The Loyola Furtado House

Some houses take you by surprise. Some houses take you by storm. On your best days there is an information crunch but sometimes, just sometimes, there is that information flood and you find yourself coming up for air. Unless, of course, they throw you that lifeline...

So you meet Rajendra and his family who occupy the north wing of the house and have the Chapel, the courtyard, two large bedrooms and a corridor under their care. Then you meet Mick, the interior decorator and Alice, his charming wife and see how they have treasured all the priceless pieces of the house to be recycled in time. You meet Dr Max in what was once the dining hall of the large house and is now the formal drawing room and you go over the history of the Loyola-Furtado house at Chinchinim.

Entrance PorchPicture the scenario before the year 1590. It is a typical village in Goa. The temple of Chinchinath stands in the centre of the village with the main door to the sanctum sanctorium facing the East. The temple tank, perhaps fed by a natural spring, has laterite stone walls around it and stone steps that lead to the water. In a mercurial change of political circumstances, the temple is replaced by a church (Our Lady of Hope) and the temple tank is filled in and built over. Two hundred years later, between 1790 and 1800, "Morgad" José Maria Furtado builds a palatial mansion over the land that was once the temple tank. Perhaps it was not the same house that we see today but there is no doubt that it was the house of an important and influential member of the Chinchinim village community. By the time "Morgad" José Maria Furtado raised his young family, wealth from the coconut, arecanut, paddy and fish enabled him to rebuild the old house into the palacio we see today.

Like most houses in Goa this one too has a central axis. Fourteen steps lead you into the entrada. A frangipani tree in full blor the smaller visitor's room. Beside the saleta, a passage converted to a guest room and bathrooms with modern plumbing added on to the main hoom greets you with a formal nodding of its pink leafless blossoms. Inside, you have stepped on to flooring that has been discreetly relaid in recent years by Mick and Alice who have opened up the plinth from within to make a basement-bedroom for themselves. Behind the entrada, the saleta ouse. The outhouses, storerooms, firewood sheds and grain stores girdled the back of the house once. They gave the courtyard dimension. Today, the courtyard stays undefined, a shapeless mass of land with a few odd trees.

Reception RoomYou are ushered into the main reception room, the sala to meet Mick's mother Dona Aninhas Fernandes Loyola-Furtado, who greets you in Portuguese, Konkani and the English she has picked up from Alice. Warmth springs from the heart and transcends language barriers. Nothing takes away from the expansiveness of the sala.

In the days when spaciousness was the fashion, heavy drapery would not only have been an extravagance, it would have taken away from the feeling of spaciousness and added heaviness to the room. Painting the ceiling and the walls was the ideal, the ultimate fashion statement, a discreet alternative. Above the columns and the arches, a light transluscent "curtain" makes its subtle, delicate presence felt. You can almost touch the old gossamer "lace".

In the sala, a flooring of white and black flowers strewn and elsewhere, under your feet, wooden floorboards creak as you walk out to the two rooms adjoining the sala. Walk straight into a page from the epic Mahabharata. For how else can you describe this?

When the house was divided to accomodate all the members of the family, the ornamental windows had to be torn down and walled partitions created for privacy. Instead of a blank wall partition, doors and windows have been painted on to the plaster. So like Duryodhana in the Epic, you too find yourself walking into a wall or trying to open a window that does not exist.

BallroomThe house faces the West and the early rays of the morning sun bathe the verandas that encircle the North and the West in a gentle light. What do they see, when they sit out on their armchairs? They see the Chinchinim Church, the Church grounds, motor-cycle taxis parked in a row, autorickshaw pick-ups in a queue and the village shops open for business. A scene far removed from the days when the affairs of the village, the district and the country flowed through the house like the blood in a heart.

