Coming at time when the sands of Goa undergo their annual purge, the Bonderam float parade festival is a smaller version of its more popular infamous twin — the Goa Carnival.
Nonetheless, the festival is celebrated on August 23 and owes its existence to village boundary disputes in the colonial Portuguese era and continues to hold on to some of its old world charm even today.
Streamers deck the village in remembrance of the Portuguese regime’s method of demarcating village boundaries to avoid fistfights between groups of villagers, while troupes of children and adults hold costume parades remembering everything ranging from traditional lifestyles to modern political issues like that of corruption, nepotism, etc.
As a long-time participant in the local village celebration, Annabelle Heredia explains, “All we need is the excuse to celebrate. The celebration brings the village together and feel proud that at least for once the attention is on us.” Sometimes referred to as quaint, at other times queer, the festival in the island village of Divar is today a major tourist attraction with both locals and tourists thronging to see the colourful floats, which might not exactly match the state sponsored carnival, but retains the old world charm.
And not without reason. Being held on an island whose only links is via a fifteen minute ferry the island has evolved differently from the rest of the State.Having a slower pace of life, agrarian economy and completely bereft of any high rises, the island also boasts of familial relationships among its 40,000 odd inhabitants.
The original inhabitants of this island were people who once lived in Old Goa but had to leave during a disastrous plague that greatly reduced the population of Old Goa.Contrary to popular perception, the celebration does not have religious connotations or origin. Instead, arose as an imitation of villagers of two main wards of the village Piedade and Sao Mathias who used to, in an attempt to bring down, fling stones at poles of flags erected by the Portuguese administration to demarcate the boundary between the two wards.
The word Bonderam emerged as a corruption of the Portuguese word ‘bandeira’ which means flag.Consequently there are two ‘bonderam’ festivals celebrated in the villages by the respective wards — Sao Mathias which celebrates it on the second Saturday of August and the bigger Bonderam celebrated at Piedade on the last Saturday of August.
The Tourism Department is only to happy to promote the festival, with its director seeing it as a welcome relief during an otherwise lean time of the year.
“During weekends like these, off season does not seem like off season anymore,” he said adding that the residencies offered by them were reporting around 80% occupancy. “It gives people an excuse to come down and that’s all they need,” he said. He however, admitted that other than the weekends the monsoon packages are not doing as well as they should.
The Goa Tourism department on its part promotes the festival among its guests in a bid to monetize it. locals, however like to keep it on a small scale, if only so that it does not go the carnival way.”What’s special of this festival is that its made up of people’s participation. There are no commercial dancers, or professionals, but nonetheless we are taking it forward,” Heredia added.