Well written Devika W Sent from my iPad Pro
www.wendellrodricks.com Address: Wendell Rodricks, Campal, Panjim, Goa. 403001. INDIA Off: +91-832-2420604 Shop:+91-832-2238177 E-retail: wendellrodricks.com > On 26-Oct-2017, at 3:27 PM, Frederick Noronha <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > A controversy Wagh would have loved > > Devika Sequeira| TNN | Updated: Oct 25, 2017, 11:19 IST > > Long before the poetry, Wagh had produced some wonderful plays in Marathi > that took on the Brahmins in Maharashtra > PANAJI- The controversy over Vishnu Wagh's book of poems Sudhirsukt has > exposed the deeply entrenched caste fractures that continue to often surface > in Goa. Sanjiv Verenkar should be applauded, rather than denounced for the > sneaky manner he tried to scuttle the Konkani poetry award going to Wagh. Had > Verenkar not been so offended by Wagh's takedown of the Saraswats, few would > have known the former MLA wrote a form of powerful protest poetry. The book > had gone unnoticed for four years, but its demand has now soared. > > What did he think, I asked writer Damodar Mauzo, of the collection of 60 > poems in Sudhirsukt. Some of them are excellent, a handful ordinary, and a > few pretty bad, in his opinion. But "the intense feeling of the oppressed" > that runs through the poems cannot be denied. With the awards decided and > sealed, the government had acted foolishly to cancel them. "Unless there is a > better book, the award should go to Sudhirsukt, there's nothing objectionable > about it," Mauzo feels. > > Poetry, its reading and appreciation, can be quite subjective. Both Madhav > Borcar and Reginaldo Lourenco who resigned from the Goa Konkani Academi some > months before the current squall hit the organisation that was being starved > of funds by the government anyway, are far more circumspect in their > impression. For Borcar, the poetry "doesn't rise to the level" deserving of > an award, though he's all for a writer's freedom of expression. > > Lourenco is more conflicted. He sees "the profane side of Konkani", as the > "true, raw expression of the people". But is Goa, with all its caste rifts, a > liberal and mature enough society to award such a book? There are many angles > to the debate, and the government has gone and made things worse, he says, by > carpet bombing the whole house to get rid of a niggling problem. > > Many strands collide in the blow-up over Wagh's radical critique of caste > that has unsettled and rocked a few boats, his nephew Kaustubh Naik believes. > To many Konkani patriarchs, he was the 'outsider' because he wrote mostly in > Marathi. (Wagh also supported the cause for equal status to Marathi). Giving > him a Konkani award would be seen as an infraction. Caste, Naik says, is a > "culture code" virtually embedded in one's DNA, specially in a place like Goa > where your background is already known. > > Long before the poetry, Wagh had produced some wonderful plays in Marathi > that took on the Brahmins in Maharashtra, Mauzo points out. He has been as > outspoken on the issue of Bahujans denied entry into the inner sanctum of > temples run by Saraswats in Goa, a practice unshaken to this day. > > One would hardly ascribe a political ideology to Vishnu Wagh. As a politician > he's been as opportunistic as they come—and particularly well travelled as > well. From the Shiv Sena, to MGP to Congress and lastly the BJP, he had > hopscotched through them all. Yet, in the throng of stereotypical > politicians, he stood out. A playwright-poet with an eloquent body of work—20 > plays in Marathi, three sangeet nataks, 18 Konkani plays and 16 one-act > plays. And not to forget a four-year-old book of poems that's shaking the > social edifice in Goa too long papered over by the pretension that all's > well, so long as 'they' know their place and 'we' get to keep ours. > > > Auda Viegas of Bailancho Ekvott who presumes to speak on behalf of all us > women whose dignity has been dishonoured by Wagh's "pornographic poetry", as > she so moralistically puts it, denies she was used to file the police > complaint. The alacrity with which the police has rushed in with the FIR > against Wagh and the book's publisher Hema Naik, has made the government look > all the sillier, now that the poems are travelling far and wide on social > media, floating on and on across cyberspace, neither lost in translation nor > transliteration. > > Knowing him as well as I do, I can't but agree with Mauzo. Vishnu Wagh would > have loved this controversy, far more than a government sponsored award. > > > The writer is a senior journalist and the views expressed are her own > https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/a-controversy-wagh-would-have-loved/articleshow/61211345.cms > > > > Sent with Mailtrack > > > -- > _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ > _/ > _/ Frederick Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا > _/ フレデリック・ノロニャ > _/ +91-9822122436 (SMS if you can't get through) > _/ > _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ > > > -- > *** Please be polite and on-topic in your posts. *** > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Goa Book Club" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/goa-book-club. > To view this discussion on the web, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CAMCR53K5sB_7800U-gFTftjZQsLiJ9-XgB%2BSpgSNt96jLsAYfA%40mail.gmail.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
