A review of Robert Newman's books.https://www.joaoroqueliteraryjournal.com/nonfiction-1/2019/4/5/newman-goas-shamans-and-the-fictive-dream
As a child, I might have visited Miguel Colaco’s Christ Ashram in Nuvem. It was after all, within walking distance from the Mae Dos Pobros Church, and it was not at all unusual for Catholics in Nuvem, after mass, to drop in at the ashram. I have a recollection of a blue sky, people crawling on all fours, sweeping the earth with their hair, and supplicating in other grotesque parodies of faith. These memories are almost certainly false. They have been created in my mind by the many stories told to me, for the ashram and its paradoxes were an enigma and a constant talking point in the village of Nuvem. Robert S. Newman, the American anthropologist, who has spent many years studying Goa in its various transformations, has recently released two volumes of his anthropological papers, which delve into aspects of Goa’s mythologies. Newman is a much respected academic, who first visited India in the 1960s, as part of the American Peace Corps, when still in the bloom of Kennedy-era idealism, Americans sought to engage with the world through learning new cultures. In the volume titled, Goan Anthropology: Festivals, Films and Fish (Goa 1556, 2019), Newman now fills the gaps in my porous memory about Christ Ashram. Best wishes,Selma
