Rest in power, my loveliest Maria

Maria Aurora Couto and I nurtured each other, as writers. Pic/Rosalyn D’Mello

Five days ago as I ate my oatmeal breakfast I stopped to gaze at a photograph writer and journalist Raghu Karnad had posted on his Instagram feed. He was with my friend Maria Aurora Couto, and it was lovely to see them together. I was well aware of her fondness for Raghu, she had often spoken about him and her friendship with his late father, Girish. I began to wade through the caption accompanying his post and felt befuddled. Underlying each sentence was the whiff of a past tense. Why was he referring to her as if she was no longer with us?

Maria and I had last been in touch in September, when Rati Bartholomew passed away. But she has been a constant in my life since 2010. She was among the first few close friends with whom I had shared news of my pregnancy. "Both my sons are March babies," she had written to me. Just a few days ago I had been thinking of emailing her, not only to send New Year's wishes but also to share with her the PDF of my latest published essay which hinged on my grief around the death of our mutual friend, Margaret Mascarenhas. When M died, Maria and I felt her void quite uniquely, since the three of us were like an informal unit. We met up frequently whenever I happened to be in Goa, always on Maria's veranda, usually over beer and whisky and excellent cheese toast that her Nepali cook, Bahadur, would make us.

Once it sank in that Raghu's post was indeed announcing Maria's passing I felt crushed by grief. In an attempt to self-soothe I thought about the first time I had met Maria ‘in real life'. It felt like an event. When I was doing my Master's at JNU, I had chosen to make a presentation on her book, Goa: A Daughter's Story. Reading the book and engaging with it critically was a life-altering experience for me. In her retelling of her familial entanglements with Goa I was able to discover my Goan heritage, particularly as someone who was not only born outside of Goa but who had grown up in Mumbai, and who, unlike other Bombay Goans, didn't get to spend idyllic summer vacations in the homeland. Maria's daring personal revelations and her recounting of her attempts to trace her lineage and draw parallels between her self-hood and the history of Goa felt so exciting and audacious. In 2009, I happened to spend several months in Goa with my sister and I wrote a series of blog posts about my experience. One of them was titled ‘Roots', it was one of the most moving pieces I had written about my relationship with Goa.

I met Maria at the first edition of the Goa Arts and Literary Festival. I was accompanying Pablo, who was an invited guest. As we were walking towards somewhere, we passed by Maria, who recognised Pablo, whose mother, Rati, she had known in Delhi. I was obviously star-struck when I realised I was in the aura of Maria Aurora Couto. I was mostly silent, though at some point I was introduced to her. In a flash of a second she asked me if I was Rosalyn D'Mello, to which I shyly answered yes, though I was confused about why my name would mean anything to her. She immediately began to tell me how she remembered my piece, Roots, and how much she loved it and how she thought, while reading it, that there was finally a new kind of voice announcing itself on the Goan literary landscape. She gave us her number and invited us to lunch, careful to ensure I would be there too.

Over the years we evolved an independent relationship. She had a sixth sense about when I would be in Goa. She'd message instantly and say she had ‘heard' on the grapevine, and when could I come see her, and we'd soon be planning our time together, usually around early evening. Margaret and I would meet up in Aldona and then head over to Maria's. We'd spend hours chatting while the sun slipped away and the birds announced the onset of twilight.

We nurtured each other, as writers. We shared our insecurities with each other, our deepest vulnerabilities. We also depended on each other's validation. I remember a phone conversation we'd had some Christmases ago, on the cusp of the New Year; she had said that one of the things she admired the most about me was how I didn't take myself too seriously. She said this was a quality that made me so relatable and always approachable. And it is feedback that I find myself frequently revisiting. Had she not had a terrible fall around the time of my book launch, in 2015, she would have been there on stage with Margaret and me. Around early 2019, when Margaret was still alive and I was contemplating having my court marriage in Goa, she jumped at the possibility of being my witness. When I eventually shared photographs of my wedding in Sudtirol she gasped at the beauty around which I was ensconced. It is paradise, she wrote.

I still cannot find it in me to write an obituary for her. She feels so alive, still, in my inbox, in my WhatsApp chats, in my memories… I am aware of that peculiar grief that awaits me the next time I visit Aldona… for two of my dearest writer friends who were, frequently, my reason for visiting and staying - Margaret and Maria - will no longer be there in the flesh. I cling preciously to the unwritten legacies of our intergenerational friendship which has been so foundational to my personhood. Rest in peace and power my loveliest Maria.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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