Of Failures and Dreams

By Prajal Sakhardande

Prajal Sakhardande minces no words in his admiration for the Goa Chitra museum and the man behind it. Everything from the establishment of the museum to the struggles of external support, from Goa Chitra’s value for heritage conservation to knowing Victor Hugo Gomes, this week’s personal story is as personal as it gets.

---

Victor Hugo Gomes is an enigma to me. He is a phenomenon. He is unconventional. He is a Great Goan who has placed Goa on the International map through his great creation, a tribute to our Goan Heritage. My first impression of Victor is of a restless Goan in faded jeans, unconventional looks with a zest to do something for Goa. He believed in carving a unique niche for himself in this huge world. He had stars in his eyes. He seemed to be angry with the system. He dreamt big – he was tracing his roots embedded in Goa’s red soil. Digging the soil to find our agricultural ancestry and thus began his long and chequered tryst with history and heritage. He was fired with a passion: a life long journey into the very evolution of us humans in the beautiful realm called Mother Goa. He established a congenital connect with Mother Goa and Mother Earth. He was angry with the establishment. A cursory perception of Victor we found a sense of negativity had crept in his person but it was on a journey of self introspection and retrospection of his Goenkar Heritage. Things were not right and it hurt him, it hurt his inner soul that our Goan brethren were slowly being divorced from their agricultural farming roots. That we were forgetting our Goan rustic ethos. Our Heritage is great, he often said. He went on a difficult path to find our agricultural heritage from the ancient wooden plough to the modki to the smallest of the agricultural implement used by our forefathers as showcased in the wonder of Goa called Goa Chitra.

Goa Chitra is Victor’s dream baby which he gave birth to with a deep sense of research authenticity detail and meticulousness. He spent his money, time, and energy to create this dream project. Things were far from easy. A struggle had begun where this great Goan left everything at stake. Contacting people and getting them to see his passion to fruition was a challenge and he went through this with singular devotion to create this wonder of heritage. The Government hardly cared as is always the case. His wife Dr. Aldina stood by him through thick and thin in those pressing days of collection of artefacts and implements. Victor Hugo never settles for mediocrity. He is a perfectionist. He does not compromise on quality.

Initially no one took him seriously about his passion. I had invited Victor to be a resource person at my Seminar on Goan Heritage in 2012 and I remember his zestful, passionate discourse on Goan heritage. He finds that the government is least interested in heritage preservation. He has spent all that he had on his life called Goa Chitra and Goa Chakra. He grows his own rice. He grows his own veggies. My students were much inspired by this great personality. I look at Victor Hugo Gomes as an institution. A scholar, a man who dreamt madly and crazily. A man who dared to dare. A man who chose to be a face in the crowd rather than follow the societal norms and conventions. Nobody can tie Victor down. Victor flies and flies high to pursue his dreams. He thinks of Goa Chitra all the time. He breathes, sleeps, and wakes up to the call of Goa Chitra of its growth of our Mother Goa. He is not the run of the mill kind of a man and that’s what I love about Victor. He stands out. He strikes a chord. He is not easy to get along. He is a difficult man, he is straightforward, he knows no hypocrisies. He is a fighter. The establishment of Goa Chitra was not a bed of roses. The man has slogged. I know it. He loves and respects honesty. He does not mince words when he talks. Every minute of this great Goan is important because he does not idle away and waste his time doing the mundane. He never talks for effect. He never butters anyone. Personally to me, he is an inspiration, a Great Goan who makes history every day. He has a serious demeanour. You cannot play with the man. He is a backpacker, he is a traveller, he is forever on a journey of discovery. He is a flower child. He is secular to the core. Religion as an institution does not matter to this great man. He respects the grassroot. He salutes the little enterprise, he salutes the worker, the artist, the craftsman, the tribal. He  believes in them. Victor is constantly engaged in a conversation with himself. He is a student, a child, a person with a quest. He is a study. He is not ordinary. He is cut above the rest. He is a red lotus who has risen on his own steam, because he woke up with a beautiful dream.

---

Prajal Sakhardande is a historian, heritage activist, and associate professor and head of the History Department at the Dhempe College of Arts and Science. The President of the Goa Heritage Action Group and Goa’s Movement for Special Status, he also conducts nature trails and heritage walks for students in Goa. Having penned columns for the Navhind Times for fourteen years and authored “Muslim History and Heritage of Goa”, he is currently working on a book titled “Goa Gold, Goa Silver: Her History, Her Heritage.”

The Past in the Present

By Jose Lourenco

Goa Chitra, according to Radharao Gracias, is a “wonderland where you can see the entire past at a glance.” Jose Lourenco explores this dynamic between the past and the present, which comes into play at Goa Chitra, along with his recollections of Victor Gomes’s advertising days.

---

Museums preserve the past. The past is dead, is it not? The present is alive and so is tomorrow. But the present too will be dead tomorrow and tomorrow too will perish.

Though Victor had schooled at Loyola’s, the same that I attended, I first met him proper as the owner of DAM Associates (a quirky name with attitude, standing for Design, Advertising and Media), whose office was in the vicinity of an architect friend’s studio in Margao. We had some good times hanging out at DAM, with endless teas and cigarettes at the Milan Hotel café nearby. If a good topic came up over tea, the office work could be DAMned! I cut my teeth on some copywriting for Victor’s ad campaigns. I recall he had designed the Carmel College magazine, and he, our architect friend Raikar and I drove to Belgaum to get the printing done. The thing I remember is that we felt sleepy driving through the night, and got out of the car and slept on a roadside culvert!

