Mangalore Lore: A Review of Shades Within Shadows

From the 16th century onwards there have been waves of migration from Goa to the Kanara coast, Mangalore, and even further on to the Malabar coast, which have been attributed to hostile political and economic conditions in those times. Shades Within Shadows is about the Mangaloreans (as  they are called) and particularly the Catholic ones and the terrible trauma they faced in the 18th century -- an agonising episode in Goan diaspora history.

Curiously the Mangaloreans are a diaspora that the native Goan is often either unwilling to acknowledge and even hostile to, as Alfred Rose's classic kantar Mungllurkar vo Goemkar testifies.  Often they would be called ghantkar for coming from over the Ghats often on foot in times gone by in order to collect their jonos in their comunidades. Many of these emigrants who wanted to rebuild their lives, whether converted or not, were of Gaud Saraswat Brahmin ancestry.  Even today, the names of many Mangalorean Catholics will carry their pre-conversion GSB surnames such as Kamath, Pai, Prabhu etc.

A terrible calamity swept over these people them in the 18th century and wiped out two thirds of this population: the sword of Tipu Sultan. Accused, probably falsely, by Tipu of assisting his rivals the English, they were rounded up and captured by him around Ash Wednesday of February 24, 1784.  They were marched into captivity in Seringapatam (the anglicized version of today’s Srirangapatna), a small island in the Kaveri 11 kms from Mysore.

This captivity of the Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam, which ended on May 4, 1799, remains the most disconsolate memory in their history.  During these 15 years of horror, an estimated 60000 of them were captured and of them 20,000 of them died on the march to Seringapatam due to hunger, disease and ill treatment by the soldiers.  Girls and young women were made wives of Muslims and young men who offered resistance were disfigured by cutting their noses, upper lips, and ears and paraded in the city...

The writer Alan Machado (Prabhu) a 61 year old Bangalore based engineer who has been a passionate chronicler of the Mangaloreans, has recorded these events both as history and as fiction.  His Sarasvati's Children (1991) is a history of the Mangalorean Christians.  If one reads this book first before turning to Shades within Shadows then the dramatic irony in the parts of the novel describing the community's exodus to Seringapatam is palpable. For, Machado in playing out the story of his own family in the form of a novel in Shades within Shadows, does what Sarasvati's Children did in another form -- document genocide. Although a work of fiction, interspersed in italics are citations from historical manuscripts and other documents that lend authenticity to the novel.

The first chapter is a prologue set in  Goa circa 1660 when owing to either the fires of the Portuguese Inquisition established in Goa in 1560, or to Maratha invaders, people began to flee southwards towards today's Kanara coast.  One of them was Pedru Machado Prabhu, who after much hardship arrived and settled in Ferangipet which is now a part of Mangalore.

There he marries and it is his grandson Jaki and his family which include his wife Zuan, his three children Joao, Foka, and Paulu who are at the epicenter of the novel.  Along with them are his neighbours Konngi, Karminn, and Katrinn; Natal and Bastiao and others.  What follows is the depiction of the life and culture of the Mangalorean Christians.

Flashes of humour light up the novel's grim subject. Many of the characters are known by the nicknames that they have bestowed on one another -- an enduring Goan habit. There are for instance: Foka (Francisco); Kuntto Pasku (lame Pascoal); Dukor Gibbu (pig Gilbert); Pongo (hunchback). One monk is incongruously called Duki Saibinn (Sorrowing Lady, after Our Lady of Dolours).

An interesting technique used to carry the narrative along and describe the environment without introducing more characters who might needlessly complicate the central plot is to personify birds and animals -- so there are generic characters like Crow, Cat, Snake, Rat and so on.

The novel takes the reader on a fictionalised tour of the life and culture of the 18th century Mangaloreans: their fondness for riddles; their belief in their pre-conversion ways; their love of feni, their food; their toilet....

Although the pace of the novel flags at times, the novel is a valuable addition to our understanding of the Goan diaspora.

[A version of this article was published in the March 2012 issue of GOA TODAY.]