The Girl who was the color of nothing

The Girl who was the color of nothing

By Selma Carvalho

Humour is notoriously difficult to render, isn’t it? So, it really is nice to hear that it works in the book. Indeed, I wanted there to be an obvious satirical element in the story and the suitors provide the perfect opportunity to demonstrate some real and very wild things one has heard of, or seen, in society. While I wanted readers to have a laugh at these figures (and maybe at themselves), I also hoped to point out the ludicrousness of what the characters subject themselves and others to. This is why the second half of the book brings back some of the occurrences from the first half, but in less funny ways.

Janakye Bai’s Story: Velip Oral Traditions

Janakye Bai’s Story: Velip Oral Traditions

By R. Benedito Ferrao

The illustrated book The Story of Janakye Bai (Goa 1556, 2026) chronicles a tale that has been passed down over several generations amongst Velip people, one of Goa’s Indigenous communities. The story revolves around Janakye Bai, a girl who chooses to run away from home rather than resign herself to a fate she refuses to accept. This book appears in two editions, one in Velip Konkani and the other in English. Vithai Zaraunker, a member of the Velip community and an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the D. D. Kosambi School of Social Sciences and Behavioural Studies at Goa University, envisioned this book project…

The Most Famous Suitcase in Goan Art History

The Most Famous Suitcase in Goan Art History

By Ava Sherry

I had been drawn to R. Benedito Ferrão and Vamona Navelcar’s The Destination is the Journey, initially because it wasn’t obvious in its positioning. It felt almost like a puzzle, except with every answer found, another layer of depth revealed itself. The Destination is The Journey forms part of R. Benedito Ferrão’s edited book, Goa/Portugal/Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar (2017) which is about a Goan artist – Navelcar (1929-2021) – whose life and identity, due to colonial forces, became dispersed across the boundaries of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

The Language of christmas in faraway lands

The Language of christmas in faraway lands

By Saachi D’ Souza

Growing up in the dominantly Hindu state of Gujarat, Christmas was more than gifts, family, and cheer. We found ways, albeit small, to bring us back to what was forced into suppression. Like most Catholic kids, I too took piano lessons. The one song that stuck with me was Auld Lang Syne. Every year, between the last carol and the first toast, the familiar melody begins. It isn’t, strictly speaking, a Christmas song. There is no Bethlehem, no manger, no snow. But Auld Lang Syne always arrives, as if called by the hush that settles over the world in late December.

Christmas in Poona

Christmas in Poona

By  Michelle Mendonça Bambawale

The PGI was the centre for community activities. We learnt to play badminton and  there. We looked forward to the PGI’s long event calendar over Christmas. We did not notice the rundown buildings or the peeling paint. The toilets still haunt me, they were filthy and stinky. As young kids, the highlight was the annual Christmas tree party. We always had fashionable new custom-made dresses to wear. There were needle and thread, lime and spoon and sack races. The highlight was waiting for Santa Claus to give us our Christmas presents.

The landscape of Goa in Writing

The landscape of Goa in Writing

By Selma Carvalho

Poet and playwright Owen Sheers thinks landscape is what happens to nature when humans arrive. We create landscape, otherwise nature exists, forlorn, desultory and on its own. In every manner the newly released anthology The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art 2025, edited by me and published by Cinnamon Teal, encapsulates this ethos of Goans interacting with the land of Goa. Identity is that most unknowable thing, constantly changing, a mere shadow on the edges of our consciousness, and yet if something were to exist as Goan identity than that something is our love of the land.

A Book Full of Rice - Portuguese Colonialism, Food and Society in Goa: 1900-1961

A Book Full of Rice - Portuguese Colonialism, Food and Society in Goa: 1900-1961

By R. Benedito Ferrão

Once an Assistant State Librarian at Goa’s Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa also served as a Reference Librarian whose specialty was Indo-Portuguese History. Accordingly, the focus of da Costa’s latest book comes as no surprise, its title being Portuguese Colonialism, Food, and Society in Goa: 1900-1961 (Bloomsbury, 2025). Attending to the final decades of Portuguese rule in Goa, da Costa’s book looks closely at rice production in the capital of Estado da Índia.

Of Red Dust

Of Red Dust

By R. Benedito Ferrão

Paul Melo e Castro talks about the translations Life Stories: The Collected Stories of Maria Elsa da Rocha (Goa 1556, 2023), Weeds in the Red Dust: The Collected Stories of Epitácio Pais (CinnamonTeal, 2023), and Regional Tales (CinnamonTeal, 2024) which brings together stories by Augusto do Rosário Rodrigues.

when god died

when god died

By Jessica Faleiro

Your first book Shadow of the Palm Tree (2019) brought to light the presence of the slave trade the Portuguese brought to Goa. Your second book when god died (2023) brings to light the Goa Inquisition, another significant historical event in Goa that isn’t talked about very much. What was the motivation or inspiration for choosing to portray this particular moment of history in your latest novel?

