By Rochelle Potkar
Matriarch Rita D’Costa is determined to reclaim her family’s power and riches from her elder son, Don Pedro, even as their tenants plot a rebellion of their own. With schemes unfolding, betrayals simmering, and long-buried secrets surfacing, alliances shift faster than a loaded gun. As old enemies rise, Rita must ask herself — how far is she willing to go for vengeance?
The following chapter is excerpted from the book “The D’Costa Family” by kind permission of the author.
Rita was soon back into the realm of daily grind: the insurgency of spices for the sorpotel and vindaloo, the crisp frying of rechado rava-coated prawns, the bubbling of rice that let out a briny foam from its handi. All this that went straight up her nostrils, making her eyes moist, but whose sizzling was music to her ears. Her kitchen that also had a spare clay stove and brass utensils was her island of solace, where Annette — Pedro’s blue-eyed wife was slitting raw pomfrets to stuff rechado masala into them.
Rita watched Annette for a while and grabbed her by her arm, nudging her out of the kitchen door into the backyard. Here the garden gleamed in cherub tomatoes and green chillies.
“What is it Mummy?” Annette asked, scrunching her face to the sun. “I feel thirsty, you know in this heat. What’s so urgent...?”
Rita looked her up and down, her gaze resting on her swollen stomach. “What happened to you? Are you alright?”
“Of course, I am!” Annette touched her tummy.
“Okay! I want you to vote for Jason in the re-election. Got it?”
“How can I? You know Pedro.”
“Still.”
“He will know! Then what would I do?”
“I have thought about it, my dear. Don’t think I’m just sitting and stirring the curry pot. You know how much it took to get the will changed in your favour, don’t you? You have not even thanked me.”
“Thank you!” said Annette, shading her eyes with her palm, as her gaze took a distant flight to the far-end of the tenant’s settlement.
The settlement was calm. Only children were playing about — their adults either indoors or out at work. Annette hung her wistful gaze over the last house of that settlement.
“Even if I don’t get to sit on the throne in the den, Jason can. Or maybe you? But never Blanca. Unless you want her to,” said Rita.
“I don’t think she’s capable. So lofty and dreamy.”
“It’s never about nature, but caste.”
“That’s something I’ve never understood. She looks like everyone else,” said Annette.
“If only looks were everything, my dear. It’s blood, skin, bloodline. I heard from the neighbors, she’s a Kharvi - Konkani Kharvi – not completely a low caste, but still.”
“How many castes are there in Goans?”
“Oh, you’ll be surprised. Gawda, Bhandari, Kharvi, Chari, Vani, Gawli, Kansar, Kalaikar, Satarkar, Shet, Kumbhar, and many, many...,” chuckled Rita.
“My god you know it like nursery rhymes.”
“Oh, they never forgot their castes no matter how many years of church-going.”
“Would we forget our fancies? Alright, Mummy, I will try to vote for Jason. But I can’t promise.”
“Try girl. At least!”
They hurried back with a few raw tomatoes. Rita’s haven was now attended by Blanca and the maids, but not Seneca, and never once Appolina.
For the next forty days, Rita decided to observe a phase of mourning. She dressed in black even though she hated such a joyless color and removed her gold rings, earrings, and chains. She dabbed Appolina’s wasted foundation creams five shades too dark for her skin tone, that it separated her neck from her face and looked like a mask of a theatre play. And theatre it was, as she welcomed the simple food the tenants brought, which she tried shoving into her mouth, and then in those plastic boxes away for Philomena and Myna to eat over their meals.
But nothing was missed now after Theodore’s passing, except the strong smell of incense and burning camphor that had made her life feverish. Now the air was hot, but crisp and aroma-less and they began preparing for the month’s mind – a church mass in remembrance of the departed, a month after death. Father Fabian Furtado – her ex-son-in-law - had come visiting after Rita’s frequent phone calls and was now in the drawing room. He shivered his leg and jumped his knees and dabbed his nape as if he faced a trauma of a past life not so far back in time - of being related to this house. What was the magic of following God if it couldn’t even grant you amnesia?
Rita made a list of things that would be required for the month’s mind mass and said, “I hope Father Furtado you will officiate Seneca’s marriage in December too? Father Fabian…?”
“I would rather… rather leave that to the senior and older priest, Mrs. D’Costa.”
Rita had a hard time concentrating on the utterances of this stupid oaf of an ex-son-in-law, who was now suddenly the Voice of God.
“I did rather you do it. You are, were, part of this family. You know best! I insist.” It wasn’t a request or a plea, but an order with sternness lacing her voice, and Father Fabian, young as he was into priesthood, picked on it. Like mother, like daughter, he thought. Better never to lock horns. “It shall be my honor, Mrs. D’Costa,” he said, as he left.
Once again in the kitchen, preparing sannas, chutney, boiled eggs for breakfast, to getting the garlic pods, ginger, and cinnamon sticks ready for the lunch curry, the counter was divided into regions and territories. Rita glanced at Myna and Philomena who stood sun-tanned like furniture, peeling garlic and crushing the ginger to a pulp. Tiny gold crosses glinted from the chains around their necks. They both had been Adivasis whose great- grandparents had converted to Christianity and who now followed the religion more strictly than anyone else in Burgundy House.
Blanca was mute, struggling to get the sanna batter into shape with not a sliver stuck to the pan, as Annette arranged the silverware, the filigreed spoons on the blue-and-white saucers and placed the matching teapot and the rose-enamelled sugar pot on the tray.
Blanca was always the outcast and by now she was used to her mother-in-law Rita looking through her. That’s what happened to unwanted brides, to near-child brides. To girls when they crossed a line and colored outside the shapes.
Rochelle Potkar is a prize-winning poet, author, playwright and screenwriter based in Mumbai. Her books in poetry include Four Degrees of Separation, Paper Asylum, shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2020, and Coins in Rivers, longlisted for the Sarojini Naidu Poetry Award 2026. Her books in fiction include Bombay Hangovers (also in Hindi) and her novel The Fabric Goddesses.
The D’Costa Family can be purchased here.