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CONVENTION OF THE GOAN DIASPORA FROM GOA INTO THE WORLD
Lisbon, Portugal June 15-17, 2007 Details at:
http://www.goacom.org/casa-de-goa/noticias.html
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"No posts about centrifugal movements today? You're
losing your shine already. Here I was On Goanet, we get very angry if our
grey cells are not galvanized into action at least once
every 24 hours."
Selma
RE:Yes, Charu is fine! That's what everybody calls me - both, friends and
foes.
No posts about centrifugal movements from now on. Goanetters don't seem
ready for "l'avenir"...
Lose my shine? You must be joking Selma! Just wanted to sit and watch for a
while. It's Good to check the impulse to be drawn into commenting on
everything. Sometimes Goanet looks fantastic when I sit just looking.
Besides, I'd like to connect on a wavelength peculiar to Goans and Goa.
Something uniquely Goan.
Goanet is a good luck find! I was not sure initially if it would get me by
the b word, but believe me, I actually look forward to the posts from
Goanet. I am very new on't, not only Goanet, but this whole internet thing.
Obviously you are a veteran on the net. Seem so familiar with things like
"FN/'s habit of ban'kok oil, etc? He's an oldie, too, isn't he? He seems to
be...
How's that only a certain few take the bait on the Goanet? FN does not seem
interested in anything b'low his ,I imagine, intellectual standards!? A
"trout" eh? Whereas I am like a "buranto". You can fish me with nothing more
than a length of ordinary thread. I have myself done that near the old ferry
warf in Panjim, way back in the early 80's or late 70's (Opposite Olympic
bar!!!):- Around a certain hour of the day, fish - 'Sangtam', 'Shevtallyos'
and 'burrantes' usually -
gather in their agitated shoals, very close to the tide in the shallows, to
eat all kinds of things which float about. And people come (used to go)
fishing there. One day I found a piece of ordinary thread from a 'pudo'
someone had chucked by the roadside. I had no bait, too. But I cast that bit
of thread in the waters and lo! A burranto caught the end in his mouth. I
jerked the fellow right up, did it again and again and again and yet again,
almost every time getting a fish by the thread-end. Within half an hour I
had many, many 'burrantes' to carry home. Unfortunately, it was a Monday or
a Thursday and we did not cook fish on those days, so my mother yelled at me
for 'touching' fish on a 'Somar' or 'birestar'... Not surprising that
expressions 'small fish'/ small fry/Shark are associated with egos and
personas of people. 'He's a shark', they might say, or 'Oh! he's a small
fry' and stuff like that. So a 'burranto' is what I thought I took up every
thread (pun intended) like and commented on it on the Goanet. And the
Selmas hooked me off even without a hook!! But then I realised that I did
not want to be a burranto.
Also my intention is to make this Goanet experience a bit more 'amchem'
type, you know, because of late I miss Goa. So none of that highbrow
intellectual bullshit! I will tell stories from the past, hoping that more
and more "get to like the new penny" to give your expression a quote (coat
!) of prevalent usage.
Now The grey cell part: have you heard of a term passhyanti - vaak?
Passyanti - vaak is an old Vedic term for the 'seeing intellect' or, to be
precise, 'speech that sees' or 'seen thought'. The word kavi meaning poet is
Sanskrit for a seer. It is the poet who wrote our Itihaas or history.
Mahabharata and Ramayana are considered our History, although to a mind
steeped in the linear method of deduction and inference it may sound most
bizarre. The name Rama, several centuries after it is 'dead and gone' is
alive enough to motivate a whole nation into the Babri masjid fiasco. Same
is the case with the great Indian freedom struggle. What really ignited the
fire of Nationalism? Gandhi? Gapal Krishna Gokhale, Surendranath Bannergy?
Hell no!!! It was actually a novel called Ananda-Math by rishi Bonkim
Chandra Chattopaddhyay. That is the book from where the poem Vande Mataram
comes, which became the inspirational mantra of the struggle. ( you see the
whole Sanskrit approach to language as everything else is not acute and
utilitarian like the western approach to things. There are "vadas" or "ism"
in, for instance, the Jain inquiry into the nature of thought. There are
things like 'asti asti vada (yes + yes ism), nasti nasti vada( no + no ism),
asti nasti vada (yes + no ism) and the like. These are hair slitting
arguments about the many ways in which 'tarka' or logic can be applied. And
so broadly speaking, there is nothing that is wrong in the Indian thought.
Even what is called "wrong" in the normal modern sense is there because it
has a valid, god ordained place to exist on its own. Wrong and right was
determined by canonized tenets of moral law , but thought as such, I think,
was not compartmentalized as wrong thinking and right thinking.
What I like about India - and that is her unique genius - is that
exclusionism has no place in human affairs. These things of touchability and
Brahmanism are latter corruptions of the original varna system which is so
wonderful that a civilization that practices it can not perish. No wonder
that in spite of every disaster, India still stands, uninterrupted in its
continuum, its perennial march towards its central goal - UNIVERSALITY- and
one day she will have it.
Charudatta Prabhudesai,
Khoro Goinkar!
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Goanet recommends, and is proud to be associated with,
'Domnic's Goa' - A nostalgic romp through a bygone era.
This book is the perfect gift for any Goan, or anyone
wanting to understand Goa. Distributed locally by
Broadway, near Caculo Island, Panjim & internationally
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