Learning from Goan expat writing

THE PRINTED PAGE

Goan expat writing continues to help the
reader here to understand the local
reality. Two new books, one on Abbe Faria
and the other on print and politics in
Goa, have just made it to the stands.
Meanwhile, the Central Library at Panjim
has also put out an informative website,
writes FREDERICK NORONHA.

–

Writers link the past with the future, and Luis S.R. Vas’ contribution is to the memory of Abbe Faria. Vas’ 117-page hard-bound book (ISBN 978-81-905716-0-9, Rs 295, www.bbcbooks.net) is soon to be out, and focuses on the 18th century hypnotist of Goan origin from Colvale and Candolim.

Readers might know the author to be the brother of the popular Dhempe College mentor-to-a-generation and prof Isabela Santa Rita Vas. Luis has “had a life-long interest in Abbe Faria and hypnosis”, the book tells us. And he has been for decades in feature writing, publishing, corporate communications and translating.

Like many non-residents settled outside Goa, he’s also contributing to the debate here.

His book starts interestingly: “Sometime in the early 1950s, British novelist and travel writer Norman Lewis arrived in Panjim, Goa’s capital, by steamboat.” And it goes on to quote the intrepid traveller as noting that the quay-side was “presided over” by a statue not of the colony’s founder Albuquerque, but rather the Goan who “discovered the doctrine of hypnotic suggestion”.

Vas begins by making us think: Who was this enigmatic Faria? Why is he not mentioned in some textbooks on hypnosis? Who is the lady in question? And he goes on to hint that Faria is a “most colourful if half-forgotten, 18th century character, perpetrator of amazing exploits, mainly in France, some of them still shrouded in mystery.”

This book is written in a simple yet catchy style. Its chapters would ring a bell to the reader in Goa to whom the Abbe is no stranger. Titles of the chapters, for instance, are: Candolim, Colvale, Trip to Lisbon, Propaganda Fide, Priest, Pope Pius VI, Cator Re Baji and so on….

Explains Vas: “As the 250th birth centenary of Abbe Faria loomed in 2006, I thought a new biography and assessment of the pioneer hypnotist would be an appropriate and worthwhile project for the occasion. This is that book.”
     
PRINT, POLITICS

Rochelle Pinto was just one of those names I ran across in cyberspace. Sometime in March 2005, a blog entry of mine noted: “Incidentally, in an article titled A Time To Publish published in the Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai) issue of February 26, 2005, Rochelle Pinto makes some interesting points indeed.”

This week, Bangalore-based Pinto wrote in to inform that her new book “Between Empires: Print and Politics in Goa” (Oxford University Press, 2007 ISBN 9780195690477 Rs. 645, US$ 16.54) is just out.

Government Printing Press, Panjim… legacy from colonial times.

One google search told me: “Between Empires offers the first systematic analysis of the relationship between print culture and colonial rule in Goa. Rochelle Pinto discusses the development of print culture and its implications for larger questions of nationalism, modernity, and colonial politics.”

Sounds interesting.

Apparently, the book draws “succinctly from available literature on print, reading publics, and linguistic hierarchies elsewhere in India,” for the author to offer what the book calls “a persuasive account of the possibilities opened by print media and the manner in which it reordered social, cultural, or political ties within Goan society.”

Pinto looks at print produced in Portuguese, Konkani, and Marathi, and examines the contesting claims about Goa and the terrain of its politics.

“It shows how this highly contested public realm was deeply reflected in the novels, pamphlets, and newspapers produced by the Catholic elite, Goan migrants to Bombay, and litigants in the rural districts in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.” Pinto is credited with discussing questions of representation, genre, publicity, and literary history followed different trajectories among the non-elite and elite writers. One site said: “This work makes an important contribution to current discussions on the emergence of print spheres in colonial India.”

In her earlier, insightful EPW article, Pinto discussed two sets of pamphlets that appeared towards the end of the 19th century in colonial Goa, in an attempt to show how precedents and norms established by European print were not exactly reproduced in the colony.

The function of print and the genre of pamphlets, in particular, were altered by class difference, caste hierarchies and the context in which rural and urban politics functioned in Goa, she says.

Quote: “Increasingly, in the early decades of the 20th century, the monopolies and usurpation of land rights by nadkarnis, kulkarnis, and other dominant castes began to be challenged across villages in Goa. In the Old Conquests of Goa, the territories conquered from 1510 on, the institution of the communidade, which administered village land through councils whose membership was hereditary, male, and usually upper caste, was particularly strong.

