Aghô Milagrin, Londokarancheo dhiriô chollotai mugo. Milagrin, Bull Fights in London.

‘Mother, Motheeeeer, where are you? ‘Screams Rosalyne, full of excitement and delight. Words tumble from her young, tremulous mouth.

‘Yes, Rosalyne’ replies her Mother, Frieda, very sedately as befits a person who has lived in England, for a long time, amongst people known for their impeccable deportment. 

‘Rosalyne dear must you shout, I am not deaf, you know’ she smiles to take the sting off her anger.

‘You know Mother’ continues Rosalyne in a more refined voice. ‘There is a girl in our class and she is from Goa!! I told her that we too are from Goa.’

‘But Rosalyne dear, we are not from Goa, ummm, we are from Kenya’

‘What???’ screams Rosalyne forgetting her cultured voice ‘But Grandpa and Grandma are from Goa?’

‘Of course they are Rosalyne,’ replies genteel Frieda... But I have always been in London, and the much rehashed argument goes on... It is an argument that has seen many seasons...

A couple of days later, Rosalyne enters with an ear splitting yell, a spring in her leap, a wide grin to the utter displeasure of genteel Frieda. 

Rosalyne, she thinks, will never be a calm, sensible English girl. Frieda hopes and prays that Rosalyne would be much like Darrell Rivers from Mallory Towers. Sigh.

‘Mother, Motheeer,’ Frieda winces...

‘Mother, Mother,’ Benita has invited me to her home...’

Frieda thinks with a sigh, Oh no! Oh no!

‘Mother, Benita wants me to come to her house for Saibin, Mother it’s so beautiful, Saibin is so neat Mother...’

‘What’s Saibin dear?

’

‘Oh Mother, didn’t you know, the Blessed Virgin Mary...’

‘Oh, no, oh no, that old fashioned drivel from the country,’ thinks Frieda

‘You know Mother; the Saibin will go from Mellissa’s house to Benita’s House. Whilst taking the Saibin from one house to another, we will light candles and sing hymns all the way.’

‘Oooooh Mother isn’t that the neatest thing you ever saw?’ 

‘May I go, please Mother, please’ Frieda looks at her daughter, eyes glowing, cheeks rosy from the excitement and the cold.

’But Rosalyne dear, I thought you were going to Maeve Brown’s home for a sleepover.’

‘I told Maeve I wouldn’t be coming; that I would be going to Benita’s’ replies Rosalyne carelessly. I can go to Maeve’s anytime...But Saibin!’

‘Mother, do you realize that this is the first girl from Goa who has invited me for anything?’

And thank God for that, thinks Frieda, that European Union (EU) rabble.

In comes Joe. ‘Let her go Frieda, let her go, it will do her good to be around her own people.’ 

‘Her own people, echoes Frieda, you call that mass of people from EU our own people?’

‘Of course I do Frieda. I have had a drink or two with some of the guys from my own village and they are perfectly fun guys. Just doing their bit...Just trying to earn a living much like us.’

‘Joe, you actually mingle with the EU crowd, socializing with that horde, what could you possibly have in common with those uneducated plebs.’ 

‘Oh, Frieda, Frieda, my dear, you forget how ‘educated’ I was when I came here from Kenya. As to what binds us, our village my sweet.

Joe hums, Amchea sezreak assa pisso, umm, umm....

Mia Couto the Mozambican author, talks about the asimilados, the colonized, who leaving behind their own culture and traditions immerse themselves totally into the culture and traditions of the colonizer.

Coconuts, he calls them, very white on the inside but sadly brown on the outside.

‘Why did they do it’? Well the answer is obvious, to blend, to mingle and to feel one with the colonizer.

My Mother would go to weddings in Goa, in the sweltering heat of May in nylon stockings and some ridiculous hat stuck firmly to her head with bobby pins. 

Emulate the colonizer.

The immigrants, who went to Africa in search of jobs, were all types, educated, uneducated, tailors, musicians, cooks, all working hard to earn a decent wage. Everyone bent on getting a good deal, every parent yearning to give his child a good education, these were sent back to India or Goa for better instruction.

But at no point did these Africanders think they should be Goans in any sense of the word, showcase their Goanness, or their culture.

They were British...No questions asked.

The only time our Africander Goans let down their hair, or lapse... is when they in the secrecy of their dining room eat a good xit koddi using their fingers for who can eat prawns and crabs with forks and spoons?,

Goan food in the quietness of one’s own house on a blissful Sunday. Colonisers be damned, a fiery ambot-tik cannot be denied and the hateful cutlery can be put aside for a finger licking prawn curry with okhra.

Konkani... that is for Pai ani Mai in Goa. 

Poor Mai and Pai struggling to understand their own Anton now Tonee and their daughter in law Rosmari now Rosalyne speaking a convoluted heavily accented Konkani.

Pai ani Mai’s grandchildren June, Janet and Belinda ‘Mai I don’t speak Konkanee only English’

‘Oh we don’t celebrate those Goan Feasts?  Maybe when we go to our ancestral village in Goa, These Feasts are very noisy. You know I don’t believe in saints, 

San Francis Xavier or San João. 

Yes, as children maybe...but now we know God doesn’t exist. Where is the proof? And that Body of San Francis, no arm you know it’s in Rome and Sant Anton’s tongue where is it sweetheart? How terribly grotesque...

Fact is our immigrants had moved from one colony to another.

In Goa they had already learnt the tricks, they were all well trained. 

