By Selma Carvalho
Issue no 15
Film-maker and poet Jonas Mekas has presciently noted, ‘In the very end, civilisations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.’ So come, let us listen to our poets. Poets are the quivering heart of a nation, its pulse, its very essence. Let us listen to the words of our very own major Goan poet, Armando Menezes.
By Rachana Patni
Issue no 15
Joshua and his father sat with a book on dinosaurs. On the first page there was a timeline which indicated that first there were water-creatures, then came dinosaurs, and then finally, came human beings. Joshua looked at this timeline, heard the description of it, and immediately asked his father, ‘Papa, what will come after human beings?’
By Tony de Sa
Issue no 15
The Goa of the sixties and seventies was a stark contrast to the Goa of today. Goa had just been freed from the Portuguese yoke, and frankly speaking, the things we take for granted in Goa today, electricity, piped water, tarred roads, telephones, internet connectivity, were simply not there.
By Cordelia B Francis
Issue no 15
As I look back at my childhood, squinting across an ocean of time, faint memories begin to flicker to life. Like mirages they swim in to focus, the details fuzzy, the stories skewered, the timelines overlapping. Fact, fiction and hearsay coalescing into childhood impressions.
By Braz Menezes
Issue no. 15
I cannot sleep. My thoughts wander back to Nairobi and the Portuguese Consulate. Except for me, the whole family is travelling on my father’s Portuguese passport; my passport requires an additional document authorizing me, as a minor, to an indefinite stay until my studies end.
By Sheela Jaywant
Issue no. 15
The men of the Gaitonde family were rarely seen in the ancestral house. The Portuguese had left; the cry aamchey Goyen aamkaa jaay (our Goa must be ours) still echoed around; it wasn’t yet certain whether the Union Territory would be merged with Maharashtra. The villagers kept their distance from my politically active family; my eldest uncle, Dr. Pundalik, had, in the 1940s, done an unthinkable thing. He married a Portuguese girl, Edila, who lived with the family for some years.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 14
a 1930s ‘Christmas in Goa’: “Our host and hostess were a charming couple who lived on the revenue of their property and had a large house with many rooms to spare… Christmas dinner proved to be something like a private cabaret, the entertainers being the younger members of the family of our hosts. We sat around a long room and a bottle of vintage wine was opened. A young man gave us a tune on the fiddle and was loudly applauded. Then some of the boys and girls danced to the music of the gramophone. The proceedings followed the same sequence all over again – wine and further toasting, music and dancing and food.
Bu Jugneeta Sudan
Issue no. 14
Understandably, Solomon’s priority then was to set out on a project of celebrating his grandfather’s village first, by painting murals of its iconic men and women, on public walls. It takes a village to raise a palpable cultural environment, and Saligao ranks high on this account. The village welcomed Solomon with open arms and he was sighted perched on his ladder…
In conversation with Vatsala Mendonca
Issue no. 14
Shadow of the Palm Tree opens with a heart-rending tragedy: the death of a mother at her own hands. Yet the shadow of sadness cast on the Abreu family took shape much earlier, in the 1700s, when the family not only converted to Christianity but joined one of the most lucrative enterprises of Christian Europe — the slave trade. This unfortunate career choice would bring the Abreus power, prestige and wealth but also a curse that would snake treacherously through the centuries.
By R. Benedito Ferrão
Issue no. 14
It’s dark now as the taxi takes you to your hotel. You see nothing along the way. But then, when the car slows down, you know you’re finally in Jerusalem for you see the most beautiful sight. Softly bathed in the golden light of the lamps below, its crenelated silhouette set against the night sky. The Damascus Gate. Suddenly, that interminably long flight, the security measures you’ve endured, the slightly damp clothes pressed against your skin in the cloying heat – none of it matters.
By Vishvesh Kandolkar
Issue no. 14
What if I do not try to understand myself? I think this is easy to answer. But what if I want to understand myself? This quest is much more difficult. To do so one has to recollect memories from day one, when we were born. Every day a narrative could be changed, because we as humans are smart with language to convince and exaggerate our points of view, as we increase our experiences with language and knowledge.
By Edith M. Furtado
Issue no. 14
My father’s house was in Salvador do Mundo, Bardez, not grand by the standards of colonial Goa, yet, surrounded by fruit-bearing trees and flowering plants. The trip across the Mandovi in a noisy ferry, past the picturesque Penha da França Church was already a preview of the much-awaited freedom the children enjoyed at our paternal grandmother’s.
In conversation with Tina Athaide
Issue no. 14
Our ties to Uganda date back to 1927. My grandfather, Anthonio Athaide, was the first family member to move to Entebbe. He worked as an accountant for the Public Works Department and played cricket for the Uganda team. He married Elvina Fernandes in 1931 in Goa. She stayed back at the Athaide family home for another four years before joining Anthonio, in Entebbe, in 1935.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 14
Canada has been in the news lately for the implied racism of its prime-minister Justin Trudeau. Perhaps what’s relevant to the large number of Goans settled in Canada is not Trudeau’s faux-pas but questions about Canada’s history of racial exclusion and how it might have impacted their lives.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no. 13
We exist outside of ourselves. This moment of consciousness is the birth of literature – the ability to perceive ourselves and to give form to perception is what allows us to introspect and immortalise experience. It’s a profound loss to Goans, that we grow up exiled from our own literary legacy.
By Anish Esteves
Issue no. 13
Sarto Esteves was born in Solvá, Raia, Goa, then a Portuguese colony, on the 28th of August, 1919 to Roque Piedade Felicio Esteves and Argentina Maria Esmeralda Geneciana de Piedade Quadros e Esteves. He was one of nine children in the family. He lost his parents at a very young age and later came to Mumbai for his education.
By Jugneeta Sudan
Issue no. 13
My chat series with him has been slotted between his scheduled work on two huge abstract works. In his red aachakan embellished with golden thread work and matching pyjamas he looks sharp, his silvery white beard and moustache offsetting his profile aglow with the sunrays filtering in through the open window.
By Roy Parras
Issue no. 13
Over a few years, I started to see visual changes occurring in the landscape. Fields that would welcome me into Curtorim with a green lushness to them were now slowly becoming uncultivated. This visual started to create a niggling thought in my head that in a way lead to an apprehension. I was wondering, what would it be for us if one day all of this faded into oblivion?
By S Gasper D’Souza
Issue no. 13
The store marks the way to my house. They call it the posro. It’s a small square structure, no bigger than ten paces across; a terracotta tiled roof rises like a pyramid. Rice, rye, and red lentils fill tin cans alongside chickpeas, chillies and cumin seeds, purveyed by a gentle, grey-haired man.
In conversation with Janet H. Swinney
Issue no. 13
My approach anywhere I go is to be an observer. And I mean observing without any preconceived idea of what it is you’re looking at. Looking and trying to figure out why things are done in a certain way, which may not be your way. Trying to figure out what the rationale is – because there will be one.