“Rising literacy levels among sudras had, however, resulted in their growing visibility among groups of litigants in Goa. Salaried employment outside Goa had enabled sudras to use print to supplement litigation for land-rights. Within Goa, the form of the pamphlet was considerably altered when they adopted it to challenge the monopolies of kulkarnis, nadkarnis, and their own village comunidades.”

ONLINE NOW

Carlos Fernandes is the (newish) curator of the Central Library, in Panjim. From Ponda, he was earlier (for a short spell) the librarian at the Goa University, and also at the Goa Engineering College.

Last week, we ran into each other when one went to collect some information sought under the Right to Information Act.

Fernandes mentioned that the Central Library had just put up its new website. A quick glance made it clear that this is an unglamourous site, but one filled with a whole lot of useful information.

See http://goacentrallibrary.gov.in/

nlike some government-run sites, contracted out to private parties to create, this is a website built by the GoI’s National Informatics Centre, Goa. While private parties are great at creating glitzy sites, the NIC stresses on functionality. Their sites often last and don’t simply vanish in some time into that cyber black-hole.

What’s more, the Central Library initiative is enriched with a whole lot of useful information.

Some of the links on the home page focus on their collection (of books), services offered, committees, lists of libraries (including rural) in Goa, schemes to promote libraries, the rare book sections, forms and rules for joining the library, a photo gallery, lists of staff, and useful links.

The ‘useful links’ section takes you to two dozen online links, dealing with books, careers, scientific information and more. The Central Library has done a good job in taking things beyond just their own work. After all, information is seamless in a networked world.

Let’s hope they keep updating their site often, and adding more links to it. And also that readers take an active stand in ensuring that the site itself remains active and useful.

About the site, send in your feedback to the Central Library via phone 2425730 or 2436327, or via email lib-cent.goa@nic.in And, regarding this column, your comments and brickbats are welcome at fred@bytesforall.org or 2409490 or 9970157402

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Tags: goa, printing, expat writing, central library

The Konkans — a compelling search for roots and voice (By Ben Antao)

A review by Ben Antao    

To find our voice and place in the sun, we must first get in touch with our roots. This statement applies more to fiction writers than ordinary human beings because writers work with their imagination, a quality of the mind that forces them to dredge into their innermost being to uncover the roots of their buried past. Such a dredging in fictional mode informs The Konkans, a new novel by Tony D’Souza, 33, and Chicago-born and raised second generation offspring of a white American mother and an immigrant father of Konkan roots in India.  

The plot of the novel parallels the author’s own birth circumstances in that Francisco D’Sai, the narrator, tells the story of how his mother Denise met his father Lawrence during her stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Konkan region.  

The narrative moves at a steady pace, now and then running swiftly as in this scene involving Francisco’s two uncles, Les and Sam, recent immigrants, who, having decided to celebrate the feast of St. Francis Xavier with dukrajemas pork curry, have bought a live pig in the southside of Chicago and stowed it in the trunk of their car, which they have parked in the shopping lot while they go in the supermarket to buy spices.  

Here’s how D’Souza describes the scene: 

“Even from the doorway, my uncles could sense that something wrong was happening, and they stopped with their paper bags in their arms to take it in. People were streaming past them and out of the store, stock boys in their aprons, the women they had looked at, the checkout girls in their striped uniforms, shoppers from all around. What did my uncles have left to do but step forward slowly, as though in a dream, toward the flashing lights of the police cruiser, toward the gathering crowd, toward the place where this new thing was happening. 

“Women held their hands to their mouths, men looked on with knitted brows. Cars on the street slowed in a line as their drivers gaped. And because they knew all of this belonged to them, my uncles moved forward like sleepwalkers. The crowd parted for them, each new set of eyes fell on them in their slow march. Then they heard the squealing of the pig exactly as all those other people did: as a human being, a woman, screaming to be let out.”  

This reviewer at once connected that scene, outrageously hilarious, to similar images he’d seen in the movie Coming to America (1988) starring Eddie Murphy.     

When at last the pig is shot in the backyard of the narrator’s house, this episode ends in wrecking the relationship between the uncles and their older brother Lawrence, the first-born son of the first-born Konkan father.    

The vignettes of Konkan culture and the American immigrant experience are depicted with affection and feel as if, even when funny at times, they actually happened in the distant past and the immediate present.  

However, the story narrated in Francisco’s voice and point of view compels the reader to exercise a willing suspension of disbelief in order to appreciate the backstory emerging from the mouth of baby Francisco. The blurring of first person and third person POV, nevertheless, works like a charm, as D’Souza weaves in and out of the present and the past to create a fiction that mesmerizes the reader to keep on reading.  

