Mrinalini Harchandrai

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.

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.