Episode 4: Deleted Pasts, Tim Howard Saves and Christ the Savior: History Lessons in Salvador
Watching the Belgium vs USA match in Salvador was a slightly awkward experience. More than two thirds of the stadium was there to cheer for a Soccer team, while everybody else was watching a football match. It was a foregone conclusion that the “Football” team or Équipe de football, to be precise, would beat the “Soccer” one. But for a short while it seemed that there was nothing that Tim Howard, the brave American goalkeeper, could not save. (as illustrated in the adjoining image)
Exhilaration at watching your last world cup football match in Brasil paired with a strange sense of unease that neither team playing deserves a place beyond the round, for various reasons.
In retrospect that could sum up the entire Salvador experience. Something exhilaratingly beautiful and incredibly exotic, that you wouldn't trade for anything else, paired with that itch in the gut that tells you that all is not right somewhere. But we are skipping pages ahead in the story here.
We stayed in a beautiful villa in the secure enclosure of a gated community that adjoined a tennis club. Just a few hundred meters from the beautiful Itapua beach. Home to a Brazilian-French couple and cats ranging from the age of 3 months to 13 years. The perfect Brazilian home with a garage full of surfboards, a hammock, guava trees and loads of sunshine. We walk up to the beach. It’s10 am and almost 30C. Hot and humid, while the papers tell us that it’s winter in Brasil.
A friendly ice cream cart jingles along. He figures out we are tourists and offers us two flavors that seem impossible.Corn flavored ice cream bar and raw banana flavored ice cream cup. We look intrigued enough. He smiles and asks us to try them. Perfect. Impossibly perfect. He is amazed that no one in India would have ever tasted corn flavored ice cream, which seems to be one of his top selling packs going by the number of bars he shows us stacked within the cold box.
Soon we are accosted by a hundred touts wanting to sell us everything from a massage to Brasilian flags. But if there is one thing a good intrepid Indian tourist can handle, after all the experience gained from his motherland, is to handle a tout with firm élan. To bargain well and out-tout- a- tout is the name of the game, learned young in the labyrinths of Palika Bazaar.
When our hosts hear of our adventures they look concerned. The beach isn’t too safe they tell us. And that’s one we get our first history nugget on Salvador.
Salvador was the first capital of Portuguese Brasil. Slave trade was then the greatest propeller of Portugal’s GDP then and thousands of Africans landed in Salvador for sale- auctioned to the highest American bidders. The rejected men and women were abandoned in Salvador to fend for themselves, becoming cheap labour for local plantation overlords. Centuries later, Salvador has become Brasil’s third biggest city, with glittering skyscrapers, but deep within the heart of Salvador is the Pelourinho- now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Pelourinho, Salvador is the old Portuguese capital, which the African population of the city now calls its own. In fact, as our host points out, Salvador has small pockets of white inhabitation, all enclosed off in the gated communities, like the ones we live in. Poverty reigns supreme elsewhere.
We take a long bus journey to Pelourinho, along the beautiful Salvador coast and get down at the Praça de Se, in the midst of a busy market milling with traffic and people, surrounded by building at least a century old. Wouldn’t look too out of place in Kolkata, this landscape!
Huge 18th century churches and pretty cobblestone streets wind all around meeting busy Squares or Praças where African jewellery and clothing is sold. We seem to be in for something really special. The old city seems to be whirring with something electric as more and more people crowd towards it.
July 2nd is the day of the Bahia liberation and the old City Hall is decked in festive colors. A school band starts playing a beat. We walk further to meet two carnivalesque floats filled with African dancers.
A lady dressed in the traditional attire of the region, huge billowing skirt and white shirt with a huge matching headpiece, calls out to us from her food stall. Try an Acarajé she says.
She takes a ball of black-eyed peas and fries them crisp in palm oil. She splits it into half and fills it with a choice of stuffing. There is a shrimp and cashew paste or an extremely spicy caruru made of okra and tomatoes. She tops the thing with peppers and green tomatoes and we bite happily into the vegetarian acarajé. The dish is supposedly an import from West Africa, and now as Brasilian as football or Carneval.
The presence of the Church is everywhere, including a massive fallen Cross that overlooks the port where the slaves landed. But once the chains of slavery and religion were demolished, the Africans seem to have taken their own paths. African religions live better here in Salvador than in most parts of Africa. There are Voodoo dolls and charms for sale in every other store. Even voodoo fridge magnets to complete the picture.
But the religion of this place is Candomblé not Voodoo, the shopkeeper corrects us. It is a mix of Christian practices with old African beliefs. Why Christian? Because the slave masters would not have let them practice it- so hoodwink them with some outward Christian like action but pray to the old Gods.
Just like Capoeira, he adds. It looks like a dance but it’s a martial art, disguised well so that the slave masters won’t be able to stop it. Slowly, very slowly, on the very last day of our sojourn in Brasil, do we get to peep through the holes at the real Brasil. But there is festivity outside and the pastel colored building seduces us.
The streets are now alive with music and dance and food stalls. They are decorated with huge dolls and elaborate African icons. A Capoeira band demonstrates their skills to the pulsating sounds of a drum. Beer flows.
The Acarajé has only made us hungrier. We slip into a good old Por Kilo- Brasil’s greatest gift to the vegetarian traveller. The Por Kilos are omnipresent and are anything but glamorous. Here around eight-ten dishes are served in a buffet and you load up your plate with all that you can eat.
The plate is then weighed and you pay by the kilo for the food you are eating. Simple, effective, cheap. And enough rice, beans and potatoes to feed the starving Indian.
After the rajma chawal routine we head to a little stall selling some Beiju.
Tapioca, finely powdered is madeinto a pancake like a crepe or a dosa, if you prefer being local. Sweetened milk and coconut are added and the Beiju is folded and served ready to eat. Here’s a video on how to make one, if you are in the mood for it.
Filled to the brim now with African delicacies, we cross the old heritage buildings painted in blues and yellows to admire the 400 year old Cathedral Basilica. There is gold everywhere and fabulous sculpture. But what catches the eyes is a million ribbons tied along the entrance on the fence. Worshipful locals leaving a reminder to the God inside.
Samba dances start along the streets. The capoeira group joins a set of African tribal dancers and someone starts distributing caipirinhas in glass bottles. The evening descends slowly and a carneval gets into full swing. Just for us, to complete the Brasil experience, it seems like.
We join in. All pasts are forgotten and the present pulsates to the rhythms of an African drum..Bliss.
Feature by: Lalith Krishnan
Director- Aspirations Advertising
Director- Aspirations Advertising
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