[Goanet] Back to the Future (GQ India, April/May 2024)

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https://www.gqindia.com/content/goas-buzziest-restaurants-praca-prazeres-and-larder-folk-traverse-the-european-continent-for-inspiration

Just over a year ago, I found Ralph Prazeres uncharacteristically pensive
behind the counter of his lively bakery-café near my home in Panjim, one of
the post-pandemic runaway successes that define Goa’s increasingly merited
hype as the food capital of the country. Padaria Prazeres (padaria means
bakery in Portuguese) rocketed to attention immediately after opening in
2021 for its superb pastéis de nata— traditional custard tarts from Lisbon
that have become an unstoppable global trend—and has kept on winning prizes
and honours ever since. Still, it was obviously not enough for this Cordon
Bleu–trained expert with hard-earned experience in the kitchens of some of
the world’s best restaurants, and on that day he finally confessed what was
on his mind: Salade Niçoise. It was such an odd, unlikely revelation that
an inadvertent grin spread across my face until I realized the intense
32-year-old was being serious. He told me, “I need to start cooking my
food, which is the French classics made exactly how they are meant to be.
There is no one else doing it in India, but it’s what I’m going to do.”
Bemused by this bold statement of purpose, I ventured to ask which dishes
he had in mind that weren’t being properly represented anywhere in this
vast country, and that’s when the young chef’s eyes lit up with excitement
talking about the iconic 19th-century salad from the Côte d’Azur—Nice is
the largest city in the French Riviera other than the ancient port of
Marseilles—along with other decidedly old-school fare from the golden age
of European gastronomy. His passion struck me as charming, but also
distinctly eccentric—this millennial Indian so hung up on cooking what even
the French consider old-fashioned—and I returned home unconvinced his
quirky dream would ever come true.

That, of course, was my very big mistake, because Prazeres proceeded to
accomplish exactly what he intended, and opened up an elegant,
astonishingly accomplished little shrine to French cooking in an
ingeniously restored old house in São Tomé, one of the pocket-sized
heritage neighbourhoods spilling into each other along the Rio de Ourém
(the “river of gold” mangrove-lined creek at the entrance to Goa’s
pocket-sized capital). From the moment I entered Praça Prazeres soon after
it opened, it was obvious there is indeed nothing like this understated but
unlimitedly ambitious restaurant anywhere else in the country, and that was
even before his Salade Niçoise made its first appearance on my table. It
was an epiphany in a bowl—shockingly good and so unbelievably addictive
that I literally woke up the next morning craving more. That is when it
finally sunk in what had made the young chef so wistful all those months
ago, and every meal I have enjoyed at his hands after that has only
confirmed he is the real deal. Make no mistake, this is an instant culinary
landmark of huge significance, and anyone who cares about truly great
restaurant food in India needs to check out what this gifted maestro is
capable of.

To be sure, Praça Prazeres poses any number of challenges to conventional
wisdom in our hype-driven 21st-century restaurant landscape, along with
what passes for rankings of the very best in the country. This new
establishment is rooted in one of the most resolutely carnivorous regions
of the country, and does serve beef, fish and chicken, but its most
revelatory dishes turned out to be runner beans with cauliflower purée,
cubes of beetroot with goat’s cheese, charred cabbage set off by crispy
chickpeas, and, above all else, that killer Salade Niçoise (which contains
tuna and anchovies). Everything is meticulously technique-driven French
cooking without any pandering to “the Indian palate” that usually
characterizes—and ruins—most “continental” restaurants in this part of the
world. Also markedly unusual is the service: warm and attentive but never
obsequious, with the tone set eye-to-eye from the open kitchen out of which
Prazeres constantly pops out to meet and greet, with the front of the house
tightly controlled by his wife Stacy Gracias.

