Saturday 24th February 2007: Diu

Bliss. Sitting on the roof terrace in my hotel in Diu, the formerly Portuguese-controlled island now part of Daman and Diu Union Territory, sipping Kingfisher. Not being part of Gandhi’s Gujarat, despite its extreme proximity, hard drinks flow freely, or least cheaply and abundantly, from the non-proverbial bottle! However, I am leaving tomorrow, and while I will come away with a positive overall impression, I cannot hide the fact that Diu hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations.

Diu

    I wasn’t expecting it to be a paradise, and it certainly isn’t one. Rather, it is a friendly, calm and comfortably well-off seeming island with a number of interesting features. Cheap, abundantly-flowing alcohol for one, including beer and Goan port. Beaches for another. Nothing spectacular when compared to the beaches I’ve seen in Kerala and Karnataka, but beaches nonetheless. But sandy
beaches always lead me to wonder whether the irritation of wet sandy feet after a dip are ever entirely compensated for by the pleasures of the swim itself! Give me shingle any day.
   Aside from this, Diu certainly has a good dose of historical and cultural interest. It was a Portuguese colony from the 1530’s to 1961 when it was “liberated” through “Operation Vijay”, bringing it into the Indian Union, alongside a strip of mainland in East Gujarat called Daman, with which it forms Daman and Diu Union Territory, ruled directly from Delhi [24]. A few civilians and a few Marwari soldiers, the latter immortalised in a Martyr’s Garden, were killed in the liberation process. There is a certain Portuguese legacy, most obviously detectable in the form of architecture. The big Portuguese fort in Diu town is quite unlike Rajput and Maratha forts, being uglier and dotted with ruined Catholic chapels. There are also a number of large, white-washed Catholic churches across the island. As far as I can tell, only one – St Paul’s, which has an elegant façade – is in operation, with services in English rather than Portuguese.

São Tomé

  There is still an Indo-Portuguese community, some of whom speak Portuguese. Different people have told me different things – 25 families with 200 individuals, 30 families, 300 individuals… One old man, Captain Fulbaria, who runs a seashell museum, bristled when I asked him whether he was Portuguese. “No! I’m Hindu! No Gujarati converted here – not like in Goa.” This seems to corroborate my impression that there is a fairly tight, if not exclusive, correlation in Diu between Portuguese descent and Catholicism. Many of these people, tentatively identifiable by paler, slightly atypical faces, live in an area called Firangiwada or foreigners’ quarter, a quiet and apparently prosperous part of Diu town. There is very nice little restaurant in this area called O’Coqueiro where the Indo-Portuguese owner Kailash (Hindu? Catholic? The name is as Hindu as they come!) makes glorious iced coffee and even better pasta. Real, Italian pasta with tuna, olives and garlic, dowsed in olive oil! I visited his place twice and would have liked to get to know him better – oh dear! Is this going to be the constant traveller’s refrain? Transient, unfinished friendships and acquaintanceships?
   On another occasion I was driven out of slight loneliness (more on which in due course) to drink port in a local bar and attempted to make conversation with the drunken wreck of a man next to me. The only glimmer of interest in the conversation occurred when he pointed at his glass and mumbled “Cerveja” (the Portuguese word for beer).
    Other confusions: somebody told me that 99% of Diu’s residents have Portuguese citizenship, but I couldn’t find out any more about that. Somebody else told me that 60% of Diu was living in Lisbon or London, but what does that mean exactly? 60% of the people alive today who were born in Diu are now living in London or Lisbon? I scarcely imagine his meaning was that precise! A third man I met, whose family was ancestrally from Fudan, a village outside Diu town, told me he was born in Mozambique and had moved to Fudan after Mozambique gained independence from the Portuguese and subsequently moved to Lisbon, and finally to London where he now lives! I think he was totally Indian, if anybody in Diu can be said to be “totally Indian” and whether that label has any meaning. It is interesting how you can find “East African Indians” in former British colonies (e.g. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), Portuguese colonies (e.g. Mozambique) and French colonies (e.g. Madagascar).
    My bungling attempts at amateur anthropology have been, as usual, only partially successful and I had a wonderful self-parody of a dream a few nights back. I was in some Indian town, ringing the doorbells of houses along a street which I had been informed belonged to Jewish families but were rented out to Jain families. Desperate to find out more about these communities, I pretended I was researching for a book and, as a result, got into all sorts of nightmarish difficulties.
    In reality there is another group that interests me on Diu, a community called the Siddis. The Lonely Planet story, which I think is plausible, is that they are a hangover from the Indian-African trade that took place along the Gujarati coastline. As well as Indian populations establishing themselves along the East African coast, a side effect of this trade was the African population that remained in Saurashtra, evolving into a Muslim Dalit caste called the Siddis. In any case, the Siddis I encountered had all the hallmark Negroid features including fuzzy hair and a very African face structure. Their skin doesn’t seem to be any darker than that of darker-skinned Indians.
   I made friends with a Siddi called Nawaz, who ran a fast food stall and we chatted on various topics before I asked him about his ancestry. At this point a friend of his butted in with a “Let me explain”. This was Jamshed Turner, a pleasant old tour guide from Ahmedabad. We sat and talked for a long time, but I’m afraid I shall only relate what he told me about the Siddis. He claimed that it was the Nawab of Junagadh, suddenly anxious to protect the Asiatic lions of Sasan Gir, who shipped over tribesmen from Kenya to act as guardians, thereby creating the Siddi caste. I would imagine the grain of truth in this story is that there was a Kenyan population already present in Saurashtra and the Nawab employed members of this community for his conservation measures [25]. 
   Nawaz told me that some of the elder generation still speak Swahili amongst themselves (I imagine Nawaz’ first language would have been Gujarati or possibly Urdu) and that certain religious rituals are conducted in Swahili. The next day I witnessed a procession of thirty or forty Siddis, although there was not enough chanting for me comment on the language. I went back to Nawaz’ stall last night and he reproached me for not having come to visit him since the first time. I was a little touched and regretted not having got to know him better – not as an anthropological specimen, but a friend.
   Which brings me back to loneliness. I admit that there have been times on Diu when I’ve felt lonely, which even led me to question travelling alone as my favoured method. I had hoped for more, both in terms of making Diuian friends and perhaps especially meeting Indian tourists and students. I have no doubt I could have had my pick of conversations with other foreign tourists, but I had little interest in that, and I doubt whether it would have assuaged the loneliness at all, as this was born out of a continued yearning for new and varied Indian company. Apart from the obvious fact that, when alone in a touristy area among groups of other travellers, there is quite a strong psychological pressure to feel like a loner, the residents of Diu don’t seem especially friendly. I can’t quite put a finger on it, but there seemed a slight coolness about most of the people I passed. Old men and women would nod uninterestedly, younger people might not greet at all and it was only the young children, running after you and screaming “What is you name?” that showed any real curiosity. I wondered whether people were too used to tourists, and this was probably the case, although it was interesting to note that nowhere in Diu town has there developed a “tourist-ville” culture. The tacky, boozy stretch by the sea-front seems more geared towards hungry (and thirsty) Indian tourists and the only feature in common with other traveller hangouts is prevalence of Nepali waiters in the restaurants. As it happens, I did go out drinking with Gujarati tourists last night. These new friends were a faction from a large party of Christians from Ahmedabad on a church weekend away. A funny sort of church weekend away, if you ask me…

