ERVELLE E MENEZES, to many, is the former news-editor and foreign-films reviewer of the Indian Express. More relevant to us, he's a Goaphile and ardent Bastodkar (his big white-walled house looms over the curving road at Bastora village in Bardez) and sharp-tongued columnist in Goa Today and The Navhind Times.
Ervelle, when we last met, unfortunately still wasn't on email. He keeps reminding how easy his Mapusa-exchange telephone number is to remember, but all one knows is that it's extremely easy to forget. (Of course it has something to do with 25 and 64, but is it 256464 or 250064, or are both guesses wrong?) Coming to the point, Ervelle has written an interesting profile of Mumbai-based master violinist Alex D'Silva in the January 2002 issue of The Examiner. (This was earlier published in Goa Today.) "'No, don't write about me. People will be wondering 'What, he's still alive?' No, no,' he went on almost embarrassedly, as though to be living at 81 wasn't quite right. But Master D'Silva, as he was known to us in the early 1950s, is slim, fit and keeps on rolling like Old Man River..." D'Silva, it emerges, lives at Bandra, ad once taught Science at St Sebastian Goan High School half a century ago, and then lived in the "then Goan stronghold of Dhobi Talao". Other insights: "(In school) he had powerful wrists and was 'king of the kutt', the knock he gave his pupils on the head with his knuckels and a flick of the wrist... he did not agree that in our enthusiasm for Konkani in Goa the standard of education had suffered... Master D'Silva's memory is vivid, recounting anecdotes decades old, of picnics he went to in Goa and the football matches in Duler... one by one he recalled names of colleagues and students, some long since dead and may be that is why there is a sort of embarassment about being alive still....The violin has suffered with my forays into the piano and the guitar, he said, but picked up his 'rebek' from atop the cupboard and played for us 'Humorouske' and 'Mermaid's Song' from Oberon..." =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-W-E-B---S-I-T-E-=-=-= To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from GoaNet | http://www.goacom.com/goanet =================================================================== For (un)subscribing or for help, Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dont want so many e=mails? Join GoaNet-Digest instead ! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Help support non-commercial projects in Goa by advertizing!! * * * * Your ad here !!
