Hi John, Don't be so harsh on yourself! We don't choose our parents, and we can't always be responsible for their actions (except those of our children, in a way). Even assuming he's your dad, I think your attitude matters more than his!
There are issues involved here though. Understanding Agente Monteiro is important for filling in the gaps as far as Goan history goes. And there are many gaps, not just this one, both pre-1961 and post-1961. It needn't be a witch-hunt, though one could understand the pain of those who suffered brutalities of whatever form. At the same time, those at whose hands the brutalities was doled out were mentally prisoners of those times. I'm sure they believed they were doing their patriotic duty, 'protecting' Goa or whatever. When I visited Dachau in 1998, I wondered how anyone could have done what they did there hardly six decades earlier. But while we do it, we all have justifications for the violence we wreck on others, even in the case of Gujarat in 2002 or in Algeria or Vietnam and Indonesia or Afghanistan, and the many invasions (and toppling-via-military-coups) that even countries the US has undertaken in recent times. There is, sometimes, a self-correcting mechanism at play though. Call it poetic justice, if you want to. The children of many of those who have strong anti-'outsider' sentiments have chosen to marry people from the other states of India, for instance. Just my thoughts ... FN On 28/03/2008, JOHN MONTEIRO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dear Roland, I cannot thank you enough for this, it is a start for me. I have always known in my heart that the evil of my father was totally like this, he was a very nasty, ferocious & unaffectionate man, that was towards his family, my mother, my brother and me. The rest of our neighbours suffered from his visits also, but my mother was too timid (it was the 1950's & all women, whether Goan or Portuguese or as in my mother's case, English father & French mother, had no rights and no discussions between them, she did as she was told, no arguments)....
