Knock on wood

Sixty years later, and Deo Fernandes is still quite and reserved, preferring to channelize his energy chiselling, chipping and shaping of wood, transforming ordinary teak or shiwond blocks into the figurines of saints. Christ and the images of Our Lady. Statues that adorn altars of churches, houses and now with recent beatification of Father Jose Vaz in Benaulim, Deo is busy working on statues of Father Jose for his parents home in Benaulim and Sancoale.

Deo’s childhood memories were wrought with difficulty, more so with the sudden death of his parents. The carefree privilege of a child didn’t last long nd out of necessity, Deo dropped out of school, and turned towards carving. Then only four years old, Deo remembers. “I wouldn’t play like other children, I preferred to stay by myself, and with my father’s tool and my uncle’s screw driver I would play around pieces of wood. Later on, when I started working on the ship, I didn’t like it. So I came back and tried to work on wood because I always noticed that with wooden statutes even if the paint faded away, the statue remained as good as ever.”

It was a slow arduous process, initially chipping away at limbs that lacked proportion, chiselling away at facial features that had a faint resemblance the original- if Deo was lucky, and torsos that struggled to acquire an even proportion. Now, the perfection is apparent. Taking a cool four hours for a five-inch statuette to five to six months for a life sized statue like the Crucifix of Christ in Canacona. He has also restored the 300 year-old statue of Our Lady in Raia using sawdust and wooden blocks. And carved out a cement statue of Our Lady of Snows in Raia.

Now the years have been kinder, but Deo has worked hard to deserve the kindness of fate. With his family entirely involved, his elder son helps him out because he says, “It is a full time job.” The orders keep coming in and even though I make furniture, there is no time for it.

But complaining, Deo doesn’t except having to spend a sleepless night keeping an eye on his chickens because of the snake that’s robbing them. With a herd of cowa, and a concrete house that’s slowly inched itself up, bigger and stronger than his previous wooden framework house.

Though originally from Chinchinim, Deo has been staying in Raia since his grandfather moved there when the martyrs were been murdered in Cuncolim.

It was here at the age of seventeen that he reminisces, “My first big chance came when Emanuel Printers bought a set of my statues from Ribandar, but they realised my statues sold faster earning me Rs 1.25 for a five inch statuette. At that time in 1944, three rupees was enough to support your family for a day, or you could roam around in the day and yet have something left over.”

Now of course Deo’s five-inche statue goes for nothing less than Rs 150 and his life-size statues for an easy Rs 60000. His statues though perfect replications from pictures are not likely realistic. They are typically Indo-Portuguese, resembling statues of pre-independent Goa. A time that Deo refers to as “better then what Goa is now. Though after independence there has been some good still, there has been more bad. Today, there is no respect nor value for people. Before you could leave your doors open, and not worry. During Portuguese time the feni was also better,” says Deo, though his whole family are teetotallers now. He adds, “you could drink feni and work the whole day in the fields. Now, they put in a lot of rubbish. Also, during the rains, people would dig a hole in the ground, and bury their feni bottle there, directly below the eaves of their roof where the rain water would trickle down over it. It would be left for three years, and when it’s removed its yellowish in colour and is the best feni I have ever tasted, even better than all the foreign whiskeys.”

But while he misses the old days, the present and the future still sees a strong, skilful Deo sitting cross-legged in his workshop chiselling out another wooden wonder.