The innovative aspect of DAM Associates’ design work was that Victor incorporated interesting concepts in every advertisement or publicity campaign that was produced, at a time when ads were rather staid and matter of fact in style. His clients, of course, appreciated these attractive designs.

Another facet of Victor’s career I respect and admire is his relentless drive to promote live music in those years, back in the nineties. He organised a series of Rediscovery concerts, featuring fabulous sets and live music with very talented musicians. Other ventures followed, Hugo’s Hungry Hill at Nuvem being one. It was a restaurant with décor designed by Victor, close to a go-karting track.

A personal venture, or adventure, that met great success was his meeting and wedding Aldina, an accomplished personality in her own right, who has stood by him through his amazing Goa Chitra saga and many other ideas. I raised the toast for his wedding. One of the things I distinctly recall saying was that I met a lot of my good friends through Victor, including the brilliant artists Theodore Mesquita and John Rodrigues.

Victor is driven by a powerful and obsessive ego that stops at nothing until it achieves completion. This ego, and the rage and occurrences that it often manifests, has naturally earned him a few detractors. There have been times when I have felt tremendous fury against him too, for some reason or the other that time has gracefully blurred.

Many pages and tomes have been and will be written on Goa Chitra, Victor’s flagship museum, but it is the inner artist that always interests me. Surrounded by visitors, friends, patrons and the world at large, I sense that Victor’s is still a very personal journey, fraught with his own dreams, ghosts and demons. Some of his early paintings at the Goa College of Art feature chessboards and gnarled hands. Our lives are indeed chess-fields in the hands of our personal daemons.

His respect for professional workers at all levels could be seen when his museum was inaugurated by the veteran carpenter who worked there and other workers. I know that at some crossroad in his life Victor began spending a lot of money (earned from other works, or begged, borrowed or stolen!), sometimes obscene amounts of hard earned money to buy what seemed like junk. But those decrepit wooden and metal tools and devices were to become the foundation of what is today an internationally respected ethnographical centre.

Victor has a crazy sense of humor. I once had to ‘crash’ with him at a hotel room after some work. When I woke, I blundered around the dawn-lit room looking for my spectacles. After a good half hour of searching, with Victor watching gleefully from under his bedsheet, he rubbed his eyes, sat up and requested me to pour him a glass of water. And it was in that steel jug of water that I found my glasses, surreptitiously dropped there when I was fast asleep!

Museums preserve the past, the dead. So we would think. But when you see the men, women and children walk around the exhibits at Goa Chitra and the Chakra museum, and you see their eyes light up as they animatedly discuss the uses of the objects there, you know that the past is alive and kicking in their hearts, and possibly driving their tomorrows. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard says, ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards’. A great gratitude is owed to Victor Hugo Gomes for the magnificent manifestation of this wisdom.

---

José Lourenço is a Margao-based civil engineer with a passion for the arts. He is the author of ‘The Parish Churches of Goa – A Study of Façade Architecture’, ‘Amazing Goa Information Cards’ and ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Ancient Goa’- an illustrated collection of Konkani proverbs.

A ‘Courlorful’ Personality – Victor Hugo Gomes

By Joseph Dias

When Victor introduced me to the Goa Chitra Blog, I was immediately compelled to write to readers about my experiences which are closely entwined with Goa Chitra and the man behind the collection.

I first knew Victor in my Alma Mater, Loyola High School in Margao. He was fondly known by all as ‘Pisso Bhatkar’ (Mad Landlord) and went about school life fearlessly, always challenging the norms and his peers with passionate guile and exuberance. Whilst I was studying for an architectural degree, Victor was pursuing an art education in the Goa College of Art and we met rather infrequently. I remember one of such times was during an art exhibition he and some colleagues of his, put up in Margao, called ‘Synchronicity’. Being known to some of the artists associated with Victor, I volunteered to help them out and I hung out with the group: eating, drinking and sleeping with a bunch of mad artists who saw colourful dreams and listened to Zappa tracks when I didn’t even know that kind of music existed! It was a crazy and memorable time.

Art work by Joseoh Dias

After graduation however, Victor went completely off my radar, only to reappear just a few years ago on my Facebook page – Jodi’s art. He had been secretly admiring my cartoons and illustrations on Goa until one fine day he decided to comment … and we reconnected! Previously, on vacation in Goa, I visited Goa Chitra unbeknownst to the fact that it was Victor’s passionate project. I was taken through the museum, which consisted of several ‘houses’ within a large gated compound, marveling at the collection and wishing for it to rise to the renown of European Museums I had visited before. It was only during my third visit to Goa and to the museum, that Victor and I were able to spend productive time together. We discussed varied subjects related to Goa and the projects (both Architectural and ethnographic) we could undertake together. To broaden my understanding of the kind of work he engaged with, Victor took me to some of the Portuguese mansions he had restored himself. I was stupefied at what he was able to accomplish with the old houses as well as new houses built for foreigners in the Goan architectural vocabulary. We visited other prospective projects and shared views on areas that catered to our mutual interest and desire for collaboration.

Victor is crazily in love with Goa and all things Goan. He works hard throughout the day to improve the museum with whatever funds he can gather, both personal as well as from the small fee he collects from visitors at the museum. Personally, I have great respect for Victor and his endeavours and I look forward to helping him in whatever way I can ­although, the distance and my sporadic trips to Goa make it a little difficult to keep my involvement consistent. I wish Victor all the very best on his inspiring journey.