All this is unconventional in India, but in many ways, it represents the
platonic ideal of modern restaurant culture in the West, as it developed
out of 19th-century France, and was substantially shaped by the famous
Michelin Guide books, which began to become all-important in the wake of
World War I just over 100 years ago. The brainchild of tire company
founders André and Édouard
Michelin—the brothers’ idea was to encourage motorists to drive further
thus generating more demand for their products—has become an all-powerful
juggernaut, with perniciously influential ratings of restaurants in almost
40 countries from Japan to Brazil, but it began with purer intentions and
this lastingly compelling and effective set of criteria to compare like to
like: quality of 

[Goanet] Libby de Liberdade (O Heraldo, 28/4/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/LIBBY-DE-LIBERDADE-/220727

In less than a month on May 25th, the great Libia “Libby” Lobo Sardesai
will celebrate her 100th birthday. Unfortunately, like her childhood friend
the late artist Francis Newton Souza – the two Goans grew up close to each
other at Crawford Market in Bombay – it is deeply shameful that city and
country are paying no attention, let alone the appropriate respect. But in
this case, we do still have time for everyone to get their act together, to
acknowledge the contributions of this indomitable, irresistible
freedom-fighter. One fitting tribute will be on May 12th, when Solomon
Souza – the grandson of Libby’s teenage dancing partner – paints an immense
new mural in dedication to her, in the heart of Panjim where she has lived
for decades.

Today we are bombarded with propaganda about Nari Shakti – women’s power –
but nothing compares with Libby, the one-woman juggernaut. Born into
relative comfort into a family from Porvorim, this self-described “chit of
a girl” was intent on participating in the vibrant world of ideas and
idealism she was surrounded with in South Bombay. While still a student,
she was the Secretary of Tristão de Bragança Cunha’s anti-colonial Goan
Youth League. Then, after wartime years as a censor/translator for Italian
prisoners of war (where many other Goans were similarly employed) she got
her first degree at the new Siddharth College established by Ambedkar,
where Babasaheb himself expressed pleasure about her signing up for
admission.

Still in college, Libby was introduced – by her young professor Nissim
Ezekiel amongst others – to MN Roy, the world-famous revolutionary who
co-founded the Mexican Communist Party, and was Lenin’s nominee to the
Comintern. By that point, after the devastating world wars, the radical was
in the process of abandoning communism in favour of liberal humanism, and
that important ideological influence remained with the bold Goan girl, who
landed a good job at All India Radio but kept studying for another degree,
from the Government Law College which had opened its doors conveniently
close by.

All through the 1950s, the Goans of Bombay remained in foment over
continued colonialism in their ancestral homeland. There was no denying the
“winds of change” signalling the end to European rule but they were stuck
with the obdurate, uncomprehending (indeed, positively addled) dictator
Salazar, who insisted on the delusional refrain “Aqui e Portugal” instead
of negotiating seriously like the French with regards to Pondicherry. There
was censorship, the curtailment of civil rights, a half-hidden regime of
terror against nationalists, and Libby’s clean heart burned with anger
about all these atrocities. She wanted to offer Satyagraha, but the
Portuguese massacred 25 unarmed marchers and wounded over 200 more on 15th
August 1955, so the Indian government stopped the border crossings. The
young Goan was crestfallen, but that is precisely when history came calling.

Everything changed for Libby after Vaman Sardesai unexpectedly walked
through the doors of All India Radio. This fine young scholar from Goa had
completed his Lyceum education, and joined the Escola Médica, but was
compelled to escape across the border when found in possession of
anti-colonial literature. He moved to Wardha, and Mahatma Gandhi’s famous
Sevagram Ashram, and eventually to Bombay where he too felt crushed at
being unable to offer Satyagraha after August 15, 1955. Nonetheless, he
joined AIR in the External Services Division, creating programming about
“the problem of Goa” to be beamed abroad. But there was an inherent
frustration, because – Libby recalls – he could see no impact: “all
communications were suspended. The people of Goa had to rely only on the
propaganda of the Portuguese, and they could not know anything about what
was happening in the outside world, and how the [freedom] movement was
going on. The people were getting desperate, and they were losing their
morale. There was no way of communicating with the Goans or educating and
enlightening them in any way.”

