The white church

The ubiquitous white church - glimpsed through treetops as you drive through the hilly landscape of Goa, standing by the seashore or within the precincts of a ruined fort - gives the impression that Christianity dominates Goa. This is not so. Christians probably account for no more than a quarter of the population.

Yet these churches are seen everywhere: austere, silent and shuttered. Some are small, no more than chapels, some imposing in their dimension. Some are earthbound, others appear to be suspended over the village or town, with a flight of steep steps leading up to them. They are almost invariably white, a whiteness that dazzles - and beautiful in their uniform serenity and simplicity. They are also almost invariably detached and separate from their surroundings.

Local Hindu temples, on the other hand, are colourful and gaudy, often noisy. Apart from a few ancient temples which are quite grand, the temples are small, built by local villagers. Though several are present in every village, you don’t notice them as you do the white silent churches.

What do these different houses of worship say about the worshippers, not to mention the gods they pay homage to?

If the church is silent and almost forbidding, is the Christian god, too, distant and remote? Or do these churches merely present such a façade because they were built by the Portuguese, conquerors who desired to impress the land with the authority of their gods?

On Talpona beach is that rare sight: a Hindu temple. The small temple stands at one end of the long, curving beach. Adjoining it is the cluster of red-tiled cottages that forms the tiny village. Walking along this almost virgin beach lined with casuarinas trees towards this far end, you are not tempted to go right up to the temple. There is about it an air, not of worshipful reverence as befitting the house of god, but of the mundane, of the ordinariness of life. You imagine hens scratching in the dirt outside the temple, dogs sleeping, wet clothes flapping, small children with bare bottoms crawling about near the temple door. If god lives in this temple, he is very much a part of village life.

The difference with the white churches seen on most other beaches is stark.