By Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 12
Newman is by no means condescending of those who visit the ashram. He seeks only to understand the fictive abstractions underlying the pan-India consciousness. Long before Yuval N. Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Penguin, 2011) popularised the idea that the human ability to create fictions was fundamental to evolution, Newman sought to understand a pan-India consciousness
By Ishaan H. Jajodia
Issue no. 12
While we know Orta today as a man for his medica materia, I would like to push for his recognition as an early antiquarian — probably the first European antiquarian in India. As Markham points out in his critical edition, it is almost certain that Orta was the earliest European visitor to Elephanta Islands.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 11
Shirley L. Gonsalves’s book The Luso-Indian Stethoscope (Goa 1556, 2019), is an extraordinarily incisive look at the mandarin class the empires of Britain and Portugal created in the Indian subcontinent, and how these early transnationals heralded the golden age of intellectualism and public philanthropy.
By Jugneeta Sudan
Issue no. 11
Konknnichea molleant, the artwork by Loretti Pinto, is a significant and powerful metaphor for how weaving transforms conflicting ideas in our minds. The Aztec philosophy calls weaving a cathartic activity, and elaborates that weaving begins with fibre-dried grass stalks, bunched together into two groups, warp and weft.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 10
Pacing his office, badly served by his predecessor and left in a ‘chaotic condition,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Bremner knew nothing good would come of his posting to Goa. Outside lay a land shorn of adventure, a land whose weather he found to be ‘unbearably sultry,’ whose Southern European colonisers spent their time in ‘cheery inebriation’ …
In conversation with Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 9
I was inspired by the work of most Japanese designers. It’s exceptionally tough to take a fabric devoid of any embellishment or print and make it look stunning purely by its construction. That’s the challenge that’s inspiring and worth every minute spent in the design realm.
By Ben Antao
Issue no. 9
I understand that the place of one’s childhood and early influences leave an indelible stamp on the memory and subconscious, but can it be so profound as to negate all subsequently lived experiences in other lands? Indeed, this seems to be malady afflicting Goans in the diaspora who at one time in their lives had the luck to sample life in colonial East Africa.
By Jugneeta Sudan
Issue no. 8
Quixotically Vamona read chivalrous texts passionately and then implemented the ethos into his existence. Regrettably, reality had moved away and become inequitable, random and prejudiced. It did not share his faith in codes of chivalry. Every time he was subjected to physical abuse and psychic tortures, he drew courage from his readings …
