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Goan Voice Canada
Special
– Reading List for the Christmas Holidays
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"The following
is a list of books on Goa or by Goan Authors which may be of
interest to our readers:
Domnic’s Goa
By Domnic P. F. Fernandes
Review from:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=852
Released: April 27, 2007 - Kala Academy, Black Box, Campal,
Panaji, Goa
Publisher: Abbe Faria Productions
Foreword: Placido P. D'Souza
Illustrations: Domnic Cordo
Edited & typeset: Frederick Noronha
Designer: Cecil Pinto
Printer: Rama Harmalkar
Front cover photo: Jude D'Silva
Back cover photo: Assavri Kulkarni
Domnic's portrait: Alex Fernandes
ISBN 978-81-904640-0-0
247 pages, Rs 350
Domnic Peter Francis Fernandes is the Internet's find. Since
2003, when he began penning his thoughts in cyberspace, he
never quite stopped.
What would you say when a man in his fifties, busy at work in
the hot desert sands of Saudi Arabia, suddenly discovers his
talent to jot down amazingly detailed pen-portraits of the Goa
that was half-a-century ago?
As he wrote, Domnic got rave reviews. His work was met with
appreciative acknowledgment, and ever so many email messages
telling him just how meaningful his writing was. Via
cyberspace, his pen-sketches have already helped thousands
understand and appreciate their own relationship with this
tiny but significant region of South Asia.
Now, Domnic's labour of love takes on a paper-and-ink
existence and a reality that goes beyond the virtual world.
Domnic has been egged on to write a book, and the product is
in your hands. As he explains, "These articles are my personal
experiences. They tell the story of the Goa I knew. You would
find many set around Bardez, in the central Goan coastal area,
and sometimes the narration pointedly refers to my
home-village of Anjuna. But, I feel, and you might agree,
these stories also paint a wider picture of far-reaching
social change taking place in Goa over a half-century.
Take a closer look. Judge for yourself...
The author can be contacted at:
EMAIL: jyovalden@gmail.com
The book is distributed in :
Goa by Broadway, near Caculo Island, Panjim; Varsha Book
Stall, Azad Maidan, Panjim & internationally by
http://www.OtherIndiaBookStore.Com
Churches of Goa
José Pereira Professor Emeritus of Theology, Fordham
University, New York
Description
Goa's churches, Roman in scale, are the finest Neo-Roman
monuments found in Asia. This book establishes Goa's cultural
individuality, the basis for the distinctive character of the
Goan church; describes the basic style of the Neo-Roman church
specified by the five orders of classical architecture and
lists the Goan church plans in vogue; and gives a detailed
account of nine churches as examples of Goan architecture,
which either closely follow European models in idiom and
style, or subject European forms to an Indian aesthetic.
Richly illustrated with maps and line drawings, the book will
be of immense value to students of architectural history and
the informed tourist interested in Goa and its culture.
Product Details
124 pages; 37 halftones, 2 maps & 3 color plates; ISBN13:
978-0-19-566541-3ISBN10: 0-19-566541-4
Folk Songs of Goa
From: https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no38670.htm
Mando-Dulpods and Deknnis/
Jose Pereira, Micael Martins and Antonio da Costa.
New Delhi, Aryan Books, 2005, xxv, 85 p., $19. ISBN
81-7305-280-8.
"Konkani Song, of which Goan Song is the preeminent branch, is
a treasury of the traditional music of the Indian
subcontinent. It has at least 35 types, monophonic and
harmonic, the former prevalent before the Portuguese brought
western music into India, and the latter, consequent to the
western impact. It was in Goa that Indian musicians first
began to compose in western musical forms, incorporating into
them motifs and nuances of their own immemorial tradition.
Among these 35 types four were created to accompany social
dancing: the Mando, the Mando-Dulpod, the Dulpod, and the
Deknni. The Mando, the finest creation of Goan Song, is a slow
verse-and-refrain composition, in six-four time, dealing with
love, tragedy and contemporary events, both social and
political. Aryan Books International has published two volumes
on the Mando, entitled Song of Goa, Vol. I: Mandos of Yearning
(2000); and vol. 2: Mandos of Union and Lamentation (2003).
