> Who exiled the Goan Intellectual? > by Jose Lourenco > > You left, O great Goan > To walk with kings and poets > And to shine like a martyred star > With glowing angst and exile-chic > But They, unmindful, toil on. ----------------------------------------------------------------
Folks, This cry is universal but there are degrees of exile. The best case scenario, for the intellectual, is when s/he is exiled in the land of birth. The worst case, is when s/he has to flee for her/his life. An almost similar fate awaits when then intellectual is drawn in by a foreign power. The only country that does not have intellectuals leaving it, I feel, is that super power, the USA. Non the less, at times intellectuals there are forced to leave their birth place too. Southerners move to the Northeast. Easterners move to the west, etc. Today Africa lost one of it best intellectuals in Chinua Achebe. I was forced to read Achebe as a teenager and did not appreciate him then. It was only after I left Africa that I discovered how powerful his books, and especially "Things Fall Apart," were. Thankfully, Achebe found fame in his homeland. Other intellectuals are not so lucky. They are often misunderstood and mocked in their homeland. The straw that sends the intellectual abroad is when s/he is denied by those who are just unable to understand. Goanet, I feel, has more than its fair share of people who are unable to make an effort to understand. Mervyn
