-Atika Modassir (Oxon)
With four PG degrees and a career spanning education and global HR leadership, Atika has followed one enduring question through Oxford lecture halls, global boardrooms, and her Goan homestead- what helps people and societies grow, flourish, and find meaning?
A Portuguese friend of mine taught me an exquisite word that I find very profound- ‘reparar’. Meaning to pause while witnessing, granting genuine attention by stopping to notice. It beautifully expresses the essence of what I found myself gazing upon at Still / Goa: A Place in its People. Organised by Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts and the Consulate General of Portugal in Goa, it is an exhibition by Inês Gonsalves and Catarina Portas. Call it photography, but to me it is an act of reparar- truly pausing to observe Goa through its people. Seeing them in those chance encounters where the theatre of daily life comes alive, without any audience. When the land revealed itself- beyond the churches, temples, streets, and homes- it unveiled the face of its humanity through the people- the village priest, matchmakers, writers, teachers, freedom fighters, historians, merchants, cooks, and a myriad of threads embodying the social fabric of the community. When Inês and Catarina arrived decades ago in 1994, staying until 2004, they found themselves witnessing an era of transition. Through them, we see how a millennium turned the old ways of living into the new ways we now witness.
I see two old ladies standing side by side- sisters perhaps. The modest smiles on their weathered faces are in varying degrees of bloom. One looks like something is playing on her mind, and the other feels more present as both stand in a dignified stance. An umbrella hangs on the crook of one’s arm, and a handbag nestles in the hands of the other. My mind jumps to Instagram shots of any girl’s day out now- an elaborate choreography of tongues, pouts, and tilted hips. It strikes me how social norms change with time and how much the visual glossary of a culture shifts with globalisation.
On the other hand, some things never change. Like a parent holding their child’s hands as they wade on the seashore together. It’s an image every Goan family has captured and cherished through the ages- the old linking hands with their young, walking them steadily through the waves that come at them.
A priest walks away on a path, making me wonder what is on his mind. Maybe he is thinking about the next sermon his parish needs to hear, or how he can offer comfort to someone in need. Maybe he is contemplating the rigour of his road, the peace that hardship brings, or maybe nothing at all; I will never know. What I do know is that the Goa of the photos he inhabited has always loved its culture with the same fervour he loved his parish.
A little girl stands firmly planted atop a stack of straw in a field. Her book clutched resolutely across her chest; her eyes look straight into mine. She appears suitably armed with her book and her dreams, ready to face any challenges that life may throw at her. A lot like the good folk I see now- resolute against the odds, firm in the conviction of their beliefs- that what we want to preserve is worth fighting for.
Time freezes when a Ferris wheel stands motionless, but somehow, I can still hear laughter ringing in the air at the empty fairground. Sounds like the echoes of the past that I can hear though Still / Goa- showing us a moment in time when our past was on its way to becoming the past.
Then there’s the parked Fiat Premier Padmini. They were discontinued in 2001; hence, now we call them vintage. The photo took me back to a baby picture where I’m perched on our Fiat’s bonnet, parents holding me- my mother laughing out loud, as my father smiles amidst swaying coconut palms. The picture of joys well lived. Therein lies the alchemy of still photography- it waits quietly as we look at it, then illuminates our senses with what it means for us and where it carries us away. To think of the exhibition as a retrospective would be limiting; it is more like stepping into an accidental time machine-seen not through the lens of travellers or a Portuguese photographer, but through the eyes of human beings who cared; to pause and look. Inês and Catarina reflect: ‘So what Goa showed us revealed a great deal about our own country too, a past that was not always as glorious as claimed. One that disturbed us and sometimes raised many questions. We learned to distinguish between eras, policies and behaviours, and gradually unravelled consequences and legacies. Just as the photographs in black and white taught us to distinguish the many shades of grey in the history of the world. Marcel Proust, in ‘In Search of Lost Time ’, says, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”. Twenty years ago, two people came looking for Goa, but they found it looking back at them- right into their souls.