---

Joseph Canisius Dias is an Architect by profession who has worked on several iconic projects in Dubai like the Emirates Towers, National Bank of Dubai and Shangri­ La Hotel. He is also a writer (“Dona Paula”, “The Magical Bone Flute”), musician (Flute, Sax), Cartoonist/Illustrator, and a storyteller. His Facebook page, ‘Jodi’s Art’ is well-known among Goans all over the world for its funny and informative posts. He partners a publishing firm and bookstore (Word Ventures, Margao) with his brother. Jodi’s Comic Art Gallery in Margao is his latest venture with a few more in the pipeline.

A Unique Artistic Personality

By Gerard Machado

Goa Chitra’s roots, in many ways, are linked with the curator’s deep-founded interest and previous experience with the music scene in Goa. Victor Hugo Gomes’s pioneering Jazz Music Festivals of the early 2000s in Goa were given a new lease of life with the launch of Goa Chitra. One of the jazz musicians who performed at the museum, Gerard Machado, shares his experience.

---

 Victor Hugo Gomes has long been a stalwart in organizing music concerts in Goa. One day I got a call from him inviting me to perform with my Jazz band at his Great Music Revival concert series, I accepted his invitation and this was the first time I met him in the year 2000. During my three day stay at the Marriott hotel we must have met only two or three times during breakfast or at the lunch table in the coffee shop. We hardly had any conversation. I returned to Bangalore where I live. A year later Victor came over to Bangalore along with his wife Aldina, we hung out at a friend’s farm in the outskirts of Bangalore playing music and chatting on various topics like philosophy, history, art, culture.

Victor Hugo’s The Great Music Revival 2000 by Alexyz

Victor visited me several times in Bangalore, we became good friends. It was at one of those all night jam sessions and discussions he mentioned to me that he would like to create a Museum showcasing and promoting Goan heritage, art and culture at his vast land in Benaulim. Wow! Sounds great! But that’s going to be a mammoth task, I said to him. Victor was serious and determined. I knew he was dreaming big, he always did and always came up with brilliant ideas. I also knew he is hard working and is capable of getting done anything he wanted to make his dream come true.

After a couple when years I came to Goa for another performance, I visited Victor and he took me over to his dream project site. The site was all cleaned up and ready for construction. He explained the plan to me briefly. The man with a plan and vision was at work towards turning his land into a Museum. I returned to Bangalore after a few days. We kept in touch as some more years passed by and Victor’s dream project was ready. He founded Goa Chitra and Goa Chakra for the whole world to see. An awesome way of connecting the present with the past that appealed to the masses, especially the youth.

Recently I visited Goa Chitra along with my wife Stella, we took a tour around the Museum and had a wonderful experience viewing ancient artifacts, implements, items of Goan cultural & historical interest that are on display. We were informed by Aldina that Victor himself had picked up many of these items from the remote areas of Goa far and near. Beautiful paintings painted by Victor and other artists are also on display and are a treat for all art lovers visiting the Museum.

Music Concerts held at the museum over the years.

Last year I had the privilege to perform with my Jazz band at Goa Chitra for a wonderful Goan and expat audience.  The Concert was a fund raiser to patronize the magnificent Museum Goa Chitra. As a musician and artist I felt the need to support a cause I firmly believed in.

---

Gerard Machado is a Bangalore-based Jazz musician. Hailing from the musical Vonn Trap family of Mangalore, he began playing guitar at the age of six and has worked and collaborated with many musicians in India and abroad. Gerard has experimented with Indian classical music and has produced Jazz/Fusion and Gospel Albums. Apart from composing jingles and scoring music for numerous feature and animation films, he has performed for “Jazz Yatras”. His band “The Gerard Machado Network” plays Contemporary Jazz incorporating the Blues, Funk, Latin and Indian Rhythms.

When the Art World United: Part II

To read the first part of When the Art World United, click here.

The King and the Peasant

By Malavika Neurekar

Victor Hugo Gomes, made weary by the pace at which his work was taking place, woke up to an unexpected email on the morning of 21^st October, 2009. It was a letter from a great Goan artist based in California, Dom Martin, which opened with a small tale:

“In ancient times, a king had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the big stone out of the way. Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. On approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. As the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many others never understand: every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.”

The implication of Dom Martin’s allegory became clearer as Victor continued to read the rest of the email. Dom Martin had decided to part with all that remained of his material possessions in Goa, and bequeathed a generous donation to Goa Chitra. Victor trembled with excitement and a certain degree of disbelief as he continued to read. Dom Martin, assuming the role of the ‘king’ and likening Victor to the ‘peasant’ in the story, had also bequeathed upon Victor theeight panels of pen on paper drawings that adorned St. Francis Xavier’s casket at the 1974 exposition; seventy-one original artworks locked up in Martin’s Porvorim flat; and the rights to the Porvorim flat of 140 sqmt!That was not all. The Vincent Xavier Verodiano Foundation, instituted by Dom Martin in memory of his father, was established with the objective of recognising and awarding excellence in various fields such as literature, arts, medicine, etc. The foundation had already conferred the prestigious award upon Victor earlier that same year (which included a cash donation of Rs. 50,000 and a medal), and now Dom Martin had expressed his wish to pass that legacy on to Victor as well, alongside the corpus fund of the Foundation at Victor’s disposal.

