Frederick Noronha
It was nearly half-a-century ago, when one walked into the Ataide Library at Mapusa for the first time. Being fascinated by books, this place too caught my fancy. It had an old world charm to it, it contained many books, and there also were so many eager readers lost in
reading there.
Like the other municipal libraries of Goa, it didn’t seem lavishly funded. But the staff kept busy and appeared both helpful and quite friendly. Above all, a number of middle aged and elderly (mostly) gents were busy silently reading newspapers and magazines. It had all the appearances of a shrine of knowledge.
In the background, there were wooden cupboards filled with magazines and books. Many were in Portuguese. This was in the late 1970s, and a remnant from the earlier times. But old is not necessarily of less value. On the contrary…
The cupboards were open access. You had the joy of discovering what books were available there, easily and without trouble. It gave the air of freedom.
Some years later, I discovered copies of the old magazine called The Goan World in this library. The Goan World was a magazine from the 1930s. It recognised, then too, that the Goan diaspora was widely scattered across the globe, and was contributing significantly to life back home.
It is a kind of a precursor to the magazine Goa Today. The latter emerged in the 1960s. It is still active, coming out every few months despite facing a threat to its existence during the challenging times of the pandemic. Later on, other online publications like The Goan Voice, UK, built links among the expat community worldwide. This is however no longer being updated.
On sharing this information (about The Goan World) with colleagues overseas, they were quite surprised. They had not encountered this magazine elsewhere. Some had not even known of its existence. Such is the wealth hiding in our old libraries.
Today, if you ask someone, they might not even know how the Ataide Municipal Library at Mapusa got its name. It’s expected to be reopened — after a many years gap — on April 23 this year, World Book Day. So taking a peek at that issue might be relevant here.
Few seem to know anything about the Ataide (sometimes spelt as Athaide) whose name this unique and 14-decades-old library pays tribute to. Fr. Mousinho de Ataide, a senior priest at the Seminary of Pilerne-Saligao, who has himself undertaken the translation and editing of the legendary Msgr Sebastiao Dalgado’s century-old unpublished work, is related to the figure after whom the library is named.
Francisco Luís Gonzaga de Ataíde (1825-1881) was a priest credited with laying the foundation of the current St. Anthony’s Monte Guirim, a prominent school in the Bardez and entire North Goa area. This Guirim school has educated generations of young men, preparing them for a life in migration too, and thus allowing them to contribute to Goa’s growth too. At one stage, till the 1970s and 1980s, it housed many boarders (residential students), from across Goa.
Fr. Mousinho comments of the senior Ataide: “He handed over the school to his nephew
Fr. Hipólito Higino de Luna, who was my father’s first cousin. Fr. Luna gave it to the Franciscan Capuchin Order [which still runs it].”
Born at Salvador do Mundo, Ataide studied at the Seminary of Chorão and founded a school at the island of Corjuem, a part of Aldona. In 1860, he transferred the school to Monte de Guirim. He offered the Preparatory Course to Theology as well as a Lyceum.
In 1873, he went to Mumbai to raise funds for his school, but he did not come back. He was appointed parish priest of the Gloria Church, today a prominent shrine in Byculla and earlier at Mazagaon, where he is buried. The Municipal Library of Mapusa, inaugurated in 1885, bears his name. The Portuguese scholar Luís Pedroso de Lima Cabral de Oliveira and the Aleixo Manuel Costa, who tracked the literary work of generation of Goan writers, have written about him.
Cabral de Oliveira explains that his Colégio do Monte de Guirim, was located in the centre of Bardez. Monte de Guirim had for centuries been a place of teaching: back in the 16th century, the Franciscans had constructed their Colégio Real de São Jerónimo there. Later, in the 19th century, due to the ending of the religious orders (“extinguished” is the word used), the buildings were handed over to the agricultural community
of Guirim.
The complex was already very damaged in 1860, when Ataide installed his school there. Ataide, through subscription, extended the Monte de Guirim institution. This educational establishment housed several hundred students for
some time.
The institution was attended by a large number of students, and especially in 1871, when branch classes of the Seminary and the Lyceum of Nova Goa were transferred from Mapuça. At this time, there were a large number of boarding students and more than 800 external students.
In order to pay off the debts he had acquired for these constructions, Ataide left for Mumbai in 1873 to collect subscriptions, He was appointed vicar for the church of Our Lady of Gloria, in Mazagãon in 1876, stayed on there, and died in 1881 in Mumbai itself.
Ataide was a member of the Sociedade da Geografia de Lisboa, the society dedicated to geography and related sciences, and a writer. Ataide’s sacrifice in building the institution, and the dedication of a significant part of his life to youth and education, has also been noted. His name was given to the Ataide Municipal Library, inaugurated on November 13, 1883, in Mapuca, and his portrait placed in its hall.
So many Bardezkars, and others too, have memories of this institution, and the pleasures of reading at it. It might not be relevant as to how plush the walls, structure and hardware of a library are. One can see brand new computers and printers, and yet little else pro-actively going on in a library. What is more crucial is what books it holds, and how helpful (and friendly) its staff is.
Municipal libraries have played a particularly useful role in Goa. Panaji too had its periodical reading room, in the heart of town, near the former Cine Nacional. On visiting Vasco once, many years ago, it was nice to see a busy library there too. This is the case with other municipalities as well.
In my younger days (early 1980s), Calangute had just got a new panchayat library, which was rather nice too. Of the NGO-run libraries, a few are active and well implemented, including the one at Curtorim. Possibly others too.
We need to remember the contribution of all those small institutions that have helped reading across Goa, modest and sometimes struggling to stay afloat. We definitely need to have more of those. To get those, citizens need to ask, remind, cajole and demand.
