Monday, January 21, 2008
Publishing travails
Online text
Learn Konkani
Memoirs ... of a voice from the airwaves
Friday, January 19, 2007
Remembering the Fall of Portuguese India in 1961
Francisco Cabral Couto, O Fim do Estado Português da Índia, Lisboa, Tribuna, s.d, ISBN.10:972-8799-53-5, pp. 136.
Priced at € 21.60 by FNAC in Lisbon, this hard cover coffee-table publication is perhaps the latest addition to the surprisingly rich and often controversial historiography about the end of the Portuguese colonial rule in India.
The author, now a retired general, was a young 26-old fresher from Military Academy when he arrived in Goa on 27 March 1961 and was posted at the Afonso de Albuquerque military camp in the village of Navelim, with command over 47 «caçadores» (hunters) with responsibility for the defence of Borim bridge, Paroda canal, river Sal and Anjidiv island. Within months the reinforcements made a total of 158, including many youngsters with little military training.
They were mostly involved in reconnaissance missions to ward off terrorist attacks. Describes the lack of basic conditions for any sort of defence in any terms of strategic or military means at disposal. The camp headquarters at Navelim had a generator that did not work, and depended upon the use of kerosene lamps and stoves.
With the exception of the delicious mangoes and abundant supply of bananas, classifies the food resources in Goa as of poor quality. There were canned supplies of quality food and drinks from UK and Holland, but few could afford them. The author admits that he did not stay in Goa long enough to take the pulse of the civil society, but remained with the impression that most Goans favoured autonomy or integration with India. Felt that the Portuguese presence was tolerated and even respected, but not much loved: «Quanto aos portugueses, é importante dizê-lo, pareceu-me que eram, dum mode geral, respeitados, bem tolerados, mas não amados, a não ser por aqueles que com eles tinham fortes laços familiares» (pp. 20-21).
While the acts of terrorism in Goa were multiplying, the Portuguese authorities were curiously encouraging the families of the men posted in Goa to join them, giving a false impression that all was well in Portuguese India. The author had his first son born on the eve of his departure to India. His wife and 5-month old son arrived by the first flight of TAIP in July.
While reporting about the relics of the Portuguese naval force in Goa, the author refers to a curious incident in September 1963 when Salazar ordered the ground batteries at the fort of Almada in Portugal to fire upon the cruiser Afonso de Albuquerque for having joined the republican forces in the Spanish civil war! Hence, ironically, the Indians were the not the first ones to do fire upon this war vessels. The author does not fail to report that the Commander of the warship was gravely hurt in the Vijay Operation, but his life was saved by the Indian military medics who treated him on shore in the Naval Club at Caranzalem.
The author reveals that in an emergency defence planning meet in September 1961 he had opposed the «Plano Sentinela» that was approved by the home government for resistance to Indian attack, suggesting that the defence should concentrate in the capital island, and not in Mormugão. Confesses that he was asked to drop his objections and withdraw his suggestions. Reveals another «Plano de Barragens» that has found no mention in earlier publications known to me. It complemented the «Plano Sentinela». It was meant to demolish the vital bridge links to delay the advance of the enemy forces. The same plan envisaged also mining of the main roadways and beach approaches. But lack of mines did not make it viable.
We have a fairly detailed description of the events at Anjidiv on 23-24 November, when the Portuguese forces stationed there fired upon the passenger vessel Sabarmati passing between the island and Kochi harbour, causing some deaths. The Portuguese forces were convinced that Indians were planning to disembark in the island. The Indian press was agog with news on 25 November and provoked a rapid escalation of diplomatic and military tension. The Portuguese official sent from Goa to investigate the case reported that the soldier manning the gun had fired upon the ship alleging that it was within the Portuguese territorial waters on 17 November and had kept his action unreported.
On December 9 the vessel India arrived from Timor on its way to Lisbon. With capacity for 380 passengers, it left on 12 December carrying 700, despite a telegram received from Lisbon ordering the Governor General to not permit any families to embark in the ship. The Governor General ignored the order. Allowed all who wanted to leave to embark and the passengers were fitted even into the bath rooms during night time.
It arrived in Lisbon on the last day of the year. The most valuable and original contribution of this book are the very personal experiences of the author after his detention by the invading forces. Such details as we read in pp. 103-116 constitute the value that this kind of personal memoirs can bring to historiography, despite and precisely because of their questionable nature of subjective version. Every personal version counts and is important for the re-construction of an «objective» history.
Francisco Cabral Couto describes the humiliation he felt when the Indian troops forced them to break up their weapons and arrange them in mounds. He got a gun-handle knock on his knuckles when tried to play dumb. Greater humiliation awaited him when his group was taken to the Navelim camp where he had been in command. Now he and his colleagues had to sleep on cement floor, dig trenches to serve as open-air latrines, and had to go make do with a jar of water that was supplied by tanks of Margão Muncipality.
Confesses that this shortage was caused by the Portuguese themselves by destroying the bridges and other supply routes. Remembers how the Christmas was celebrated with some dry biscuits that meant much in the context. Most interesting is the fact that among the guards, soldiers of Indian army he recognized three who had served in Goa as train TC, another as Longuinhos bar servant and a third who would be seating as a beggar under a banyan tree. After all, they seem to have been serving the Indian spy system, and nobody had sensed it.
The Navelim internees where shifted to the Ponda camp in mid January 1962, where the Alfa Detenues Camp was much better organized. Describes how a few soldiers tried to escape, provoking a serious incident when the some of the Portuguese officials were called upon to admit lack of responsibility and were threatened with death by shooting. The timely intervention of a Jesuit military chaplain ended it all without any tragic consequences. The author admits that he and his Portuguese colleagues admired the discipline of the Indian army, which was equally just in punishing its own members who failed to comply with rules.
Describes how he left Goa by air to Karachi on May 8 and embarked on 9th for Lisbon aboard Vera Cruz. On arrival in Lisbon 11 days later, they were taken away early in the dark of night under police escort and without access to the families that awaited them. In the following months all were subject to unending questionings, until on 22 March 1963 a list was published of those who were subject to punishment of some kind, and many were dismissed from service without right for self-justification.
The book ends by admission that Salazar failed to calculate well the international support, but that also the Indian invasion proved the Portuguese capacity to resist subversion. This conclusion appears to be a non sequitur after the author admits that Nehru has shown great patience for nearly two decades, and implying that no one can be tested indefinitely, as did the Portuguese diplomatic intransigence. Perhaps the photo chosen to be included in the book reveals author’s bias and provides an answer? Is the photo meant to illustrate Nehru’s intimacy with the Mountbatten couple, or does it insinuate anything else?
Teotonio R. de Souza
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1503/teo_publ.html
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Goan women... and the written word
Am a regular reader of your blogs and posts on various goa-linked forums.In response to an old query posted by you on Goacom [I guess he means Goanet.org --FN] -- on notification of new goan authors, below are two recent releases, both by Goans, and both based in part on fictional villages in Goa
- Nandita da Cunha.Novel: The Magic of Maya. Info at http://nanditadacunha.blogspot
.com - Sonia Faleiro,Novel: The Girl,Info at http://soniafaleiro.blogspot
.com
There are also short stories (again based on Goa) by Nisha da Cunha, and a non fictional account by Maria Aurora Couto but I do not have a link to that. I have read and enjoyed all these books, especially the short stories by Nisha (the only non-Goan in the list above!) ... most of which however have a darker side to them. You could update your database/ reviews section with any of these if you like. Do let me know if this is of any use.
Thanks so much Aloke. Your post (though I knew these names, fiction doesn't interest me as much as non-fiction....) suddenly drew my attention to the fact that in our, patriarchal, Goan society, women writers are fairly well well represented. As it happens, I kept up till late last night, reading some chapters of Imelda Dias' How Long Is Forever? An Autobiography of a Woman Ahead of her Times.
technorati tags:goa, womenwriters, feedback
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Sunday, January 14, 2007
Looking at Goa's heritage... in its various shapes
One of my favourite Goa-related journals was released the other day. Parmal. It's latest issue has on its cover this photo showing traditionally-attired Goan Hindu young women at a festive celebration. Parmal is published by the Goa Heritage Action Group, and calls itself "an annual publication brought to you by the GHAG, an NGO (non-governmental organisation) based in Goa dedicated to the preservation, protection and conservation of Goa's natural, cultural and man-made heritage".
