As funerals go, you may say I am biased in favour of this one.

Domnic Pereira – tiatrist, activist, householder – was laid to rest in the small cemetery of Tiracol village by an overwhelming crowd of over one thousand mourners.

What creates events like this? How does a funeral in one of the tiniest villages of Goa (so small it cannot even have a panchayat of its own) expand its boundaries to dominate the consciousness of people far and near for over three hours, and no complaints?

Normally, funerals begin and end like clock-work: people say set things, say set prayers, then huddle at the cemetery, eager to go home. I have witnessed funerals in the city of Panaji, in villages like Parra and Saligao, where not more than a hundred or two hundred congregate. But a thousand?

When I reached the village, there was already a brass band playing: three saxophones, two trumpets and a drummer. Since this was a musician’s funeral, these were very good musicians. None of those false notes.

By the side of Domnic’s coffin, I found Elvis (his eldest son) and Fr. Daniel (his youngest, just flown in from Rome). They say these villages like Tiracol are “barren” and ”backward”, yet how did one of Tiracol’s youngest lads go to Rome?

The walk from the settlement to the Tiracol heritage church took all of 10 minutes. A shamiana had been erected, in case there was going to be rain. Rain it did the whole morning, but by 3 pm, even God cooperated and provided excellent weather till the final mourners had dispensed with sprinkling mud on the grave.

The religious service was truly awesome. The head celebrant (there were more than a dozen) spoke exquisite, finely chiselled Konkani. It was sheer pleasure just to listen to him. At times like these, one appreciates the true beauty of the mother-tongue. When I enquired, I heard the speaker was no less than Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao. I could have hit myself on the head for not recognising the voice. All I can say is when he spoke, the words fell out of his mouth like flowers.

But the son, Fr Daniel, also delivered a moving eulogy in memory of his departed father. The stories from the eulogies spoke of a fine man, much appreciated for his music at tiatrs. But then we also heard other things: that Dominic treated youngsters as his equals, that he never discriminated against anyone on the basis of religion, and that he encouraged people to laugh. They said that he was dedicated to the survival of his village and that he would never have rested till he got Leading Hotels and their infernal golf course out of his neighbourhood.

So he was the archetypical Goan villager: skilled in fishing on the rocks, simple in the extreme, always looking outwards to his community, ready to help, and, firmly religious. That all the speakers noted.

As one of them observed, as a tiatrist Domnic might have faced blood and bouncers who were nothing more than actors playing their roles on a stage. But when he became an activist to fight the golf course, he found it difficult to accept that JCBs, blood and bouncers could be so real they could hurt.

The last straw was his visit to the illegal road constructed right across his agricultural plot. Leading Hotels found the plot came as the single most impossible obstruction to their plans to move inwards where they would need to build their rooms and buildings. So they got the name of Domnic Pereira simply deleted from Form I and XIV. After they had eliminated the name, they ran the road across his plot because they could now claim he did not exist. Seeing the road there struck him like a dagger because he found that nothing of his plot remained.

This was not a tiatr any more. But the world was not listening because it was composed of mamlatdars, talathis and deputy collectors who simply carried out instructions. (Published in O Heraldo on 15 July 2015)