A few unthinking individuals have been mistaking Selma’s article The New Goan
–PPP of Aug 6 in Goa’s Herald, for ingratitude towards the East African
community.
Let’s look at a few issues that have manifested themselves as a result.
Goans have to be able to take criticism. While many Goans especially educated
ones, have long since absorbed this truism, others living in western, advanced
countries, surprisingly still have a Goan village mentality of the 50s, one
that is far removed from what prevails in today’s Goa. Thanks to economic
progress in that little state and the furtherance of education accessible to
all sections of the population that would once have seemed unimaginable, what
she has said would be accepted in stride and curiosity by today’s educated and
cultured Goan generation.
The article had good information on the UK Goan Festival of 2012 but what else
did she actually say besides mere description? To have missed the core of her
presentation was to have missed the wood for the trees. She drew a picture of
cross-cultural interaction at the festival. She led us to take history by the
tail in imagining how the meeting of Goans from various national boundaries
resulted in a melting pot stew that Goans in the UK find themselves. She told
us that East African Goans in the UK now have to move over for a torrent of
Goans with Portuguese passports who have taken advantage of the late Salazar’s
fondness for his Goan colony that led to making that part of geographical
India, an integral part of Portugal. A boon that until now, 50 odd years after
they left, enables Goans by a quirk of fate to move around and work freely in
the European zone. Such population displacement is normal. In Canada too there
has been a natural progression of the Goan populace. Goans from India without
money were the first to arrive. They gave way to the Pakistan Goan influx, who
in turn were nudged from their large numbers into the reality of the refugee
Goans from Uganda, quickly followed by the rest of East Africa. This
composition was churned by Goans from the Gulf who came in droves and who in
turn saw their sizable lot defer to the newly entering flushed-with-money Goans
from Bombay and the rest of India. A full circle if one can see the whole
picture.
Now let’s look at her visuals. Doddering East Africans limping from tent to
tent. The average East African emigrated to England in the 1970s or earlier in
their 30s and 40s. That would make them 70 to 80 years old now. So what is it
that hits us about aging? Is it that having lived too long in Western society
we think we are all young men, never to age and forever maintaining our hockey
and soccer physique of the Nairobi Gymkhana variety? Or is it that we will
never limp, going direct from a perfect stride or jog to six feet under (look
at the death notices). Left to me I would think it a good thing that those
doddering, limping men took time out to make their trek through a bustling,
crowded Goan festival and far from sitting on a lawn chair or bench, made their
way in the Goan festival spirit around the various tents.
What about the Swindon Goans and their swollen biceps? Let’s observe the
composition of the new “Salazar granted Portuguese passport Goan” or as Selma
call them PPP Goans? Are they from Assagao, Aldona or Saligao? I think not.
Don’t ask me why, but they are from farming villages where swollen biceps
abound, not from workout gyms but from plowing terraced fields, pulling fishing
boats ashore and climbing tall trees with rough barks and sharp palms. Is there
any shame in that. This time we forget we are in the western world that above
all prizes physical labor.
Now to the subject of how ungrateful Selma has been to unflatteringly describe
East African Goans despite what they have done for her. Excuse me! Done for
her, or the other way around. She has written a community-acclaimed book that
has brought the East African Goan Diaspora movement to the fore. She has
chronicled their travails and successes better than many Goan writers going
before her. A tear-jerker it might not have been, but for Goans who have had
little or no connection with that part of their people, it has been a well
worded story. What about her British Goans history project? It has brought the
Goan community in the UK to the public gaze in a documentary form for
posterity, through a Government grant that is not so easily given. Sure, East
Africans and the Goan Association has helped. Sure, without them it would not
have been possible, but in this, there was definite give and take. Both owe
each other and not one side to the other as those unthinking people have
unthinkingly concluded. If there is any imbalance, it is in Selma’s favor and
the community owes her. Any Goan who thinks there is profit in writing and
marketing a book about Goans or there was a bonanza awaiting her from the UK
Lottery Fund, ignoring the valuable time she has spent that she will never get
back, exhibits one of the seemingly most proliferating Goan characteristic –
cluelessness.
Roland.
Toronto.