Prava Rai is Parmal's editor. She does a great job of it. It fits in with my view that some of the so-called "non-Goans" (and returned expats) are among those who are contributing the most significantly to Goan society today. The simplistic barrage against them notwithstanding.
Prava says in the editorial: "The danger of equating heritage with identity fosters untenable claims to the bones, belongings, riddles and the refuse of every forbear into the mists of time: ipossible claims in the face of historical reality."
My view of the GHAG is that it tends to be a bit elitist in nature. Sometimes. This places it somewhat closer-to-comfort to the Establishment than it perhaps should be, and blocks it from taking more strong, campaign-oriented stands. But, on the positive side, it helps them get an official hearing. Sometimes. Their approach also means they do a great job to generate content that has much relevance to the debate about Goa.
This issue contains articles, among others, focussed on the mother goddess cult (by Portuguese studies specialist Ana Paula Lopes da Silva Damas Fita), the feminine space in Goan houses (architecture writer Heta Pandit), sacred groves (field ecologist Nirmal Kulkarni), the Fontainhas Festival of the Arts (artist and journalist Deviprasad C Rao), Goan residential architecture (Sanskrit scholar and prof of theology Jose Pereira), the parish churches of Goa (civil engineer-turned-author and Goalogist Jose Lourenco), the legacy of the house of Menezes Braganca (sociologist Nishtha Desai), forgetting Pio Gama Pinto (by SOAS-London educated researcher Rochelle Pinto), and Mumbai-based freelance writer Veena Gomes-Patwardhan's The Stars of Yesterday (from the Konkani stage).
If you'll allow me to brag a little (which is what one is usually doing!), we managed to point to the interesting ideas of some writers by having them e-published on Goanet Reader... and Parmal/Prava did a good job of following up. Of course, we should be doing far, far more on this front....
technorati tags:goa, heritage, parmal, ghag, goaheritageactiongroup, books, reviews
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Saturday, July 08, 2006
Sunday, January 22, 2006
BOOK REVIEW: Secrets behind church facades (by Melvyn Misquita)
Secrets behind church facades
BY MELVYN MISQUITA [Herald] melvyn at misquita.net
What do mermaids, a two-headed eagle, lions, the mythical Cyclops and a boat have in common? Believe it or not, they all grace the façades of parishes churches in Goa.
To be honest, a casual spectator may find façades of the 158-odd parish churches in Goa nothing more than repetitive white-washed multi-storeyed structures that deserved nothing more than a cursory glance.
That is, until they lay their hands on the recently published book "The Parish Churches of Goa", a study of façade architecture by Jose Lourenco along with photographs by Pantaleao Fernandes.
The 201-page book is packed with exhaustive, yet fascinating, information and pictures on façades of parish churches, right from Agassaim to Veroda and even includes a map of Goa identifying the parish churches for the curious traveller. The book, however, does not include facades of non-parish churches (churches at Old Goa).
The authors begin by briefly describing the various architectural influences of the west and east on church façades in Goa.
The early façades, according to the authors, were the 'peaked gable' façades, relatively unsophisticated late Portuguese Renaissance style, as can be seen in the parish churches such as St Peter (Sao Pedro) and St Lawrence (Agasaim).
The 'Cupoliform' façades, considered a Goan innovation, can be seen in churches such as Our Lady of Immaculate Conception (Moira) and St Cajetan (Assagao).
Other façades include the 'Pozzoan pediment' (such as Holy Spirit, Margao), 'Rococo' (such as St Jerome's Church, Mapusa), 'Templet' (such as Savour of the World church, Loutolim) and 'Neo-Gothic' (such as Our Lady church, Saligao).
A concise description of each parish in Goa is encompassed in a single page, which includes other interesting details such as a brief history of the parish, the feast of its patron (now you don’t have any excuse for missing out on parish feasts of your relatives), the elevation/ inception of the parish, the latest picture of the parish and architectural notes on the facade of the church.
While praising the rich architectural heritage of façades in the parishes churches of Goa, the authors seem pained over the recent unintentional 'distortions' to these façades, which, in their words, "have marred the elegant beauty of these edifices."
Some of these 'distortions' detailed in their book include the installation of metalor plastic sheets to protect doors, windows and belfry openings, concrete porches, back-lit signboards and 'blinded openings', the closure of the oculi (the opening that streams light into the church interiors).
The authors also express anguish over the recent trends to paint church facade in multicolours, a far cry from the "resplendent brilliance" of the white paint of yore, besides pointing to recent trends of introducing fluorescent or sodium vapour lamps on or around façades, aluminium windows and haphazard facade renovations.
A glossary and sketches containing the different elements of the church facade are also a useful addition in the book.
The book is certainly an eye-opener to those who will now admit that facades of churches are much more than repetitive white-washed multi-storeyed structures that deserved nothing more than a cursory glance.
While the book is strongly recommended for the fascinating stories that emerge out of church facades, there is, however, one drawkback -- its price.
Priced at Rs 495, the book is by no means cheap and could well elude the masses, who may miss out on the hidden secrets of church facades. (ENDS)
Monday, January 02, 2006
Sonia's book, The Girl
Sonia Faleiro <faleiro_s at yahoo.com> has just released a novel, The Girl, this month. More information is on her website www.soniafaleiro.com Looking forward to seeing the same...
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Amita Kanekar's A Spoke In The Wheel (HarperCollins, 2005)
Below are three reviews of a book by Amita Kanekar, a Mumbai-based writer whose roots are in Goa. -FN
The Hindu, May 1, 2005
The Buddha emerges a more rounded figure in this reinterpretation, says R. KRITHIKA
----- A Spoke In The Wheel: A Novel About The Buddha, Amita Kanekar, HarperCollins, Rs. 395. -----
THE traditional legend of Buddha's renunciation and search for enlightenment is, in many ways, unsatisfactory. Could one be as divorced from the reality of his/ her times as the legend implied? Also the characters seem unreal cardboard cutouts rather than real live people, who felt, loved, lived and hated especially when compared with extant literary sources on social life of this period in Indian history.
Good use of history
Against this background, Amita Kanekar's A Spoke in the Wheel is interesting reading. Described as historical fiction, the book draws from Indian history to such good effect that one can't help wondering if things actually did happen this way. The period of the Buddha was one of great philosophical ferment. There were six main schools of thought, the Vedic ritualistic tradition was under attack and people were beginning to look at alternate schools of thought. Both politically and socially too, it was a time of changes. Republicanism had come to the fore.
The book moves at two levels. A monk, Upali, (who lives in Asoka's times) is writing the story of Buddha's life. Upali has lived through the Kalinga War and is not quite sure about the reasons for Asoka's conversion is it a true inner change or is it politically motivated? Upali's story has raised hackles in the establishment since he avoids the traditional rendering. His Buddha is an outsider in his own society, racked by doubts and finding something lacking in the political and socio-religious structure of his times. But, initially at least, Upali has the support of the emperor.
A modern reader might find Upali's Buddha a more rounded figure than the over-protected prince of mythology. The reader is drawn to the character as his doubts and worries do have a contemporary resonance. But one can also understand the horrified reactions of the community of monks. After building up the greatness of Buddha, to have him portrayed as a nave, self-doubting individual out of sync with the socio-political environment can be damaging.
Dismantling legends
Another interesting aspect of the book is the dismantling of each legend associated with the Buddha. Beginning with his birth right down to his renunciation, Kanekar systematically demolishes the otherworldly gloss. The touch I liked best was the handling of the charioteer Channa when he brings the news of Buddha's renunciation home. Our lovely legends are silent in this. But Kanekar has Channa thrashed and thrown in jail till it is proved that Siddhartha was alive. More like those times and these too.
