William Dalrymple's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
His website is http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com/ This week William Dalrymple won two awards for his book, White Mughals - the Wolfson History Prize and Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award, each worth �10,000. Next week American TV channel HBO decides on a �45 million four-part mini-series based on his book. See The Scotsman, Sat 7 Jun 2003, at http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/uk.cfm?id=630832003 Read the riveting account of his Goa trip (3417 words) at http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_45.html It is entitled At Donna Georgina's. Coincidentally, it is the very same Donna Georgina of Lutolim featured this week in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and elsewhere (http://goanvoice.org.uk/newsletter/2003-23/supp1/Loutulim.html) Summary: Most Goans still consider their state a place apart: a cultured Mediterranean island, quite distinct from the rest of India. As they quickly let you know, they eat bread, not chapattis; drink in tavernas, not tea shops; many of them were Roman Catholic, not Hindu; and their musicians played guitars and sang fados. None of them, they assured you, could stand the sound of sitars or shenai. Excerpts: Old Goa became more famous for its whores than for its canons or cathedrals. the clerics themselves keeping whole harems of black slave girls for their pleasure. Francis Xavier seems to have been a brute- when he visited Goa he was so shocked by the lingering pagan practices performed by the colony's converted Hindus that he successfully petitioned for the import of the Inquisition- but this does not stop Goans of all faiths revering his memory four hundred years later. At Lutolim, Donna Georgina Figueiredo said, "Now understand thees, young man, When the Indians came to Goa in 1961 it was 100% an invasion - the Indians were kindly liberating us from peace and from security. We are completely different from Indians- completely different! We Goans have a different mentality, a different language, a different culture. Although we are now under Indian occupation." "In fact, since 1961 we've had two invasions. First it was the Indians. They plundered Goa: cut down our forests and took away our woods. Their politicians created havoc. Then after that it was the turn of the hippies. Disgusting. That's what those people were. Dees-gusting. All that nudism. And sexual acts: on the beach, on the roads- even in Panjim. Panjim! Imagine: kissing in public and I don't know what else. Disgusting." Donna Georgina sipped her tea defiantly: "Mr. Salazar would have known what to do with those hippies. He wouldn't have let them behave the way they did. " Full text is at: http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_45.html ============================ Eddie Fernandes www.goanvoice.org.uk ########################################################################## # 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 # ##########################################################################