The so-called genteel Society aped the Portuguese colonizer to the hilt and still do, you only have to look through Social Media to see the Portuguese clones that still exist and persist. 

The transition was painless. 

You just substituted Portugal, Estado da India for Kenya, Colony of the British Empire.

They were always attired in Western clothes, at all times. Some men pride themselves on the most perfect knot of their tie. 

‘You aren’t wearing a sari amorzinha are you’, José, José querido, do you think I want to look like an ayah, or a Gujrati Patel, that’s for Fancy Dress at the Club Function. 

Edwina, do lay the table dahling, the de Sás are coming for lunch. I have told you, the tablecloth that Avozinha gave me, iron it first.

Now, cutlery on the table in the order of its use, fish first, starting from the outside and working inwards with each course dahling.

Jokulosh are the drinks organized? No, you know brandy is an after dinner aperitif and Jokulosh a good liqueur also after dinner, you are losing your touch amor...

Who have you been talking to, sweetheart, that EU rabble?

Do you remember that Lobo your friend from Goa, he put his knife in the mouth, my blood ran cold. I still wonder why you got him. 

Imitate the Colonizer sweet pea, however hard it goes against your grain and they did succeed brilliantly. 

The Coloniser loved this genteel breed of people imports from another European Colony. They were perfect. They ate, drank, and dressed like any white man. They were hardworking, honest and most of all amenable to the white man’s rules.

These poor wretches even fought a War for them with no recognition from the British Empire.

Of course nobody forgot they were Brown.

Let them work for us but mix with us? Segregation would take care of that.

They would have their own Clubs, but mark my words; the Club would most surely have white man’s rules and regulations

Isn’t that awesome? They follow us like poodles. 

Now this well trained, amenable group of people moved to England soon after the African nations get their Independence.

Once again they worked extremely hard at their jobs, educated their children beautifully. Times were different too, there were mixed friends, mixed marriages. 

No segregation. Times were lovely. The Africanders had arrived. Nobody thought of our Africanders as anything but English.

But sometimes when everything is fine, when life is divine, some maleficent sprite decides to stir things up, which unfortunately happened to our Africanders now safely and surely ensconced in England. 

In the case of our Africanders, it was this wave upon wave of crass European Union Goans.

God dammit, these EU Goans, had scrounged and scrimped, they had fought with the Registrar of Births and Deaths; they had stood in mile long queues for the birth, marriage and death certificates of their forefathers, unheard of long dead relatives.

They had spent vast amounts of very hard earned money on Agents just to get that precious, precious Portuguese Passport.

A brief Adeus to their beloved family, they moved to England!

At first it wasn’t so bad; the Africanders just about tolerated them. But hey, this was an unstoppable mob, an avalanche of EU Goans, willing to take up any jobs.

When would it all end? But it just didn’t, it got worse. Much like the mythological hydra.

What really irked our genteel Africanders was their ‘lack of manners’. They were unpolished, not unpolished diamonds with promise, just gross, they spoke Konkani at all times and at all places, and the English language was definitely not their forte. 

Given a tiny occasion, they celebrated and how, Saibin, Litanies, San Francis, Sant Anton, San João were feasted with good food and copious drinks.

How could they spend so many British Pounds earned with such effort in getting those dreadful Tiatrs all the way from Goa?

Africanders would not be caught dead going for one of those. They were in Konkani, good heavens.

They are ‘thieves’ the Africanders agreed, they drag their Mothers, Fathers from their houses in Goa for Social Security. 

Our Africanders had dignity; they would never stoop this low and drag their aged, broken-down parents for Social Security.

And then there was that utterly disgusting terrible dog meat scam.

Really just a ghastly horde of people, the Africanders were extremely ashamed of these EU Goans, they wanted no relationship with these usurpers, these so called Goans.

But the worst and by far the most awful and appalling part of this invasion was that the British could not and would not distinguish between the Africanders and the new wave of EU Goans, and frankly the British did not care who was who...they were all brown, for Christ's sake, one Brown just like another.

How could this have happened? Now the whites thought that they were all from India, that everyone was an Indian. 

All those years and years of working so hard, of ingratiating, of attempting to be just like the whites, washed away in a wave of EU Goans. Indistinguishable. Just brown.

So the genteel Africanders seek refuge from the masses, they ignore them at all possible occasions. Does it help?

The EU Goans are impervious; they care a damn for these ‘pretend’ English people. They love Konkani and speak the language. 

Tiatrs are the window to Goan Society; they show Goa as it is, every Goan politician, every scandal, the smallest occurrence in Goa is mirrored in the Tiatrs. They are the true colours of Goa, warts and all.

Goans they are and they will flaunt their Goaness in every possible manner. Saibin, Litanies and of course the Feasts of San Francis, Sant Anton, San João

Who wouldn’t love their fish-curry? And you mean you need a mass of cutlery to eat that delicious sorpotel and sannas?

Isn’t that utterly ridiculous?

Strangely the happiest person is Father Patrick St. John Webb, his Church of Our Lady and Saint Christopher has never been so full on Sundays.

On Easter and Christmas people spill out even if it is immensely cold. 

They are generous, these EU Goans. Father St. John Webb marvels at their generosity, they are so happy to be in Church.

Father St. John Webb has just to say the word and there are dozens of EU Goans eager to help him out.

Jesus, Thank you for the EU Goans, their love for the Church, their enthusiasm for anything Church.

Truly, Father Patrick St. John Webb is an extremely happy person.