Life in the Magadhan empire is also portrayed with an eye to historical accuracy. Quotes from Asokan edicts which we knew of as history but couldn't really relate to now come alive with a new imagery. The schism within Buddhism which Asoka tries to bridge with the Buddhist Council is portrayed through the conversation of the monks. Political intrigue, a given constant in all times, reaches through insidiously into the Sangha - one of the elders is a spy for the emperor, another monk is murdered for his political affiliations.
Same old stories
The other interesting issue is the expansion of so-called "civilisation" and the effect it has on tribals and other forest-dwelling people. The young Siddhartha is troubled by the treatment and enslavement of defeated tribals. By the time of Asoka, the expansion of the Magadhan kingdom sees the forest dwellers fighting a losing battle to retain their way of life. One quote brings the reader slap up against the tribal agitations in today's world and the conflict between civilisation-development and the traditional cultures "Everything in the forest is not the same ... . Magadh has this way of demeaning the forests - using them, plundering them, destroying them and ignoring the richness, the layers, the differences, the thousands of thousands of differences." Not much seems to have changed in the years that have passed since then.
Kanekar's language is forceful and direct. Vividly drawn word pictures bring old textbooks to life. Upali is a figure who draws and holds the reader's interest. His stubborn refusal to accept the legends as sacred, his championing of the communities, his doubts over the king's reasons for conversion and promotion of Buddhism ... This is a book that will be of interest to anyone interested in philosophy in general and Buddhism in particular.
-----
Revealing the real Buddha by S A Karthik, The Deccan Herald, May 29, 2005
New Delhi, India -- The book is an attempt to strip away fanciful stories surrounding the Buddha and reveal him as an ordinary man who had an extraordinary approach to his problems.
In his Buddhacharita, Asvaghosha describes in majestic verse the unnatural splendour of the Buddhas birth: as Indra, the chief of the gods holds the newborn in his hands, two streams of the purest water from the heavens fall on the baby together with mandaara flowers. The baby then utters words of majesty and meaning: I am born for the benefit of this world. This is my last birth on this earth.
Amita Kanekar's debut novel, A Spoke in the Wheel is an attempt to strip away layer by layer such fanciful stories surrounding the Buddha and reveal him as an ordinary man who had an extraordinary approach to his problems.
At her hands the Buddhas story emerges plainer but more than makes up for that by offering a wealth of alternate, rational explanations that challenge blind belief in legends that were formulated largely to serve the selfish interests of particular clans, kings, and communities.
The novel has an interesting structure. It begins with the story of Upali, a monk in the Maheshwar monastery on the Narmada. He begins rewriting the life of the Buddha as he sees contradictions in the Suttas. The reader changes lanes every alternate chapter, from the story of Upali set in 256 BCE during the emperor Ashokas reign to the story of the Buddha three hundred years earlier as retold by Upali.
In his reconstruction Upali adopts what is a blasphemous approach in the eyes of the leaders of the Buddhist sanghas. He portrays the Buddha as an ordinary prince, apathetic to the kshatriyas vocation of war, abhorrent of their animal and human sacrifices, and sympathetic towards the plight of the slaves and other repressed peoples.
Upalis account is thus shorn of the legendary elements in Buddhas life - his divine birth, the reasons for him leaving home and hearth and his war with Maara the Tempter on the path to enlightenment.
Throughout the book Amita presents issues of ethics and socio-economic relationships that are relevant even today. The ruler-priest nexus that exploits the commoner, the ethical ambivalence of the merchant classes, the morality of war, the issues of displacement and rehabilitation (as in the case of the people of Kalinga after the war with Maghadha) and so on.
The book attempts to show that the Buddha went away in search of solutions to these earthly, mundane problems, not esoteric questions of existence. His Middle Way was his solution to the excesses of all types indulged by all classes. Did those who professed to follow the Way, including Asoka, actually do so or did they merely use it for their own ends?
The book has some stimulating answers to this question.
The narrative is rich in detail and every aspect of life in those ancient times stands out vividly before the reader. There is a glossary of terms at the end. Perhaps the only lacuna is the absence of notes that indicate the sources for Amitas inferences. At the end of the book we do not have the comfort of knowing what is supported by research and what is imaginatively concocted. But this is not to deny the books deserved place on our bookshelf.
A Spoke In The Wheel - A Novel About The Buddha; Amita Kanekar New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2005; pp 447, Rs 395
-----
Spetrum, The Tribune Sunday June 19,2005 Buddha demystified Arun Gaur
A Spoke in the Wheel by Amita Kanekar. Harper Collins, New Delhi. Pages 448. Rs 395
"Influenced by all!" said Mahanta. "Upalis Buddha is a confused fool parroting whatever was said around him!" "Thats not true," protested Upali. "Perhaps it is not deliberate," conceded Mahanta. "Perhaps it is only your stupidity." He turned to the others. "But just imagine, brothers, if everybody started this kind of imaginative interpretation, what will happen to the legacy so carefully protected this far? It will be torn apart, destroyed! Well be left with only interpretations, each one more adventurous than the last!"
Upali is a monk, a Chandala, a remnant of the Kalinga war, seething with hatred towards Ashoka. Ironically, he is supported by the king himself in his private enterprise of writing Buddhas biography. Only three centuries separate the Buddha and his biographer, but these are enough to mythologise him heavily.
Now the primary task, the self-appointed mission, of Upali is to demythologise the sage, deconstruct the associated fantasies of the Suttas and the Jatakas, and to place him firmly in the historical matrix. His fears are strong: "To make him a god is to make him ordinary. He will be one of thousandsthis is a land of gods. He will be swallowed up by myth and ritual. He might even become a sacrifice demander and a slavery-patron tomorrow, one who needs blood and flowers and incense and servants!" The biographer is irritated at the inimical stance of the fellow monks: "My understanding is simple... The Buddha was a very wise man, but a man." Harsha knows better: "Upali! The Buddha is already a godone story cant stop it."
How can Upali be free to create his own Buddha? Even Ashoka opines that time is not ready to receive his Buddha and directs him to deposit his manuscript with him. The post-modernist debate about the right to authorship is in question here.
Upali does not seem to nurse any ambition to become a renowned author and his enterprise seems to be a purely private affair, an exercise in self-contentment. Even then, society at largehis friend Harsha, Mogalliputta, who is the powerful thera of Pataliputra, and the courtiers of Ashokaholds the opinion that Upali is trying to appropriate a privileged position of an author. And that would not be granted to him. The interference of the state machinery cannot be countered by the individual flashes of genius. When the writing begins, a writer has to die. This option is not acceptable to Upali; for him, writing as well as the author has to die. Consequently, he throws his unfinished script into the fire and slumps into silence.
The abstract story of the recreation of the Buddha is embedded in a multi-layered phenomenon. The philosophic gaze of Upali takes into cognizance the spiritual, commercial, political, and artistic ingredients of the society surrounding him and somehow manages to persevere through this maze. Unwittingly, Upali also becomes a part of the intrigues of love and political assassinations.
Clearly, Kanekar has done a lot of research that this kind of novel writing demands. She examines diverse historic issues: Dhamma, jungle versus city, slavery-system, stature of a devadasi, national identities, crime and punishment. There are evocative descriptions of burgeoning cities like Kapilavastu, and Benares Ujjayinis "raucous noise" is sharply demarcated from Pataliputras "laughter from glamorous carriages."
As the novelist is a teacher of the history of architecture and comparative mythology, she comfortably deals with the details of a Yakshini on the stupa: "Her pose seemed modeled on a liana vine, her ridiculously generous curves on fruit-laden trees, but her expression? The amused challenge in her eyes" Still more important is the fact that this observation is not a dry piece of analytical realism; as it is conveyed through a monks eyes, it suggests an amorous hidden dimension of a spiritual being.
