FREDERICK NORONHA
Quite often, we end up with too many old books in our basement or loft. Protecting the same during the Goa monsoons can be a challenge, what with the termites and all. We end up feeling that we’d never probably have any use for these books. But is that really so?
Please don’t make the mistake of junking (or worse, selling to the ‘raddiwala’) the old titles that you, or someone in your family, collected over the decades. It can be a priceless treasure trove, especially if it falls into the right hands, that is.
Old books in Goa’s private and institutional collections might look like just sleepy relics on a shelf. Yet, they also hold the pulse of the region, keeping records of its cultural, political and linguistic journeys. As someone who has been collecting Goa-related books since my early 20s, I feel preserving such work is an invaluable (mostly) thankless task.
If you have just a few scattered volumes, it might not make much sense in understanding Goa in its totality. But when assembled together the value shows up. You can build a map of information, ideas, migration stories, debates, traditions and everyday practices about Goan life in the past. (My oldest book is now 111 years old.)
Many of these works document voices that have since vanished from mainstream histories. Among them are lesser-known writers, small presses, obscure pamphleteers, and community storytellers. Even if they seem to be now of little use, preserving and studying them safeguards our intellectual ecosystem. It also supports future scholarship. A forgotten text may reveal an important missing link in Goa’s literary or social history.
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Last week, after sharing a meal with a friend, the topic somehow reached to old books. He mentioned that his mum had passed away sometime back, and they were in the process of cleaning up her book collection.
A small light lit up. A quick visit later, one returned with a small treasure trove of books. Some children’s books (there’s always a generation waiting for this), prayer books, Portuguese titles, and even food-related books.
Of these, the most interesting was a 30-year-old souvenir called ‘Portuguese Food Festival’. Brought out in a modest get-up and size, it had 128 pages, many filled with advertisements. It was the initiative of the Fundação Cidade de Lisboa and the Indo-Portuguese Friendship Society. But, on its pages are a number of recipes which many would have forgotten by now.
Let’s recall the context though. The mid 1990s were just two decades after New Delhi and Lisbon had gone about normalising their relationships. Because of the peculiar (and bitter) way in which things worked out in 1961, the equation between these areas remained rather distant and unfriendly for long. Even after the 1974, post-Carnation Revolution resumption, there were still traces of distrust and suspicion lingering in some sections of Goa.
Consular links were just being set up, amidst some protests, as were the cultural foundations. So, the topic of food might have been a less contentious area through which to build bridges then.
The book contains simply-written (with few illustrations in black-and-white) recipes from Portugal. It covers soups, salt cod dishes, bread, fish, meat, rice dishes, desserts, poultry, cakes, snacks, and vegetable dishes.
Onion soup and marzipan might sound simple enough, as would sponge cake. But then there’s rice pudding, or even the baked pumpkin sweet, stewed mushrooms and Beira Soup. Sharing hints of this online drew some interest, though the test of the cooking is in the eating.
Not that there is any reason to be skeptical. These recipes came from Maria de Lurdes Modesto, as acknowledged in the book. Someone mentioned in passing that she was a prominent name, and a little online searching threw up more details on her work.
Modesto was in fact Portugal’s most influential culinary writer and television presenter, often described as the architect of modern Portuguese home cooking. Beginning in the 1960s, she brought regional food traditions into the national spotlight through pioneering TV programmes and later through her landmark books, especially ‘Cozinha Tradicional Portuguesa’.
This book became a foundational reference for documenting and preserving Portugal’s diverse gastronomic heritage. With a blend of rigour, warmth and deep respect for rural knowledge, she helped transform everyday dishes into cultural treasures. Modesto is also credited with having shaped how several generations understood Portuguese cuisine.
This might not exactly be a “Goa book”, but it is one that could be of relevance to those interested in food here, and also those whose culinary memories go back some decades. Some recipes that strike a faint bell include Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, Sardinhas Frescas de Caldeirada (fresh sardine stew), arroz-doce (rice pudding), leite creme (milk sweet), Toucinho do Céu. The last translates literally to “bacon from heaven”, and is a rich, traditional Portuguese almond cake or torte (sweet cake or tart) that originated in convents, made primarily from ground almonds, a large number of egg yolks, and sugar syrup.
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Each such book takes us back decades, to the memories of our ancestors. So one is grateful to the Menezes family of Miramar.
As far as preserving these goes, Goa is yet to do a satisfactory job of the same. Projects to digitise old books in Goa have struggled and got caught between good intentions and weak ecosystems. Many initiatives lack sustained funding, trained archival staff, and long-term institutional commitment. If funding is available, once these works are digitised, they are not well archived or easily accessible.
Digitisation got treated as a one-off event rather than an ongoing process that requires curation, metadata, conservation, and legal clarity on
copyright.
Then, there are other physical challenges. These include fragmented collections, fragile physical conditions, and coping with linguistic diversity (across languages like Portuguese, Konkani in two or more scripts, Marathi and English).
To this, we need to add technical and scholarly hurdles. Turf issues between institutions and private collectors also limit access. Some libraries seem to believe that if their documents are scanned and made publicly available, fewer people would visit there. But this is very different from the approaches taken in other parts of
the globe.
As a result, scanning here often happens without adequate cataloguing or public interfaces. Goa produces digital files that exist but are hard to find or use. Goa’s printed past is still more promised than preserved.
