Tras os Montes I

São Salvador do Mundo

With my left hand, I tied a knot on the pine- like leaves of the little plant and the future became a certainty. In one year’s time from that evening I am to be married. My genial classmate has already made the offer in exchange of an elephant as a wedding gift. São Salvador do Mundo is not about the little plant and a wedding in offer. It is about a belief that dates back to more than ten centuries.

With AD 1000 fast approaching, the dooms day was in prediction. In the mass hysteria that spread around Europe, São Salvador do Mundo (literally saviour saint of the world) was northern Portugal’s little locale of salvation. The short steep climb carries one through a circuit of beliefs and folklore. The little plant has already shrivelled up with the weight of a hundred weddings on her head. Two simple white chapels perch on top of gray rocky outcrops. Then there is the stone where the devil caught his foot and fell down on his knees; got up and fell down again this time his horns hitting hard on the rock’s surface; cup marks marking each stage of his fall on the Fraga do Diabo (Rock of the Devil?). A strong, chilly wind caught our faces as we climbed up to the highest point on the cliff, to the second chapel of hope.


Hope, I think, must look, somewhat like Douro that flows beneath, nestled amongst the steep cliffs of Tras- os- Montes. River Douro (of gold), that captures the golden rays of the sun and shines out brilliant from rugged depths of the mountain...

The Wine Country

São Salvador do Mundo was our last and the lightest part of four days, titled Geomorphology and Geodiversity, through the North of Portugal. The landscape is predominated by schist in the lower reaches and more resistant granite and quartzite in the upper reaches. Schist is a soft gray stone that breaks with ease in neat layers. The slate we write on for instance is metamorphosed schist. The region is also the heart of the wine country in Portugal- home to the famous Vinho- do – Porto. If wine does not flow in the rivers, it definitely flows through the stone tanks and pipes of the wine factory of Freixo de Espada. For once, outside the dream also, as I turn a tap it is wine that flows out rather than water. The schist absorbs sunlight in summer and radiates it out in winter- conditions ideal for wine cultivation. The grape wine creeps up over narrow elongated schist blocks rather than on wooden support. It is a geology set out for wine.

I am writing this with a glass of wine on my tabletop- wine from a dusty green bottle that stayed for years on the cupboard of a house in Vilarinha de Tanho. During the last few days of our stay in this little village, many such bottles have found their way to the house where we stay. Vilarinha de Tanho is close to Vila Real where we have courses for a month. The place is in stark contrast with Mação. Mação is an impersonal city, flaunting its affluence, in the pretence of a village. Vilarinha de Tanho smiles and greets you with a spontaneity that is informal. Spontaneity of the several bottles of free wine and home-baked bread on our table, of the middle aged women who show us around the many little chapels (dedicated to our Lady of Affliction and Health and what not) and the repeated handshakes of the ever smiling man, always there on the same street, for whom the world is a reality different from that of the others.


But much was there before that....

Nazaré

The story is of a foggy morning, eight hundred years back in time. Knight Dom Fuas Rouphino, was pursuing a stag. All of a sudden, his game disappeared at the edge of a cliff. Rouphino who was close behind, heard in alarm the waves lapping below. Only a miracle could save. And it was a miracle that did happen.

At the very edge of the cliff his horse came to a sudden halt. Convinced that the Virgin of Nazaré had come to his aid Rouphino raised a chapel on the site. But, I do not think that any divine intervention was necessary. The spontaneous beauty, of the sight that spread below would root anyone to the spot.

O Album Nazaré

The Tale of an Axe

This was told by Chris Buco in her lecture on Rock Art in Latin America...

Prehistoric stone axes acted just like modern axes. They chopped. What remains of the axe now is the stone head, carefully flaked out of the core and polished by skilled hands. When they find their way to us, archaeologists, we draw them, measure them, try to identify how, in their making, each strike fell.

The Krahô as a group of people presently lives in the North- East of Brazil, in and around the state of Tocantins. The numbers and occupation patterns, mediated over time by violent conflicts and colonization. Time and again in the region, one comes across pre-historic stone axes. For the Krahô, these lunar (stone axes) have immense symbolic significance, significance different from their original ‘chop chop’ function. They are painted and held in ceremonial gatherings and preciously guarded over generations.

Laughter

On the whole, in our classroom laughter is a very calculated thing- a response to an academic joke, a note of sarcasm, genuine surprise on why the Palaeolithic deer looks like a fish! And usually the laughter flies over my head, due to my ignorance of the language. To be fair there is a bit of uncalculated laughter too that flies over my head.

One Saturday afternoon, during one of the ten minutes breaks in the daylong lecture, the class gathered around the little pond outside the museum. Sleet of ice had covered the pond. The last few autumn leaves lay still just beneath the surface. I don’t remember who started it.