The Little White House at Cumbiem Morod

         On the left-hand side of the picture of the house you can see stenciled lettering "Happy X'mas". Young boys went around the village stencilling the caption on the walls of houses in the village after the Midnight Mass.

         On the left side in the pic, on the 'sopo' is a circa 1960 model Philips radio, similar to the one in the picture below, tuned to the early morning English program of Radio Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). From the long shadows in the picture, it is evident the picture was taken very early in the morning. After listening to the BBC news relayed by Radio Ceylon, on Short Wave 31 meter band, I joined the other boys at the cross-path in the center of the village and walked to St. Anthony's High School, Monte de Guirim, Bardez, Goa, as a young lad. 

 Tilted on its stand is my 'Atlas' bicycle that my father bought for me during my mid-teens, fitted with a bell, horn, rear view mirror and a rear bracket, which I often used to carry wheat purchased from Mapusa market and later take it to the flour mill to grind it into flour. I also used it to run several errands, like fetching a doctor to the village in an emergency, to watch football matches in Duler, Mapusa, to attend Mass at St. Diogo's Church, Guirim, and to go to Calangute Beach in the months of April and May.

         On the top right of the picture a 'star' is seen and that surely indicates that the picture was taken during Yuletide. The 'star' seen in the picture was my own work of art like many other boys in the village, made of white translucent craft paper glued onto a hollow framework of bamboo sticks held apart as an expanded shape by sticks at 5 cross points. It was hauled up using a pulley and coir rope on a long bamboo pole. And at sunset it would be brought down to place and light up a candle or a lamp fitted to a thin flat piece of wood inside it and hauled back up above creating a beautiful aura of its own that said it all, along with some lanterns lit up under the roof edge of the balcão.

         The camera used to take this picture was a Japanese Model called 'Samoca', similar to the one in the picture below:

The colour slide from which the house picture has been reproduced is Kodachrome 35mm 64 ASA. The film was processed by Bombay Film Labs, and at times also done by Kodak Film Labs at Hemel Hempstead, England. I still have the 1 inch x 2 inches slide, that I used to project on the wall using a projector powered by batteries.

         Electricity first came to the village of Cumbiem Morod only around 1969.

Those were the days.

Tony Fernandes (a.k.a. Felicio)