By Jugneeta Sudan
Issue no 17
A plurality of self forms the signature line for artworks by Eleanor Viegas. A language of interconnection and a holistic consciousness impregnates her works. Lasting impressions from art museums, architecture of visited landscapes and the expansiveness of western thought into eastern philosophy lend a polyphonic edge to her artwork.
By Yvonne Vaz Ezdani
Issue no 17
The sun has just waved a glorious goodbye, leaving lingering light for my path. I latch the gate behind me as I step out on my evening walk. Clusters of crimson bougainvillea slipping over our white-washed garden wall make me stop to let the beauty soak in. More warmth, as passersby smile and friendly neighbours wave from balcãoes as I walk on.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no 17
Nowhere in the history of nation states are the victims of an injustice or their descendants called upon to atone for that very injustice. This happens only when the narrative is distorted beyond recognition by special interest groups keen on creating a perpetual sense of victimhood.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no 16
the home has always been a special place, one we take for granted perhaps, but which dwells in our imagination—the geographic specificity of it, the relationships which unfold within it, the momentous events we share and celebrate—and particularly the homes of our childhood remain with us, becoming an indelible part of our consciousness.
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no 16
My great-grandfather Ignatius Borges was from Sadashivgad in Karwar; he worked as a motorman for the railways and travelled often. His younger son, Stephen, my grandfather, served briefly in the army, before moving to Bombay in the 1940s, where he lived in a kudd, a short distance from Cavel. He got married to a Goan bride, my grandmother, Anna Vaz, and got himself a job as a tailor, and settled on Grant Road.
By R. Benedito Ferrao
Issue no 16
I was the first-born son in the family. My sister Ruth was born when I was over four years old, and so I was in effect a lone person. My father had a lot of books in our house, including joke books. He was well known by Goans for giving fine speeches and always including a joke in the speeches.
By Victor Rangel-Ribeiro (preview only)
Issue no 16
What was the state of literature in Goa, a hundred years ago? With no radio or TV, and only one movie theatre in distant Panjim, surely people spent a lot of time reading? Yes, they read a lot of newspapers, that sprouted like mushrooms, and died almost as quickly. And what about books? Seventy-three long years had passed between the publication of Os Brahmanes and Chord and Discords. What were people reading in the intervening years?
By Selma Carvalho
Issue no 16
The Goan club is that identifiable marker wherever a sapling Goan community exists. It is a representation, a microcosm of our larger society, it is home to the peccadilloes of our eccentric characters, a gatekeeper of our inclusions and exclusions, and the fulcrum on which our history pivots.
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.