Very quickly, an extraordinary puzzle fell into place. During the
liberation of the tiny Portuguese enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the
Indian authorities confiscated powerful wireless transmitters, and decided
to use them to break the Portuguese embargo on news in Goa. A small team
was assembled, comprising of Libby Lobo and Vaman Sardesai along with the
older anti-colonial intellectual Nicolau Joao Menezes and his wife Alda.
Under the pressure of severe conditions in the Western Ghats, the quartet
proved short-lived.

The Menezes couple (who happen to be my grand-uncle and aunt) quickly
retreated, but not so Lobo and Sardesai, whose resolve only increased, and
they went even further into isolation, where they remained undaunted for
six long years, keeping up daily broadcasts of the “Voice of Freedom”
(Sodvonecho Awaz in Konkani) in what would become 

[Goanet] Renewing Goa’s French Connections (O Heraldo, 20/4/24)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Renewing-Goa%E2%80%99s-French-Connections/220375

An old and significant cultural crossroads hits another high point in its
revival this evening, with the first edition of Thinnai Stories, an online
series of conversations hosted by the distinguished Indo-Malagasy writer
Ari Gautier (who lives in Norway) and Goa’s own Shamika Andrade from the
Alliance Française in Panjim. The new initiative debuts most impressively
with Ananda Devi, the hugely acclaimed Mauritian winner of the 2024
Neustadt International Prize for Literature – “the American Nobel” – who is
one of the most important Francophone literary voices. Attendance is free
via Zoom: Meeting ID 966 7123 6147 and passcode 7Wxe0Y.

Gautier and Andrade are mining rich terrain, of an intense intellectual
back-and-forth that has persisted between France and Goa for 250 years,
although largely overlooked in the myopic contemporary narrative which
misinterprets and falsely represents Pondicherry as the be-all and end-all
of French impact and ideas in India. In fact, what occurred between Paris
and Panjim is much more consequential than the cultural history of that
still-quaint Union Territory – it has so far handled tourism relatively
well – where the streets are named for icons like Alexandre Dumas and
Romain Rolland, even if those luminaries had living links to Goa no other
place in South Asia can rival.

 Here, it’s interesting to note how the colonial history prism is itself
quite misleading when assessing what happened between France and Goa from
the 18th century onwards. Instead, what comes across is a meaningful mutual
solidarity about the sacred principles of equality and self-determination,
which the Goans have always quickly absorbed and adapted from every global
cross-current after the advent of the Estado da India in 1510. This much is
amply clear: following the 1789 French Revolution, the Goan quest for
liberation assimilated the language of Robespierre - liberté, égalité,
fraternité – and France became Goa’s primary intellectual lodestar (as was
the case for Portugal as well), while formidable pioneers from this tiny
slice of the Konkan ventured across to Europe to make history in France.
The first, of course, was the enigmatic “Abbé” José Custódio de Faria who
relocated to post-revolutionary Paris precisely to scheme against the
Portuguese, and cut such a dramatic public figure that Alexandre Dumas was
moved to immortalize him in *Le Comte de Monte-Cristo*.

There are many similar examples. The “father of Goan nationalism” Tristão
de Bragança Cunha was effectively the Indian national movement’s first
ambassador in Paris in the 1920s, where he was Ho Chi Minh’s roommate, and
is credited with taking the message of Gandhi directly to Romain Rolland.
Before him was Francisco Luis Gomes, the true intellectual forebear of
Ambedkar, whose anti-caste 1866 novel *Os Brahamanes* was inscribed
“Liberty, Equality and Fraternity are the necessary principles: eternal in
their duration and universal in their application.” This great polymath
argued (in French, of course) with Alphonse de Lamartine that “the
nightingale has lost its voice whose strains once reverberated to the
heavens. I demand for India, liberty and light!” His adulatory reception in
Paris in 1867 - including at the palace of Napoleon III – would have been
entirely unthinkable for any other Asian of the times.

