Furious and funny in Goa Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa Editor: Jerry Pinto Publisher: Penguin India Pages: 295 Format: Paperback Price: Rs 395
An anthology can be like a clumsy herd of beasts. It can totter in circles, loping and swaying, covering much ground but getting nowhere. Reflected in Water, though, holds out the promise of a graceful progress, if not a purposeful journey. And perhaps Goa is best understood in this manner for it seems to belong, variously, to the Catholic convert, the Hindu majority settler, the Indo-Portuguese descendant, the smitten tourist, the Indian government and the wistful expatriate. This anthology reflects the various perspectives, even the sense of ownership all these people have of Goa. Essays, stories, poems, polemical tracts and even the occasional cartoon and lyrics of a song make up the selection of this book. At times full of whimsy, at times dead serious, this anthology covers a wide range. And that gives the book the freedom to spin out and loop back in: a discussion on Goan gastronomy by Antoine Lewis enlarges into a larger vision of intercontinental cultural exchange, a description of the fertile land by Richard Lannoy connects with the transfer of the caste system into the Christian community. That Hindu Goans should revere a saint that invited the Inquisition home, that the Konkani tiatr (theatre) should have made its debut on Easter Sunday in South Bombay, these are some of the small ironies that are a staple of the Goan experience. The informative pieces seem to revel in the nuances and celebrate the in congruities of the Goan experience. After nearly five centuries of colonial rule, Goa had seen irreversible changes. While the rest of India moved into independence, the ‘liberation’ from Portugal resulted in mixed feelings for some. As a classic exercise in hegemony, the colonisers inter-married with the natives of Goa, building a social structure that could not be toppled like the statutes of Albuquerque and Vasco da Gama. William Dalrymple highlights this in his piece through the words of Donna Georgina, an Indo-Portuguese woman, who speaks scornfully of the union with India, exclaiming that the “Indian invasion” brought an end to a happy way of life. Just as intense is the quite opposite line taken by essayist Prabhakar S. Angle, who writes about his disgust for the colonial heritage. And here is where it gets interesting, for each narrative shines light on a new facet of Goan identity. Manohar Malgonkar traces the migratory Mangeshi temple that travelled as much as its followers did, to retain its religious integrity in the face of tremendous religious persecution. Naresh Fernandes follows the fractured corporeal remains of the saint Francis Xavier: the right arm in Rome, the elbow in Macau and the body in Goa. What remains constant is the sense of migration and flux as changes in Portuguese policy, over the 450 years that they ruled Goa, divided the Goan populace.Donna Georgina equates the Indian government’s arrival with the hippy invasion in terms of destructiveness. But Angle, inMisunderstanding Goa, resents the “distortions of our history and culture” and exposes the communal lines asking, “Will even half a dozen Goan Hindu families claim that their culture is Indo-Portuguese?” The process of highlighting Goan cultural energy through articles about art, dance, theatre, classical singing and folk ballads also reveals the awkwardness of a colonial inheritance. Cultural, societal and gastronomic influences have been incorporated. Is the Goan bread vendor that Laxmanrao Sardessai celebrates in his piece a traitor or a local hero? He sells the Portuguese-introduced bread but aids freedom fighters by shoving the letters of political prisoners deep into his bag of bread and distributing them outside the jail. Sardessai calls him “a true son of the soil” notwithstanding his business with the foreigner’s bread. While the essays draw the outlines of a changing Goa, the stories and poems fill them in with an intuitive appreciation of various social processes. Of particular note are the stories, Outkast D’Souza by Sonia Faleiro and Three Lives by Nisha da Cunha. The potential of The Old Crone Says set of illustrated death stories by Jerry Pinto, Agni and Kumar, however, is largely unrealised. The symbols are visually gripping and create an atmosphere for the telling of Konkani folk tales but with only a few panels for each story, they lead nowhere. Every anthology has its strong leaders and its stragglers. Not every piece in this compilation is a winner. Adil Jussawalla’s delicious diary entry is at odds with the dispassionate, somewhat boring account of Noronha’s hypnotist-priest. Jerry Pinto’s selection seems to have concentrated on a mix of voices. Diversity appears to be the editor’s solution to the problem of fair representation of the multiple perspectives that make up Goa. Somehow the anthology marches on without tripping. A general direction emerges, and one appreciates what Pinto was trying to say in his rather weak introduction: the Goan identity is intensely personal despite or perhaps because of the historical distortions and corrections it has suffered. And the only way to understand it is to embrace its fragments. Karishma Attari is a freelance writer based in Mumbai. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Furious-and-funny-in-Goa/Article1-178186.aspx