Here is an abstruse difficult-to-handle story that could easily have gone drab, but it goes to the credit of the writer that in spite of her being a debut-novelist, she has been able to keep it lively. It seems to be an important contribution to Indian historic fiction.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Dr Jose Pereira ... on the mando
Friday, December 23, 2005
Blood, nemesis and misreading quite what makes Goan society tick (book review)
BLOOD, NEMESIS AND MISREADING QUITE WHAT MAKES GOAN SOCIETY TICK
Being trapped in the immobility of their social structures, the Lusitanian supremacy did not matter to the downtrodden.
[A review by: Lino Leitao lino.leitao at sympatico.ca]
---------------------------- Blood & Nemesis by Ben Antao Goan Observer Private Limited Pages 318, Rs 250. Goa 2005. ----------------------------
Ben Antao's 'Blood and Nemesis' is a historical novel. In this novel, the author attempts to recapture Goa's freedom struggle from Portuguese colonial rule. In doing so, he gives us insights into Goan psyches of both the Hindus and Catholics -- the two main sectors of the Goan population.
In the very first chapter of the novel, we are introduced to Jovino Colaco, a young constable in Goa's colonial police force at Margao. Jovino's character is very vividly drawn, as if the author had known such a character personally; and many a Goan freedom fighter might have come across such a lout in those days of their struggle to free Goa from Salazar's tyranny.
Though Jovino is a bonehead with nothing much of substance, he is shrewd enough to use his position as a police constable to acquire money by graft, harassing the drivers of carreiras -- the busses of those colonial times. He has huge appetites for booze and sex; and of course, he likes card games, gambling with his friends. For him, dictatorship isn't ugly; he has a nose to sniff out freedom fighters. His boss, Gaspar Dias, a fearsome detective, likes him for that, and promotes him as his assistant. And Jovino, who spends more money than he earns, sees it as an opportunity to make a lot of cash to support his tainted lifestyle. He is happy; the promotion goes to his head.
Jovino's sexual exploits introduce us to the Devdasi cult at Mardol. (Devadasi refers to temple-based prostitution, which existed till the early part of the 20th century. In Goa, a devdasi was also called Bhavin, or the one with devotion.)
Antao draws vibrant and titillating sexual performances; and Kamala, a family devdasi, a steady sexual partner of Jovino, an expert in innovative Kamasutra poses, knows to give and take sexual pleasures for herself. But at the same time, a reader might question, as I did, how this kind of degrading humiliation of the woman came to be sanctified in the Hindu religion?
June 18, 1946 is a historic date in Goa's history. On this day, Dr. Juliao Menezes, a Goan, and Dr. Rammanohar Lohia from what was then still British India lit the torch for civil liberties at Margao, defying the ban on the freedom of speech.
Santan Barreto, Jovino's nemesis, who was only eighteen years old then, was on the scene. Seeing Juliao and Lohia hustled into a Police jeep and driven to the Police station, had an effect on Santan's soul. It awakens to freedom.
Santan dreams going to college in Bombay, and participate in politics after India's independence. But his ambition is shattered when his father, a seaman, passes away on board the ship. Having no one else to support his ambition, he pursues his dream by becoming a 'social worker' -- a euphemism for joining the ranks of the unemployed. He runs errands to get in touch with the like-minded Hindus to bring in freedom and democracy. He could have easily got a job in the colonial administration; but being the zealous Goan patriot that he was, he couldn't compromise his principles. Nor do we see the like-minded Hindus offering him a job in their businesses that they owned.
Santan, an ardent idealist, whose soul burns fervently to usher in freedom and democracy to the Goans, has no scruples, whatsoever, to freeload on his mother's meager widow's pension. The poor woman, to make the ends meet, works her fingers to the bone laboring in the fields owned by others.
Santan, when released after Liberation from the Aguada jail doesn't rush back to his mother, the mother who had sacrificed her own needs and fed him on her paltry widow's pension, when he was a 'social worker'. Instead, we see him basking in 'hero worship', for a week at Vaicunto Prabhudesai's, a like-minded Hindu and a fellow political prisoner from Aguada jail.
The author portrays Santan, a freedom fighter, as an impulsive individual with no ability to control his anger when enraged. The reader will come across two incidents in the novel. One: a glass of pale amber liquid, which is Santan's urine, which he arrogantly demands Jovino drink. Why? If you read the novel, you’ll know the answer to it.
The other incident is when Santan snatches the revolver from Jovino's holster. These are impulsive and sporadic acts, not worthy of freedom fighters. Committed freedom fighters to the cause plan their acts carefully and execute them to get the desired results.
After Liberation, Santan and Vaicunto, their self-importance puffed up as Goa's liberators, rush to settle scores with Jovino. The author, in the end, renders a debauched Jovino, on his dying bed, as a better human being than those two vengeful liberators.
Subtly, the author exposes the conceitedness of Santan. One gets the impression that the author must have known such a character like Santan personally too, the way he draws out his hidden traits of his personality.
The plot though unfolds around these two main characters -- Jovino Colaco and Satan Barreto, other fascinating characters also pop up in the narrative, giving us the overall view of Goa's life in those colonial times under the dictatorship of Salazar.
Unsubstantiated historical perceptions are thrown into the story, sometimes they come through the mouth of the characters, or sometimes injected by the author himself. For example in pages 21 and 22, we read: "He (Gaspar Dias, Jovino's boss in Police Force) was convinced that the political sympathies of Goan Hindus definitely lay with India.... The younger generation of Hindus, if you cared to ask them, would say without hesitation that they wanted freedom from colonial rule; they wanted Goa to become a part of India. As for the Catholics, by and large, they tried to be good citizens...."
Gaspar Dias can be excused for such analysis of the Goan society of that time, he being a mestico, might not have ever assimilated the intricacies of Goan nationalism.
Again, in page 110 the author probes the thoughts in Santan's mind. The author writes, "...But he (Santan Barretto) was also aware that many Goan Catholics somehow had been brainwashed into thinking they were different from other Indians, that they were superior because of their Western ways of life."
We can make allowances for Santan too, and overlook his assumptions of this nature because the author has portrayed him as an impetuous freedom fighter; impetuous persons do not use their brain muscle but their emotions.
But it's historically fallacious inferences to assume that Goan Hindus were pro-Indian because of their religion, and that Goan Catholics were pro-Portuguese. The civil rights movement that was launched in 1946 was launched due to the endeavors of Dr. Juliao Menezes, who was a Goan and baptized Catholic, though he might have been an agnostic later on in his life.
In that civil rights movement, many Goan Catholics participated. To name only some important ones: Tristao da Cunha, baptized Catholic, though atheist later on; Berta de Menezes Braganca, baptized Catholic, perhaps atheist later on; Evagrio George, baptized Catholic; Aresenio Jaques, baptized Catholic; Critovao Furtado, baptized Catholic and many, many others.
Jose Inacio Candido de Loyola in Free Press Journal, Bombay, September 26, 1946 sums ups this movement in this fashion, "An attempt is being made in certain quarters to create among the Catholic section of the Goan population, the impression that Dr. Lohia's movement is directed against the Catholic religion. There is no truth whatsoever in this propaganda. This movement has nothing to do with any religion. It is a movement for all Goans."
Goans always struggled to break the fetters that bounded them, and the author brings to our mind at page 95 the Pinto's rebellion that took place in the summer of 1787. Weren't they Catholics?
Francisco Luis Gomes, in his maiden speech in the Portuguese Parliament (18th January 1861), spoke: "... but far better models are the sacred principles, which in a free government require that hundred of persons should not be deprived of their political rights, of rights through which they share in the creation or exercise the political powers, simply because they had the misfortune to be born in the overseas colonies." (Dr. Francisco Luis Gomes, 1829-1869, by Inacio P. Newman, Coina Publications Goa, 1969.)
