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South Asian Film Festival in Goa from Fri (June 27) to Mon (June 30)
At Kala Academy, and ESG, Panaji, Goa
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2008-June/076384.html
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(Title changed to reflect subject more accurately)
--- On Fri, 6/27/08, JOHN MONTEIRO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Either way, I dont see what Selma has said that is wrong.
> She has described quite clearly where her parentage lay
> & much more which she need not have done, but gave us
> the courtesy of knowing her forefathers / foremothers.
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Dear John and Mario,
I suspect Ed in an effort to cheer me up was trying to pay me a back-handed
compliment. To that extent I thank him.
However, I must make my own position on caste clear. Chardo, faldo or mando
means little to me and I suspect it meant nothing to my parents. My maternal
grandfather, Gomes, owned a small bhat, one of the few in the village to do so.
To her dying day my grandmother was lovingly called "bhatkhani" by
toddy-tappers who would pass-by on their evening rounds collecting the sap. My
paternal grandfather, was a "mundkhar" and he was Gomes' neighbour. The lives
of these two gentlemen were not that different. In those days, one didn't think
of selling their land to builders or of building tiny rooms to rent out to
British tourists. One eked a meager living from the land. There were chillies,
pumpkins, eggplants and tomatoes to be planted, mangoes, jackfruit,guavas and
chico to be harvested, jamblans to be made into wine and fish to be preserved
by making a mole or parra for the long monsoon months ahead.
I don't want to overly romanticize this lifestyle, for it produced few
opportunities for my father and mother in the Estado da India and even fewer
after Goa became part of India. They fled to the Arabian Gulf, where life in
the 70s was not tangibly different from the hardship back in Goa. Constant
power cuts, water shortages, barasti-hutments as far as the eye could see,
sweltering heat, cockroaches, lizards and a strong protected rupee that traded
for just half of the petro-dollar, meant there was little material comfort to
be found working in the Gulf.
Then came the free-fall of the 80s. Overnight, my parents were earning 12 times
more in terms of rupees. I remember being asked by my father if I thought this
was a good thing and me firmly saying no, because it wasn't a good thing for
India. My parents smiled benevolently. They had raised a patriot after all.
Needless to say, as a teenager my knowledge of macro-economics was sketchy. The
liberation of India's monetary and fiscal systems indeed proved to be a good
thing, because it led to the liberalisation of our thought processes, inner
reserves and intellectual wealth. It produced the generation of Indians my
husband belongs to; a generation that knows no boundaries, that engages with
the world, not as first-time immigrants arriving with a suitcase and a couple
of plaid madras-styled "chadars" to get through the winters, but as leaders,
innovators, managers and equal partners.
I am tracing the history of my family in a personal memoir, from Africa to
America, for I think it accurately follows the progression of India's economic
history.
selma
