How My 5-YO Learnt More About Goa’s Heritage in One Afternoon Than I Did in Years

I walked into the Museum of Goa a few days ago with my five-year-old daughter, holding my hand. She had no idea what a museum was, but I carried the usual assumptions: quiet corridors, stern reminders, and an unspoken expectation to behave. Instead, the Museum of Goa opened its doors to us like a home. No hushed reverence. No rigid rules. Just colour, warmth, and a sense that children weren’t merely allowed here, they were welcome.

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Before I could even register the first exhibit, my daughter had already darted toward a towering installation of hanging chillies, her curiosity leading the way, as it always does.

We were still taking in the hanging chillies when Sharada Kerkar( Director of the Museum of Goa) appeared beside us, warm, welcoming, and instantly engaging my daughter. Sensing how curious she was, Sharada led us straight to the towering Narkasur installation.

She explained that Narkasur is a demon effigy unique to Goa, created by local communities every year and burned on the eve of Diwali. This one rose more than 20 feet high, its tongue and snake springing to life with a gentle tug,  a detail that thrilled my daughter immediately.

How a patient curator, a child, and a mother met in the middle of art and heritage

Sharada did something few adults manage instinctively: she bent down to my daughter’s height, introduced herself directly to her, and waited patiently for a response. It set the tone for the rest of the afternoon. She spoke to my daughter not as a visitor who needed supervision, but as someone capable of engaging in art.

Sharada’s storytelling pulls a child in without compromising the depth an adult hears. It’s rare to see art explained to a five-year-old with such attention, patience, and respect. 

The three of us walked into the first gallery like an odd little trio: the curator, the mother/journalist, and a curious five-year-old who kept asking questions faster than either of us could answer. Sharada explained each piece with the kind of simplicity that doesn’t patronise. 

She paused often, letting my daughter make meaning on her own.

Four shows. Ninety-plus artists. Over a hundred artworks. But none of those numbers captured what the space felt like. It held a kind of colourful, united hum, a chorus of histories, rituals, and communities sitting side by side confidently.

A wall made of 1,50,000 plastic bottles

When we walked out into the open courtyard, the first thing we saw was a long, stunning, towering wall that stopped us in our tracks. From a distance, it looked like some kind of patterned installation, almost like carved panels. It took a minute to realise we couldn’t figure out what the material was. The sunlight kept bouncing off it in odd ways. 

Only when Sharada noticed us staring did she explain, “It’s made of plastic bottles. All collected from Goa’s beaches.” One hundred and fifty thousand of them. Hearing the number and then seeing the scale of the wall made me think about all the conversations I have every week about recycling, sustainability and garbage collection. Here in my (metaphorical) backyard, there was a wall made from waste. It was an eye-opening moment on what you can do when you want to give hope, but also showcase reality. 

My daughter asked why anyone would build a wall out of trash, which opened up an unexpectedly simple conversation about waste, beaches, and why plastic ends up where it shouldn’t. Sharada told us the piece was designed by her father, Subodh Kerkar, and suddenly the installation carried even more weight. You could feel the intention behind it. 

It was firm and practical but brilliantly aesthetic all at once. “It also blocks the industrial estate behind it,” she added. And that single line said everything about how art, landscape, and purpose meet here amongst people who understand the land, its problems and its people. 

As we moved from gallery to gallery, Sharada leading, my daughter bobbing beside her like a tiny apprentice, I kept thinking about how festivals are not just annual events but mirrors. Communities seeing themselves. Communities telling the world who they are, and who they want to remain.

What struck me most was how naturally the exhibition held complexity: joy alongside sorrow, ritual alongside improvisation, devotion alongside mischief. As someone who spends much of her time hearing about how people hold on to what matters, I felt a familiar pull. The tug of continuity. The negotiation between memory and modernity.

The exhibition unfolds across four interconnected shows, each one offering a different entry point into Goa’s layered cultural landscape:

• Seen/Unseen, curated by Prashant Panjiar, Indrajit Khambe and Sharada Kerkar, explores how festivals are remembered and represented by everyday Goans.
• Where We Gather turns to community-led practices, highlighting the power of shared art-making — a room Sharada spoke about with the tenderness of someone who has witnessed these collaborations firsthand.
• Side by Side responds to both known and lesser-known festivals, creating a space where ritual becomes a lens to understand identity.
• And Festivals as Playgrounds — unsurprisingly, my daughter’s favourite — celebrates how children see celebrations: brightly, boldly, without rules about what “counts” as art.

I couldn’t help thinking about how rare it is to see museums that don’t intimidate children but invite them to participate. To imagine. To leave fingerprints metaphorical and otherwise.

