Located somewhere between Benaulim Beach and Madgaon, in a quaint street in Goa Chitra – an ethnographic museum. That intends to show you life in Goa as it used to be. This is the second ethnographic museum that I have seen after the Big Foot Museum.
While Big Foot focuses on the macro-level showing you the houses and the professions of the Goans. This one has collected and documented the stuff used in day to day life of the agrarian society of Goa. Before tourism, mining, and a few other industries took over.
Goa Chitra Museum – Goan Culture & Customs
I have already written about the Goa Chakra part of the museum. Let me give you a glimpse of the ethnographic part of the museum which has a huge collection of many unusual things. At the entrance, there is a collection of Christian prayer items followed by Hindu prayer items. That shows the peaceful co-existence of two communities in the state.
The beautifully designed museum has a central courtyard that is occupied by displays and a water pond that has fish living in it. Various rooms are filled with aesthetically arranged items. Some of them you might have seen in your grandmother’s house. In fact, I felt a tinge of sadness when I saw the Banta Bottle or the bottle with a marble stuck in its neck as a museum piece. Which was just a couple of decades ago and was pretty much a part of our growing up.
The common thread of living
Visiting these kinds of museums across the country tells me that all the communities in different corners of the country were bound by a common thread in the way they lived. What would today be called ‘100% Organic living’? And the commonalities in their tools, types of equipment, and daily wares.
The museum collection is huge, this is a small sample of what I saw.
Read more Travel Blog posts on Places to visit in Goa.
Anirdha!
India looks even more beautiful and enticing from your camera lens and you computer keys. Well maneuvered equipments to extract sugarcane juice from jaggery and prepare cashew nut freni ?? Wow!!! seems like our ancestors were infamous inventors who were guarded from the lime- light. So proud to be a part of this ancient society where knowledge was the cradle for civilization.
Thank you Gopal. My idea to share these places is to put light on our heritage and learn from it – for our ancestors did everything in the most sustainable of the ways.
The legend of the ilustration “Sugar cane juice from jaggery picture at Goa Chitra Museum” should be corrected to ” Sugarcane juice extractor” or “Sugarcane crusher for juice extraction”. Figure has nothing depicting jaggery.
Thanks, Carlos for pointing out. Updated.