Victor was at a loss of words, and continues to be amazed even today every time he talks about that fateful October morning.In 2014, he launched the Dom Martin art gallery, which stands at the entrance of Goa Chitra, with the stated objective of promoting young local artists. All the works on displayat the gallery have been donated to Goa Chitra, and are for sale as a means of raising revenue for Goa Chitra. At the heart of this interaction is the fact that the two artists did not know each other personally or had even met. Yet, Dom Martin reached to Victor from the other end of the world based solely on Goa Chitra’s merit and the recognition of its struggles. A quick glance at the email correspondences between them reveals that both men harbour a desire to meet in some part of the world some day. An exemplification of how art transcends distance and space to make possible the coming together of like-minded souls, it is perhaps best expressed by Dom Martin himself in his piece The Aesthetic Evolution of Madness.

*

The Aesthetic Evolution of Madness…

By Dom Martin

If eccentricity is genius temperament then a refined madness, which motorizes one to maniacally scavenge for discarded vestiges of the past and metamorphose them into museum exhibits, rightfully deserves to be bestowed a cultural halo.  Victor Hugo Gomes belongs in this genre of madness.

In 2009, when I bequeathed my 3-bedroom flat and the entire collection of my mid 70’s art which was decaying therein, a condescending Victor thanked me profusely.  In the subsequent years, he staked out exorbitant sums of money to restore the art and the flat.

The question foments:  Did one caliber of madness underestimate, supersede or absolve the other?  The verdict is in the wallets of art collectors, which have a tendency to instantly fatten or resurrect upon the demise of artists who labored and continually exhibited within the engulfing walls of oblivion.

Other than for the uncommon commonality of symbiotic madness, Victor and I have yet to meet and perhaps, might never.  However, someday when posterity peers through time’s kaleidoscope, it might likely find our autonomous identity among the colorful, fragmented pieces.  And that, is satisfaction enough!

Of Implements and Dictionaries

By Malavika Neurekar

Victor Hugo Gomes used to be an artist. He did his masters in Print Making, and studied restoration of manuscripts and paper paintings at INTACH. When it came to researching and archiving the collection at the museum, he found himself in uncharted territory. In an impromptu speech delivered at the inauguration of Goa Chakra in 2014 Victor launched into a series of old Konkani sayings. “harroithamhunn gaindol ghelo, ani chirddun mello”, he said. If the earthworm imitates the method of the python, it will get trampled and die. And so he established his own method – he started translating all the Konkani dictionaries published 1897 onwards. He compiled his own glossary of thousands of forgotten Konkani words, travelling across Goa to interview village elders and double check the meanings of the Konkani words he had noted.

Languages develop intimately with the lifestyle of the people who speak them; they breed familiarity with the customs of the land. Thus, in English, a plough is a plough. The word for plough in the Konkani dictionary is nangor, but Victor traced other ploughs called pane, kosso, dongri, and loconddi, depending on the build, the design, the material, and the type of land on which it was used. The plough collection was almost complete when Victor was travelling with his friend Russell Murray in the Sattari taluka, documenting farming practices related to nachne and rice production. Bad weather conditions forced them to retreat to Ponda for the night, but in the morning they set off to meet another close friend Kanta Gawde. The three men then decided to hike up a hill, as Kanta Gawde wanted to show them a shrine of the local mountain gods. It was during the hike that Victor’s eyes fell upon a curious object sitting on the roof of a Dhangar house. It was a dongri nagor, a three-piece wooden plough designed specifically to be used on laterite soil in the valley. The roof had grown slippery from the rain, but after much persuasion and at a modest price, Victor was able to retrieve the now extinct dongri nagor, completing the plough collection at Goa Chitra.

The dongri nagor at the Dhangar’s house

Another interesting incident unfolded at a scrapyard in Curchorem, from where Victor Hugo retrieved a huge roller with a wooden frame and metal spikes. The implement lacked a history as nobody seemed to know anything about it except the fact that it was originally from Bicholim. With no idea of its story or its function, Victor named it ‘the spike roller’. He inspected the type of wood, the kind of soil stuck to it, the mud on the spikes, and whether there was any pollen embedded in it – all in an attempt to gather clues about its function. The object was shown to many agriculturists in Goa but no one could identify it. He set it aside, often spending long hours staring at it and wondering about its origin. It was during a chance encounter with the Gaonkar family in the jungles near Kanapur that he spotted a similar instrument of a smaller size. Victor often travels to Maharashtra and Karnataka to meet families of Goan origin that fled during the Goa Inquisition. The Gaonkar family traced their origin to Bicholim, and continue to make annual trips there for the religious festival Jolmidevacho Utsav. Victor inquired about the implement that resembled his ‘spike roller’ and was told that it was used to break or pulverize the ground to be brought under cultivation. The pieces were all falling in place. Once again, it was the dictionary that came to the rescue and filled in the final piece of the puzzle. Victor learned that the description of the spike roller fit that of a farming implement called pocruncho roll, a word found in a 1931 Konkani- English dictionary. It was described as a metal roller with spikes held by a wooden frame, and attached to a yoke and a rope to be drawn by bullocks and used to break the soil.

“Xendlolea boilache rakandareche kananth ghanto vazot ravta”, was another Konkani saying that Victor explained that day. When a farmer loses his bullock and hears any sound of cow bells he thinks it is his own bullock. This had become Victor’s condition – he saw the material culture of Goa everywhere and in everything. He may not have had a name for it then, but observe the trajectory of Victor’s life and all his actions seemed to be of a man attempting to retrace his roots, a man trying to capture the essence of the land. Much the same way a child runs around with a jar to catch fireflies.

