Source: www.goanvoice.org.uk Daily Newsletter of 22 Sep. 2013 It's been more than a year since I made an offer to Eddie Fernandes to write a Sunday column for the Goan Voice which he graciously accepted. It's been a fulfilling period for me. I got a wide audience with which to express my thoughts and views on subjects common to us, hoping what I wrote would resonate with readers and it did. Also it was a tremendous opportunity to walk down lanes of memories in Bombay, Goa, the Gulf and Canada, mostly happy, comic as well as serious. There was no philosophy or sophistry involved, for I am a simple and ordinary Goan Canadian and wrote about what I experienced and felt. I know I have sometimes offended some readers with a few seemingly acute views, but other than saying unequivocally that I had no intention to hurt anyone, I would say those things again. I thank folks for their emails of support and appreciation. There is no bigger boost to the writer's ego than being told that his or her readers look forward to the next essay, with other comments to the effect that they would not miss the Sunday column if they could help it. To those who didn't write, I hope you too took some pleasure from my keyboard. I am rooting for Eddie to find another Sunday columnist with his or her own perspectives so that I can on Sundays, after church or even before, open up the site and go straight to the column (other days I visit the Goan Voice more than twice daily) to read opinion, thought, observation, angle and reminiscence like I used to do before the column became mine.
The future has always been a challenge to our community and we have met it well. However, a time is coming when our resources and blessings whether God-given or otherwise that we can call upon, will be sorely tested and will call for different responses than heretofore, from us and more specifically from our children. There is no part of the world that we have not already gone to for a better life or merely to escape from what was not available at home. But the avenue of migration will no longer be a viable option because those challenges have already started in the developed world where the bulk of our Diaspora lives. In the current global environment, it will not be long before they are seen in Goa, India and Africa where the middle class has just recently burgeoned. Goans have largely been a middle class. Whatever our occupation or class, we have had stable homes, stable work, food on the table and a doctor to go to. But the middle class faces a bleak new reality. The cost of living soars, university education is no longer a sufficient qualification to find a job and free medical treatment will slowly become a thing of the past in Britain and Canada with costs rising beyond comprehension. To put it in the words of Canada's Maclean magazine in their "Letter from Europe" - This summer the British middle class went from being temporarily "squeezed" to officially terminally ill. Also mentioned is that in the 'Guardian', columnist Suzanne Moore observed that class has been recast as a generational issue, with anyone born after 1985 denied access to what their parents had - "the traditional tools of social mobility - education, housing, steady income". The situation in the US is worse with 4 out of 5 American adults struggling with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, according to the Toronto Star today. It's not that the world has insufficient wealth for all those within it to have a decent life; it's just that the rich are becoming super rich and the middle class poor. It's possible that eventually the problem will be mitigated. All the ills that have brought the situation to where it is now, including the form of democracy we know which is frayed, abused and incapable of being a sustainable system needs to, like communism, be replaced or at least improved unrecognizably beyond what it looks like now. There is hope for Goans if like Jews after the Second World War, our future generations reinvent themselves to meet the new challenges. That calls for much change and discomfort. We will be unable to do it but we hope our children will. They are more capable, focused and better educated than us and they do not carry our baggage. But not only must they surmount the odds, they must do it while retaining the values and traditions of decency, morality, compassion and good faith that have defined us to the rest of the world. That is our prayer. >From me it may not be a final goodbye to the column. If Eddie does not get a volunteer or does not re-invent it I may yet see you again, even if occasionally, though not anytime soon I am expecting. Saude ani sussego (good health and peace) to you all and viva to your goencarponn (Goan-ness). ============================ >From Eddie Fernandes: I would like to place on record my grateful thanks to Roland for his nostalgic, entertaining and stimulating weekly contributions. I am going to miss him. Hopefully he will be back occasionally, because in its new avatar this Sunday column solicits contributions from all of you on an ad hoc basis. Please send in your column - approx 700 words - by Wednesday, together with a photograph of yourself.