And again, Menezes Braganca, when Acto Colonial was incorporated in the Political Constitution of Salazar's Dictatorship in 1930, repudiated the mentality of the Act, "Portuguese India does not renounce the right of all peoples to attain the fullness of their individuality to the point of constituting units capable of guiding their own destiny, for it is a birthright of its organic essence." (Menezes Braganza, Biographical Sketch)
At page 21, the author, while probing into the mind of Gaspar Dias, writes: "...(Gaspar Dias) knew that the older Hindu businessmen mostly paid lip service to the Portuguese administration in order to make a living -- and some became wealthy in the newly booming mining industry of iron and manganese ore."
The Goan Hindu businessmen, tradesmen and landlords weren't that naive; they knew which sides the winds were blowing. Goa was their personal fiefdom without an economic base. They understood that the economic power that they were holding would slip away from their hands if Goa integrated with free India, which had an economic foundation.
So, they organized a public assembly in Margao (O Heraldo, July 30, 1946), and petitioned Salazar's administration for autonomy for Estado da India. Jose Inacio de Loyola gave the presidential address. The others who spoke were Mrs. Krishnabai, the niece of 'Bairao' Dempo, Datta Naik, Francisco Furtado and Vicente Joao Figueiredo.
Laxmikanta Bembro, making various observations, proposed a committee of the following: Adv. Vicente Joao Figueiredo, Adv. Polibio Mascarenhas, Manganlal M. Kanji, Adv. Panduronga Mulgaocar, Adv. Francisco de Paul Ribeiro, Adv. Prisonio Furtado. Adv. Antonio Xavier Gomes Pereira, Bascora Desai, Dr. Jose Paulo Telles, Adv. Álvaro Furtado, Adv. Francisco Pinto Menezes, Adv Vinayka Sinai Coissoro, Adv Datta Phaldessai, Dr. Krishna Sanguri and Laxmikanta V.P. Bembro.
But their efforts did not bear any fruits. And again in 1961, Purushottam Kakodkar perused autonomy for Estado da India, with no success. Gaspar Dias, the character in Antao's novel, who is a fearsome detective and obviously based on Agente Casmiro Monteiro, seems to know nothing about Goan native nationalism.
"The Goan people, for all practical purposes, have been pulverized by these heinous acts of brutality; in effect, Goans had been figuratively castrated over the years and rendered effete. And thus in the course of time, generations of Goans had grown up denationalized (p. 95)."
The above quote doesn't come from any of the characters that abound in the novel. This above statement is inserted in the narrative by the author to remind us about the heinous acts of brutality committed by the Portuguese conquerors on the Goan populace. No historian will ever dispute the atrocities of the Inquisition, nor the ruthlessness by which the Portuguese conquerors put down rebellions, nor Salazar’s brutality in suppressing the genuine Goan aspirations to free themselves from the colonial yoke.
But before the conquest, the most inhuman injustices were seared in into the Goan collective psyche, through their religion and the caste system. In their religion, there was the practice of sati -- burning the widows on the funeral pyre. Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese conqueror of Goa, stopped this barbaric practice. The Devdasi cult, which the author depicts with all its dimensions in the novel, was a part and parcel of that culture.
Dayanand Bandodkar, the first Chief Minister of Liberated Goa, sought to put the Devdasi practice to end a few decades ago. The caste system, in its evil designs, had contucares (the village servants) system and the manducar (serfdom) system incorporated into it. These deep layers of subjugation implanted into the Goan society before the conquest 'pulverized and figuratively castrated' the collective psyche of the Goans.
Being trapped in the immobility of their social structures, the Lusitanian supremacy did not matter to the downtrodden. Their main pressing concern was to eke out a living. The rural uneducated had no luxury of thinking for themselves. Goan journalist Frederick Noronha writes in one of his essays, "a society which has no chance to think for itself is an enslaved society".
Though they were enslaved and servile and branded as denationalized because of the Lusitanian influences that made a way into their soul, they were never de-Goanized. They carried a love for Goa in their soul wherever they went to make a better living; and now in the present, we are the witnesses of Little Goas blossoming in all corners of the world.
The central theme of the novel is expressed through an Australian folk song:
Freedom isn't free You've to pay the price You've to sacrifice For your liberty
Goans were paying the price and making sacrifices to break the chains that bound them. They were imprisoned in Aguada, Peniche, Azores and Africa; and they were brutalized and their liberties were taken away. But Nehru's administration, discarding Gandhi's credo of non-violence, invaded Goa on December 18, 1961, thereby robbing Goans of their right to seize their own freedom from Portuguese colonial rule. One can only hope that the Liberation that was handed to the people on the platter helps them to empower and bring the control of the economy of the land into their own hands.
'Blood and Nemesis' is a thought-provoking novel. The various contradictions that the author introduces through his characters, or his personal comments, in the narrative are debatable issues.
------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lino Leitao grew up in Salcete, Goa, and was a young man when Goa transitioned out of Portuguese colonial rule. He subsequently migrated to Canada, where he is currently based. Leitao is the author of 'The Gift of the Holy Cross'. His manuscript of short stories is at present being readied for publication. He can be contacted via email at lino.leitao sympatico.ca Goan Observer, which also published this book, earlier printed an abridged version of this review in its issue of August 20, 2005.
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BOOK REVIEW: Maria Aurora Couto's Goa: A Daughter's Story (Reviewer: Dr Teotonio R de Souza)
Goa: An 'Aurorised' Story
------------------------------------- Goa: A Daughter's Story, by Maria Aurora Couto; Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2005; pp 436, Rs 350, (pb). -------------------------------------
Teotonio R de Souza
Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh (Vintage, 1994) depicts Aurora, as the last of the Gamas and a daughter of Camões, playing the perfect granddaughter to Epifânia da Gama, whom she wishes to murder. We are told that Epifânia had developed a healthy respect for the British, but her heart belonged to Portugal, as she dreamt of walking beside the Tagus, the Douro, sashaying through the streets of Lisbon on the arm of a grandee. Aurora’s grandfather, Francisco da Gama, had fallen prey to Annie Besant’s theosophy and propounded a theory of ‘transformational fields of conscience’, but his playing with Gama rays finished him off, after provoking cruel and satirical editorial comments in The Hindu. Those who are familiar with this “Aurorised” version of Rushdie’s novel (do not miss Chapter 13 of the novel) will find in the present book, another Aurorised version, Chico’s daughter and Alban Couto’s wife, a soulful, or to use her father’s “alma”-discourse, a passionate and emotion-charged reconstruction of Goa. ‘The Sunday Magazine’ of The Hindu of April 4, 2004 had reviewed this book under the caption ‘Apparent Divide, Actual Bridges’, relating Goa to south Asia’s macro-level processes, without leaving it isolated as a dazzling but inexplicable pendant on Asia’s hippie and tourist routes. It should not surprise the reader if a large part of the book is devoted to the Goan musical tradition, which serves to link and also bind the Bhakti cult with Goan Christianity, Goan “kudds” with Bollywood, a lawyer-politician-freedom fighter of Orlim with a Souza lady born to a music merchant in Karachi and trained by an Italian maestro in Bombay and speaking English at home in a predominantly Portuguese influenced Salcete subculture. Even a rat frequented occasionally (p 270) the music classes of Father Philip Soares in the Dharwar parish of Aurora. Perhaps, he mistook the Goan music for the “laddus” of Lord Ganesha.
A New Approach
Couto follows neither the tourist brochure approach that goes little beyond describing the sun and sands of Goa, nor does she take up the stance of the academic historian, who in this book will have to bear with absence of their preference for footnoted erudition. Aurora prefers rather to “imagine and interpret” the process of conversion, subversion and compromise (pp 240-49) to which the population and the land were subjected since its occupation by Afonso de Albquerque in 1510. She prefers to build her “story of Goa” on the basis of her own choice of sources, giving the pride of place to family reminiscences and other kinds of oral traditions and F N Souza’s canvases, but above all to the two major rivers of Goa. Maria Aurora believes that the “view from the river is dramatically different”. This river-borne perspective would certainly make Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha keen to come to Goa, even though Aurora does not extend her view to the Buddhist or any other phase of pre-Portuguese Goa. Unlike Rushdie’s Epifânia, his Aurora’s grandmother, here we find an Aurora who reveals a sound respect for the Portuguese, but whose heart belongs to a greater India. The Portuguese get almost off the hook of most academic historians: they are presented as non-aggressive as a rule and without delusions of superiority. We are told that their coercion did not mean violence against human person, but only the violation of right to practise Hinduism, or that the citizenship granted to Goans was not matched with the right to highest positions of power, particularly in the church hierarchy and during the dictatorship of Salazar.