Ari Gautier says France has always looked at India through an inherently
dubious and bizarrely coloured lens: “The impressive work done by Professor
Ian Magadera and his team at the University of Liverpool shows just how
much India has been described for centuries as an exotic land of Maharajas,
fakirs, snake charmers and dacoits (https://frenchbooksonindia.com/). India
is the country where the French either describe human misery or rave about
jungles and palaces. There are very few who have accurately understood this
complex country, and until quite recently, many even wrote books about
India while sitting on the banks of the Seine. Very recently, some writers
have been trying hard not to make the same mistakes, but there's still a
long way to go before we can see India in French literature with any degree
of accuracy.”

 By himself, Gautier constitutes a one-man corrective mission, and antidote
to the tired old tropes the French insist on imposing on India. Via email,
he explained the selective blindness began “in the wake of [the
Enlightenment] philosophers and scholars, when French intellectuals of the
19th century were charmed with India which they perceived as the land of
reveries and spirituality. To writers like Voltaire, Lamartine, Stendhal,
Michelet, Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, it offered mysticism, The
Upanishads, Sanskrit and eternal wisdom which Europe had lost. A whole
generation of writers wrote about India without ever having set foot on
Indian soil, by creating an imaginary world that continues to this day, an
India crafted purely out 

[Goanet] Galvanizing Cry (Mint Lounge, 19/4/2024)

[V M]

Remember the dead
But do not mourn over them
Because yesterday’s jasmines have dried.
Forget not tomorrow’s birds.
Though the knife is coated with honey
Let not your tongue run over it.
The hook lies hidden inside the bait
Never forget it.
The new life is begging from you.
Give her in large handfuls.

(Manoharrai Sardessai, translated by Edith Melo Furtado)

Long after the dramatic “freedom at midnight” brought an end to
colonialism across almost the entire immensity of South Asia, the
tiny—but historically crucial—remnants of French and Portuguese India
continued to fly European flags throughout the 1950s. There was one
big difference: Paris kept negotiating with New Delhi, while cannily
positioning France’s tractability in contrast to the obstinacy of
António Salazar, the half-addled dictator in Lisbon who insisted Goa
was and would always remain an inalienable part of Portugal. Few
people realise the tricolore finally only came down in Puducherry in
1962, by which time Goa had already been annexed by the Indian Armed
Forces, and was already seething with linguistic and identity politics
around the question of absorption into Maharashtra.

Some of the most wonderful Konkani literature, poetry and popular
music derives from this period, when the mother tongue was being
slurred as a mere dialect, and the historical and cultural uniqueness
of Goa was denied for short-sighted political gains. All that is in
Zayat Zage (Arise! Awake!), an anthemic set of verses by the great
Sorbonne-educated multilingual poet and scholar Manoharrai Sardessai
(1925-2006), which have been remembered with great affection ever
since they were published in 1964, and set to music by the charismatic
singer Ulhas Buyao soon afterwards. Looking back from our 21st century
vantage, it’s impressive to note just how successful this iconic
rallying cry turned out to be, with its warnings about the
responsibilities and challenges that were inextricably linked with
freedom and democracy. These iconic outpourings galvanised the Goans,
who came together to reject merger, then fought to enshrine Konkani as
an official language of India, and eventually won statehood in 1987.


Note: Mint Lounge's well-conceived pre-elections special about "the
pulls and pushes of democracy in the country's different languages" is
here: 
https://lifestyle.livemint.com/news/big-story/democracy-books-elections-2024-politics-literature-111713514096553.html

[Goanet] The Emperor's New Tree (O Heraldo, 14/4/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/The-Emperor%E2%80%99s-New-Tree/220134

Adding insult to injury in the ongoing massacre of green cover across
the State, the giant old banyan tree uprooted at midnight from St.
Inez for an alleged “Smart Road project” has been conspicuously
relocated to the new football grounds being prepared at Campal, where
the renowned horticulturist and landscape designer Daniel D’Souza has
volunteered to try and keep it alive. It’s a gallant effort – and the
responsible officials and heartfelt “tree doctor” deserve credit for
trying – but the entire exercise does seem like mere window dressing,
to distract from the veritable holocaust of trees that is being
carried out on every other scrap of land in Goa that can be converted,
concretized and sold off in one of the most unscrupulous real estate
marketplaces in the world.

