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 Manha de Carnival! You are right! This Brazilian song signifies the spirit behind the everlasting tradition of the Goan carnival, also popular the world over for celebrating the return of joy: alegria voltou.
The joy retreats every year for less than a week-five days in Brazil, four nights in Goa-before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent which was once a dreary season of penance and abstinence-40 long week days preceding Easter Sunday.
It started as a way to "put away flesh" carelevvare in Old Italian. Carn meant flesh, and leavare to remove. But leavare could also mean to raise, perhaps to raise the way the Brazilians seem to interpret it.
People of every age group went their own way, did their own thing, insistently, unaccountably-without any regrets. And at the end of it, there were no queries and no replies. The cavaliers returned to their hovels in the slums, the fazendiros to their gorgeous ranches, and at the samba clubs the preparations used to start afresh for the next year's processions, balls and street dances.
Carnival in Goa was a great leveler as illustrated by the so-called historians. Early accounts-all of them hearsay-are indeed educative. The white masters masqueraded as black slaves and the latter-generally slaves brought in from Mozambique-plastered their faces with flour and wore high battens, or walked on stilts. For those three ephemeral days, they were happy to be larger than life. And while the whites and the blacks mimicked each other the brown dwellers watched this reversal of roles in awe from the sidelines.
In course of time, when the imperial regime liberalized and inhibitions declined, Goa Carnival became a time for bonhomie. The old crude mimicry blossomed into social satire. In the villages, the playwrights pieced together in Khel (Konkani for play) anecdotes, events and criticism. The Portuguese Governor General, his family and retinue used the occasion for a show of diplomacy. At the Carnival balls, everyone danced toe-to-toe as if equals on the dance floor.
Once, Carnival was a mood. It had no spectators and the active participation of outsiders was totally a taboo. From dawn to dusk and back to dawn again, the great Goan Carnival exemplifies the proverb: "Eat, Drink and Be Merry"!
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