This novel will appeal both to immigrant readers and the natives interested in understanding what makes the new arrivals tick in the American land.  

Finally, if indeed The Konkans is a recreation of the author’s roots by the power of his imagination, it comes across more like fiction than autobiography. Having dredged his past, the author can now rest in peace as far as his roots are concerned.    

Published by Harcourt, Inc., New York, the novel (308 pages) is priced $25. ISBN 978-0-15-101519-1  Email: www.tonydsouza.com   

Ben Antao, born and raised in Goa on the Konkan coast, lives in Toronto, Canada. He’s a journalist and author of three novels. His email: ben.antao@rogers.com 

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Tags: mangalore, expat writing, goa, fiction

A tribute to a departed friend … Peter Nazareth on Lino Leitao

Lino Leitao in Goa. Photo: FN

I first heard of Lino Leitao in Missisauga, Canada in 1977 when I was driving to a conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Friends of mind showed me a book they had found in a bookstore, Goan Tales. They laughed at the author, whom they knew, because they said he looked like a beachcomber, not a writer. I got the book and liked it so I decided to write a review for World Literature Today, which published it in Autumn 1978 This is what I said:

Lino Leitao was born in Goa under Portuguese rule, was educated in Goa and Canada, taught for many years in Uganda and is now teaching in Quebec.  The five stories in Goan Tales, his second collection, are all about the Goan community and are set in Goa, India, Entebbe, Nairobi and Mombasa.  The reference point in all cases is Goa, the ancestral homeland, where people return to get married, to have their children educated or to retire. Goans seem to live in a cocoon in Leitao’s stories.  Africa rarely enters the bubble of communal existence, except for one story, ‘The Son.’

A woman who has entered an arranged marriage with an older Goan gives birth to a son — an African son, to everybody’s shock.  The father is the African servant, who had offered her love and understanding.  Returning to Nairobi several years later, she still looks youthful because of an inner peace, and she openly acknowledges her brief but genuine love.  Leitao is generous towards true love, in whose name all can be forgiven, and he is hard on both the ‘gossip-powr’ of Goans and the fact that very few Goans are able to resist what ‘people’ are saying.

Leitao has a sharp eye for Goan behavior.  He sees the Goans as very deeply Roman Catholic, like all Latin peoples, and he does not scorn their faith, while recognizing contradictions and hypocrisies.  In ‘The Miracle’ Goa becomes impoverished during World War II, while the people keep waiting for the Blessed Virgin to appear.  She finally seems to appear twice; the first appearance is not believed because the ’see’ is not poor but a teacher; the Church ignores the second because it does not want a tourist attraction to rival that of Fatima in Portugal.  The second ’seer’ ends up rich and believes in Her for She was the one who performed this miracle of a good and rich life for him.

I tracked down Lino Leitao and wrote to him because I wanted to include his stories in two anthologies I was invited to edit: ‘The So’ in Goan Literature: A Modern Reader, an issue of the Journal of South Asian Literature, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, Winter/Spring 1983; and ‘Dona Amalia Quadros’ in African Writing Today, an issue of Pacific Quarterly Moana, Hamilton, New Zealand, July/October, 1981.

I reviewed his next volume of stories, Six Tales, in World Literature Today, Spring 1982.  I said:

Lino Leitao continues to create a sociology of Goans in his third collection of short stories.  The stories are set in Goa and East Africa, the last one with a protagonist who has gone to Goa on leave from Canada.  ‘The Hidden Truth’ is about a woman left behind after her arranged marriage to someone from abroad.  Needing love, she is seduced by her brother-in-law and gets pregnant.  The son survives and is eventually adopted by her husband.  The lover, who abandoned her when she became pregnant, dies.  The story begins with the funeral of her husband.  People expect her, in the traditional manner, to weep over his coffin.  After a damningly long dry-eyed period, she finally weeps hysterically, and people are convinced of her dutiful love for her husband.  What they do not know is that she sees the face of her lover in the coffin, the lover whose funeral she could not attend.

I commented,

Leitao has affection for his characters and implied criticism for the hardness in Goans going by traditional mores.  We see this in ‘The Hindu Goan.’ There were few Hindu Goans in East Africa, and the one in the story is exceptional, more so as he falls in love with and marries, but does not possess, an Ethiopian woman.  He dies in an accident after one of the Goan men jeers that he has slept with the Ethiopian woman, who, the man says, is a prostitute.

