YOUR list of most influential persons, with or without deliberations and
your personal bias, omits a few defintely important persons/situations
that I, a goan for over 55 years, but an outsider looking inside for
over 50 years, would claim as being strongly influential in the past decade:
1. That scoundrel, that policician, that possible saint to the poor,
that football team owner: I forget his name, but the Salcette Goans
would know him from a mile away. He, I would say, based on numerous news
and goannet emails, undeniably loathed and/or loved, for what he
did/does and for what he said/says. and yet getting to the big politcal
seat in New Delhi, ( still do not know how that terminated!) via the
post as Goa Chief Minister, and the always available seat as a
politican, whichever party he happens to want to represent at the time
of an election! and he, therefore needs to be reckoned up there in the
top 10 list.
2.. Goan football. for its coming of age and putting its boot-print on
the Indian soccer scene, which should have been so, many, many ages ago.
After all, were we not trainees under Europes power-house of soccer:
Portugal?.
3. this may be the new decade, but the Colva Catholic agitation against
one of its own; somehow, I pity this scenario, this susegad-no-more
lifestyle of the Goan. For good or bad, these residents have taken to
arms and rocked the idyllic beach village.
Overall, I think of Navhind Times, still rolling off the press; those
powerful bygone Goan actors/actresses, whose names rhyme with actors and
singers in Amche Noxib, Nirmon, Claudia; powerful inksters like the
cartoonist,
Educators but now belittled are institutions like Loyola, Monte Guirim
and Don Bosco.
-- anthony fernandes
