MAPPING OUR WORLD
Peter Nazareth
I received a copy of Domnic's Goa while I was reading A Third Map: New and
Selected Poems by Edwin Thumboo (Uni Press, Centre for the Arts, National
University of Singapore, 1993), preparing to teach a class on Singapore
Literature and write a book on Thumboo. I have been involved with Thumboo's
writing since I did an interview with him in 1977, when he came to the
International Writing Program at the University of Iowa at the same time as
I began to work for it as Advisor. The transcribed interview of 81 pages has
been published in extracts in five countries, most recently in Singapore in
ARIELS: Departures and Returns (Oxford University Press, 2001). Thumboo was
an official in the government and then, at the National University of
Singapore, was Chair of the Department of English, Dean of Arts and
Sciences, Director of the Centre for the Arts, but he is best known as the
unofficial poet laureate of Singapore. Although I was born in Uganda, I was
interested in Malaysia because my mother was born in Kuala Lumpur, where my
maternal grandfather, Mathias Gomes, was a professional classical musician.
Thumboo had studied African poetry and had directed the Master's
dissertation of Theo Luzuka, the Ugandan who designed the cover of my novel,
In a Brown Mantle.
To my surprise, there was a connection between Domnic's and Thumboo's books.
Both are "national" writers concerned with nature and a past that seems to
have disappeared. For most Goans, missing the past means longing for the
good old days under Portuguese colonialism-I found criticism of Domnic's
book on this score in a review by Claude Alvares posted on the internet. But
Domnic begins Chapter 3 as follows: "Contrary to what some make it sound
like now, life in the Goa of the Forties and Fifties was not a piece of
cake. It was tough. Those of us who were born during this period have
witnessed tremendous changes. It was almost like a transition from the Stone
Age to the modern world; with determination we forged our lives and came out
victorious." (pages 9-10)
Domnic loves nature and the relationship of people of his generation to that
nature and he regrets its disappearance not only in real life-I think here
of John Mayall's song "Nature's Disappearing"-but also in the awareness of
the present generation. He is not opposed to progress but points out that
the past runs through the present. There was technological progress in the
past too, but being slower it did not sever the relationship with nature.
Yet cyber-space need not erase the past, as shown by the opening paragraph
of chapter 27, "Cine theatres over the years": "Coming up in cyberspace, a
recent listing played a flashback of sorts in my memory. It reminded me of
cine-theatres of the yesteryears that drew crowds in and around Mapusa.
There were quite a few across Bardez." In fact, Domnic says that his essays
began on the internet and he subsequently received requests from Goans
around the globe to bring out a book.
The chapters are triggered by Domnic's memory of growing up in Goa but he
explores and extends his experience. For example, he says: Today, people
wake up to the musical sounds of an alarm clock, a mobile-phone or even set
a television wake-up. In the past, they woke up to the rooster's call or at
the chirping of birds at dawn.
Sounds produced by various animals brought joy to the ears and were
considered entertainment of sorts. Whenever the wind blew and tree branches
and palm leaves swayed, people admired and considered it to be nature's
wonder.
People watched the rivers flow and thanked the Creator. They went to the
seashores and spent hours watching the vast ocean before their eyes. They
quietly appreciated the waves which formed in the sea and broke upon the
shores splashing tons of water which traveled as far as possible up the
shore. This too was a form of entertainment..
We are told that the origin of music possibly stems from natural sounds and
rhythms: the human heartbeat, the songs of birds the rustling of wind
through the trees, the thunder and sound of rain, the dripping of water in a
cave, the crackle of a burning fire and the sounds of waves breaking on a
beach or bubbles in a brook.
It is most likely that the first musical instrument was the human voice
itself. One's voice can make a vast array of sounds, from singing, humming
and whistling (some of these being the more musical forms) through to
clicking, coughing and yawning (less musical).
It is also likely the first instruments were percussion instruments, the
clapping of hands, stones hit against one another, or things that are
whatever else was useful to create rhythm." (5-6)
Domnic describes food; fruit (see the brilliant chapter, "Goa's guest from
Brazil: the cashew"); travel; religion (inevitably including St. Francis
Xavier); music; liquor (and its role in the community); the making and use
of wells ("the water of life"); clothing; the importance of animals (cows,
pigs, etc.); the importance of cow-dung to houses; love; marriage; family
relationships; the seasons; the importance of sewing skills; the church
painter; tiatr; the connections between Catholics and Hindus; the different
classes and castes; and funerals.
We see and experience life in its totality because Domnic enjoys life above
all and has a sense of humor rather than being judgemental about the way
people behave (although he believes that anything in excess is destructive).
But he reinforces what he knows not only through study but also through
practical experimentation. For example, he not only tells us how the ghumott
is made: he takes lessons in playing traditional music and plays it in a
band, even though he loves and describes international forms of music such
as by Johnson and his Jolly Boys. He has a chapter on the "Gulfee" which I
found very informative as I was born in Uganda of an "Africander" father. I
am surprised that Goans seem to be on the outside in the Gulf while in
Africa (despite Idi Amin, who was put into power by the West, as one can see
in my novel The General is Up) many Goans could be part of the scene if they
chose to-though the paradox for writers is that in order to contribute to
their country, they need to go outside (as was done by Sam Selvon, V.S.
