Choris pao, and jaggery on a stick
Remembering St Francis Xavier’s Feast through the food stalls that dotted Old Goa.
The mountains called out to us.
Stacks of roasted chana (gram), dull yellow peeking out of crisp brown shells. A mound of madachem god, the black pyramid-shaped Goan jaggery, responsible for transforming dodol (a spongy sweet made from coconut milk and jaggery) and pinagr (an oblong sweet made of rice, coconut and jaggery). Twig-like pieces of khaje, besan coated with jaggery, their ginger coats glistening in the sun. There were laddoos of different colours and sizes; their ingredients, a colourful mystery. The smaller hillocks had coils of fat choris or Goan sausages, round rosary ones and the fat linked ones. All these items were laid out on cloth, newspaper or plastic sheets fashioned into mats, and on raised platforms in makeshift stalls. They demanded attention, coyly peeking out from under fluttering newspaper or the barest of cloths, or just lying there open and bare-faced, glinting in the sun.
As children, these treats appealed to our basest vice, greed. On a day when we were woken up early morning to walk or bus our way from our homes across the state to Old Goa, stiff in our formal wear and too-tight shoes, those mountains offered sweet reward for our troubles.
But first, we had to attend the feast Mass.
Every year, thousands of Goans and others congregate in the city of Old Goa to celebrate the feast of Goencho Saib, Goa’s protector, the Christian missionary St Francis Xavier. Saint Francis Xavier was a Spanish priest who came to Asia, and ultimately Goa in the 16th century, to work in Portuguese empires as an evangelist spreading Christianity. He died in China, and his body has survived mostly intact for over four centuries. The (now-decomposing) body is in a glass coffin shrouded by a silver casket placed high in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa. His feast is celebrated on the day he was buried, December 3. The novenas — nine days of special prayers — witness pilgrims from across the state and beyond. A pandal is set up outside the Church and Masses happen in the morning and evening. On the feast day, some pilgrims walk to the church from their homes. In the days before private vehicles became the norm, villages would hire buses to transport people to the Mass for a festive day out. As a state holiday, Goans of all religions congregated to celebrate the feast.
My fondest memories of the feast, unsurprisingly, have to do with food.
Food forms a big part of every occasion or festival in Goa. Church feasts and religious festivals bring with them a litany of prayers and the promise of a table laden with Goan dishes. Christmas and Easter mean midnight Mass, followed by cake, sweets and coffee offering respite as we waited to play Housie. The Church Feast (each village has a church dedicated to a different saint) would bring out the best dresses and suits, the Bomoicars (Bombay Goans) and NRIs, a mournful brass band playing Konkani hymns, and the odd food stalls selling khaje and choris pao.
The defining food item of the Feast in Old Goa (at least for the Catholics) has remained choris pao, simply Goan pork sausages stuffed into bread. There is no need for embellishments. The sausages carry enough flavour and heat, staining the white bread in hues of red, and if careless, hands too.
Everyone has their sausage preference. Some gravitate to their favourite stalls; others will wander about, peering into the handis or plastic containers carrying the choris, looking for the right fat to meat ratio. South Goans tend to gravitate to the rosary sausages, named because they resemble the beads of a rosary. Us, North Goans, liked the linked version. And you cannot eat just one. No, a proper feast breakfast involves two choris pao, with the second one ordered before the first one reached its end. More than two constituted gluttony and would be frowned upon.
You had to leave space for the other food.
As children, there was wonderment in roaming around the stalls lining the areas around Old Goa’s most famous churches. We weren’t allowed to wander alone, and had to clutch tightly to the proffered arm of a parent or adult. We would buy freshly roasted plain gram (chone) and peanuts, eating them straight out of paper cones, the shells flying away in the wind. There were laddoos, made of dried fruit, cashewnut and more; crumbly and extremely sweet. There was barfi and halwa, softer textures for those who couldn’t eat the harder sweets. These lay in perfect harmony with savoury snacks like chakli, shankarpali, and varieties of mixed chivda. Our system was universal — sample, buy, eat, and carry back a doggy bag, a plastic bag full of treats for the journey back and to distribute to those who couldn’t make it to church.
The star of these bags was the quintessential snack of every Goan festival or Hindu zatra (fair), khaje or kadyo bodyo — sticks of deep fried besan (chickpea) dipped in melted jaggery infused with ginger, and dotted with sesame seeds. There were plain ones; orange ones (with food colouring), and a white one (with sugar coating). The jaggery would form different shapes on the besan while drying, and we would pick on these rough edges to chew on the sweet ginger-y bits. Every stall owner would call out to us, urging us to try their wares. We sampled them all. They tasted the same, but our greedy eyes would pick out the versions with the most jaggery coating, bypassing the plain kadyo bodyo and choosing the colourful ones. Back then, saffron was a colour we liked. As we munched happily on our chosen kadyo bodyo, the adults would buy them by the kilos — wrapped in newspaper and too much thread — to send to other family members, and relatives abroad. After all, what’s a feast without festachem khaje?
Beyond the mountains, there were stalls selling food and cold-drinks. If we cajoled enough, we were allowed to sip a Maaza or Fanta, watching in fascination the daily hubbub of a feast day. Passers-by would call out to the adults, wishing them and enquiring about each other’s health. Around us was the hot food, hot handis releasing the aromas of xacuti (chicken curry made with coconut and spices), and sorpotel (pork curry), and spongy sannas (steamed rice cakes made with toddy). There were other stalls too, selling clothes, plastic toys, household items, souvenirs and other knick-knacks. We didn’t patronise these because ‘you get everything in Mapusa market’! But, stomachs satiated with sugary, gingery treats, we had no space in our bags, or lives, for anything else.
As adults, many of the practices followed for St Francis Xavier’s feast have been discontinued. Now, we attend church in cars, choosing the earlier Masses to avoid the crowd. We escape quickly after Mass to provide parking space for another. We don’t eat choris pao anymore — the unanimous conclusion is the quality has gone down. There is much adulteration in the cooking process of khaje (maida instead of besan, for instance). The greed of our youth has disappeared. I became the Bomoicar who was sent packets of khaje from the feast, till my no-sugar diet put a stop to it.
This year, khaje got a Geographic Indication (or GI tag), which defines the region of origin of a food product. This tag, awarded during the lockdown, appears symbolic of the shared identity of many Goan foods, uniting Hindus and Catholics in their devotion. There’s no zatra or feast that isn’t made sweeter by the addition of khaje, speckled with sesame seeds and blobs of jaggery.
In a year that’s reminded us of many things we took for granted, I found myself missing khaje and yearning for the days when feasts meant coming together to share good food, and not a communal disharmony that’s become the norm.
