Fashion designer Wendell Rodricks writes about his childhood memory of Tia Rosa, a woman who lived in the neighbourhood of his small village of Colvale, and taught him a few secrets of the Goan kitchen.
It was almost at the end of morning mass that a chapel bell begins to peal. The priest looks up at the high-vaulted ceiling of the Saint Francis of the Wounds Church in the remote Goan village of Colvale. The blue ceiling of the apse is covered in gilted stars that reside in the church by day and escape to sparkle in the sky by night. The walls of the church are pimpled like a youth in acne bloom, interspersed with peeling paint, some pieces hanging mid-air on invisible cobwebs. Too much salt in the water when they plastered the church has caused this sprouting and peeling. The salty water has risen brick by laterite brick, seeping through the laterite holes. Defying gravity, the saline liquid has risen towards the vault leaving behind a uniform curtain of peeling and spluttering. If you listen closely, you can hear the walls move and the paint splutter like bubbles rising to the surface.Quite like the sound of water that bubbles in the large copper cauldron over the log fire in blackened, soot covered Goan kitchens.
The statue of Saint Francis on his knees below the crucified Christ is perched high on the altar platform. The face of Christ, resplendent with a pure silver halo, is bent towards the kneeling saint whose outstretched arms glow with pomegranate drops of stigmata. A second gong! At this peal, the eyes of the sparse congregation turn from the altar and its dim interiors to the glowing light in the east where the sun is beginning its ascent over the hills of Tivim. Through the pale morning light outside the main entrance of the church, a startled white owl flutters past into the dark recesses of the high roof. Then a low mournful gong again! Aunt Emilia whispers, ‘Someone has passed away. It sounds like it is someone near your house.’ She makes the sign of the cross and murmurs a prayer for the departed soul. On the fourth gong, the owl flies out of the church and swallows the sun.
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