The Ancestral Property

(26 Aug ’12)

Years ago, someone noticed an ornament I was wearing, and asked me whether it was ‘old gold’. I laughed and told her my ancestors were poverty-stricken, no old, no gold, the only money they had was spent on school or college fees. They believed the only legacy they could leave behind was something we could carry inside our heads, not around it.

Recently, what with so many ‘dears departed’ in our family, some cousins  thought it was time we divided whatever coconut trees our grandparents owned. And the land around them (the trees, not the grandparents). Apparently they owned some rice fields as well, but the records weren’t to be found. Pity. There went my portion of unboiled, unpolished, organically grown rice, I thought.

Ancestral property, even if it’s a 1BHK in a corner of Jhumritallayya, is a term that evokes awe and pride anywhere in India, but specially so in Goa, what with our Portuguese laws allowing everyone to have a square inch of stuff by birth, marriage, crook or purchase. Earlier the landlords had their headaches. Post Liberation, those (the headaches, not the landlords) were distributed amongst other classes/castes who were tenants. Made our lawyers richer than our doctors. Only the builders were richer. No, sorry, the politicians took that medal.

At the primary family meeting (not held in Goa since now only two families live here), many saw/met their blood relatives for the first time. The shared genes were expressed in the double-chins, crinkly noses, scanty hair, postures and voice-tones. Wonderful thing, that DNA, can be identified even four generations down the line: it showed in the temperaments, too. A cheery lot, I was pleased to note.

Make a family tree, said the lawyer. We did. Complicated it was, with us not knowing the surnames or addresses of several. Some had changed countries, some had quit the planet and with no information.

 You have to get their signatures on the NOCs, POAs, and other abbreviated legal documents, the lawyer said. Took us many months to do that, what with the living folk having no time or inclination. ‘Where are the death certificates of those ‘not here’?’. We clucked our tongues and shook our heads. Mercifully, the Portuguese were an organized people. A guess work of dates helped us track those down. If they had passed on in the year 2000, we could have handed over a couple of rupees and invented a date, someone remarked. Whilst the inventory of heirs was happening, we learned that our family had secrets. Who said what to whom, when, in what context, where… hushed whispers across a sofa progressed to emails flung across continents. I’ve saved some for my novel.

Then came the inventory of assets. When we went to the village for the first time, we enjoyed ourselves, ate plenty of fish, cracked jokes, exchanged memories; we were on a picnic. The next time we were more serious, walked around known and imagined boundaries helped by an old retainer (who was gruff because he wanted it known that he didn’t like our poking our noses into matters we didn’t know anything about.)

I know now how cases take as long as they do: sans wills, sans official records… same story in so many families in the State. Some plots are arbitrarily put on a son or nephew’s name without follow up on paper. A gift maybe? Who is to know? When the census guys did their surveys, many old widows who stayed alone in these villages marked plots against names that were different from those mentioned in the records. Thus there are cases where the same plot is held by two names in two different documents. Some parts were sold or mortgaged when a family member needed money. Most families have had an uncle who looked after ‘matters’ (whilst the brood earned their livelihoods in Mumbai, Dubai, wherever) and took decisions that now, decades later, the present generation can’t figure out why. Debates carry on as does the paperwork. More stuff for my novel.

At the end of the exercise, none of us is going to be rich. We are a large family and the assets aren’t. I take back my remark that all our wealth is in our heads. Actually, it’s in our health, as is said, and am glad to have inherited healthy genes, my most valuable ancestral ‘property’. Touch wood.

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