Excerpts from ‘Land, Museum, Legacy’

By Malavika Neurekar

Rochelle Pinto and Aparna Balachandran’s Archives and Access Project is aimed at examining the complex relationship between private archiving, its legal implications, and the role of the State. In Land, Museum, Legacy, Rochelle Pinto, who is a historian specialising in pre-19^th Century histories of Goa and has been a professor in the English department at Delhi University, explores the issue through a first-hand account of her visit to Goa Chitra. While delving into the functions (and diminishing economic role) of Goa’s land ownership system and its implications on private researchers/archivers, she provides an insightful look at the collection at Goa Chitra, its arrangement within the space, and the aesthetic impact it creates.

“[Resources on the web] suggest how the arrangement of objects crowded into this converted living space reduces the objectifying distance that a conventional museum would produce. An art historian who recommended the museum also mentioned how sensitively the objects had been restored. It is not surprising, then, to find that Gomes was trained in restoration, at INTACH in Lucknow, and returned to Goa, the place where he grew up, as curator of the museum of Christian Art to work on another project.

The enormity of the numbers of objects, and labour that must have gone into retrieving each one astounds me as the nature of Gomes’ work sinks in. We are familiar enough with cooking pots and other objects that have a more active life in the worlds of rural communities appearing in our living rooms as objets d’art, and briefly one wonders whether this is an aestheticisation of rural life. But this museum seems to side-step this problem.

The presence of these objects, not yet fully out of use (or so it would seem) in Goa, begs the question of why they had to be museumised. It is true, for instance, that cultivation has dropped drastically within Goa for a range of reasons. In some areas, it is uneconomical when the sale of land or its conversion brings higher margins. In other areas, people have been forced off the land. In yet others, irrigation patterns have been forcefully changed. And in areas where cultivation continues, it tends to be fuelled with pesticide. Yet, one can scarcely say that fishing and cultivation do not continue, particularly where there are small landholdings, using, one would think, much the same kind of technology that Gomes has in his museum. But for certain, there are precious pieces of hand-crafted agricultural technology that are impressive here, and are not in use anymore.

The wooden sugarcane crusher bound with metal for instance, was ‘rescued’ by him from Sawantwadi and restored. The texture of wood and its areas of damage are moving, as the enormous piece bears witness to labour that has vanished. A visit to some of our protected national monuments, where cracks have been filled in with visibly different materials of varying colours, would reveal, by comparison, the painstaking nature of Gomes’ work over the last decade.”

While the fist part of Rochelle’s paper is largely descriptive, the latter part wanders into a more analytical territory. The future of Goa Chitra is a question raised by many. What after Victor Gomes? Victor’s answer to this is the systematic institutionalisation of the Goa Chitra brand – an objective grasped and framed by Pinto in the following passage.

“What makes this collection interesting to a project on internet technology and questions of archives and public access, are the last two lines of Victor’s letter of invitation to his museum, asking an unspecified ‘us’ to look at the museum communally, to suggest what journey it could take. One of these journeys is clear – there is a vast trove of information about practices relating to the land that Victor has accumulated. Even as he works at turning these into text, it is evident that it would be appropriate for someone to pick up this thread of the project that he has begun, to explore other media through which the diverse life of his museum can move. Educational curricula and other kinds of publications, both printed and online, can bring in different audiences, releasing the trove of information around each object, and making it accessible as a legacy for contemporary inhabitants of Goa. Such a development would dilute the idea of a legacy being locked within the intellectual production of a particular kind of elite in Goa’s past and could potentially tap into the knowledge base of students in non-urban locales. In fact, this museum is an explicit commitment to the children of Goa, whom Victor sees possibly growing up without any connection to what is the vital culture of their home.”

To read Land, Museum, Legacy in its entirety, click here.

The Magic of Madness

By Radharao Gracias

Radharo Gracias’s portrait of Victor Hugo Gomes and his journey of building Goa Chitra from the ground up is an uplifting piece about hope, the transformative power of dreams, and the importance of madness to be successful.

---

Do you know Victor was the question hurled at me. Of course, I do was my answer. And, then came the challenge. Write what you know about Victor. And so, I got to writing what you are about to read.

Do I know Victor? And this time the answer was a huge no. Does anyone know Victor? And the answer is no. Does Victor know himself? And the answer again is no. Strange but true.

I have actually “known” Victor for decades. I have often gone and sat with him, on the innocuous patch of land his family owned, not far from his ancestral house. And he would explain his plans for it which appeared to me to be unrealistic. But then, Victor is an artist. And every artist has a right to dream and to convert the dream into reality. Every subsequent visit, I was left wondering whether it is the same place I had visited a few months earlier. Dramatic changes were taking place. Sometimes I wondered is Victor a thief? Has he managed to get hold of P.C.Sorkar’s magic wand?

At other times, looking at Victor, I thought maybe he is the first successful alchemist. The innocuous property is now a wonderland where you can see the entire past at a glance. He has certainly managed to change base metal into bronze. And is well on his way to turn it into silver and gold!

And Victor has achieved all this with no help from any government authority or rather, despite obstacles by all powers that be. I have seen him struggle trying to secure access to his property. I have seen him struggle trying to overcome nightmares induced by officials, and achieve his dream. Nothing could daunt him.

How did Victor reach this far? I have no answer. But sometimes I wonder, has it something to do with his native village. As we know, Benaulim is known for the quality of its coconuts. And its nuts too. I remember in my younger days, when I was a little mischievous with my siblings, which was quite frequently, my mother would castigate me. And one day out of anger she shouted, is my son going mad? And my immediate answer was, may be. After all, I said, my grandmother (her mother) is from Benaulim. And she had a good laugh.

I believe that sometimes to achieve success one must have a little madness; the capacity to look beyond the ordinary. A little madness can do to you much more than full sobriety can. I have never seen Victor mad but did the Benaulim effect have any role to play in such a stupendous success? My guess is as good as yours.

