Dear Augusto, Your extract from Sarto Esteves brought tears to my eyes. Like Sarto I too believed that Goans are the most cultured and civilized people on the Indian sub-continent. Ok, I am one of "those" Goans who believes this but surely I can be forgiven. Was it not Pudalik Naik who said, there is something in the water that makes us different?
Now, I have combined this post with Silviano Barbosa to tell him not to berate himself for the Sixth Night. I remember I was pregnant when I first read it. Silviano had kindly sent it to me and I enjoyed it tremendously. It was a book that had to be written. But the bigger point I want to make is this. Let's forget this nonsense about turning Goa into some industrial hub or call-centre hub. That ship has sailed. We are not cut in that cloth. But we can still capitalize that which had made us different in the first place; that most cultured and civilized breed of people. We must write, we must create, we must bring our intellectual capital to the fore. Even if our books don't make millions, let's write. Who else will write about us Goans, besides ourselves. Let's build our museums, our libraries, our research centres, our universities. Lets become what we always were. A centre of knowledge, art and culture. Ok, enough for a Sunday morning :-) selma ________________________________
