As a young boy, Pantaleao Fernandes recalls stumbling upon his grandfather's collection of holy pictures in a cupboard drawer. Holy pictures are usually distributed as souvenirs among the congregation in Catholic churches on important occasions like feast days, first communions, ordinations of priests, first death anniversaries, etc., and usually contain prayers and pictures of biblical scenes.
Recently, Fernandes happened to be browsing through this collection again. This time, he took a closer look and was pleasantly surprised to find some pictures related to his own house.
"There was this one picture that spoke about the enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in our house on May 4, 1934. This date has always been a special day for our family. It was my grandmother's birthday and was also the day I got married. Also, my brother was ordained as a priest on this date," narrates Fernandes, who also found a sketch done by his grandfather of an altar that had been specially designed for this enthronement. "We still have this altar in our house and I have always been fascinated with it. So this picture connected me to my past," says Fernandes. Realising that these pictures could thus help others also discover their roots, Fernandes decided that doing a book project around this could be helpful. "I am finding that people are very disconnected from their past today. They don't even know the names of their great grandparents. So pictures like these can give us an umbilical cord to our past," he says. Thus, although a niche theme, Fernandes decided to take the risk and go ahead with the plan of a book on this.
On a friend's suggestion, he decided to include articles on various subjects dwelling on the holy pictures in the book. For instance, art historian and author Savia Viegas has written about the art in the pictures.
Fr. Sucorro Mendes has written about indulgences (remission in the sight of God of the temporal punishment due for sins). Another priest Fr. Edison Fernandes has written about the psychology of these holy pictures, etc.
In addition to this, the last section of the book consists of more information about the people whose names are mentioned in the pictures. This work has been put together by professor, author and translator Oscar Noronha.
In fact, many descendants of the people whose names are mentioned in the book have shown keen interest in this work and Fernandes expects that this interest will only increase as more people get to know about the book. Although he is not having a formal book launch, the book titled 'Holy Pictures from Goa' which spans the years from 1890 to 1990 is currently available at Light House, a bookstore run by the Archdiocese in Margao and a few book stores in Pilar. "The book will be available at all shops selling Catholic religious material and objects. It will also shortly be available at Broadway. Apart from this, people can get in touch with me directly," says Fernandes.
Delving deeper into his work, Fernandes shares that among the pictures; he also found another one where his grandfather had pledged to say the rosary everyday. "We have a family tradition of saying the rosary everyday but this picture renewed the interest in this. Besides, some of these pictures have some really nice prayers which I have now incorporated in my daily prayers," says Fernandes.
The author adds that the art in these pictures is also very interesting. "Initially, these pictures were imported on a large scale from Europe and these were probably miniatures of paintings done by great artists. So they are very expressive and very colourful with a lot of minute details in them," he explains. With time however, the printing was then done here. "One can make out the difference in terms of the quality, the pictures are not very sharp," says Fernandes.
Another notable change was the wordings. While many of the older pictures were handwritten and in Portuguese, the later pictures have more of English.
"Also, what happened later down the line is that people began taking photos of statues and using those to make holy pictures which resembled bookmarks. These you don't feel like keeping because they don't have great value. In contrast, the older pictures were so expressive and beautiful that my grandfather had kept them for so many years," says Fernandes. Another important thing to note is that now instead of 2D images, people have begun offering rosaries or miniature statues instead. Again, given that these are many times made of plastic, people do not tend to attach too much value to them, he says.
Fernandes thus hopes that this book will reignite an interest in these older pictures.
"People could ask me for soft copies of these images, print these and give them at feasts again. I also hope that people will pay more attention to the indulgences and nice prayers," he says. Also, he hopes that it will make people look at the objects in their house with new eyes. "We think that the things in our house have no value, only the things in museums have value. But this is not true. I hope people recognise the value of objects in the house and start conserving and preserving these better instead of just tossing them out?," he says.
And while Fernandes will now be moving on to his next three book projects (on Goan culture through the age old implements in his old house, on tribal culture, and on the Exposition of the relics of St. Francis Xavier next year), he hopes that this work will inspire other collectors of holy pictures to take this project further in their own way.