---------------------------------------------------------------------------
**** http://www.GOANET.org ****
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy New Year Twenty-Ten
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sting of Peppercorns
By Antonio Gomes
Published by Goa 1556 http://goa1556.goa.india.org
Forty eight years later Goans are still sorting out the tangled web of
their identities and allegiances, particularly those of the Catholic
heritage. In this fictional novel “The Sting of Peppercorns” Antonio
Gomes, an esteemed cardiologist within the medical community,
brilliantly illuminates complex strands of a citizenry, unsettled by
various forces foreign and domestic.
The colonial experience of Goans is not unique among the colonized;
nonetheless it is peculiar experience given that it took place at the
intersection of very powerful forces of the West, and the aspirations
of the regional kings, with its Christian, Islamic, and Hindu
convictions and trappings. All this happened when Enlightenment was
yet to be dawned.
Goan society is layered complex of disparate forces, with each layer
as intriguing, fascinating, and delicious as the layers of “bebinca.”
In “The Sting of Peppercorns” each character epitomizes the layers of
the Goan embroiled in this web of identities. The author, Antonio
Gomes, understands the maddening history of the people of Goa, and
weaves a fantastic story to illuminate the stultifying appropriations,
assimilations, and internalizations of and by Goans over the
centuries, particularly those of the Catholic heritage.
The characters of Senhor Afonso, Dona Isabela, Dona Rosita, Paulo,
Amanda, Roberto, Carmina, Mari, Pedru, Winnie, Captain Antonio Borda
de Mar, Tulsi, Tucaram, Angelina de Tor, Ana Sofia, and Uma – all play
a critical role in each others life in baking a peculiar Goan
“bebinca,” which, either one learns to live with all its
contradictions, and charming complexity, or one engages into an
exercise of self-torture to un-layer the centuries old “camadas da
alma goesa.”
“The Sting of Pepperconrs” by Antonio Gomes is a “stinging” reading,
which will prick through the many strands of the cultural DNA of the
sons and daughters of this land called Goa; the reader will see
herself and himself in the novel as the story unfolds page after page,
as a mosaic of identities shaped through the centuries due to a
confluence of forces beyond any one’s control and imagination.
Antonio Gomes, a medical doctor with specialization in cardiology, a
poet, and a novelist, treats “The Sting of Peppercorns” with art and
surgical precision. It is an engaging reading, which will sooth the
restless soul of the Goan at home and in Diaspora.
Basilio Monteiro
