Each one of Dr. Teotonio de Souza's books fell into my hands with a kind of thunderclap of significance. They were deeply desired, desperately sought, pored over carefully and greatly cherished.
I was growing up at what felt like the far end of the diaspora, in the numbing cold of near-total isolation, in half-comprehension of who I was and where I came from. So each book came as a kind of life-raft. They added up to a trail that could be followed, a train of thought and scholarship that slowly, meticulously, identified the building blocks that I would need in order to achieve coherent perspective. It's necessary to recall the period of time we're talking about, distant in substance but actually not so very long ago. There was no Internet, the scattered Goan community was even more fractured and dissipated than we find in the new millennium. Those of us growing up in the west in our teens and twenties were still collectively scrambling to find our feet, to identify our bearings. At that time complete immersion was (and to some large extent remains) the preferred Goan method of assimilation – our cousins in England became totally British to the exclusion of all else, those in Montreal and Toronto went through similarly one-way enculturation. It was often difficult to find similar ground even within families, and when it was achieved it often centered on the future, rarely on what bound us from the past. The migrant who identified himself as Goan – more often than not from East Africa, because there weren't very many directly from Goa at that time – often clung to farcically impoverished, stunted and out-of-date ideas of identity and community. To grow up Goan in the diaspora then seemed to mean very little beyond an affinity for certain foods, for drinking and dancing. Meagre fabric indeed, the central thread of which was little more than "not Indian." Another complication was the abysmal lack of critical writing regarding Goa, Goans, Goan history. Even assiduous, persistent seekers found pretty much zero. We had worthless hagiographies of "great Goans", written with visible biases. We had religious claptrap. And there was the prevailing, provably false, perpective from the colonial era that aimed to draw lines between Goa and the rest of the subcontinent, which cast European misadventures in glorious light. So you can image the effect that Dr. de Souza's books had on my life – suddenly I had access to clarity, to a reasonable, deeply informed voice. Suddenly there was a small body of work that could be relied upon, that sought a rigorous approach. There was post-colonial self-confidence, a sense of worth and very, very, welcome real pride that resonated deeply in diaspora breasts. There was the authority of scholarship, the magisterial approach – meticulous, multilingual, sensitive to all sides and unfair to none. 'Goa to me' exemplifies all of this, more than the other books. It remains the single book that I recommend to every young Goan who seeks to grasp his origins. For those who have grown up – like I did, like most of us do – with truncated, deeply skewed information about our culture, the book incisively highlights a whole range of related subjects that completely explodes horizons. The Xenndi Tax? The Oratorians? Sir Rogerio de Faria? We'd never heard of any of it. Best of all is Dr. de Souza's long introduction – full of confidence leavened by genuine humility. It portrays a questing life, an indomitable spirit, a refusal to settle for received wisdom. A blurb provides the essence – "the author sees his work as a genuine reflection of his search for self-identity. He sees his self-identity as inseparable from the history of the people to whom he belongs." He takes us on a journey, in this seminal book, but also the other writings, including many graceful, humour-filled interventions onto Goanet (the Goa centered Internet discussion group with 6000 subscribers). It is vital work, and essential service rendered with characteristic indefatigability and rigor. The Goan ship may skim the cultural oceans, but it now always has recourse to anchor. That mooring has been forged first of all by Dr. Teotonio de Souza. I take this occasion to offer sincere gratitude. [Note: this tribute was written for 'Metahistory', a 2007 festschrift published in Dr. Teotonio de Souza's honour]