Title: Who the Bleep cares about lunch with Carmen Miranda? By: Selma Carvalho. Source: Goan Voice newsletter 20 June 2010 at www.goanvoice.org.uk
Full text: Carmen Miranda is an award-winning graphic designer, whose career includes working with Panos Institute and Wolff Olins. She is an environmental activist currently involved in protecting Goa from exploitative mining. I didn't mind the light spray of rain which greeted me as I came out of Southall's railway station. I hugged my green overcoat and headed to Madhu's restaurant where I was meeting Carmen for lunch. Carmen is a walking contradiction to Rudyard Kipling's contention that "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." Her stylishly coiffed hair, gracing a beautiful patrician face, the long flowing wool coat draped with ease around her body, the over-sized mother-of-pearl ring brandished about when she wants to make her point, were typical of her Spanish heritage, except of course, ever so often, this very European-looking lady broke out in fluent Konkani. By the time the steaming pastries stuffed with meat arrived, Carmen had transported our party of four, which included Bishop Agnelo Gracias of Bombay and Eddie Fernandes of GoanVoice UK to the intoxicating world of Bombay's J. J. School of Arts of the 1960s. "I was a rebel," she bursts out. "We had a great time. I didn't know a word of English" she tells us in animated spurts, which is a revelation coming from a woman who speaks it impeccably from across the table, in addition to being fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and French. Her work includes helping asylum seekers in the UK with language translations. Carmen's mother is Spanish and her father is a Goan from the illustrious Miranda family. She is a cousin of Mario de Miranda, the celebrated artist. But the walls of the J. J. School of Arts were too claustrophobic to contain Carmen, ideologically and artistically. Ironically, it was J. J. School's finger-wagging which propelled Carmen to complete a Bachelors degree in Art, from Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, Kent, UK and go on to win international awards and accolades. As the tall Indian server arrives with cardamom smelling rice interspersed with chunks of lamb, the conversation turns to thornier subjects like Socialism. I shift uncomfortably in my high-backed chair. I've always been an unabashed capitalist ever since Adam Smith introduced himself to me in my secondary school. I believe firmly that capitalism is the only way to create wealth and lift people out of poverty. "But what is wealth?" Carmen counters. I'm stumped momentarily. I realize how strong her ideology is and how it is so much a product of having come of age in the Sixties, against a backdrop of the Vietnam War, America flexing its muscle against Cuba, the Liberation of Goa, the dismantling of Colonial hierarchical power structures and the emergence of Student power. There would have intense outpourings amongst intellectual circles from Bombay to London; heady notions of equality irrespective of class, race and gender in a post-colonial, post-war world. By the time, I came of age in the Eighties, communism and socialism lay by the wayside. We didn't see Socialism as ideology, we saw it as something that festered only under totalitarian regimes who themselves were collapsing before our eyes. Words like Perestroika, trickle-down economics, the liberalization of India's economy, globalisation, free-flow of information, internet, dot.com companies and freedom from every kind of restriction and perhaps even obligation was what shaped my conversations with my peers. None of us grew up respecting the nobler ideals of Socialism. And yet, twenty years later, our world too had succumbed to the perils of unfettered fiscal greed and has collapsed around us. As lunch ambled to a close, despite our different world views on economics, I couldn't help admitting how much we agreed on; the neglect of the environment which the free-market couldn't protect, the corrosive effects of unbridled consumerism and the idea that our social responsibilities were not to be taken lightly. Yet, I could never convert to Socialism. I believe in the liberty of that humble man who takes his produce of apples and bananas to the market, to anticipate profit. Capitalism to me isn't about money, greed, exploitation or big heartless corporations. It is that most profound, most complex and yet most basic tenet of what defines us as human beings. The desire to excel, the desire to create, the desire to be free and unfettered and in that endeavour to profit along the way. It in embedded in the very ideals of a glorious democracy and has taken humanity to magnificent climaxes of discovery. For it is, in the end, the idea of profit and glory which propels humanity to excellence. For a photograph and profile of Carmen Miranda, go to http://www.environmentaljournalists.org/Carmen_Miranda_of_India.htm Do leave your feedback at carvalho_...@yahoo.com