While the Mando is an art song, the remaining three types
represent Goan folk song. The Mando-Dulpod is a slower variety
of the Dulpod (or a quicker sort of Mando), also in six-four
time, facilitating the transition from the slow rhythm of the
Mando to the quicker one of the Dulpod. The Dulpod itself, in
six-eight time, is typically descriptive of everyday life in
traditional Goa, particularly that of the Christians. The
Deknni ("Song the Deccan"?) is a song imitating Hindu music in
the musical idiom current among the Christians, in two-four or
six-eight time, descriptive mostly of Hindu life, with special
attention given to the temple dancers. The present volume
contains examples of the Mando-Dulpod and the Deknni.
Hopefully a future volume will be devoted to the Dulpod."
(jacket)
The Tailor's Daughter
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=780
By Ben Antao
Published: 2007
Publisher: Goan Observer Private Ltd.
ISBN 81-89837-03-6
338 pages, Rs 300 (North America $25)
What happens when the beautiful, charming and ambitious Eliza
Rodricks of Nairobi comes to study tailoring in Margao and
falls in love with the local bhatkar? She doesn't think twice
before giving away her heart and body to the arrogant seducer
Jorger Pacheco.
This is a novel with an unusual theme that will leave readers
spellbound and heartbroken. It's a story that takes a searing
look at the hypocritical and traditionally caste-bound society
of seemingly modern Goa.
The Tailor's Daughter is the Canada-based novelist's third
novel. His previous two novels, Penance and Blood & Nemesis,
received critical praise abroad and in India. The author, born
and bred in Goa during the Portuguese colonial times, has an
unerring memory of life in Goa before it was liberated in
1961.
The author can be contacted at:
Phone: +1 (416) 250-8885
EMAIL: ben.antao@rogers.com
Review from:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=780#Lino
Tailor’s Daughter probes Goan psyche shaped by caste, class
and colonial mindset
Lino Leitão
Ben Antao’s third novel, The Tailor’s Daughter, is set in
Margão, Goa, at the height of Salazar’s dictatorship during
the 1950s. In this novel, Antao, through his characters,
engages in exploring the mindsets of Goans who lived in the
confines of a stratified society of that time.
Besides Antao, there are also some other Goan writers who have
looked into this oppressive relationship that existed in Goa
between landlords and serfs. Landlords, known as bhatkars,
came mostly from upper caste and class; and serfs came from
lower caste with no standing in the society; they were
non-persons called mundkars.
A Goan writer, Orlando da Costa, in his novel O Signo da Ira,
set in Goa of 1940-41, gives us an authentic picture of the
exploitative relationship between bhatkar and mundkar in that
colonial period. Another well known Goan writer, Prof. Lucio
Rodrigues, exposes the sordid bond that existed between
bhatkar-mundkar in his short story, It Happens. But Antao, in
Tailor’s Daughter, probes into the Goan psyche sickened by
caste and class of those colonial times.
Although the narrative in the novel spins around two leading
characters, Eliza Rodricks and Jorge Pacheco, there are other
minor characters in the novel that provide us with a view of a
society that was kept in check through the supremacy of caste
and class.
In that society the lower castes who excelled in various
trades and crafts supplied the essential services to run the
feudal economy of Goa; and yet, because of the caste biases
instilled in the Goan psyche their skills were looked down
upon. Eliza’s parents who both earned their living working as
tailors in Goa found it harder to make ends meet. In the end
they migrate to Kenya, settling in Nairobi. By working hard
and economizing, they ventured in opening their own tailoring
outfit for men and women. Their enterprise succeeds. Now they
have an urge to elevate their social status without purging
their inherent servility.
Eliza brought up in Nairobi became aware of caste
discrimination that was practiced among Goans. The Goan
makarani—clerks who came from higher caste—had their own
clubs, Gymkhana and Goan Institute, where tailors weren’t
welcomed. Goan tailors had their own club: Goan Tailors
Society. Eliza who attended Dr. Ribeiro Goan School noticed
the subtle differences the way she was treated by other Goan
students; because of this stigma of caste, she perhaps changed
her last name from Rodrigues to Rodricks and became obsessed
to marry into higher caste. She is a screwed-up personality
with an acquired inferiority complex in her psyche.
When Eliza came to Senhora Lopes in Margão to hone her
tailoring craft, we see her ditching her first boyfriend Diogo
Baltazar from Nairobi, even though he came from the Brahmin
family. She falls for a randy male from Goa, Jorge Pacheco, a
gigolo, a kind of a Brahmin who is a caste supremacist; and
besides, he is the only son of Nazarinho Pacheco, a bhatkar.