There was so much to take in that at times I simply stood still and watched the room breathe, which is partly why I’m taking you through this visually, through the photographs that hold what my sentences cannot. Think of this as a guided walk-through of what we witnessed: a state remembering itself through its festivals, one story, one frame, one gathering at a time.

1. Chorotsav — The festival that forces a village to face its own mistake

When we reached the room where the ‘Chorotsav’ photos were displayed, Sharada stood beside my daughter and explained, in the gentlest possible way, why the image felt both beautiful and unsettling. She told the story carefully, respecting its weight but not shying away from it.

Years ago, travellers passing through were mistaken for thieves and killed in haste. The truth arrived too late. The guilt stayed. And the village decided that forgetting would be an injustice, silence, an erasure.

The photographs portray this with stark honesty. Men called “Chors” are positioned in unsettling tableaux: some buried up to their necks, others lowered headfirst, swords clenched. Even in photographs, the weight of remorse is unmistakable.
And then the elders rise, singing songs of regret and remembrance. This is a community carrying a painful story forward so it’s never repeated.

2. Pethechi Zatra — An 8-Kilometre Festival of Devotion and Kinship

By the time we reached ‘Pethechi Zatra’, my daughter was walking beside Sharada like they’d known each other for years. She stopped in front of the four masks, bright faces in white, blue, yellow and red, each with the same tall golden headpiece and asked why there were two sets.

Sharada explained that one Peth travels from Mulgao to Mayem every year to meet its twin, a reunion between goddess-sisters that the villages have kept alive for generations.

She also told her about the Dhonds who carry them, walking eight kilometres in the heat, dhotis soaked in sweat, the Beth Kathi bouncing lightly on their shoulders.

My daughter nodded seriously, as if the distance itself deserved respect. Moments like that make you see ritual through a different lens, not exotic, not archaic, but lived.

3. Potekar Festival -What happens when a Goan village turns Halloween-like mischief into tradition

The ‘Potekar’ section made my daughter’s eyes widen in a way the softer exhibits hadn’t. 

Sharada caught her hesitation and, with the same calm warmth she’d shown all afternoon, explained that this ritual was meant to be playful, not frightening. She told her how village children often react the very same way: a mix of fear and fascination that quickly softens into laughter, exactly the kind of thrill that becomes a story you remember.

When I told my daughter it was a bit like Goa’s own version of Halloween, something shifted. She straightened, leaned forward, and looked at the photos more closely instead of shrinking back.

“So they’re just pretending?” she asked, the relief already tugging the corners of her mouth into a smile.

Potekar has always lived somewhere between prank and performance, a community’s invitation to indulge in a little chaos before the quiet season arrives. Watching my daughter move from uncertainty to curiosity felt like witnessing the festival do precisely what it’s meant to do: startle you first, then draw you in with its humour, heart, and humanity.

4. Xeni Uzzo — Where fire, memory, and courage meet

The Xeni Uzzo room made my daughter step back first. The flames in the photographs are striking, but she inched forward once Sharada explained what she was seeing. A mound of cow dung cakes set alight, sparks rising like restless insects. Men walking through embers with steady expressions. Young boys climbing areca nut trees while burning xeni falls around them.

“It looks scary,” my daughter said.
“It can be,” Sharada replied, “but it’s also about courage.”
That was enough. She looked again, this time with curiosity instead of fear.

5. Maange Thapne — the Crocodile that saved a field and became a festival

The crocodile installation was my daughter’s favourite. Bright blocks stacked into a friendly creature. Sharada told her the story: how a crocodile saved the Khazan fields by plugging the break in the embankment with its own body.

“So he protected everyone?” she asked.
“Yes,” Sharada said, “and people remembered.”

 For me, this was a reminder that rituals survive because someone keeps telling them.

A museum that meets you where you are, not where it thinks you should be

All through the afternoon, we wandered in and out of the Children’s Studio. Colours everywhere. Craft tools, unfinished projects, and bold artworks all over the walls. My daughter stopped at the doorway, stunned by the invitation the room offered. “This is my dream come true,” she said excitedly.

Sharada smiled. “Mine too.”

If you’ve ever tried taking a child to a museum, you know how rare this is: a space where the art, the curator, and the atmosphere work together to make a child feel not just included, but central.

Walking back to the car, my daughter asked me when we could visit this place again, “this place where everyone celebrates differently but all together”. And I realised that in two hours, she had absorbed something many adults still struggle to articulate.

That festivals aren’t performances.
They’re memory systems.
And heritage is something you pass down not through lectures, but through shared moments, one room, one ritual, one patiently whispered explanation at a time.