Naipaul, Andrew Salkey, George Lamming and other West Indian writers). Maybe
this is because at a certain stage of maturity-Domnic went to the Gulf when
he was 26-one must write about home by drawing from memory and imagination,
and in doing so, find meaning in and present it through the words, so it
helps to be far from home physically. Yet, in apparent contrast, Thumboo
seeks to create a hinterland for Singapore from the many cultures of people
who came to work at the entrepot city of Singapore (which was suddenly
pushed out of Malaysia in 1965) through making their past available in the
present, through the description of the people and the terrain and the myths
and their meanings in the present without himself going away from the
country for an extended period of time other than through the imagination.
He told me that social history was lived but not recorded in Singapore under
colonial rule. We needed to go back to really look at our historical as well
as our social past, he said. Notice how much of what he says about social
history applies to Domnic's writing: [Social history] is not history
consisting of traumatic events but a history of the family, of ordinary
people, and literature is made out of the lives and experiences of ordinary
people. This kind of historical continuity we alone must attempt to
construct.. [It is] important because out of it, you construct your types
[my stress] which are altogether necessary. Without them, you can't see the
evolution of your own society and, thus, your writing may only be confined
to the contemporary, devoid of a historical perspective. The historical
perspective is important for us because, after all, Singapore is such a
small place and it is already modernizing so rapidly, becoming a kind of
international city. We are in danger of losing our historical hinterland.
(ARIELS, 167-168)
Domnic constructs his types in two opposite ways. First, he tells stories
about individuals who have some particular characteristics that make them
special or eccentric, so that they are individuals as well as people
performing necessary or useful roles in society, e.g. Bombo Porobo the
church painter on page 107. Second, he creates stereotypes. People think
that stereotyping is bad, but this is not always so: they are abstractions
taken from many individuals and put into general figures, such as the
boyfriend wooing his girlfriend on page 130 and the girlfriend responding on
page 131. And so the book is peopled with memorable individuals as well as
representations of how the people behave in different contexts. To give us a
fuller understanding, he purposefully presents many expressions in Konkani,
which he translates in a utilitarian way, so I had to slow down to read
instead of whizzing through as on a superhighway.
Since Thumboo is a poet, however, we must look not only at his statements
but also at his poetry. There are poems that describe people as exceptional
individuals such as in "Ibrahim bin Ahmad" and as stereotypes as in "An
Ordinary Man" but the poetry can do more. This is how "Evening in Batok
Town" ends: Yet high-rise and high-way, The new breed in search of Gleaming
jobs, the computer-mind, Turn memory shorter than the land's, Or that kept
whole by auguries of Spirit, descent of custom, the pain Of friendship; or
the spell in the rose. Unless brought into the blood's necessity By an
evening sky, by immemorial Language of cloud and light. (A Third Map, 119)
Thumboo's poems seem simple on the surface but are complex when one pays
attention to the depths of and the terrain covered by the words. Despite its
cover, Domnic's Goa too is not a nostalgic romp in that it is not a carefree
and effortless frolic into a simple past: the words are a way of planting in
the reader's subconscious serious experiences and questions about what the
people should be in the postcolonial, global and cyberspace world. Human
beings are not machines. They have a subconscious and are part of a
collective unconscious. If nature is disappearing, it needs to be replanted
in the people. Words can do it.
Thumboo seeks to create a new nation out of various ethnicities (his father
was Tamil from Sri Lanka, his mother Chinese) while Domnic seeks to replant
in the new Goans the roots of old Goa. Thumboo stressed in his interview
that he was taught and awakened to history in school by my cousin, Philip
Nazareth, although he added, "the kind of 'hinterland' I may refer to is not
straight from history; it is the psychic inheritance which anybody in India
or perhaps Japan, or even an oral society in Africa, has and which he can
carry with him as part of his consciousness; and not merely his
consciousness, but also as a living part of the language, the emotions, the
social institutions. In other words, I am referring to the whole fabric of
what we consider both the background to a culture and the very culture
itself." (ARIELS, 168)
"Let me confess though that I still consider myself a child and this is what
makes me bring out the past in me and present it to you," says Domnic, using
the word "present" with a double meaning, a technique employed frequently by
Thumboo. "Remember: anyone who forgets his or her past, forgets himself or
herself." (125) He is assisted in his project by his "twin", Domnic Cordo,
whose spare drawings help make the people of the past present. (ENDS)
The above review was published in CONFLUENCE - South Asian Perspectives,
Volume 6 Number 7, October 2007
Peter Nazareth is Professor of English, University of Iowa, USA. This review
is sourced from his forthcoming book: "Edwin Thumboo: Creating a Nation
through Poetry"
Dominic's Goa
ISBN 978-81-904640-0-0
Rs.350/-
http://www.confluence.org.uk/data/magazine/Confluence_October_2007.pdf
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