And there is the old adage which goes, behind the success of every man…Victor’s wife has proved the adage meaningless and outdated. I have known Aldina for long. She is always by Victor’s side and not infrequently in front. And rarely behind. So, for those of you, who believe in the old saying, just forget it.

Now, I do not know how to conclude this bit of an essay. In fact, you cannot conclude anything about Victor at all. So you can be assured that as we go along, this blog will grow with Victor.

---

Radharao Gracias is an eminent lawyer, social activist, politician, and ornithologist. He was the former president of South Goa Advocates Association and a former independent MLA. He is a regular columnist and a history lover.

 

Responsive Rage

By Pravin Sabnis

On Victor Hugo’s exit from the Christian Art Museum over differences with the museum directors, Russell Murray said “I cannot say for sure, but I think it was the anger that he channelled to pick himself up and throw himself into something new.” In the following piece, Pravin Sabnis enlightens us further as to how Victor redirected all his rage and transformed it into creative productivity.

---

I first met him during our college days. He was studying in the Goa College of Art and I was studying at the Goa College of Architecture. My first impression of him was that of an ‘angry young man’. Over the years, many things have changed but not that original impression of the personality of Victor Hugo Gomes. He was always engulfed in fury, speaking against injustice, against mediocrity and against hypocrites and pretenders. Initially, I thought him to be just a talker but over many interactions emerged more layers of his personality. His indignation was not at the surface. The roots of his rage arose out of great depth. It was an era of student rebellion and angry voices of a restless crowd. But Victor’s anger was more personal rather than arising from a collective synergy. His angst seemed to be of a lone ranger, but a loner he did not remain. He seemed to enjoy the company of similarly angry, restless persons but he would not easily trust anyone fully.

Victor was as sharp as he was sceptical. Despite detailed discussions and explanations by me, he refused to join our college strike. It was pertinent to note that he was not ready to be part of the herd, just because his friend was leading it. He had no quarrel about the cause; he just was not convinced about his deep doubts and apprehensions. He would not jump into something just because he agreed with the purpose or trusted the proposer. He wanted to be clear about everything. The ‘who’ and ‘how’ were as important to him as the ‘why’ of doing anything. His indignation, which seemed uncontrolled, was aligned to critical and deep thinking. His rage chose to be responsive, not reactive. The art student’s fury was intertwined with passion. I began to realise that he held the emotion of hope as well as the sentiment of restlessness. Many of our generation seemed consumed by a rebellious rage, and displayed great integrity and commitment to this unrest. Yet most were not able to sustain the fire like Victor did.

Many of the angry young men and women moved away from the path of unrest. They had their reason and justifications of pulling back…first earning to sustain, then to go up the ladder. But Victor’s passionate rage seemed to be like the embers that remain smouldering on, even when the flames have died down. Victor stuck to his ‘agneepath’, even at the cost of being forced out of his labour of love that he so painstakingly put together. His passion was not doused even at the prospect of losing out due to his stubborn integrity. Every dampener would further fuel his fire. And this confirmed that the angry young man’s rage had not retreated with age.

Victor’s emotional fury made him constantly step out of the confines of his boundaries. From putting together music shows to restoring and retrieving a losing heritage, Victor allowed his rage to fuel his progress towards transforming the negative situation. His anger at the callous and careless attitude towards a diminishing cultural heritage resulted in the impressive Goa Chitra, then Goa Chakra, and now Goa Cruti.

As he continues to stretch the footprints of his impressive legacy, Victor has learnt to spread the fire among his growing team. Now, he no longer walks alone. His partner Aldina seems to be the balance that ensures that his anger is no longer just flames, it is more like a torch that not only lights up the path but can also turn into a cutting edge. Every stimulus can trigger off a wide range of responses. One of the possible responses is anger. So often, the situation is such that the rage seems natural. We get disturbed by the provocation born of dismay, disgust or distress. So easily we respond with rage, but it is pertinent to ask whether our rage is responsive.

Indignation is definitely desirable over indifference and insensitivity. But mere fury is just hot air. However, if the hot air makes a huge balloon rise and takes people along to loftier actions, then the fury turns worthy. We need to be better at ensuring that our rage is not just a reaction… it must transform into a responsive action that can strive to overcome the very cause of that rage… like Victor Hugo Gomes has!

---

Pravin Sabnis is a corporate coach with a passion to connect people to their potential. Through his enterprise ‘Unlearning Unlimited’, he has conducted over 1900 workshops. He is known for innovative use of song, dance and experiential activities. Pravin writes the Monday Muse blog since the first Monday of 2004. He also expresses his creativity through poetry, theatre and oratory. Pravin has been active in the student movement, Citizens Initiative for Communal Harmony, Goa Bachao Abhiyan and the SEZ Virodhi Manch. He is proactively involved in JCI, Rotary Club, Goa Hiking Association, Samraat Club, Nisarg Nature Club, FilmBeam and YHAI.

 

When the Art World United: Part I

By Malavika Neurekar

Artists are famous for being individualistic and non-conformist. As a society, we have collectively constructed a cookie-cutter persona of the ‘Lonely Artist’ – eccentric, aloof, often mad. But every once in a while, the creative community reaches out to each other, recognising only too well the struggles and ambitions of their acquaintances. Goa Chitra has actively encouraged such cooperation, hosting a variety of cultural events like performances or book launches. Victor Gomes is grateful that the art community, in turn, has also extended their support in numerous ways. (Case in point – much of the art work posted on Goa Chitra Rewind has been conceptualized and illustrated by Charudatta Ram Prabhudesai, and the layout has been designed by Bismarck Dias).

