Selma Carvalho is the author of 'A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa, 1865 - 1980'. Between 2011- 2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British Goans project in London
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Having spent his childhood in Dharwar, George returned to Bombay in 1947, just as the intoxicating air of freedom filled the lungs of every citizen
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Death is unfamiliar territory to me. Mostly, I’ve been spared the pain of losing people I’ve known. Hearing about George Menezes’s passing earlier this month, I was overcome by a myriad of emotions, none of which I could express through words.
I’d lost touch with George in the last few years, largely from my own laziness. George would accuse me of suffering from telephonitis “ a strange malady which causes an aversion to telephones. But for two years from 2011 to 2013, George and I communicated almost every day, either by phone or through email. I’d convinced George of putting together an anthology of his writing: the humourous ‘middles’ he was so famous for; his equally prescient views on politics, the Catholic church and communalism; as well as a clutch of never-before published poems. Alongside his writings would be a brief biography of his life introduced by me. That collaboration resulted in the book, ‘The Naked Liberal’.
George was born on 10 April, 1929, in Bombay and baptised at the St Francis Xavier Church at Dabul. The enormity of the fact that he was the eldest son of major poet, Armando Menezes, a towering gentleman of disparate tempers, and Mathilda Rebelo, a “short, chubby woman”, did not weigh heavily on the toddler's mind. Shortly after George’s birth, Dr. Antonio Oliveira Salazar, proclaimed the discriminatory Acto Colonial. His father, Armando despised the implications of this Act. Politics, activism and religion, would shape the very milieu of George's existence.
George came of age, against a backdrop of his father’s nationalism. His father had become persona non grata with the Portuguese authorities because of his nationalist sympathies. A faint rumour had persisted that Armando was earmarked for the foreign services with a posting in Brazil. This came to naught but in 1947, when he was appointed as Indian Consul General to Goa, replacing MRA Baig, the Portuguese torpedoed the appointment. Meanwhile, George, early on had asserted his own political views. At thirteen, George cut classes to join freedom fighters in burning a railway station connecting Dharwar to Hubli. He spent a day in prison and had to be bailed out by his father.
Having spent his childhood in Dharwar, where his father, Armando was principal of Karnatak College, George returned to Bombay in 1947, just as the intoxicating air of freedom filled the lungs of every citizen. It was on 30th of December, 1956, that a dapper twenty-seven year old George married the convent-educated Thecla Mascarenhas. The bridegroom did not wear the traditional European dark woollen suit. Instead, he wore an elegantly tailored Indian Airforce uniform. By then, George had joined the Indian Armed Forces. The young bride was more traditional, in a flowing dress of white lace, carrying an exquisite bouquet of freshly plucked flowers. Like most middle-class weddings of Goan families not flush with money in Fifties Bombay, it was a common Mass wedding, the religious ceremony shared by three couples, at the St Michael's Church in Mahim, followed by a reception on the tennis courts of the Catholic Gymkhana. The momentousness of the occasion, however, was apparent in the guest-list. This was the coming together of two of Bombay’s finest Goan families. The father of the groom was Professor Armando Menezes; from the bride’s side was the formidable William Xavier Mascarenhas, a brilliant engineer responsible for major infrastructural works, and the maverick priest Reverend HO Mascarenhas, a nationalist penalised for his views.
Three years into his marriage, George was posted to Paris as Assistant Air Attaché, a much sought after diplomatic posting. What followed was a life of Parisian charm; the whirlwind of diplomatic parties in one of Europe's most enchanting capitals, baguettes and fine wine, the romance of the countryside, and the responsibility of representing India. On his return voyage from France, a chance meeting with Karl Schutz of Hoechst Pharmaceuticals, engendered a twenty-four year career with the company, retiring as Director of Personnel and Training.
Oddly enough, the best pieces of writing in the anthology, ‘The Naked Liberal’, were eulogies a grieving George had written: for his father (‘Do you hear me Father, as I stand beside your grave, a few apologetic roses in my hand?); for his mother (I suppose I first met her in the warm, cosy, friendly and very chaotic place called The Eugene Maternity Home); for his beloved wife (She stood there in her yellow dress, a wild flower growing astonishingly in a field of cacti, bramble bush and wilted shrubs).
I don’t want to remember George in death. I want to remember only that day, when George, my husband and I took a rust-eaten, blue coloured ferry to Divar. I want to remember the river parting, the pleated ripples unfolding, the sun shinning benevolently on us, and George looking at me with the sort of trusting gaze which made him instantly likeable. I want to remember walking the long garden path leading up to his ancestral house, I want to remember being engulfed by a tremendous sense of history as tall trees crowded around me peeping through the windows into the house where poet Armando Menezes grew up. I want to remember George, there on the island of Divar, where I believe I’ll still find him, if I were to take the blue ferry.