Coins in Rivers: Heta Pandit on Rochelle Potkar

Coins in Rivers: Heta Pandit on Rochelle Potkar

By Heta Pandit

Why do we call it a book release, Rochelle? In fact, isn’t it just the reverse of release? Holding, reading, and experiencing a book is an inhalation, a holding in of your breath, a waiting for a revelation. That is exactly how I felt when I began reading Coins in Rivers. I wonder why the perpetrators of all the atrocities described against women are men. You write as a feminist; you see and understand scars. Even the ones under the skin. And yet, I see a soft gentle touch, not the caustic, harsh, and scarred perspective of a hard-core man-hater.

Becoming Goan: Beyond Ancestral Pasts

Becoming Goan: Beyond Ancestral Pasts

By Selma Carvalho

My anecdotal observations suggested that Goans were leaving Goa for a better life. At the same time, many others from across the country were moving to Goa for a better life too. Hence when I moved to Goa during the pandemic, I grappled with fundamental questions about modern migration, indigenous cultures, and identity: Where is home? Where do I belong? What is culture? How do I connect with my culture and community?

The One Book to read from the Asian Prize for Fiction 2023 Longlist

The One Book to read from the Asian Prize for Fiction 2023 Longlist

By Selma Carvalho

Longlisted for the Asian Prize for Fiction 2023, Mrinalini Harchandrai discusses her book. This story was inspired by my mother’s childhood experiences in 1961 Goa. So quite a fair bit of the details of life then have been reaped or borrowed from family stories itself. I myself spent my childhood summers visiting my grandmother’s home in Goa, so perhaps some facility with the tongue and an understanding of mindset nuances seeped into me over the years.

Still Lives: Mangoes Don't Grow in Manchester

Still Lives: Mangoes Don't Grow in Manchester

By Selma Carvalho

Issue no 26

Icarus is dead, Icarus is alive. He resurrects himself in all of us as surely he must, in that tiny seedling hope, reaching for a dream which lies beyond our grasp. This then is the premise of Reshma Ruia’s haunting novel, Still Lives (Renard Press, 2022), drawing the reader in immediately and imperceptibly into a brooding sense of loss, a palpable dissolution, a wounded self, searching through the gloaming.

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I am not your Eve: Interrogating Male Colonial Privilege

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I am not your Eve: Interrogating Male Colonial Privilege

By Selma Carvalho

Issue no 25

At the heart of the controversy lies Teha’amana, his muse, barely thirteen (or was she eleven) when forty-three-year-old Gauguin, by arrangement with her Foster Mother, took her as his ‘bride.’ Could Teha’amana give her consent in such an arrangement? And if we assume some diluted and distorted form of consent, did she have any agency in this action?

Zanzibar's Goan Bandsmen

Zanzibar's Goan Bandsmen

By Selma Carvalho

Issue no 25

In 1877, urged by the British, Barghash formed an army and it is customary within British military tradition to have a band attached to battalions, in order to perform marching and ceremonial music. What is extraordinary is that in a time of colonial hierarchies defined by race, the intended band for Barghash’s army would comprise almost entirely of Goans from the west coast of India.

Photo Essay: My Friend Shubhi

Photo Essay: My Friend Shubhi

By Shazia Shaikh

Issue no 25

In a place like Goa, known for its glitz and glamour, its parties and perversions, a family of farmers have managed to continue their quiet and dignified lifestyle. The simple pleasures of life like family and love is the driving force of their life. At the core of it is their connection with nature. This photo-essay documents the women as observed in their house and working on the plantation over a period of one month.

Footnotes on Vimala Devi's Monsoon

Footnotes on Vimala Devi's Monsoon

By Selma Carvalho

Issue no 25

Devi’s writing is an exquisite capture of mid-century Goan society, mores and landscape. The detailed descriptions of the houses and households in particular are of interest for the sheer opulence they conjure up, a gilded age indeed which faded far too soon, and it is easy to see why for so many Goans, there persists a saudade for a paradise lost.

Artist Julio D'Souza: The One Last Supper

Artist Julio D'Souza: The One Last Supper

By Jugneeta Suda

Issue no 24

Artist Julio D’ Souza has rendered the Last Supper many times in the last 13 years. When I talked to him he said, “Irrespective of how many I have painted, when I set out to paint again, for me, it’s One Last Supper” Every-time. Without exception. The magnetic pull is the metaphor in the painting, a family/community coming together to partake of a meal at the dining table. A masterpiece embedding the dance of ‘Light & Shadow’, the polarities are palpable.