Dear Frederick & Helga, It is sad that we are part of a society where one's surname and geography are an indictment on one's character.
That said, not wanting to sound overly optimistic or trivialise the caste problem among Catholic families, I do think the situation has improved substantially. I do know of people who married across caste lines, without too much ado or objection. To this end, I think the Gulf Goan has contributed immensely in leveling the playing field. The Gulf Goan, fled to the Gulf in the 1970s and by the 1980s, with the rupee devaluation became a lakhpathi over-night. The mostly impoverished Bamon families back home had to sit up and welcome his petro-dollars with an ache in their hearts and a smile on their faces. The Bamon may have been the bank manager at State Bank of India but it was the Gulfie's greasy money he was after. Moreover, astute Goan families in the Gulf made sure they gave their children the best education money could buy, shipped them off to the US or UK for further education and groomed them with memberships to clubs, overseas travel, music lessons, sporting activities, etc. Second generation expat children became indistinguishable in terms of their cultural finesse from the so-called "elite" of Goan society. They also became doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs and all those things formerly reserved for the upper echelons of Goan society. Love began to bloom across the aisle. And where love blooms good things blossom. I once read a matrimonial that stated "Educated and cultured Bamon boy seeks only Bamon matches". Sorry darling, you are neither cultured nor educated if you believe that the world owes you something because of an accident of your birth. Elisabeth ---------------------------------------- --- "Frederick \"FN\" Noronha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ha, lady! You've got a lot of catching up to do via > the Goanet > archives ;-) Forget your trips to the zoo and > Mexico, this is going > to take you a year of Sundays. > > To make life easier for you: Goanet + caste search > on Google, 3300 hits! > http://shrunklink.com?hvd > > Cecil Pinto says I have invented much of the > imagined linkages between > castology and geographies ;-) FN > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
