By LILIANA GIL, 6/13/2016. “Scores of churches were built in Velha Goa. There were, in fact, so many of them that there are on record letters written to the Vatican from the priests of churches here saying that ‘Their bells and our bells… Their choir and our choir… there is cacophony’.” (explanatory panel at Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa)
The presence of Catholic symbols in Goa is overwhelming. Each house has a cross, each crossing a chapel, each village a church. They are often adorned with flowers and burning incense.
In Old Goa, the capital of Portuguese India between the 16th and the 18th centuries, the main attractions are a basilica, a cathedral, and a church. Like a theme park, or a ghost town that fills with tourists during the day, Old Goa’s façades are immaculately kept and its interiors are moldy and just functional.
I think of Brian Larkin’s notion of “colonial sublime” and how the British exerted indirect rule through imposing infrastructure – bridges, factories, warehouses, railways. And then I look at these messy remnants of Portuguese colonization and can’t help but ask “what the hell happened here?”