Bombay to Goa The first thing that strikes you about this book on Mumbai is that it is edited by two young writers of Goan origin. Beyond that, it also serves to remind us of the close connections this small state has had with India's commercial capital, across the generations.
The book Bombay, Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai (Penguin, 2003), which former Times of India news editor Naresh Fernandes and journalist Jerry Pinto put together, tells many a story that tens of thousands of Goans had at least some small role in scripting. J Gerson da Cunha and journalist Nina Martyris both have contributed a chapter to this tome. So has Sunil Gavaskar; and though many might not be aware today, the Gavaskars are believed to trace their home to Goa and the village now called Gauxim in Tiswadi. But it is not just in terms of current-day writers that Goa has had a role in contributing to the metropolis some 600 kms north of it. In terms of migration, commercial links and even colonial ties, the history of the two places have long been inter-twined. This is how the book describes Goa's colonial cousin: "When King Charles II of England married Princess Catherine de Braganza of Portugal in 1661, he received as part of his dowry the isles of Bom Bahia, the Good Bay. A marriage of affluence and abject poverty, where a grey concrete jungle is the backdrop to a heady potpourri of ethnic, linguistic and religious subcultures, Bombay, renamed Mumbai after the goddess Mumbadevi, defies definition." In the narrative, the hand of Goa in Bombay keeps coming up... even on a very casual read. Pico Iyer's essay titled Bombay: Hobson-Jobson on the Streets calls the city a "money-minded mix, where Christians called Coutinho, da Cunha, and de Souza have mingled with Parsis (from Iran) called Merchant and Engineer, in the company of Muslims, Sikhs, Jains and an odd variety of cross- breeds...." Iyer also points out that the hero of Salman Rushdie's novel The Moor's Last Sigh is "depicted as a half- Catholic, half-Jewish Moor not unlike his creator, a Christian- educated, Hindu-surrounded, Muslim-apostate Englishman". The Birdman of India late Salim Ali's narrative is also reproduced in this book. Ali recounts how a Scotsman, early on in his romance with birds, put him (Ali) "under the training of two young assistants, S.H.Prater and P.F.Gomes". Ali describes the latter thus, "P.F.Gomes, a rather stolid pachydermic Goan, was in charge of the Society's insect collection in his later years, a function which he discharged with phlegmatic efficiency. I remember chiefly for his neat handwriting, which can be seen in the old accession registers of the Society, and on many of the labels in the reference collections...." Naresh Fernandes' own essay Morning You Play Different, Evening You Play Different is a poignant story about emigrant Goan musicians making it big in Mumbai, and then winning the hearts of audiences back home too. "Chris (Perry) was forty-three at the time, Lorna was twenty-five. No one seems quite sure exactly how they met, but everyone's agreed that he groomed her into one of Bombay's finest crooners.... A vocalist in the Shirley Basey mould, Lorna belted out every tune like it was her last time on stage." This is former editor and columnist Kushwant Singh: "There is (in Mumbai) also a sizeable community of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, known to the rest as Makapaos -- bread eaters (from pao, Portuguese for bread." In another chapter titled The Day It Rained Gold Bricks and a Horse Ran Headless, writer Jerry Pinto narrates the 1944 explosion along the docks through the eyes of Goan-sounding individuals Augustine Pinto, Adelaide Pereira and others. There are obviously other stories waiting to be heard, and waiting to be captured in print or digital format, hopefully before these all simply get erased from our collective memories. Goa too has many awaiting-to-be-told stories. Unfortunately, unlike the commercial capital of India, our state is poorly equipped in terms of book publishing options. This will have to wait till some publishing house from out of state finds our many stories worth being put down in print. ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################