As far back as the family can remember, the house was always open to the members of the church, the community and the village. It was so in the time of "Morgad", a simple man with simple taste and stern wisdom. It was so in the time when Dr Miguel de Loyola Furtado, known to his friends, followers and patients as Minglu Bab, ruled the house. And it was never more true when Dr José ínacio de Loyola sowed the seeds of nationalism amongst the tall stands in the fields of local participation. Dr José ínacio de Loyola had started the political party Partido Indiano that had laid the foundations for the tidal wave of liberalism that one day evolved into Goa's struggle for freedom. Its mouthpiece, A índia Portuguêsa propounded the cause of civil liberties for four decades. At the helm of affairs when the elections held by the then Portuguese government were declared to be unfair and undemocratic by the local political leaders, Dr José ínacio de Loyola was charged with homicide and sedition. Had it not been for the Governor in Goa who appealed to the Governor of Bombay for extradition, the case would not have shifted to the Chief Presidency Magistrate's Court in Bombay and later quashed by the High Court of Bombay and the exiled leaders rewarded with a hero's welcome in Karwar, Belgaum, Pune, Bombay and finally in Goa.

The newspaper A índia Portuguêsa was published at the Loyola-Furtado house from 1912 onwards upto 1919 under the editorship of Dr Miguel de Loyola Furtado. In April 1919, it was shifted to Quelim.

Today, Dr Max has to live up to the historic legacy of Dr José ínacio de Loyola and to the high standards of hospitality as set by his forefathers for this house he has inherited. It is a house where both the poor and the privileged received moral support, medical aid and material succour. In a house that has seen some changes in the last 30-40 years, when the wooden flooring of the old dining hall was ripped open and replaced and expanded to accomodate a growing family and a few steps added to the front facade to provide for a gate and an entrance, the atmosphere and the spirit of the old house have been carried over.

And as if the burden of carrying the torch was not heavy enough, Dr Max must also live up to the image of his father Dr Alvaro de Loyola Furtado. Known to his friends as "Alu", Dr Alvaro was a social worker, a historian, journalist, physician and humanitarian. When he passed away in 1981, he was described as a leader among men, a man of great integrity and honour.

Dr Alvaro was the Mayor of the Salcete Municipality for two years during which time he stabilised municipal finances, improved the road network, evolved a plan for the municipal garden Praça George Barreto, compelled the government to reconstruct the bund at Macrambo in Sarzora village and restore the village's only source of water. He resigned from the post as he felt that the Portuguese Administration hurt nationalist feelings.

His articles in the Instituto Vasco da Gama (now Menezes Braganza Institute) led the then Governor General Vassalo e Silva to reinstate to the comunidades full ownership rights by the abolishing of foro (rents). He resigned from that Institute as a protest against the Military Governor's interference in cultural institutions. He was part of the group known to the Portuguese administration as the Margao Group of Autonomists and anti-Salazarists.

He was in active service in the South East Asia command during the World War II and was awarded the Burma Campaign Medal, the Long Service Medal and War Medal for his meritorious service. He returned to Goa after the War and started a medical practice in the village were he was born. A strong advocate of self governance, his paper titled O Diréito de Propriedade Rústica nas Comunidades Aldeanas in 1961 is a treatise on the status of the comunidade system and an advocacy on why the system should be kept alive. Dr Alvaro was a member of Goa's first legislative assembly and moved several resolutions that covered every aspect of Goan rural life.

He was fluent in English, Portuguese, Konkani and Latin and his paper Os Primordios de Inprensa e do Jornalismo em Goa e no Resto da índia is an essay on the history of printing and journalism in India.

Fine shoes for Dr Max to fit into! As they sit out in the patio, Dr Max and his family watch the electric lights in the houses of the village come on. Today, the village is just a view from the house. Once it was a living, breathing part of this throbbing household. Today, there is a little interaction but nothing that comes close to that hum of activity, that flurry of skirts as they rose to greet their beloved Dr Alvaro, Dr Miguel or "Morgad" Bab. The voices that once filled the sala with Ave Marias have left but if you hold your ear close to the walls, each 6 feet deep, you can hear the faint strains of the hymn. In just the way we did.