Monsoon lifestyle in Goa

Ben Antao

This year the monsoons have wreaked havoc in south Goa, I learn, and being from Salcete I  remember well the days and nights when it rained continuously for a week or two in the forties and fifties.

Now, how would people cope in such relentless, protracted, torrential downpour that might highlight the better part of a month?

Those confined to their homes and hearths would lapse into a typically monsoon lifestyle. Rising to the rumbling of intermittent thunder, Joe's mother would roll up the straw mattress and place it leaning against the corner of the room. Then she would go into the kitchen and light up the firewood stove, first to make tea, then rice gruel (congee).

After tea and while the congee cooked in the clay pot, she would sit on a low kitchen stool and beguile the time counting the beads of the rosary.

From the front window facing the verandah and one side of the leaves trough that covered the stoop, ten-year-old Joe would gaze at the half-moon trough spouting copious cascades. Along the border of the verandah ribbons of water drained from the sloping red tiles projecting from the roof.

Around ten in the morning he would sit down at the long table in the dining-living room to enjoy a bowl of rice gruel with mango miskut. The miskut is a pickle of small green tender mangoes that are slit, salted, kept under heavy weight for three days, stuffed with masala ground from hot-oil treated spices, such as asafetida, turmeric, and fenugreek.

The stuffed mango trips preserved in a jar of coconut oil and mustard seeds would be ready for eating in about a month. The sour-hot taste of the miskut would at once dispel the languorous disposition that beset the house-bound and rekindle a spark of enthusiasm for the rainy season.

After the congee it was time to look out the window and observe the surrounding trees taking a perpetual shower. The sturdy guava tree, its knotted branches fruitless, stood near the stone wall fence bent on protecting its leaves from touching the broken glass that studded the wall top. The tall banana stalks outside the kitchen sink had yielded to the fury of the storm the previous night, and now lay broken and bent like protractor at a 45 degree angle.


Across the guava tree a solitary grapefruit in the neighbor's compound enticed the eye and begged to be picked. In a corner inside the fence a young coconut tree ached to grow up and bear fruit as a bud stood erect and spear like in its crown needling the rain.

Close by a clump of bamboos sheltered in the leafage of the jackfruit tree and occasionally rustled to draw attention to their pale green willowy polished stems. The jackfruit tree having brought forth an abundant crop three months earlier was now resting in a well-deserved vacation in the rain.

In the front yard the gnarled mango tree that would blossom profusely but produce only a few fruit of the sensational Afonso variety appeared unperturbed with the changing seasons. Its branches had been chopped down because they bothered the neighbors across by straying into their compound.

Out of spite it refused to bear fruit plentifully, unlike another another's tree near the village community well, whose fruit surpassed the leaves in quantity and provided a feast for the crows. That morning, though, Joe had plucked a couple of mango leaves from a branch that was allowed to stray over the verandah. After brushing his teeth with a stick of charcoal from the hearth, he polished his teeth with the mango leaves. And now as he looked at the afonso tree he smiled in satisfaction.

Since getting out of the house is unthinkable in such weather, the folks mainly rely on the provisions they have made for the rainy day. For lunch and supper Joe's mother prepared the usual boiled rice in the black earthen pot, and for curry she used the sun dried salted mackerel fillets, a traditional standby of the monsoon season. The curry sauce, also made in a pot of baked clay, featured crushed red chilies, crushed turmeric and cumin seeds, and a few dried salted mango slices. These ingredients were added to chopped onion sautéed in coconut oil.

This simple broth-like curry lent the fillets an exquisite sour and hot taste that lingered in the mouth for hours.

Another monsoon favorite was the paro, a pickled preserved of dried mackerel fillets. The fillets are washed in vinegar and covered in masala consisting of dry chilies, ginger, cumin seeds, peppercorns and turmeric, all ground in vinegar and kept in a tightly sealed jar for three to four weeks. The fillets, served fried in coconut oil, added zest to a simple meal of boiled rice and plain curry sauce.

Then there was the preserve of balchao of dried newly spawned shrimps. The masala for this was ground in coconut fenim.

Another monsoon favorite was the dried fillet of cod or the shark. A piece of the cod fillet roasted on glowing embers and dipped in oil was all one needed as an appetizer for a plain curry and rice.

With so much preserved food to titillate the palate, Joe did not lack for variety, even if a piece of paro or a spoon of balchao or a slice of miskut became the regular diet of the rainy day and night for many people in the villages of Goa.

Have a good day, sunny, rainy, whatever!

Ben Antao
August 11, 1999