I cannot but feel deep empathy for the exercise performed by Maria Aurora Couto. My own Goa to Me (Concept Publishers, Delhi,1994) was a somewhat similar exercise of weaving the history of Goa with my own lived experience of situations of anguish and opportunities, not very different from what Couto and most other sons and daughters of Goa have gone through at different periods and contexts of Goa’s history. I see Goa – A Daughter’s Story as yet another worthy attempt to piece together one’s own lived experience with the help of the life-performances of many others, at all levels of the Goan community, whose common umbilical bond with Goa makes them all, individually and collectively, the makers of Goan history. Couto does not hide her belief in the role of the elite, but also presents history in tune with Pareto’s “cemetery of elite”. The book seems to have provided an opportunity for catharsis by seeking to unveil the main causes of the declining and dying feudal elite to which a large part of her ancestry belonged.
Through Maria Couto’s account, researchers like the present reviewer will perhaps find a wider readership for research on Goa’s agrarian economy and the baroque style of Christianity introduced by the Portuguese (p 158), the imposition in Goa Portuguesa of a “xendy” tax along the Mughal “jizya” model (p 200), the Mhamays of Goa, the debt owed by Jesuits to Bhagvatiny Camotiny at the time of their suppression, and African slavery in Goa (p 219), Lam Jaku’s (the reviewer’s grandfather) tirades against the pants-wearing (“calção-kar”) rulers and their native lackeys (p 239), the Jesuit impact upon the Goan agriculture and culture (p 251), the native Oratorians of Goa (p 319), the Pinto Revolt (p 324), and many other bits and pieces of information that do not always carry overt indication of their source. Maria Couto’s wide and rich survey of oral traditions and her encyclopaedic readings also validate many of my research conclusions, including the fact that Portuguese colonialism was sustained with the active collaboration of Hindu artisans, traders and diplomats (p 263). I can recall having chatted with Couto during her visit to Portugal and also during my visits to Goa. I remember having conveyed to her my conviction that with her socio-political background she was better placed than the scholars born and bred exclusively in Goa to present Goa on a larger canvas. That seems to have happened and a comparison of the book reviews at the local and national level bear witness to it.
Couto discovered in her genealogical lists a great-great-grandfather Antonio Caetano Pacheco, who has a road named after him in Margão. In 1955, the postal services of Portuguese India issued a stamp with his picture and name, to commemorate 450 years of the foundation of the “Estado Português da India”, to which he was elected as MP to serve in the Portuguese parliament in 1839. Had Couto gone beyond oral tradition, listening only to Priti Camotim, and “senhoras” Hira Sardessai and Hira Sakhardando in Lisbon, and found time to glance at the records of the Portuguese parliament (many of them can now be consulted online), she could have traced interesting details about her ancestor’s capacity to draft legislative projects in the company of Bernardo Peres da Silva. He was back in the Portuguese parliament after suffering exile from Goa in 1832 and after an aborted attempt by his relative and opium-baron Rogerio de Faria in 1835 to bring him back to power to serve his own business ambitions by ousting the Portuguese through a naval expedition he planned from Bombay, but which landed on the rocks of Vengurlá due to little attention paid to the announcements of early arrival of the monsoon that year (p 366), Bernardo Peres da Silva continued to be re-elected as MP for Goa till his death. He continued his political harangues on behalf of his land and his people in the Portuguese parliament, even when no minister in government cared to listen or respond to his demands. Silva did not relent till the end and earned for himself a mausoleum in Lisbon’s glamorous “Cemitério dos Prazeres”, a kind of open-air museum erected by the liberalism and secularism of the mid-19th century that took the burial grounds away from the medieval Catholic church precincts.
The Old Aristocracy
If I have pointed out in some detail the above cases, it is meant as an indirect comment on Couto’s lamentations and frustrations of the Goan feudal “bhatkars”, affecting significantly the destinies of her ancestry, including her beloved father (p 356) and inspirer of this book. They found little or no scope for idealism and creativity in the prevailing economic constraints that followed the British grip over Portuguese Indian economy (p 292) and after Salazar’s grip over the native political ambitions (pp 386-87). It is true that Couto cites the case of some young Goans, like Telo Mascarenhas, Adeodato Barreto and Lucio Miranda, who founded a “Partido Nacional Indiano” in the university city of Coimbra, in Portugal, or some visionary Hindu reformers in Goa, such as Hegdo Dessai, who led single handedly a press campaign through his newspaper Bharat, when some of his influential correligionaries had been co-opted to serve and toe the line of the administration. I am left with the impression that, while filial and human sensitivity makes Couto seek to mitigate the personal culpability of Goans who drowned their frustrations in alcoholism, she seems to be at a loss to explain how several others could resist and act within the same socio-political context with an intense sense of mission. Should we believe that most Goans, and many of the elite, like her cherished father could only find sublimation in faith and “alma”-driven music? If so, are we to conclude that the Portuguese “violence-free” colonialism did very well through the strategic promotion of a “lamb of God” or “suffering servant of Yahweh” theology with Lenten motets and what Salman Rusdie calls “kababed saints and tandooried martyrs”? Did music truly liberate the Christian soul (p 237)? Did it not rather lull and dull the pains and sufferings under the colonial rule, preventing an adequate political response of the masses?
Couto’s preliminary disavowal of academic history left me with some misgivings, but as I reached the end of the book, I could not help recalling the 16th century Portuguese adventurer in Asia and author of his world-famous Peregrinação. Till very recently, the literary critics believed that Fernão Mendes Pinto was lying or exaggerating most of the incidents he was narrating. Now it is admitted by serious researchers that he was truthful even in most details, but was forced to put into the mouths of others whatever he himself wanted to say about the Portuguese atrocities and opportunistic behaviour in Asia. The Portuguese Inquisition would not let him publish his book had he said those things as personal testimony. He had devised a literary style. Maria Aurora Couto seems to have laboured under some kind of self-inquisitorial pressures and done a superb job of making many others, including the present reviewer, say whatever could go counter to her determination to avoid extreme positions.
Just as I cherish Jawaharlal Nehru’s approach to Indian and World History through his well known The Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, I have no doubts that Maria Aurora’s Goa – A Daughter’s Story will go a long way in presenting the social and cultural (which is always political, as the author admits in one place) in a language that is both polished and passionate, conveying deep love and the “Indian-ness of pluralism” as another reviewer has summed up in his conclusions of the book. Despite my whole-hearted concurrence, I fear that the “mestiços” who are presented as the real enemies, feared and hated by Goans from both communities (p 193), may feel themselves at the receiving end of this otherwise suave treatment of Goan cultural pluralism. The recently published second edition of a massive three volume listing of Os luso-descendentes da India Portuguesa by Jorge Forjaz could provide much powder for commemorative salvos, if not for more provocative exercises, as the fifth centenary of the conquest of Goa and Afonso de Albuquerque’s policy and politics of miscegenation nears. Could the “mesticos” or their descendants be brushed aside in Couto’s account of Goa Portuguesa? Were they dismissed summarily (pp 134-35) to avoid getting sucked into less pleasant reflections and interpretations? How about Goan natives, men and women, who sought matrimonial alliances with the white Portuguese, and are now integrated on either side of the present-day political geography divide? Where do they figure in the evolution of Goan identity as presented in Goa A Daughter’s Story? While it is easy to present the mestiços as enemies in the context of the liberal politics and pre-liberation conflicts of the Goan society, a more systematic treatment of their long-lasting presence in Goan identity could surely enrich our understanding of Goa’s cultural history.
