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CONVENTION OF THE GOAN DIASPORA FROM GOA INTO THE WORLD
Lisbon, Portugal June 15-17, 2007 Details at: 
http://www.casadegoa.org 
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I'm afraid that the vivacious verbosity padding the content of this message 
from Arnold was actually a jerky jumble of contradictions, like some 
convoluted plot of a Greek tragedy that somehow turns out 
Goan-Triatr-like-comic in the end, largely owing to a willful suspension of 
disbelief on the part of the indulgent audience, so much so that I, for one, 
feel a desperate need to go back to the drawing board so as to better 
understand the original cause of this fury unleashed with a constant and 
nagging prodding at the brain of a duel prong'd thought-hoe - sense and 
nonsense -  skirting the margins of this whole article by Arnold, heavily 
padded in the middle. Ooooooooooops!!!
If it is not the above, then I have failed to understand what perhaps is 
good ol' English festooned with dazzling un-clarity! (or is it vivid 
vagueness?)
Please, let me first understand what I have just typed:
I seem to be saying that I am horrified at Arnold's uncontrolled & verbose 
use of English language throughout his article, which although he intends to 
make an ardent point, fails to make it ,or manages to make it badly, owing 
to a two pronged device of sense and non-sense he is consistent in employing 
throughout the article.
If it is not that, then I do not understand English.
Wait, let me be simpler:
The article is either horrid or I do not know English! Well, that's it... 
well more or less!
Or better still, be humble and ask before judging.
So, Dear Arnold, with ref. to your posting on the Goanet,Dated: Wed, 30 May 
2007 16:15:43,What are you saying in your message to Selma?

Mogachi kiss,
Charu.____________________________________________________________________

To Selma,

"Being a Goan from the heart of Salcete, I cling to my
identity as a Goan Catholic and I can be as jingoistic
as Churchill if need be."

RE- Yes! That "if need be." part is important. Is there  a need then? 
Perhaps there is, perhaps not, let's see.

You write:
"However, the older I grow and the more I travel, I
realise how futile it is to cling to our narrowly
defined identities because time is the great
assimilator. If we refer to the Greek civilisation, a
lesser known fact about it is, there was no Greece as
we know of it today. There were the Mycenaeans, the
Dorians, the Minoans, the Athenians, to name a few and
it took centuries of warfare to create Greece. And
yet, today these ancient principalities are seamlessly
assimilated."

RE:-I think that the seemingly unconscious evolutionary intent is the world 
union and union of races in order to achieve that on Earth which nature has 
not yet achieved. Mortality seems unnecessary, and efforts of both the 
scientists and the Tantrics and Yogis have been to erradicate death from our 
midst. Besides, the race which will inherit the living planet has to be 
strong and to avoid inbreeding, there is a constant flux and shuffle of the 
races.
What nature has not yet achieved is another matter massive in its thesis.
Although I understand what you are trying to say, I feel that until the 
ultimate goal is grasped by man consciously, thereby consciously striving to 
live as world citizens and members of ONE HUMAN RACE, until such time as 
there will be no need for emigration offices and national boundaries and 
different currencies, demarking one from another as many distinct nations 
represented in their cultural preferences to exist, one must hang on to the 
more immediate social bond. So there is the sense of 
family,city,town,state,nation,continent,world, universe, cosmos and beyond 
which has a defined hierarchical and evolutionary purpose. All the tails 
will drop when the need for them to exist will have gone on a more universal 
level and it becomes a conspicuous  & general proclivity rather than just a 
irregular tendency in the race. Yet, it must not follow that achievement of 
wider sense in a few should delete the narrow sense in all human beings. The 
few who lose it first will lead the way of course, but they should not 
abandon those who still NEED that sense to live. There seems to be an 
amazing nexus between all beings and all the states of living organisms.
You give the example of Greek principalities, prompting me to wonder if 
there was anything like principalities or clans fixed to a geographical 
location in the race that seems to be essentially and in its instinct 
migratory or nomadic. (Bonding between the immediate family unit members 
seems to be there as a factor essential to the survival of an individual and 
by proxy of a group, clan and so on) It seems to me that somewhere along the 
line of progress, nature evolved certain self limiting hurdles, if you like, 
like group sense, sense of belonging to one species and not other, and the 
need to attach to a geographical location, etc...
yet  your "However, the older I grow and the more I travel, I realise how 
futile it is to cling to our narrowly defined identities because time is the 
great assimilator." is equally true indeed!
By the way what we know as Greece today is not the Greece that we refer to 
with reverance either.

Then:
"Much of what you are proposing bears merit on economic
grounds but will do little to preserve us culturally."

RE:-I fail to understand that. What much of what is Arnold proposing that 
bears merit on economic grounds and will not preserve us culturally?

and again you:
"Today, culture is not defined by clansman ship,
geography or religion."

RE: Are you certain about that? You don't seem to be praying to Goddess Wiki 
after your return from Minachosotto? Or is she misleading you? (Gods do that 
from t t t!)

"There is a world
culture developing and my sincere hope is one day we
will define ourselves as citizens of the world"

To that I say, "TATHAASTOU!"
Then we can say "look amchem Goinkaranchem Jogg!"

"Goa will be a pleasant footnote in the annals of
history, but it will assimilate seamlessly into the
folds of the Indian subcontinent."

RE:-But Goa has always been a 'footnote' (since the Portuguese) except in 
the minds of us Goans, and the "philistine" bombayites (Indians) who have 
more often treated Goa as a place to go to for drinks and sex than not. 
Generally speaking, Goa gets its special tinge because of the colonial 
interlude without which Goa and Goans would be merged into the intricate 
warp and the weft of that lovely fabric called Indian culture, don't you 
think?

"boinni maka disti podona// hanv kuddim"...that's a song culturally Goan and 
only Goan, which has no economic viability.

I hope I am not ripping this once?

Aslyar mog asundi nazalyar "kator re bhaji !"
Charu.
Khoro Goinkar!

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