The sustenance of the Chitra museums has constantly been an uphill battle, and although there have been some disappointments and setbacks, the Goa Chitra story is just as much a story of hope and little victories. One of the strongest waves of support has come from the music community. Victor Gomes’s association with music goes way back to the early 2000s, when he was at the centre of the Great Music Revival. This association was carried forward with Goa Chitra – much after the jazz festivals had become a thing of the past – when musicians volunteered to perform at the museum. Joe Pereira, better known as Jazzy Joe (whose first ever concert in Goa, coincidentally, happened at one of Victor’s Revival concerts in the 90s) performed his last show before passing away in 2013 at Goa Chitra. Legendary musician and stand-up comedian like Ash Chandler and Opera singer, Oscar Castellino performed at Goa Chitra for free, which helped significantly with revenue generation. Many authors who held their book launches at Goa Chitra proceeded to donate some amount of their profit from the sale of the book to the museum as well.

Mario Miranda’s impressions of Jazzy Joe’s performance at Goa Chitra

As a painter himself, the fine arts have always held a special significance in Victor Gomes’s life. In 2014, Victor Gomes organised a Narrative Art Residency camp to celebrate International Women’s Day, inviting female artists from all over the world. The participating artists had travelled from Delhi, Ahmedabad, Poland, Russia, Germany, and included three local artists as well. The concept was to allow the artists to live at the museum, travel to remote areas of Goa, and interact with tribes and locals. This was to culminate into a series of works produced by them during the camp as an expression of their individual reaction to the experience. Yolanda D’souza, one of the participating artists, produced three paintings: two of which capture her interaction with the rural women, and the third one based on the agricultural implements at the museum. She states thatspending so much time in close proximity to the museum and looking at the collection evoked something that she was best able to express through her art. Mekhla Harrison, in a similar burst of artistic expression, used a blend of techniques to produce her art: black charcoal on paper depicting the tools; watercolours depicting a woman going through fire, based on a local’s narrative; women sowing rice paddy on the field; and a portrait of a village man and his agricultural tools on a red-earth background. Nirupa Naik described the whole experience as wholesome, as they got to interact actively with not only the agricultural implements, ornaments, and costumes used by different communities, but the communities and people themselves. All of the art work created during the camp was exhibited at the Dom Martin Art gallery, inaugurated that same year, and put up for sale. All the proceeds from the sale of these paintings went to the Goa Chitra fund.

Aside from the Narrative Art Residency Camp, there have been other artist-friends that have voluntarily donated their works to be set up at the Art Gallery. Norman Tagore, who donated to Goa Chitra his award winning painting of a female Rhino with its horn cut off, is grateful to Victor’s support in the past and wished to return the favour. Mohan Naik expressed a similar sentiment, stating that his decision to donate two paintings was taken because he was delighted by the Goa Chitra mission. Charudatta, a dear friend of Victor’s, donated his pieces in order to help Goa Chitra through a financially difficult time. However, it was Rajendra Usapkar who brought home the true spirit in which these donations were made: upon asking him what motivated him to donate his art work to Goa Chitra, he promptly responded that it is of extreme importance that artists reach out and lend a hand to each other. In an age where we tend to live by the ‘survival of the fittest’ instinct, there is something refreshing about the moment when members of a community join hands, allowing talent to be recognised, encouraged, and co-exist.

To see the complete list of artist supporters/donors, click here.

 

The Making of an Artist

By Mekhla Harrison

Mekhla Harrison, Victor’s friend during his art days in Lucknow and later a participant of the Narrative Art residency camp at Goa Chitra, tells all: her interactions with Victor, bonding over ideas of art and life, and the Goa of the 90s.

---

Victor Hugo’s and my friendship goes back to 1990-91 when I was a scholar at the Lalit Kala Academy in Lucknow and Victor was a young visiting artist who had come looking for a studio just after passing out from an art college in Goa. I shared the Lalit Kala Academy community studio along with other Research Grant Awardees like Harshvardhanand. Victor was using the landing of a staircase as his studio. His work was very different from mine, detailed and about the universe and life. We discussed our work and what the symbols we worked with represented, since there were similarities and yet diversity in our understanding and expression. It was a struggle to portray the meaning of life and what we understood of it at that age.

We used to meet and spend a lot of time together. It was one year of intense work and discussions regarding life and politics and books…and dreams. We connected on the ideas we shared about peasants and farmers, the real people who work with the soil and are responsible for everybody’s survival. I am from the hills and I have great respect and admiration for farmers. My artist of intense admiration had been Vincent Van Gough who also worked with peasants and painted their lives. I saw Victor was also very sincere about his work but seemed uninterested in awards and recognition. I encouraged him to apply for the same Research Grant scholarship that I benefited from. He applied and was selected for the grant the following year.

Victor wanted me to see Goa and invited me as one of the National artists for an artist’s camp, which was a part of the much talked about Arlem beer festival of 1991. The festival was conceived by him as an art and culture festival to encourage families and art communities to participate. There were a few students from Goa College of Art who had participated for the art camp had put up their works too. It was my first time in Goa and I loved the life, vibrant and so much energy that I decided to stay back for 6 months or more. It was adventurous and exciting meeting people who were different and following their dreams. Seeing different places, temples and churches, farms and life in the farms was refreshing for me.

