What the heck does the Goa gazette contain?

Here is an official explanation:

About the Official Gazette:

The main activity of the Department is the printing and publication of the offical Gazette — the official organ of the Government — brought out weekly on every Thursday. wherein the Central an Local Acts enacted by the Parliament and the State Assembly from time to time are published, for general information and guidance of the public and for their enforcement by the Departments concerned.

The Official Gazette is published in there Series, namely Series I, Series II, Series III. In addition, Extraordinary and Supplementary Gazettes are brought out as and when requested for by the Department concerned depending upon the urgency and the public interest.
The contents of each of the Series are as given below:

a) Series I which is the principal part of the Gazette, being of Legislative nature, contains Stationary Acts and Rules, Regulations, Bye-Laws, Notifications and Orders issued in pursuance thereto. In addition, the recruitment rules which are framed under Article 309 of the Constitution of India to determine the mode of recruitment to posts in Group ‘A’. ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ categories in various Departments of the Government from time to time, are also notified.

Memoirs … of a voice from the airwaves

This is about the most bizarre thing to do while encountering a book: try to read it from the ending! That’s just what I did with the autobiography of someone you might know, a lady called Imelda Dias. So one is still trying to put the pieces of the jigsaw together; but it was an interesting read.

Most of Goa of a particular generation — those around here in the 1960s and 1970s — would probably remember the name “Imelda” (or even Imelda Tavora). She then was the most popular announcer in the State, at a time when radio was the unquestioned king of all the mass media. (Forget about TV, which didn’t exist here yet, and newspapers were far smaller.) So I began reading her book with the Epilogue.

This chapter took me to my schoolboy days in the 1970s, and the music that Imelda played for all of us via the radio. It came through loud and clear on Sunday afternoons. It came on Friday nights. It came in the afternoon siesta time on weekdays. All the names of the programmes sounded so very fresh — ‘Your Choice’, ‘Latin Rhythm’, ‘Your Favourites’ and more. Many readers would probably even recall the sign-off name “Yours truly, Imelda”.

This book is about the Goa that was, touching a bit on colonial Goa and the period just after 1961. Those were times of change and uncertainty. But they were nice times too, in a way. Imelda’s book tells the story of the Catholic elite of the times, the nostalgia with which it looks back, and life in the “good old days”.

Subtitled “An Autobiography of a Woman Ahead of Her Times”, this is also a story of a woman going against the trend, settling for a divorce in the 1960s, and facing the patriarchy of Catholic Goa of the times. It’s a book edited by Margaret Mascarenhas, editor of ‘Skin’.

Spiced with the gossipy details of Panjim’s life in the 1970s, parts of the book are very engrossing. But one couldn’t believe all one read, even if this only incited one’s curiosity to learn more of those times. Besides her boarding years in Pune (then still Poona), this story talks about life in All India Radio, what it meant to be a political refugee of sorts in Salazar’s Lisbon post-1961, and stories of love and romance from another era. It’s a good read for anyone who grew up in the Goa of those years, and one would not hesitate recommending it (2006, Rs 250, printed and published by Imelda Dias, pp 189, hb).

With an catchy title like ‘How Long Is Forever’ and a covered mostly in black-and-white cover, this is a book that would catch your attention. Strangely, it isn’t very well displayed in most bookshops. Friends I mentioned it to, had all not come across it either!

Blogged with Flock

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.

Blogged with Flock

‘Drop out, Tune In and Turn On’

Frederick Noronha takes us back to hippie days in Anjuna
GOA TODAY, November 1996

Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India
by Cleo Odzer
Blue Moon Books

DID you wonder how the hippies of the ’70s managed to live seemingly luxurious lives in Goa without doing a day’s work? Want to know how they spent months on a tiny stretch of Anjuna beach? Or what really attracted them to Goa?

If so, this is the book. It is a must-read for the student of sociology, the Goan from the coastal belt, and about anyone curious to understand the changes this society underwent in the last three decades.

Cleo Odzer is herself a former hippie, reincarnated as a respectable academic in the US. She tells the full story, with brutal and uncensored honesty. Even at the risk of portraying herself as a narcissistic, self-centered and a law-breaking guest of Goa.

This book’s significance is that it is the first to decode the lives and times of the hippies of Goa, which was one of the hippie-capitals worldwide (besides Ibiza in Spain and Kathmandu).

Odzer grew up in the lap of Jewish affluence in New York, as a disaffected youth in the post-Vietnam War generation. She opted to restlessly comb Europe and the Middle East before taking the overland bus from Europe to Goa. Four years — of drugs, depravity and a meaningless existence — was, however, more than she could take of it.