

Long full-length French windows, with their wooden mouldings in white, give an impression of grandeur when viewed from the outside. On the inside, they exude a feeling of friendly coziness. The light of the morning sun filters through the small ventilators that form part of the design of the windows. How wonderful it must have been to wake up to this after a celebration!

Mirror holded by hand shaped holdersTwo hands in wood have been built into the blue of the walls. They were meant to hold a Belgian glass mirror once. The mirror must have reflected the light from the candles and the oil lamps in the room. In doing that, it must have become a source of light itself.

In the Master's Bedroom the gold ribbons had faded twenty years ago but Trifonio Godinho-Jacques could not bring himself to give up. He made a special effort to get the right paint from a source abroad and had the ribbons restored by a painter who knew his job.

The roughly hewn timber flooring continues from the Ballroom into the Bedroom. The four-poster bed, the wardrobe and the linen cupboards speak of taste and wealth in the same soft voice. A delicate service stand in pink and peach Carrera marble still holds a baby-pink china wash basin, powder-dish and hair-brush case.

BedroomToday the family has added modern facilities at the back of the bedrooms. The facilities are recent additions and yet melt into the rest of the house quite naturally. We see a sensitivity here that has perhaps come to this family as part of their legacy. Is it a co-incidence that the grey-blue tiles in the new bathrooms are an exact match to the natural grey-blue pigment on the floral pattern stencilled in the Master's Bedroom?

The Godinho-Jacques house is a perfect marriage between the past and the present. And they say, don't they, that some marriages are made in Heaven?