Around that time, Dutch artist Fritz Kraya, Victor and I joined hands to work together and setup a place called Spiritual Institute of Fine Arts, taking art classes and yoga in a rented house in Sernabatim, Colva. It was the most perfect part of my life. Eventually, we realized that art had not really taken off in Goa and it became a major strain on our finances. As most perfect things don’t last forever, so did this dream come to an end with Fritz having to go back to Holland. I left Goa too. But Goa was beautiful in those days, 1992….not too crowded, and definitely not these many unplanned multi-story buildings….

Since I’ve known Victor, he has always seemed to be obsessed with ideas for promoting local arts and crafts of Goa and its culture. Real culture, he said and felt was not known to people at large. He felt that the ‘Fun Goa’, known for its beach life, is not the ‘Real Goa’. He seemed to be disturbed and concerned back then.

It was many years later when we met again in Delhi around 2007-08 where he had come to put up a stall on behalf of Goa Tourism for the International Travel Mart. He spoke about trying to set up a museum in Goa and the next thing I knew was that he already started his Museum of agricultural finds in 2009. It didn’t come as much of a surprise since he had been silently collecting things from his ancestral homes and from the farmers there. However, it was the sheer single-handed efforts and determination that impressed me. One doesn’t think that the huge plans that a 22 year old had could be turned into a reality after 20 odd years.

Paintings Donated by Mekhla to Goa Chitra’s Dom Martin Art Gallery as apart of the Narrative Art Residency Program.

I got a chance to visit Goa Chitra in 2014 when Victor invited me for the All Women Artist Camp which was an unforgettable experience by itself. His idea was to bring back the tradition of ‘narrative art’ and to explore the different approaches to it. He took us to visit remote villages and farmers, and we were asked to capture the female energy that exists within our society through art narratives. To re-examine the weakness of betrayal that is portrayed and capture her strengths; to let our creativity acknowledge the cultural-femininity within our daily living and traditions. We were taken to remote villages of Goa where the origins of the implements on display at Goa Chitra were collected, to connect with the lives of those that once lived and worked with them, creating visuals that narrate a story. We were given the opportunity to experience firsthand the rural life in Goa and interact with the natives of Goa. On the first 7 days we stayed at the Wildlife Sanctuary in Canacona and at a farm in the jungles of Netravali, and spent the last few days at Goa Chitra. We were made to create Illustrative and narrative expression through paintings and drawings using the museum’s immense collection of cultural and ethnographic display and site-specific projects that interpret and contribute to the awareness of the environmental challenges battling mankind in today’s era.The museum itself was impressive and has a huge collection of farming tools that caught my attention, besides the carriages from all over the country. Beautifully displayed and preserved with detailed information, Victor’s plan of expanding his museum is now a reality, and it never ceases to surprise me.

---

Mekhla Harrison is an artist and professor at the WLCI, New Delhi. She acquired her Bachelors in Fine Arts from JJ school of Art, Mumbai, followed by a Masters in Fine Arts from College of Art, New Delhi and a Masters in Conservation and Restoration at DIHRM, New Delhi. She has been the recipient of several awards and scholarships, which include a research grant from Lalit Kala Academy, a scholarship of the Koninklijke Academie Van Beeldende Kunsten, and a B.C. Sanyal Grant Award. She also has a wide range of teaching experience at Design institutes such as the Apeejay Institute of Design, JD Institute, Design Innovation Academy, and Amity University.

Jack of all Trades, Master of a Museum

By Francisco Colaco

I know Victor for many years now. I would call him an “eccentric”. But it is here that lies his forte: an unconventional man always in search of a goal. Being multifaceted, he would dabble in everything and succeed in nothing. A lover of jazz, he brought to Goa many prominent Indian and worlds artists. But after initial success, his events management efforts fizzled-out. Then, he opened a few restaurants. After a favourable response his endeavours died down and I am sure he must have incurred a financial loss in the bargain. I heard then that he had started an agricultural farm but there was no news of it after a time. Poor Victor, meant to court failure forever, I mused.

One day over a few drinks he told me he wanted the Konkani meaning of various words and asked me whether I could help. “Definitely”, I replied as a “xanno”. But my efforts didn’t pass muster. It was at this time that Victor disclosed that he was bent to put together a cultural heritage museum with centuries-old heritage material from all over Goa. A daunting task indeed!

But “beg, borrow or steal” this time his resolve was of steel. And with a never say die attitude he put together an obra-prima. We Goenkars are proud of him. Goa Chitra has now become a rendezvous for connoisseurs from all over the world, a world-renowned museum which consists of “Goa Chitra”, “Goa Chakra” and “Goa Cruti”. It has become the fulcral point for visitors from all over the world.

Dr. Francisco Colaco on Vocals at the Jazzy Joe Concert held at Goa Chitra

Dr. Francisco Colaco at the book launch of Goa Rewound held at Goa Chitra

Victor is passionate, like no one else, about his baby. Yet I know there will always be hardships in his way, the main one being the huge running costs of such a mammoth venture. But with his dogged determination, the help of his devoted wife, of thousands of his admirers and especially with God’s blessings his dreams will come true.

---

Dr. Francisco Colaco is a consultant physician and Echocardiographer practicing in Margao. He completed his education in 1972, graduating from the University of Bombay through Seth G.S Medical College and KEM Hospital.He has trained at the University of Alabama, USA under the ‘Father of Modern Echocardiogrphy’, Dr.Navin Nanda; been a visiting professor at John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, USA; been the president of Goa State IMA (Indian Medical Association); and lectured at several national and international conferences. He has been the recipient of many awards for his contribution to the world of Medicine, and in his leisure time, enjoys singing, dancing, and playing the guitar.