Tagore Almeida’s ‘SALIGIA’ looks beyond religion and labels to explore the values that shape us
VINIKA VISWAMBHARAN
Behind the doors of an ancient house, demons wait in the surrounding forest. Inside, however, generations live by values such as kindness, courage, humility, integrity, gratitude, and compassion.
This is the heart of Tagore Almeida’s new book ‘SALIGIA’, released recently. Almeida, a technology professional with a longstanding interest in creative work, uses the book to explore faith, identity, and human behaviour. The book takes its name from a Latin acronym formed from the traditional names of the seven deadly sins: ‘superbia’ (pride), ‘avaritia’ (greed), ‘luxuria’(lust), ‘invidia’(envy), ‘gula’
(gluttony), ‘ira’(wrath), and ‘acedia’(sloth).
Yet, Almeida is not simply retelling the seven deadly sins. He uses them as the shadows against which his characters confront something more difficult: themselves.
The house in the story is not merely a setting. It represents the human soul and, in Almeida’s telling, it is the main character. “I chose the house partly because I did not want the story tied to a particular religious identity,” he explains, adding that a human protagonist would inevitably be labelled by readers; the house allowed the story to speak more universally.
“The evil might be outside,” he says, “but you can’t get peace of mind from outside. It is all within.” That idea sits as the book’s tagline, ‘The enemy is outside. The war is within’.
The book grew out of Almeida’s experiences of religion, migration, and encounters with people from different cultures. Born in Calangute, he spent nine years in London and later lived and worked across the Middle East and Asia as an international technology leader. Along the way, he says, he became increasingly interested in what different faiths shared rather than what separated them.
He recalls growing up around the harmony between Catholics and Hindus in Goa. His curiosity took him into conversations about Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. What emerged was a conviction that beneath different religious traditions, were common values. “So I decided to write a book about values that we all possess collectively,” he says.
His creative influences go back to Goa. Almeida recalls being 13 when he first encountered musician Remo Fernandes. “I said to myself, I want to be like this man,” he says. “Remo always sang about Goa. He sang about goodness, he sang about all these issues. And that’s what I love about him.”
His father, a former seminarian at Pilar, also influenced this thinking. After his death, Almeida found books on Islam, Hinduism, and Swami Vivekananda among his belongings. “It never let him change who he was as a Catholic,” he says. “But he was open-minded enough to know more.”
That openness is central to Almeida’s understanding of spirituality. He says he was raised Catholic in Goa, later practised Hinduism in London and eventually moved away from organised religion. Yet he does not describe himself as disconnected from spirituality. “A prayer comes from the heart,” he says. “It could take a second, it could take 10 seconds, it could take 10 hours.”
The house in ‘SALIGIA’ also contains Mr. Ianua as the protector who battles the demons outside, while Mrs. Ianua, the mother, nurtures and protects the values within. Almeida says the first two chapters were among the hardest to write because he was determined not to portray either gender as superior. “They had to be rewritten a number of times,” he says, explaining that he wanted to set the tone right.
The vices represented by the demons also made Almeida reflect on which he sees most in the world today. Greed, he believes, is hard to ignore. “By all means go out and find diamonds. I’m part of it as well. But are we losing something behind? What’s the cost of it?”
Though rooted in mythology and spirituality, ‘SALIGIA’ is ultimately concerned with values that transcend class, culture, and religion. “Whether it is a poor family living in a one-room house in Goa, or somebody living in a six-bedroom mansion elsewhere, those values are and should be the same,” says Almeida. “I always look at the core of all of us as sincerity.”
