An excerpt from the latest novel by Rochelle Potkar – The D’Costa Family

About the book 

The Goan Indian D'Costa family descends into glorious chaos after patriarch Don Theodore's death. His widow Rita, who never loved him, launches a campaign to install their gravedigger son Jason as the new Don, bribing tenants, and manipulating family members. Meanwhile, her pregnant daughter-in-law Annette juggles a secret lover, stolen jewelry, and an accidental shooting, while Inspector Gaitonde - allergic to family drama - stumbles upon the D'Costas' most absurd secret beneath Jason's manicured graveyard. As real estate schemes collapse, guns are mishandled, and a Catholic-Hindu wedding spirals into hullabaloo, Rita recognizes the madness of the patriarchal power game she had been playing, finding unexpected solidarity with the tenants she once chose to exploit. The D'Costa Family is a wild ride packed with over-the-top characters and crazy twists that come fast and unexpected - sometimes emotional, sometimes macabre, but always gripping.

Rochelle Potkar is a prize-winning poet, author, and screenwriter, based in Mumbai.  Her books include Four Degrees of Separation, Paper Asylum - shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2020, Bombay Hangovers (also in Hindi now), and Coins in Rivers – shortlisted at The Wise Owl Literary Award 2025.

Alumna of the prestigious Iowa’s International Writing Program, USA and a Charles Wallace Writer’s fellow, University of Stirling, she was invited four time over as a creative-writing mentor to Iowa’s International Writing Programs - Summer Institute 2019 and Between the Lines 2022, 2023, and 2024. She also teaches poetry at the Himalayan Writing Retreat.  Her writings have been translated into Arabic, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Hindi, Marathi, Macedonian, and German. Widely-anthologized, she has read her poetry in India, Bali, Iowa, Macao, Stirling, Glasgow, Hongkong, Ukraine, Hungary, Bangladesh, Nepal, Dubai, and the Gold Coast, Australia. 

She was granted an honorary Doctorate in Literature from Sanskriti University, Mathura by the former President of India Mr. Ram Nath Kovind. Her first screenplay was an NFDC India Screenwriters Lab 2018 selection and won a quarterfinalist at the Atlanta Film Festival 2020. Two of her projects were in the Top 30 Book to Box Office vertical of NFDC Film Bazaar 2023, Goa. Her short film scripts Catharsis, Salad, and Ali Guli Maane have won accolades in short script and playwright competitions. Her short film Salad based in Goa (Shezari) directed by Sonu Anand will release in September 2025. The D’Costa Family is her latest book – a black comedic debut novel that is receiving warm reception by readers and reviewers.

@rochellepotkar (X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIN) 

An excerpt from the latest novel by Rochelle Potkar – The D’Costa Family

 

It had been three years since Appolina had come through what she called ‘an abusive home’ and her divorce proceedings were still sorting out. Rita concluded she would have to deal with this elder daughter of hers later. Of even why Fabian her new ex-husband had gone and chosen God and decided out of the blue to become a priest and was speedily inducted as a Brother in the Society of Jesus.

How could this have happened so fast, when just six months before their marriage he was dancing with all the girls in off-shoulder gowns at Xmas parties? There was too much secrecy even in the rumours that spread about Appolina after she returned: that she was so frightening a wife that she could send even the calmest of husbands into priesthood, making them renounce the world.

But the truths of Fabian Furtado and Appolina were different. Long before it emerged in their marital bedroom, the truth had crept out with its scratchy, scrawny webbed limbs in Fabian’s unsuspecting childhood, as he played with the other boys and girls and progressed to various grades but always went home to seek and find more about God.

While others around him were interested in the latest cartoon show on Doordarshan – India’s premiere public TV channel or the latest comic book or new adventures of Shikari Shambu or Chacha Chaudhuri or Nancy Drews or the Hardy Boys files, Fabian read up whole verses of the Bible from the end of the last page to the beginning of the first page. He found the Bible was more fascinating told in a completely different way. In reverse. From the resurrection of Christ at 33 to the birth of Infant Jesus. In both cases, the life of Jesus was fascinating. An existence of purity, faith, and forgiveness. Fabian stole his grandmother’s prayer books and his catechism teacher’s guidebooks and as an altar boy even the priest’s books to understand God. Jesus intrigued him like nothing else. So, by the time he was sixteen when all were experimenting with their first kisses and first crushes, he knew about all the seven sections in the Catholic Bible - Baruch, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Tobit, and Wisdom. He was now in search of the Ethiopian Bible that had all 88 books in it.

Fabian couldn’t tell anyone of his love for God, because all those around him too loved God and prayed deeply, and even if they didn’t know exactly that the Old Testament had 46 books and the New Testament 27, they rattled off their prayers with fervent delight and he had to stay quiet.

