João passed away peacefully in his sleep at 4.15 am on 14th August 2012. Without illness, not even a cold. I always thought he was a young man who looked old. Now I know that he was an old man who looked young. To be precise, he was 85.
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It was 1963. I was 10 years old. To the happy house which we rented from Eugénio de Melo on Rua Heliodóro Salgado, one morning came a humble elderly lady [who would then be described as a mulher de pano] accompanied by what looked like a young boy a few years older to me; he was slightly built, wore short pants, and had a friendly toothy smile. The lady asked for my mother, and the two women huddled together in serious discussion for a very long while. Then the elderly lady hugged the boy, left him behind with us, and walked away. That’s how João came into our lives, and stayed for precisely half a century.
Years later, my mother narrated the gist of the lady’s talk that day. It turned out she lived not too far from our house, and was often in need of charity. She had said “Bai, this is my son, and he is a bit of a simpleton. He was being looked after by the priests in Don Bosco, but they are not in a position to keep him there any longer. He is not very strong mentally or physically, so he can’t get a job anywhere. I am advancing in age and not keeping well. When I pass away there will be no one to look after him. He will be out in the streets with the only option of a life in the market place or near the ferry boat. He will not last long there. Would you please take him in and look after him for me? He may not be of much practical use to you, but he is a good boy.”
I realize now that the ‘young boy’ who was brought to our home that day was a grown man of 35. Who didn’t look a day over 15, though in a slightly curious way.
When we moved to Miramar a few years later, I remember that João had two chores. To fetch milk from the milk booth down the footpath in the morning. And to walk the dogs on the beach at the other end of the footpath in the evening. Both chores which he loved and couldn’t be talked out of doing, as they provided what he prized most in life: human contact and gozalio [talk, chit-chat, shooting the breeze], both in the milk booth queue, and on the beach. And they satisfied his unconditional love for animals, whom he adored. My mother always defended him against all criticism and funny comments. She always said “João may be simple. But can you find such honesty, loyalty and commitment today? Even at your high fancy modern salaries? I would trust him with un-weighed gold powder. João is priceless.”
He lived a happy, care-free, healthy life in spite of being a bachelor, or perhaps because he was a bachelor. He had countless friends and well-wishers from every walk of life [my friends and my parents’ friends, doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants, musicians, actors, all ask ‘How is João?’ when they see me, usually before asking how I am], and he had not a single enemy. There was no one he ever did or wished ill.
All this is much more than I can say for myself.
When younger he never missed a temple or church or mosque feast in distant corners of Goa, from where he always returned with pockets full of food – for the dogs. He never missed a matka number, his countless day trips to the gaddo for biddies, and of course his happy evening trips to his favourite Miramar bar, on whose terrace he graced a table of a dozen or so old cronies who missed him badly on the rare occasions when João couldn’t make it. He returned from these excursions often in the mood to sing jolly songs, and sometimes in the mood to fight with the maid.
After both my parents passed away, he did not wish to be uprooted from Miramar. The action was all here: his friends, the never ending stream of people he greeted and talked to – they had been a part of his life for 33 years. So I hired a maid to look after him, cook for him, and clean the house and garden.
All seemed to go perfectly, until I made an unannounced trip there one evening, and discovered that the maid was an alcoholic. She was lying in a stupor in her room which was strewn with empty bottles. She had been cooking extremely pungent food to her own liking, which delicate João could not take. She had forced him to withdraw all the money from the bank account my mother had built up for him, and had taken it all. And she had threatened and frightened him into silence. I took a few quick decisions on the spot: within an hour I fired the maid, hired pick-up trucks to clear out all the furniture, locked up the house, and brought João to my home in Siolim.
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In the beginning, village life was too quiet for the Miramar boy. “Inga zaddam chodd!” was his verdict [‘Too many trees here!’]. But he eventually settled in, enjoyed the peace and quiet, made friends with everyone who came over and the immediate neighbours, and soon got used to the affectionate attention, motherly care and wonderful food cooked by Sandhya and Vonita, my maids.
In the years he spent here, I religiously poured him a small caju in the evenings. He didn’t want a large peg anymore, he said it made his legs unsteady. Sometimes we shared a drink together, listening to old Konkani cantaram and talking about the old days. He had an uncanny memory for people and incidents I myself couldn’t remember. He wasn’t a good one for recalling names, but had his own for everyone: foddó dotor [bald doctor], motteli bai [fat madam], haddió bab [bearded sir], dantró padri [big toothed priest, even though his own were much bigger], and so forth. These were not names he gave in mockery or in malice. They were innocent descriptions, like a child describes people. However, I shall mercifully refrain from disclosing the ‘innocent descriptions’ he had for each of you. On some of those bonding evenings of ours he would sing, and invariably start with ‘Heróis do Mar’, the Portuguese national anthem, followed by the hymns he had learned at Don Bosco during the Portuguese days. In the last two years, of his own volition, he totally stopped drinking. And curiously, a few months later, so did I.
