WORLD GOA DAY HAS COME TO STAY
by Basilio Magno (Spain)
The World Goa Day celebrations going in its sixth year on 20 August 2005 is
a social triumph for the Goan cummunities the world over. It is a phenomenal
event born out of nothing, just few e-mail epistles by its founder, UK based
Rene Barreto, blasted on all Goan nets the unmistakable message of the virtues
of Goan unity and the love of Mother Goa. This had mesmerized all the
presidents of the Goan Associations to fall in line with his call in the year
2000, and year by year their number has grown abundantly. Last week the Goan
Association Gemany joined in for the first time and celebrated the Day with a
Konkani Music Show by artistes from Goa.
Rene's noble idea would have died a natural death had it not been for the
internet collaboration of Goanet.org, Goa-Goans, Goa-world, etc, which helped
to propagate the idea to Goans in every corner of the world. His leadership
instinct told him that he would need a theme-song or an anthem for the event.
Having had known that I had composed a song for Princess Diana and the King
of Spain, Rene thought of me and e-mailed to me a request to compose "a piece
similar to the one you composed for Lady Diana."
As there was nothing else to go by in the maiden year, my song "Proud to be
a Goan" took the centre stage. It had become a hit having been hosted on Goa-
world.com website, sung by me accompanied by a Spanish band. Thanks to Mario
Fernandes of Goan International, who combined the celebration of Goa Day with
the Bonderam festival at Sao Mathias island, Divar, premiering "Proud to be a
Goa", all Goa newspapers carried the story and printed the lyrics of the song.
The o HERALD o daily had splashed on its front page the story by Francis X.
Ribeiro on 20 August 2000:
GOANS TO OBSERVE 'GOA DAY' AROUND THE WORLD TODAY. THEME SONG PROUD TO BE A
GOAN TO BE PREMIERED AT BONDERAM. and followed up:
Goans all around the globe will be observing August 20 as Goa Day, an idea
conceived by Rene Barreto of Goan International who is based in London, with
the objective of bringing together Goans form different parts of the world.
To mark the Goa Day, celebrations will be held from Kenya to Maryland
(USA), London to Bahamas and Harare to Goa at the Sao Mathias island, Divar.
To make this a memorable day, a special song (end of this story) has been
composed by famed Goan songwriter Basilio Magno, residing in Spain. Basilio
who is still recovering from his long illness, was determined to produce
something worthwhile. Within a week after being requested by Rene, this
former "Irving Berlin of India" came out with the theme song for Goa Day,
titled "Proud to be a Goan", a theme he always wanted to propagate to the
younger generation, who very often are shy to say, 'I am a Goan'.
Within these six years Goa Day has rightly changed to World Goa Day, and has
come a long way in popularity. We may say World Goa Day has come to stay, it
being fixed in the Goan psyche, and there is no fear of losing the date.
However in his farsightedness Rene has established this year Alliance of World
Organisations and has entrusted it to a successful organiser in Canada -Oscar
Furtado.
Rene has always been a lover of Goa. Some years ago he had oganised Goan
Jamboree, taking a large number of Goans from London for a picnic in Goa. Not
long ago he founded the Goan Musical Society in London, of which he is the
founder/president. Musically it is carried on by Joao Paulo Cota, which is
doing great job in projecting Goa's musical image in Britain. The name of
Rene will go down in the annals of Goan social history as the man who
singlehandedly unified the Goan communities the world over and has inspired
them to work for the upliftment of Goa and the Konkani language. Others may
now also claim to have dreamed of the idea but Rene with hard work and
organizing ability has made it the Goan reality. And that is the fact we
cherish.
My message for the World Goa Day 2005 is that we Goans should shed our
colonial complex be it Portuguese of British and proudly start speaking in
Konkani with each other at home and at Goan functions. Let's not forget that
a community without a language of its own becomes a pariah community. The
Goans have a very rich language and the only Indian language written in Roman
script. It is our special heritage. A move is afoot spearheaded by the
Dalgado Konkani Academy presided by the former MLA Tomazinho Cardoso to seek
recognition for the Roman script for Konkani along with the Devnagiri script.
Let's collaborate in the letter campaign and make it the theme of WGD 2005,
making everyone conscious of the need of Roman script not only for Konkani but
for all Indian languages to face the challenges of the cyber age we live in.
The song "Proud to be a Goan" can be downloaded from the website
www.goaday.com Its copyright has been gifted to Rene and World Goa Day.
The new version: "I'm Proud to be Goan" has not yet been hosted on the
website.