Contrary to general belief, more white blood transfusion may have entered the Goan society through white females who married propertied and influential Goan “ganvkars” than through Portuguese males for whom native taboos made it difficult to find high caste native mates. These are just some provocations, hoping that Couto will accept the challenge and answer some of these questions in the near future by delving little deeper into the feats and adventures of the “gente muito fina,… tao delicadas, tão bonitas” (very refined people, very courteous and beautiful) about whom Couto’s mother used to reminisce (p 330). Why limit and stop the influences on the character of Goan women (and perhaps men as well?) with Dravidian matrilinealism, Buddhist philosophy and Kadamba queens (p 51)? This is not applicable only to the Christian community. If we are to go by oral tradition, the choice of D Bandodkar as the first elected chief minister of post-liberation Goa permitted a smooth transition for Goa, less politically than genetically! Hopefully, the Muslims who were left out from the present Aurorised version will also find some place in future versions. It was among them that Afonso de Albuquerque found the “mulheres castas e alvas” (chaste and fair women) to reproduce the “casados” and to forge a new identity for Goa Portuguesa.
Misspellings
To conclude, I wished the paperback edition that is reviewed here had made accessible this magnum opus of Maria Aurora Couto, not just for less price, but also with less misspellings of Portuguese words. Goans need not be made more “socegado” than they seem to be by replacing “ss” with one “c”, or made less braggarts by taking away one “r” from “fanfarrão” (braggart)! (p 360). Many missing Portuguese accent marks change the meanings of words, particularly in some phrases that are not accompanied by English translation. The archaic Portuguese orthography could have been modernised as most research historians usually do nowadays. But these are minor complaints. I would add on a lighter note that, if Aurora continues copying dutifully and affectionately the Portuguese texts of her father without fearing his knocks (p 260), she will certainly have all the spellings right very soon and in time for the future editions.
Email: teodesouza@netcabo.pt
Goanet Reader: Review -- check this vision....
[One of my students wrote this review. -FN]
CHECK THIS VISION, FROM A VISUALLY-CHALLENGED ENTREPRENEUR IN GOA
By Anson Samuel ansonsam@rediffmail.com
--------------------------------- MOTIVATION... A man with a vision Rs. 30 Angelo D’Souza ---------------------------------
Have you caught sight of a butterfly opening a cocoon? Or a spider spinning its web? Or maybe an ant storing food in summer? You probably might have spotted or heard it as anecdotes. Don’t they need oodles of patience to go about doing this struggle of a task? And maybe a bit of perseverance and motivation too?
But, victory is favourable only to a few. In the rat-race of achieving success, present-day people leave no stone unturned burning the midnight oil and working indeed very hard. But failure strikes often, and right in the face. Failure gets plonked in the palms of so many today.
Aspirants are so simply bogged down to crash. The reason remains unknown, or does it really?
'Motivation: a man with a vision' is an autobiography written by Angelo D’Souza. An elderly slim man and an expert at the typewriter, he is the principal of the St. Jude’s Commercial Institute at Aldona. His institution is next to the Rosa Mystica Convent. One may say, what's the reason for creating a big din over a good and an experienced typist?
Well, this one is blind! And guess what, he's a damn good writer as well. He has to his credit the National Social Service Award which further motivated him to write news-items and articles. He has, so far, contributed two plays 'Will Power Lead Me On' (1995) and 'Love Triumph Labour Reward' (2001) to the BBC World Drama Contest.
Writing an autobiography can be tricky. If one stresses all his triumphs, s/he is likely to be classified as an egoist, reminding one of the saying that 'a donkey praises his own tail'. If he underplays achievement, he cannot convey the real intent and the very purpose of the autobiography is lost. So the jotting down of all experiences, though a knotty task for him, he has done it quite well.
This book also includes wise titbits and sayings, such as 'The need of the hour is not pity but empathy' and 'No one is more interested in you, other than you'.
The Goa State Branch of the National Association for the Blind recommends the book. Now, don’t cite the example of late Helen Keller, who conquered a triple-handicap. If you think about doing it, don't forget the circumstances she was born in, the social and family support she had, to be able to fight, totally in contrast with the circumstances and social environment in India in general and in Goa in particular.
The book deals with various facts of ones life. Chapters are based on interesting topics on his early stages -- the revelation made to Agnelo by his mentor that he is a victim of defective vision, his own reaction to the outbreak of the sad news and the early stages of anxiety.
Next follows a chapter that is about motivation -- the driving force within an individual: browse through it and activate the potentials in you. Take a peep into your own self. The chapter gives the idea of action, reflection, action.
Next comes a chapter to enables a person to encounter with the success he achieves, the fruit of his hard work. "The award did not permit me to sit and rest,” he says. Guess what follows: an attempt at being an upcoming playwrite and a mediaperson, as mentioned above.
Further in the book, the chapter 'Memoirs Of A Virtually Handicapped' is simply beautifully written. It brings out the thoughts, feelings and anguish of a blind person. Its anxiety is well-expressed in words. Deep touching, soul stirring and an eye opener to people who duck their heads low looking at their problems as "the" problem and not just "a" problem. This man of deficient vision shows how to stand face to face with a problem and encounter it.
The book provides with wisdom on the proper usage of words: don't get me wrong, this isn't a text for studying grammar and parts of speech, but rather words that will motivate and not cause one to efface oneself but to egg-on oneself forward. He makes us familiar with our very words that cause bitter torment and painful heart aches within others. The language has meandered through ones bold encounter with life. And, at the reasonable price it comes, do go for it.
---------- Anson Samuel was a participant at the Ixtt e-Mentorship Programme in Journalism conducted by Frederick Noronha during the academic year 2004-05, when he wrote this interview. If you have ideas or suggestions on keeping this programme running, and creating more socially-focussed journalists, please contact FN fred@bytesforall.org What we need is your support, not of the financial kind.
Goanet Reader: An imaginative story of Goa's turbulent time (Ben Antao's novel reviewed by Cornel DaCosta)
[A nice review from Cornel. -FN]
BLOOD AND NEMESIS: AN IMAGINATIVE STORY OF GOA'S TURBULENT TIME
A review by Cornel DaCosta
On beginning to read this novel by a Goan author and set in Goa, my memory was drawn to a period between August and December 1961 that I spent in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, whilst temporarily away from my hometown of Mombasa. I had stayed at a relatively new up-market YMCA, made new friends, including fellow Goans, others from the Indian sub-continent, and a few Brits, Germans, Dutch and Danes.
One was a particularly jovial young Portuguese gentleman. Television was not yet available to us, but in the main, BBC radio kept us informed about news around the world.
On the morning of December 19, 1961, on radio, I heard the dramatic news that, after 461 years, the Portuguese rulers had been ousted from Goa by the Indian armed forces. I recall being quite elated by this news. I had always opposed colonialism in principle and felt happy over the removal of the colonial yoke in my ancestral homeland of Goa.
Over breakfast that morning, it became clear that most of my new friends were rather excited and seemingly pleased with the news. However, the Portuguese gentleman in our midst wept inconsolably. When he calmed down, he explained that it was not so much the news about the Indian "occupation" of Goa that really upset him. He felt that this would have occurred sooner or later, because of the obduracy of the Portuguese Prime Minister Salazar. Rather, it was the manifestation of joy in me and fellow Goans, that morning that upset him greatly.
"How", he asked, still in tears, "could you, my Portuguese brothers celebrate the Indian takeover of Goa?" He was pained even more when I told him, as gently as I could, that as a Goan, I was never pro-Portuguese as he had perhaps imagined but an Indian at heart.
On continuing with Ben Antao's recently-released novel 'Blood and Nemesis', it further struck me that, despite visiting Goa several times from my subsequent abode in England, I had not followed the political changes in Goa too closely over the years. Instead, I was strongly drawn to study the abomination of caste practice among significant numbers of Catholic Goans, and also, to explore the effects of mass tourism on the paradise that is Goa.
