Recently, during a week in Goa unwinding from city life in Bangalore, I decided to leave my spot on the Candolim beach for a day to search for the last standing remnant of the alleged Croatian (Dubrovnik) colony in Goa. I'd read about it in articles a friend located for me at the Dubrovnik Scientific Library last spring, after some Croatian acquaintances were keen to show me newspaper clippings and pictures of themselves leaning against the whitewashed façade of the São Brás Church in Goa – memorabilia from trips taken years ago.
Croatian indologist Zdravka Matišić stirred up a flurry of interest in Goa within Croatia, and in 1999, a 15-member Croatian delegation flew to Gandaulim to visit the São Brás Church and investigate the possible Croatia-Goa connections. Nine years later, a São Brás priest, Father Orlando Lopez, returned the visit as a special guest of Dubrovnik's annual Festival of St Blaise (celebrated on 3 February, the same date as the Gandaulim Feast of São Brás), where he was given a donation for the renovation of the São Brás Church, collected by the citizens of Dubrovnik and pharmaceutical company Pliva.
With all my maps beckoning in that direction, I first rode my scooter to Old Goa, and from there towards nearby Cumbarjua, sensing São Brás might be just around the corner. When I ask about the church in Cumbarjua, an old man sitting at the side of the road waves his hand towards a canal and ferry dock just 20 metres away. I ride onto the ferry that is just docking, wedging my bike between two scooters whose teenage riders don't bother turning off their engines for the short crossing. They remind me of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, with thick hair neatly slicked back with abundant grease, geared up for an outing. Sitting behind them are two girls in bright polyester dresses heavy with glitter, their wrists flashing bulky new watches. The couples ooze a heady mixture of cheap fruity perfumes, alacrity and sweat.
In just a few minutes we dock on the other side of the canal, from where a narrow road leads slightly uphill. On either side, the vestiges of the stone bulwark that once protected the city of Goa – and along which the alleged Croatian colony, São Brás, was located – are covered in moss, but the old entrance gate has been torn down.