A Little Celebration

Walking to 18th June Road on 18th June. It’s the sort of stuff that could set afire a showboat Chinese businessman, urge him to make a reservation at dinner for a bowl of turtle-blood, buy his concubine Jade Lily some emeralds. Maybe, put in for a Maybach.

Panjim isn’t Hong Kong. Here, you get a taste of Goa Revolution Day. It marks the day in 1946 when an Indian socialist stalwart, Ram Manohar Lohia, addressed a civil liberties rally in now creaky, crowded Margao to the south, which in those hoary days had the reputation of being more Portuguese than Portugal. This is a day of some official rousing, of remembering freedom fighters and martyrs.

A leading daily of this tiny trance-laden state recorded the 2007 edition thus: “Mr Jamir [the Governor] and Mr Kamat [the Chief Minister] felicitated 38 freedom fighters, some of them posthumously, for their outstanding contribution for liberating Goa from colonial rule. They were presented with replica of (the) martyr’s memorial…”

It’s the spirit that counts.

Spirit also ensured a gaggle of tiny marching schoolchildren for the function at Panjim’s Azad Maidan, or Freedom Park, braving a steady drizzle, being led to raggedly shout “Bharat Mata ki jai.” May Mother India be victorious. The children were from the Government Primary School tucked away in a tattered building on 18th June Road. Easy levy.

My daughter wasn’t there. She goes to a privately-run school from which students are not trotted out for government functions. She wouldn’t be singing praise for Mother India. She would be practicing a song to commemorate the birthday of the principal of her school. Easy levy.

The children of the government school went about in their cheap white and navy blue uniform. I was told we might have to especially procure a dress of checks for the celebration at my daughter’s school.

‘Stalinists,’ I gently related my angst to some friends at dinner as they watched with fixed grins. My daughter tugged at my arm.

‘Pol Pots,’ I continued undeterred.

‘Baba, don’t say bad words,’ my daughter admonished, and pushed me along. Later, she fiercely whispered, ‘I like my principal.’

I do too. Dear Leader.