The novel, however, captured my attention to the dramatic events leading to the incorporation of Goa into the republic of India and the roles of many individuals there who were for, or against, the expulsion of the Portuguese from the territory of Goa.
We thus get a vivid account of many antagonisms and actions centred mainly in Goa, over a relatively short historical period, up to, and soon after December 1961. The Indian military action is presented in considerable detail and the many characters involved are very real in terms of the actual events of the time.
In this very absorbing story, we note the ever-vigilant police presence represented by Jovino Colaco and his immediate boss Gaspar Dias. Both are determined to suppress any Goan anti-Portuguese sentiments and political activity sympathetic to Indian nationalism.
They take it upon themselves, on behalf of the authoritarian Portuguese administration, to bait freedom fighters, capture them, physically abuse them and then incarcerate them in the infamous Aguada jail in Goa. Their particular quarry from May 1955 was a fellow Goan, Santan Barreto. They kept a close eye on him and on his friends who usually spent their leisure time at Bombay Cafe in the town centre of Margao in south Goa.
This cat and mouse strategy is captured brilliantly in the novel. It depicts Jovino, the policeman invariably on his motorbike, as a power-hungry individual, with a weakness for drink, gambling and prostitutes.
He is determined to amass wealth corruptly and to gain promotion at work, having been told by his superiors that his advancement would depend on his success in capturing Goan freedom fighters who operated clandestinely.
In contrast, Santan, fired by a powerful desire to rid Goa of the Portuguese presence becomes increasingly elusive but very active in the subversive underground political network. He surreptitiously outsmarts and frustrates Jovino for a long time. He also gets emboldened by minor skirmishes against the police, and with fellow conspirators, manages to attack isolated police posts to obtain firearms and ammunition. However, his luck eventually runs out. The vigilant Jovino strikes lucky late one night and Santan is captured, abused, and then summarily jailed. He survives the harsh treatment in prison for years and is eventually freed in 1961 during the rapid Indian military action.
Freedom for Santan Barreto and his fellow freedom fighters is sublime, but clearly, at a high cost of life and limb for many in the struggle. He eventually manages towards normal life and his fame as a freedom fighter and hero spreads rapidly with considerable adulation from the local people and also in Bombay. However, he is determined to find his former oppressor, Jovino. Thus the former hunter nowbecomes actively hunted.
Jovino had decided earlier, to continue to live in Goa, despite the available option from Gaspar Dias, to flee Goa by air for Portugal via Karachi in Pakistan.
Tracking Jovino proved to be more difficult than expected for Santan and his comrades as the canny policeman had hidden all traces of his whereabouts in Goa. Nevertheless, after much assiduous detective work of his own, Santan is able to find the final location of his Nemesis, Jovino, and has to then deal with a totally unexpected situation towards the end of this scintillating novel.
This is Ben Antao's first novel and seasoned readers of novels will detect features which are innovative in this genre in terms of the story line, its grounding in a specific historical period and in the presentational style.
For me, it absorbingly took me from my pre-independence Kenya experience, as described above, to the time of Goa's liberation in 1961. Whilst reading the novel, I also reflected on the continuing intellectual premise encapsulated by VS Naipaul, the famous novelist and Nobel laureate, and others, that fiction is dead, vanquished by our need for facts.
To my mind, this is highly debateable, but there is nevertheless, much on-going discussion on this theme and about those novels, which have, in their narrative, strong links to actual facts as in the case of Blood and Nemesis.
Clearly, we can have accurate historical accounts of actual events, but so too, the literary novel of the kind presented by Ben Antao, that stretches the reader's imagination in a way that a historical text may also do, but rather differently. In Antao's case, introspective imaginative storytelling has had the power to reveal underlying truths in highly turbulent and trying times.
On a related issue, today, there are those who have not accepted Goa as liberated but as under occupation by India. This novel zeroes in on the elements of this dilemma around the time of the military action in 1961.
Antao, who lived in Goa and Bombay for much of his life before eventually settling in Toronto, Canada, depicts this particularly well and insightfully. He has had other publications, one of which, available to me, was biographical in orientation. But I enjoyed Blood and Nemesis very much, despite what I thought was perhaps a bit of an abrupt ending.
Perhaps this specific comment stems from my desire to have wanted to read even more material in this particular novel. But in another sense, the novel has whetted my appetite for a welcome sequel that could take us from the dramatic events of 1961 to the present in Goa.
The particular conundrum whether Goa has been liberated or is an occupied territory in the eyes of some people living there, and in the Goan diaspora, is worthy of a follow-up by Antao. Hopefully, when readers convey their impressions of Blood and Nemesis to the author, he will be inspired to generate more pleasurable reading in his distinctive and inimitable style.
Blood & Nemesis By Ben Antao Goan Observer Private Ltd. 318 pages, Rs. 250 ($25 CN)
Blood & Nemesis was released on June 18, 2005, at International Centre, Goa, by freedom fighter and author James Fernandes.
For inquiries contact: Ben Antao (Toronto) 416 250 8885 ben.antao@rogers.com
Cornel DaCosta, PhD, author and specialist on University Education, is based in London, England.
Goanet Reader [Book Review]: The Sixth Night by Silviano C. Barbosa, reviewed by Zoe Ackah
This review is by Zoe Ackah... FN
Book Review - The Sixth Night by Silviano C. Barbosa
By ZOE ACKAH [The Epoch Times July 21, 2005]
The Sixth Night is a scaled down, James A. Mitchener style historical fiction set mainly in colonial Goa. Admittedly, before reading the book I had no idea where Goa was or that it was such a unique and interesting place. Those of you who lived during the hippie era are probably more than familiar with Goa, which gained great popularity as a tourist attraction in the 60s and 70s.
For those who don't know, located in India, Goa has been on the world stage since the pre-Christian era, first documented by the Summerians around 2200 BC. It has been recognized as a fertile paradise by everyone who has been there since.
In more recent history, Goa was colonized by the Portuguese for 400 years until the 1960s. This creates and interesting cultural mélange. The population is now 30 percent Catholic, 65 percent Hindu and 5 percent Muslim. The cuisine and cultural traditions are a complimentary mix of Asian and European.
The Portuguese were expelled from Goa in 1961 when India "reclaimed" her. It is precisely this point in history, the pivotal generation that experienced Goa's return to India first hand, that the author explores.
Our main character, Linda, is a simply-drawn Catholic village girl of the shudra caste. Battling caste discrimination with a stunning intellect, and a childhood of good fortune, Linda is the first in her family to receive a high-level education.
The book chronicles Linda's trials and tribulations as a woman, a shudra, and a Catholic educated in Portuguese just as the English-language-dominated Indian government takes over her homeland. She travels through Europe, ending up in Toronto, Canada.
Having fathered a child by a Portuguese diplomat, from whom she is accidentally separated during the turmoil surrounding Goa's transition to Indian rule, Linda's story is the notable personal conflict in the novel.
The details of this conflict are described rather mechanically and superficially. The emotions likely associated with the painful events surrounding the adoption of Linda's child, and the emotions of the child herself are suspiciously shallow. Indeed, the characters seem unbelievably innocent after all they have been through. The likely consequences of their suffering are left unexplored, and the prose is simplistic.
It seems as if the characters serve merely to explore Catholic Goa's history and unique culture – a feat the author accomplishes very well, making the country itself the real star of the action. Luckily, the book is well researched, and Goa's history is sufficiently interesting, making The Sixth Night a worthwhile read for history lovers and travel junkies.
For a look at "The Sixth Night" web-site visit http://ca.geocities.com/goaraj@rogers.com. The descriptions of Goa's geographical beauty, pristine village life, and fantastic food, food and more food, will make you want to visit. Luckily the government of Goa's tourism site is really fantastic, and includes recipes for all the food carefully described in "The Sixth Night".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The writer Zoe Ackah is editor of 'The Epoch Times', a Canadian publication, where this review was published.
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005
What a loss: goabooks.swiki.net
What a loss... a Swiki in which one invested a lot of time and energy (including cover scans) no longer works -- http://goabooks.swiki.net