Lino and I met for the first time in March, 1991 at the ‘International Conference on Goa: Continuity and Change’, held at the University of Toronto.  We got on very well.

I reviewed his first novel for World Literature Today, Spring 2000.  This was The Gift of the Holy Cross, published by Peepal Tree Press in Leeds, England in 2000.

I said that the novel

begins in Goa during Portuguese colonial times.  The land is suffering from drought, which ends when Mario Jacques is born; people believe he is a messiah.  But what kind of messiah, when Goans are divided, Hindu versus Catholic?  When the landlord class, Catholic and Hindu, oppresses and exploits the workers and peasants?  When Goa has been colonized for over four centuries, physically and mentally, while India is ending a hundred years of British colonial rule?  Mario becomes a political figure, an unsuccessful one except that he is made a scapegoat for the antinationalists. When he escapes to India, he is disillusioned by politicians, for they want to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.

Jozin-Bab, who has lived for a long time, says to him: “Always remember this, Mario: A nation that doesn’t aspire to be an industrial giant may be exploited by the others.  But a nation that doesn’t grow spiritually will be in worse trouble.” Mario is scapegoated for a murder he did not commit and hanged on a cross. His dying words are in Sanskrit, thus indigenizing the message of the Crucifixion.

Lino began work on a second novel.  I read a portion of it many years ago. It was a highly erotic account of the affair of a married woman and her lover, a womanizer.  However, there was a spirituality from the Vedas underlying this story, which moved between present and past.  I don’t know whether he ever completed this novel, but he did complete several short stories.  Twelve short of his stories were published in the journal Short Story International, the most important journal for short stories. I don’t know of any other writer who had more stories published in this journal.

One of the stories in SSI, ‘The Accident’, was originally published in The Massachusetts Review and is the most complex multicultural story Lino ever wrote.  It is set in Montreal during the time the Quebecois were considering quitting Canada.  It covers Goans; Canadians; the Baganda from Uganda; the illusions of white people about Amin’s “nationalism”; the Asian expulsion from Uganda; the question of whether ‘Asian’ had contributed to Uganda (they had, the narrator says, an example being that it was a Goan tailor who designed the outfit that became the Kiganda national dress, known as the busuti or gomisi).  The story ends making a connection in Canada between the three aliens in Canada who are black, brown and white.

Lino was always appreciative of what I did to get his work out.  He expressed his gratitude in many ways. Confluence recently published a story by him which he dedicated to me. Earlier, he reviewed the second edition of my novel, In a Brown Mantle, in World Literature Today, Autumn 1982.  He concluded his review:

“When first published in 1972, In a Brown Mantle was prophetic of both Idi Amin’s coup and his expulsion of Asians from Uganda.  But the novel is also a story of many Third World countries.  Its prose is easy, yet it has an astonishing power to stir the mind.  People who live under the oppression of their own bourgeoisie will find much to ponder in this book.”

In 1998, a Goan from London published a letter to Goa Today disagreeing with a fine interview with me by Fred Noronha a few months earlier.  The writer proceeded to completely misunderstand my novel, The General is Up, concluding that it had no “moral rectitude”.  And the lowest blow: he said I was an unworthy son of my father. Lino phoned me to cheer me up.  “At least you got a Goan to read!” he said.

Lino Leitao was a very good writer of short fiction.  He sometimes needed a sympathetic editor to tighten up what he wrote, and I did it whenever I could, but that is not a reason for concluding he was not a good writer because, in fact, every writer needs and uses good editors. But Goans tended to misunderstand his writing from another angle. They looked for the real life people on whom he based his stories and then blamed him both for gossiping about stories from real life and getting it wrong because of differences from the real life stories. Or perhaps they were really blaming him for revealing secrets that they thought should not be revealed about Goans to the outside word, ’secrets’ that showed Goans were human. They did not know that every writer uses models from real life, but these models go through the creative imagination before emerging in well structured works of art.  It was his knowledge, his understanding of people, politics and history, his empathy for human beings and his thirst for ending oppression that made him a good writer.  I mentioned earlier that some people thought he was like a beachcomber, not a writer.

Lino Leitao is gone but his stories live.  One of them has been accepted by Professor Ezekiel Alembi for a forthcoming volume of East African short stories.

Lino’s stories are a gift to us.  We must know how to accept the gift. –Peter Nazareth, University of Iowa

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Reproduced with permission of the writer. This was first e-published on the New Diaspora mailing list [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newdiaspora] Nazareth can be contacted via PNAZARETH05@msn.com

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Patagonia? Where’s that?

