Vignettes of a charming Goan childhood ----------------------------- A review by Ben Antao of Brenda Coutinho's *A Matter of Time* -----------------------------
One of the first decisions a writer of fiction or non-fiction should make in this: Who will want to read this? If you're Brenda Coutinho, a lecturer in English at Rosary College in Navelim, Salcete, and eager to write a memoir of your childhood experiences, the answer is simple -- the generation that grew up in the 1980s and readers like me who grew up in the 1940s yet are curious to know what village life was like two decades after the Liberation of Goa. Brenda obviously has had a charming childhood or she wouldn't have called this memoir, "vignettes of a golden childhood in Goa." And what lovely vignettes these are, simply narrated in short sentences, without affectation, in a gushing girlish voice of a ten-year-old Paula. Another decision a writer needs to make affects the structure or form that will carry this kind of narrative. For this the author has hit upon a clever device -- to anchor the memoir to the razing down of a grand palatial house called Casa Miranda that once absorbed the envious attention of the whole village named Benfica. This bulldozing event triggers the reminiscences of Paula while seated in her grandmother's rocking chair in the balcao. The metaphor of land acquisition for tourism purposes runs through the narrative like the Rver Sal that meanders alongside Benfica, a fictional name for the village of Navelim. Some vignette that caught my eye: Paula, with brother Mario, 11, sister Lucia, 12, and neighbouring children Mandovi and Xavier are the main characters who meet under the shade of the champa tree to prattle and play make-believe games. Plus there is the wise grandma soon to be 80. In the chapter The Phone Call, Paula accompanies her grandma to Margao to receive a phone call from her son living in London since telephone service in Benfica was non-existent. On the scheduled day, they travel in a minibus to the house of grandma's friend Dona Maria Linda Azavedo. After the call as grandma begins to wail, "Paula was shocked at the rate at which tears flowed from her grandmother's eyes. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she mustered all courage and asked her what the matter was. Grandmother dabbed her neatly folded handkerchief on to her eyes and said, 'They are all coming to Goa. For three weeks. Next month.'" Go smile if you have to, but this kind of episode happened fairly frequently in Goa whose sons worked overseas leaving their parents at home. Not much seems to have changed with the advent of Liberation as native Goans continue to migrate abroad in quest of jobs. Another narrative device the author employs to hold the reader's flagging interest is to end a chapter with an idea or a memory that becomes the topic of the next chapter, like the carnival in Benfica and fun at the church fair. The church fair was always fun for kids growing up in the villages and Sinquetim, the hamlet of Navelim to the west of the main church where the clans of Coutinhos dwell, was no exception. What's new around the vicinity of the whitewashed church in this memoir was the presence of apartment blocks and cars and scooters at the fair. Brenda writes, "Pinning flowers on attires of people who came to the church was taken on as a big responsibility. Wearing a new dress, socks and shoes, both she and her sister would leave the house at five in the morning and meet the other girls in front of the church before the six o’clock first Mass." Later at the fair we encounter a Sikh astrologer who reads palms and predicts the future. Paula coaxes her grandma, despite the latter's protestations, to get her hand read. "Someone very close to your heart," he says, "has returned back to you after a long time -- your beloved son. You are presently in a very happy zone." All that for ten rupees. You’ve to read the book to find out how the Sikh came to know this. The reader gets a view of the author's profile as reflected by Paula in the balcao. "She was in her forties, yet her fair square face was beautiful despite the few wrinkles." Finally, the title A Matter of Time resonated for me a double entendre. It was a flashback in time as well as a flash forward to the present, like children living in a dream world which always seems rosier in retrospect. One piece of writing advice for Brenda: Show, don't tell. This slim 123-page volume has been made easy to read by the publisher Goa,1556 with financial assistance from the Directorate of Art and Culture scheme for Goan authors. The partners of this fast growing publishing enterprise, Frederick Noronha and Pamela D'Mello, both accomplished journalists in their own right, have formatted the text in 14 pt font size, with reasonable spacing between lines as if they could see this book written in short chapters (about 2000 words each) as a suitable read for school children and seniors like me with weak eyes. [Ben Antao’s latest work of short fiction is The Concubine and Selected Stories published by CinnamonTeal of Margao.] ---- Words: 885 April 03/14 Contact the reviewer: ben.an...@rogers.com Contact the author: brendacouti...@gmail.com Publishers: goa1...@gmail.com