Though she is warned by her friend Silvia and Senhora Lopes
about Jorge, she dismisses their counsel as she wants to hook
him as her husband to elevate her status. And being who he is,
Jorge only wants to use her to gratify his lust. Their torrid
sex that the author depicts so vividly is a contest of two
people giving bodily pleasures to each other without
tenderness and caress. No deep commitment here; and both of
them have their own hidden agenda.
Eliza, the tailor’s daughter, is a girl who hasn’t emerged
from subjection. If you sample her thoughts, you will
understand why. Here are some of her thoughts:
(a) Perhaps, this is God’s way of telling me that I’ll marry
into a Brahmin family.(p.11)
(b) I truly believe that God saved you for me, Jorge. (p 117)
(c) In a letter to her parents, she writes, “I have wonderful
news. I am in love! His name is Jorge and he’s the only son of
a bhatkar. (p.172)
Since Eliza was not personally emancipated, she had no
self-respect. When Jorge Pacheco physically abused her and
humiliated her, she lacked the courage to speak up her mind.
The Tailor’s Daughter gives the readers the view of the Goan
psyche shaped by the 3Cs—caste, class and colonial mindset.
Montreal, Canada
August 31, 2007
Feasts, Feni and Firecrackers
Written & Illustrated by Mel D’Souza
ISBN: 1-895109-44-2
The book is priced at C$ 9.95 per copy, plus postage, in
Canada and US,
Via the author. Contacts: Mel D'Souza, 21 Brentwood Drive,
Brampton, ON L6T 1P8 Tel: (905)793-6123
mel.dsouza@sympatico.ca
Review By:
Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org
Ph 0091-832-2409490
GROWING UP IN GOA, IN THE 1940's
Mel Souza was one of those Goans who ran into me via
cyberspace. We
subsequently met up during one of his visits to Goa. With him
was the
illustrations he had done for the Downhomer Magazine in
Newfoundland,
Canada, and also others he had worked on for his ancestral
village of
Saligao.
He has a neat way of putting his ideas across. In one sketch –
or cartoon,
if you wish -- he depicted a parade of Salgaokars, before the
village church
in their feast-day finery. In it, he depicted many villagers
in a way that
reflected their family name. (Many a village home has some
kind of
sobriquet, sometimes flattering other-times not.)
Over the past week, Mel wrote in. He informed that his book,
"Feasts, Feni
and Firecrackers: Life of A Village Schoolboy in Portuguese
Goa", has been
just published in Canada.
He says: "(Over recent years) I had continued to write stories
about my
schooldays in Saligao, from the perspective of a young boy,
and this book is
all about those days."
This book covers stories that are about Mel's schooldays in
Saligao in the
late 40's and early 50's. He studied at the Mater Dei
Institution.
Says he: "My target audience are (a) non-Goan Canadians and
Americans who
have been the readers of my columns in the Downhomer Magazine
over the past
14 years, and who want to know something about my background,
(b) Goans who
would like to reminisce about the times I write about and (c)
younger Goans
who want to know what Goa in the 'old days' was all about."
This book is dedicated to Mel's grandmum "Louisa Maria de
Souza who taught
me the love of folklore, tradition and rural living". Its
smallish chapters
touch on diverse themes -- Mel's roots; worship, weddings and
witchcraft;
fun, frolic and frivolity; customs and quirks; memorable
moments (the
harvest feast, the school concert, ruckus over a rat, beans
and sweet
potatoes, frogs' legs, the cinema and Principal Lobo of Mater
Dei).
Quite a few pages are devoted to "Saligao In Them Days".
Including an
overview of the village, family nicknames, village
transportation, bicycles,
village doctors, village beggars, village oddballs, "our daily
bread",
village craftsmen, paddy fields, feni and tavernas, the poor
priceless pig,
Pandu and 'international freight', the city fathers, and
snakes.
The book is priced at C$ 9.95 per copy, plus postage, in
Canada and US, via
the author. Contacts: Mel D'Souza, 21 Brentwood Drive,
Brampton, ON L6T 1P8 Tel: (905)793-6123
mel.dsouza@sympatico.ca |
Goan
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