João loved music, and had a fabulous ear and taste for it. After I auditioned a new musician for my band, he would come up in the evening and tell me what he thought of him. And his opinion invariably coincided with mine. He had a weakness for good drummers and percussionists. He couldn’t walk very steadily of late, but during our rehearsals he would dance where he thought we could not see him, to the great amusement of my maids.
The Rocker fooling around with my old sunglasses.
João had no concept of time or age. He would sometimes ask me “Baba, how old do you think I am, about 150?”. I would say ”Na re João, you must be 125 only.” And then I’d say he was actually 18, to which he’d laugh; and end the conversation by telling him he was a few years older to me – which I really believed he was.
Old age didn’t creep up on him. In November 2011 it suddenly ambushed him. And overnight he was old. Really old. Sometimes when he sat down he couldn’t get up again without help. Sometimes while standing he would lean like the Tower of Pisa, sideways or backwards, giving us all a fright. That’s when I first started suspecting he wasn’t just a few years older to me. He started keeping me up nights, calling out and wanting to be picked up from bed, walked around, and laid back in bed, which he wet. And after a while he wanted to be picked up again. So I hired him a full time professional nurse. He kept her up the same way, and after 3 nights she disappeared. So I got him another; this one survived 2 nights.
When I finally timidly asked whether he would like to go to a home for the aged, I thought he would protest vehemently. But to my great surprise, he smiled and said “Yes, when can I go, today?”. He spent the last 8 months at the Candolim Home for the Aged, where he miraculously stopped his night-time demands overnight. I guess he had become a bit of a spoilt brat here at home, pampered by my two maids whom he quite often bullied, throwing his seniority around: “Hanv adló tempachó! Portuguez tempachó!” [I am from the Good Old Days! From the Portuguese Days!]. At home he was the only senior citizen, the only old man, and he tended to overplay that role. I think being with other men of his age and above embarrassed him into behaving like them, and into being more self-sufficient. Wonder of wonders, he even stopped wetting his bed.
In the Home he found companions who had all the time in the world to indulge in his favourite activity: gozalio. They also played cards, watched TV and listened to music. They were given a glass of Port wine in the evenings, and – to João’s great delight – biddies. There were a few who read the Herald front to back every day, and then narrated the news to the others. Their favourite characters, whose exploits they followed avidly, were of course Babush and Churchill [maverick ministers in the Government of Goa].
Whenever we [my sister, my sons, their girlfriends, my friends, my maids, etc] visited we were always happy to find him, and the other inmates, spotlessly clean and smiling at any time of day – which is much more than one can say for many other homes for the aged out here. And fussy though he was here at our home, he always complimented the food in his new Home to me, even in private, out of the warden’s hearing. The other inmates grew fond of him, and the more able ones were protective when his walk was unsteady.
In the last few weeks he turned too weak and stiff to get out of bed. The nurses strolled him around on a wheel chair a couple of times a day. The in-house doctor, as well as my own who examined him, said he had absolutely no illness which they could treat him for. No diabetes, no blood pressure, no nothing. Perfect health. It was plain old age, which had so suddenly pounced on him a few months earlier, which was now slowly hugging him closer and closer. All they could prescribe were tonics with supplementary vitamins, but these couldn’t help João much. I knew conversation didn’t mean much to him anymore, so the last time I went I just took my guitar and softly sang him his favourite songs at his bedside. He murmured along to ‘Heróis do Mar’, and his feet moved in time under the bed sheet to all the rest.
One way to describe him may be as ‘a simpleton’. But another way would be to see a pure soul. Someone who, perhaps thanks to that very ‘simplicity’, was naturally incapable of pretense, jealousy, arrogance, vanity, intrigue, greed, hatred, and maybe even lust – though he had an infinite capacity for love. I think that just about eliminates most of the mortal sins. A soul free of all that has to be in Heaven, there’s no doubt about it. It is souls like mine that I’m worried about.
João was even incapable of lying. All one had to do was repeat the question a little louder the second time, and the truth would come tumbling out. “João, kitleo biddio vodlai re aiz?” “Donuch bab.””Kitleo? Sarkó saang!” “Hé hé… dhá vodlom dhá…”. [“João, how many biddies did you smoke today?” “Only two, sir.” “I beg your pardon? Tell me the truth!” “Well… well… I smoked ten.”] He would finish a bundle of 20 biddis in two days, but I never denied him his little pleasure. After all, like President Clinton of the USA, João too didn’t inhale. And I took a cue from Mother Teresa, who went out of her way to buy biddis for her old inmates.
I know João is doing much more than resting in peace. João is partying up there. Yes, I am certain he is already busy making a whole lot of new friends, and meeting all the old ones. And making St Peter’s eyes water with biddi smoke.
Remo Fernandes
Siolim, 15th August 2012
João [extreme right] dancing at my birthday 2010.