--------------------------------------------------------------------------- **** http://www.GOANET.org **** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy New Year Twenty-Ten --------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE VILLAGERS H. O. Nazareth The sound of Angelus bells floats over those returning from evening walks across the fields. Oil-lamps are lit, the sunset fades to cricket-fiddled night. At the village shop, the labourers stop to drink and talk: F. X. Lobo's boy has come to say goodbye to his grandmother before he goes abroad like all the others --- cooks, engineers on the high seas, clerks in London, Nairobi --- more lately, Abu Dhabi. They return for holidays, falter over the language, make fun of religion. Some emigrate to the graveyard or to alcohol's Atlantis, but others go in search of work --- the pigs take over their houses.