Anybody Home? is what the play was called. But, this was no knock, knock joke or a theatrical performance that entertained and drew a few laughs.
Anybody Home, a Mustard Seed production, was a serious play that brought to stage Francisco Luis Gomes, Magnod the character from his novel Os Brahmanes, juxtaposed with two modern-day characters in Salvita and Nandini who have differing perspectives of land and house.
This drama company has been entertaining Goans for the past 35 yearsThere’s Salvita, a grandniece of Francisco Luis Gomes coming from Mexico to the ancestral house in Navelim and getting waylaid by Nandini the neighbour who has plans to buy the Gomes house.
The latter dissuades the former from buying, tells her of ghosts in the house, but Salvita ventures in and in the old dusty room, meets the ghosts – first Magnod and then Gomes himself, who makes an appearance only about 20 minutes into the play that is about 50 minutes long.
What happens before he turns up? Well, you will have to watch the play.
If you haven’t read Os Brahmanes, then this play will give you an fair idea of the story. Fair idea, for the novel is not easy to understand. And, like the novel, the play Anybody Home has various layers.
If you haven’t read Os Brahmanes, then this play will give you an fair idea of the story. Fair idea, for the novel is not easy to understand. And, like the novel, the play Anybody Home has various layers.
It is a about a woman meeting the ghosts of her ancestors, it gives us a small inkling of the life of Gomes, it is almost a review of the novel while simultaneously being an interview with Gomes, even as a character of the play finally meets the author and gets to ask him a few questions.
National Librarians' Day: Ever been to the Francisco Luis Gomes District Library in Navelim?Yet, the play is not all about the past. As Isabel Santa Rita Vas, founder of Mustard Seed said, the play also speaks of the diaspora reality of Goans yesterday and today. And, it truly does.
Who knows, perhaps, there will come a day when generations of Goans who have lived abroad will come to Goa, knocking on the doors of their ancestral house asking the question, ‘Anybody Home?’
It is also a question for Goans today, whether there is anybody home and ready to defend their home, their Goa, that is out for sale. Francisco Luis Gomes may perhaps be asking this question of Goans.
The playwrights have dug deep into the novel, as there are many references to it in the play, and then, it also makes the viewer wonder what was going on in Gomes’ mind as he wrote it and also what was he thinking on his last voyage, during which he breathed his last.
Was he, as the character Salvita says, ‘still dreaming of home? Of coconut trees, mango trees, knowing deep down in his gut that he would not see it again?’
I, for one, would like to think he was. For Gomes loved his motherland and the years away would perhaps only make him yearn to return and see the red soil of Goa once again and be in the India he loved and was proud of.
If there was an effort to create some interest among the young who don't know much about this great Goan, then it may not have achieved it when staged at Don Bosco, Panjim, as there were a few empty chairs at the AV Hall, but there is hope.
Kala Academy and beyond: Where you can watch a tiatr in GoaVas did mention that when they performed at Goa University a couple of days earlier, they discovered that Os Brahmanes was being read by students, and that a Konkani teacher said she was teaching the novel to her students.
Hopefully, Anybody Home will revive interest in Francisco Luis Gomes and also renew efforts to restore the Gomes house, that lies in ruins in Navelim, South Goa.
Kudos to the cast, Neha Khaunte, Shimona de Costa e Fernandes, Kiran Bhandari and Rohan Olegario Nazareth, and directors Vas and Nazareth.
