Goan Balcao & the Talkative Parrot

 

A typical feature of a Goan house is the balcão (Portuguese) which serves as a sitting space. It comprises of cement or wooden benches on both sides of the main entrance of the house, with additional single seats in front. It is a place to catch up on things happening around, for quiet study or a nap on warm afternoons or playing draughts, carrom, ludo, snakes and ladders and other board games on rainy afternoons. 

The balcão has had the reputation of being the ideal place for idle talk and gossip, but as I recall, it was the best place to listen to the radio broadcast from Radio Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the 1960’s and to receive better reception. It was considered as one of the powerful radio stations in Asia broadcasting English songs and western music in quality, content and clarity. It also relayed BBC news. Radios were few and neighbours came to listen to news, popular hits and radio shows.

We had two cages on both sides of our ‘balcão’, hanging on the beam across the two pillars that held the roof of the entrance. There was a myna in one cage and a parrot in the other. They could both speak three languages, and had a remarkable memory and extensive vocabulary. The parrot was more adept of the two. These birds provided impromptu entertainment, and showed off their skills in singing several short clips of the tunes of the day that played on the radio to people passing by our  house who stopped for a while to hear some of their colourful and amusing repertoire.

Goan Balcao (Balcony)

Goan Balcão (balcony)

A place for everyone and everything

One of the prime features of a Goan house is a Balcão (Portuguese) or balcony. In the summer months one could spend more time in the balcão than inside the house. Balcões (plural in Port.) are constructed in different shapes and sizes. Some have stone/red cement benches with reclining rests to rest on, while others have wooden benches. It is a place for everyone, everything and every occasion - a place for serious or idle conversation, for local gossip, a place to rest after a long journey before entering the house, to enjoy afternoon tea, for a thirsty stranger asking for a glass of water, for the spill-over of late comers at a sung litany or for a impromptu singing session of the Goan mando (folk songs). In the old days of the 1960's we brought the portable transistor out and placed it on the cement bench, and neighbours came over to listen to the popular evening English request program broadcast by Radio Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and All India Radio Goa.

When we were young, sometimes on rainy days of the monsoon season, the village boys and girls could not play outdoors after school in the evenings. So, we played carrom, draughts, games of cards, ludo, and at times, one of village elders would relate stories in the balcony of his house about his good old days. To hear him relate old stories was a pleassure. He regaled us with colourful accounts of his younger days and other short stories of wit and humour. It was getting dark as he still went on. It was dusk, and as we heard the chimes of the Angelus bell of our village chapel, we would all rise as he recited the Angelus prayer at the end of which everyone wished him 'Boa Noite' (Good Night) before we walked to our individual homes.