 

It hadn’t troubled him much for years, that he was found in church every evening, more than on the football, cricket, and hockey grounds until one day his mother announced that Fabian was on the ripe side of 30 and it was time for him to settle down into marriage. Fabian captured his secret love for God between his tongue and palette like the eucharist, thinking the Almighty was going to send him a package of courage soon under his wings and armpits, by which he would stay illuminated enough to educate his mother about the whole truth and she would let him go in peace to God.

But the more he tried to get the attention of his fidgety and anxious mother filled with quotidian frenzy, he couldn’t show her how his love for God could ever be an excuse for not being interested in marriage, when that was the basis of their lives.

And so, once Fabian realized that God wasn’t coming to help him in his pursuit and journey – He would give the land but not the grain, give the water but not the well – it was too late.

From poster-tearing entries Bollywood heroes made to save the heroines, to theological secrets Fabian had studied, he assumed God would tear open a wall and leap to preserve him. That’s why he was shocked as he sleepwalked the aisle on his wedding day, kissed his bride Appolina, and exchanged vows and rings in the presence of his beloved Jesus. Was Christ angry with him? Would He be jealous. How would He show it? In wrath toward Appolina or him?

Fabian waited to see what happened next, as he failed to conjugate on his marital bed. He felt frozen with the truths of life which were so different from the notions inside his head. In his head, he was one with the Supreme God and if the Son of God sat at the right side of his Father, Fabian sat at the feet of that Son of God.

And here it was Appolina rubbing his feet, trying to entice him with her dark naked plump body. Why couldn’t she see that he was not hers? That he was already taken?

But things always had the habit of happening to Fabian, right from his birth into this world, to the admission and matriculation in his school, to the realization of God’s love, and now this marriage. It was his mother who lived two lives that of hers and his. She always made everything happen. She always made up for everything that didn’t happen.

But if anything here saved Fabian for God, it was Appolina herself, because she turned out to be a greater rebel than him. For one, she couldn’t wake up earlier than 11 to cook breakfast for anyone, including herself. She admitted to him that she always got her tea and breakfast in bed in her mother’s house, brought in by the servants, and now expected his mother - active and flighty - to do that for her. She also didn’t have any idea about cooking lunches or dinners - Anglo-Indian or Goan - or any other cuisine and had no interest in lady-like activities like going to beauty parlours, shopping for ornaments or clothing or vegetables. All she loved to do was his work. She visited the garage to get his stray cycle, bike, or car fixed, washed, oiled, and greased. She could go to the bank to withdraw or deposit the month’s money, or to pay premiums on the next insurance policies. She could read the newspapers on politics and economics, and repair odds and ends in the house from appliances to leaking roofs to creaking fans to clogged kitchen sinks to toilet drains to old burnt bulbs.

She would sit around when guests - especially Mr. Furtado’s friends came by to discuss world affairs and politics much to the chagrin of both his parents. Soon she gave up on her dresses and wore Fabian’s shirts and trousers, because she told him she felt cooler in them. What she wore at home was one thing, she began wearing his tuxedoes and three-piece suits for masses and weddings too. She had become not a laughingstock like him, but more a head-turner of the wrong kind – a centre of amusement, a walking circus, a butt of all jokes. She was reforming the town with mirth more than prayer or good deeds ever could, thought Fabian. This too was God’s work, not the devil’s.

 

But that’s when Mrs. Furtado decided that her son’s marriage was over. It was only she who could take the decision, like she had taken one around his marriage. Fabian was initially grateful for the turn of events this time though. But once his mother did that, she also proclaimed she would get him married to a real lady. That’s when the voice of Fabian broke from his guttural chamber, and he spoke. The spirit of God had thawed his rigid tongue and words flew out strong and mellifluous. “No Mama!!! I don’t want to marry again. I want to be a priest.”

“No no no, my son. Don’t give up on life just because of this robust wretch - this manly-woman. There are lady-like ladies around, you will see. Plenty of them - tender, loving, and pretty with soft hands and polished nails, you will see. Don’t lose faith in womankind. We are good. We really are!”

“No mama, I don’t disbelieve you, but I don’t love men or women as themselves. I love them as my children. You too are my child.” Then Fabian took life in his hands. He stood on a small stool and put a palm over his mother’s head and whispered fervently, “Bless you, my woman and child. May you have peace in your life and see the light.” He grabbed his book of prayers and recited a verse and the way he said it with piety and depth of voice, his mother knew what she had always known, suppressed and buried under her frenetic behaviour - that Fabian was not a boy or a man. He was never going to be like the others. He was the

father of this town. Not its child, not her child, not any child.

Appolina, his saviour, was sent back, and the marriage was annulled without much of an explanation. But all his wardrobe - shirts and trousers - in a return trousseau were sent with her back to Burgundy House. What use did Fabian even have of them?

In Burgundy House, no one sought an explanation from Appolina and she simply didn’t give one. All around her, neighbors, tenants, churchgoers, and town-dwellers continued to believe that of course it was her fault. Just look at her in those bush sleeved shirts and her hair in a bob cut. What she was only missing was a baba black sheep beard! Which man was ever going to tolerate her as his wife?