*

Little more needs to be said about Diu town itself. There is a road that cuts a swath through the oldest section of the town, and it is here that I like to think the profoundest, if least tangible, influence of Portuguese culture could be felt. Quiet shady streets, little grocer’s shops, a posh glass-fronted jeweller’s and women in dresses conspired to conjure up a memory of France or Italy. But…but… is this really something different from the other Mediterranean-like parts of old Indian towns? Old Udaipur for example, or parts of Ahmedabad or Jodhpur? In my mind there is such a blurring between “Indian atmosphere” and “Mediterranean atmosphere” – the superficial parts at least – that I can’t make any claim with certainty. And yet I feel that there really is more than the usual touch of the “warm south” in this part of town, which ironically is mostly populated by Gujarati-speaking Hindus and Muslims!
   The island in general is attractive, with palms and whistling pines – Indian Ocean staples – galore, although there is a big, soullessly empty highway that leads from one end to the other. This road passes through Fudan and Malala, peaceful and seemingly affluent villages, each with their own school, past superb Nagoa beach, haunt of the Indian package tourists, culminating in Vanakbara. This is a much friendlier, less well-developed fishing village with a pervading smell of fish. I met some amiable fishermen and climbed onto their trawler for a bit before doing the rounds of the chai-stalls.
   Interesting as all this was, I have to return to the first points I mentioned – the beach and the bottle – as the highlights of Diu. Alongside, of course, delicious fresh prawns, shark and tuna!



Footnotes:



[24] India has several Union Territories that are not part of any state, but ruled directly by Central Government via an administrator. These include Pondicherry, a former French outpost in Tamil Nadu; Chandigarh, the planned city that functions as the capital of both Punjab and Haryana; and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands way out in the Indian Ocean.



[25] The very next day, during my journey from Diu to Junagadh, I encountered a Deputy Conservator of Forests from Sasan Gir, who was, without any shadow of a doubt, a Siddi! He muttered something about the Nawab of Junagadh in 1820, which was interesting in light of Jamshed Turner’s story.