Biblophile-friend Dr Nandkumar Kamat reminded me about the upcoming release of a new book ‘From Goa to Patagonia’ slated for August 24, 2007 at 4.15 pm at the Kala Academy’s meeting hall. This not only sent me scurring to my cluttered email in-box, but it also saw me go off in a hurry to the Wikipedia to understand what this was all about.

Patagonia?

This was how that amazing online encyclopedia, the Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org), explained it: “Patagonia is the southernmost portion of South America. Mostly located in Argentina and partly in Chile, it comprises the Andes mountains to the west and south, and plateaux and low plains to the east. The name Patagonia comes from the word patagon used by Magellan to describe the native people who his expedition thought to be giants. It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches and Aonikenk with an average height of 1.80 m compared to the 1.55 average for Spaniards of the time.”

This book is by Alfredo Bachmann de Mello, the Uruguay-based Goan-bon son of renowned doctor-scientist Dr. Froilano de Mello and his Swiss wife. Some years back, I ran into Alfredo “Fred” via cyberspace, and we had many an interesting exchange till (I think) we disagreed in our perspectives and lost touch. He had then also drawn my attention to a book he published, explaining who the ‘real Columbus’ was. (Frankly, history not being one of my favourite subjects, I found that text a bit too complex to adequately follow.  That book of his is called “El Verdadero Colón” in Spanish, and in English it’s “The Real Colon: Columbus is a misnomer”.)

Head of the Lisbon-based Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias history department Dr Teotonio R de Souza, while welcome the growing number of Goan memoirs and autobiographies, gives a preview of the book’s content. He also refers to De Mello’s father’s possibly misunderstood role in representing colonial Goa in Lisbon.

Of the book, de Souza writes: “Despite some unpleasant memories, Alfredo de Mello does not display any hangover of colonial past. He revealed very early in life his conviction that all empires had their end! This understanding of history and his joie de vivre pervade his memoirs, giving them a seriousness and without making them dull.

“In between some colourful descriptions of his deft control of a pony galloping downhill at Matheran while still a child; a confrontation which ended badly for a cobra in his home compound at Altinho in Panjim; a rub of the ring of the Archbishop-Patriarch that left him with bleeding nose; and his first experience of the pleasures of Eden with a young British eve while a boarder at Bishop Cotton’s in Bangalore, there is much we can learn about social life in the capital city of Goa as well as about the wild-life in rural Goa of those years.”

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Writing on the diaspora: Burma, Bombay; Myanmar, Mumbai

Another interesting attempt that’s coming along is Yvonne Vaz-Ezdani’s proposed book that tells the story of Goan expats in Burma (now Myanmar). It is one more chapter — or should we say, book — about the lives of people from this emigration-prone region, just waiting to be told.

Yvonne can be contacted at 2409519 or raynon@vsnl.net. If you know someone who has a story to tell from this period, do get in touch.

Reena Martins, The Telegraph’s feature writer in Mumbai and a journo who traces her own roots to Pune, Mumbai and Velim, is meanwhile working — still in an early stage — on the stories of Goans in Mumbai between the 1930s and 1970s.  Reena is contactable via reenamartins@hotmail.com and do share your ideas and suggestions with her.

So, keep reading Goa-related books… and think of writing some too. It’s increasingly becoming possible to do so, as entry barriers get lower.

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Dr Jose Pereira … on the mando

Here’s an April 2003 review of Fordham University professor emeritus of theology Dr Pereira’s book, co-authored with the late maestro Micael Martins of Orlim and priest – psychotherapist – musician Antonio da Costa now based in Arizona. Details below. Published in 2003 by Aryan Books <aryanbooks@vsnl.com>, this volume deals with Mandos of union and lamentation.

http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2003-April/001564.html

Some publication data:

%T Song of Goa
%S Mandos of Union and Lamentation
%A Pereira, Jose <eximirom at hotmail.com>
%A Martins, Micael
%A da Costa, Antonio
%I Aryan Books International
%C New Delhi
%D 2003
%O paperback
%G ISBN 81-7305-248-4
%P 190pp, Rs 200
%U aryanbooks@vsnl.com
%K Goa, music

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Blood, nemesis and misreading quite what makes Goan society tick (book review)

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]

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Blood & Nemesis by Ben Antao
Goan Observer Private Limited
Pages 318, Rs 250. Goa 2005.

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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.

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
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.

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.

Book of Edna’s recipes

Mississauga, Ontario-based Edna is author of ‘Saviour the Flavour of India’, pp 132, January 2005 printed at Pilar, Goa. This book is available from tonferns at hotmail.com