In this election year, with heavy campaigning from both “national
parties” in the State, with their interchangeable – and indeed
constantly interchanging – cast of usual suspects who have together
conspired to wreck Goa, there is a glaring disconnect from the
grandiose rhetoric about billions spent on “development works” and the
disgracefully incompetent misgovernance characterizing everyday
reality in India’s smallest state. Instead of accountability, there is
only defiance and bullying. Even the high court’s well-meaning
interventions are being stalled or sabotaged. This level of impunity
and arrogance is unprecedented in Indian democracy, as though
challenging voters to dare acknowledge the open assault on their
rights and quality of life. In the famous Hans Christian Andersen
folktale, an innocent child exposed the emperor’s literally “naked”
corruption. What will lift our contemporary silences?

Earlier this week, Claude Alvares wrote with great clarity on social
media that “for the past ten years now, Goa has been almost in a
permanent state of war. There have been regular invading armies and
conquests, mostly originating out of Delhi, or Mumbai, or even Haryana
and other places, each biting off slices of Goan villages, and the Goa
government has in every conceivable case, gone all out to support
them. The political leaders who run this government only come to the
villagers when they want their votes.” He said to “look at these
simple facts about the new brewery and distillery approved for
erection at Amdai, on the banks of the Uguem river - a depressing
repeat of hundreds of similar invasions being fought at Cavelossim,
Carmona, Tiracol”

Alvares says “the land is zoned as orchard in the regional plan,
because it has magnificent spread of coconut and cashew trees. The new
owners claim in a media interview that the Tree Act being amended to
exclude coconut trees, they do not need permission to mass-kill the
trees on the plots [and] according to the project report, there is
“plentiful water” to produce 5 lakh hectolitres of beer. There is
simply no acknowledgement that the water belongs to - and has been
hitherto sustainably enjoyed by - the people living in the area. The
water, in fact, belongs to them since they have been using it for
decades.” Nonetheless, slews of clearances were promptly issued: “When
ordinary Goans approach the same bodies for similar permissions or
approvals, they are made to run around coconut trees. Now even that
may not be possible, because at Amdai, more than 1,000 coconut trees
will be cut to produce liquor and beer for tourists and other
elements, as if they haven't already drunk themselves senseless.”

What kind of “development” is this? How can any responsible government
keep on subverting the laws to transform the forests and orchards of
the state into concrete jungles, in clear contravention of Supreme
Court guidelines that trees can only be felled “as a last resort”. In
2020, Chief Justice Bobde insisted even “the value of the oxygen that
a tree gives in its lifetime must be factored in.” The next year, the
special committee he appointed said “the monetary value of a project,
for which hundreds of trees are felled, is sometimes far less than the
economic and environmental worth of the felled trees.” Heritage trees
with a lifespan of more than 100 years – of which countless numbers
are being cut in Goa – should each be valued as more than one crore,
because each is worth around 75,000 rupees for every year of its
existence: “the first endeavour should be to relocate them, making use
of modern technology, and if they must be felled; five saplings in
lieu of one tree is not good enough since a 100-year-old tree cannot
be equated with a few fresh saplings”

“I miss the trees that we have lost in Panjim so much,” says Daniel
D’Souza, the passionate plant man who is focused on reviving the
cruelly hacked St. Inez banyan in its new location. “The trees and I
grew up together, and it hurts me a lot when they suffer. What is
happening now is the result of constant asphalting, and the
destruction of the city’s old drainage 

[Goanet] Souza, Again (O Heraldo. 31/3/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Souza-Again/219606

Just in time for his 100th birthday on April 12, the brilliant
one-of-a-kind son of Saligao and all-time great artist Francis Newton Souza
is back in the headlines. On March 20 at Christie’s auction house in New
York, 36 of the late master’s artworks sold for almost 20 million dollars,
with a new record set by the 1960 oil on board *The Lovers* at $4,890,000.
Even as his centenary is being disgracefully overlooked by both state and
country – this is nothing new – the vast sums of money Souza’s paintings
continue to attract only further underline his singular importance to
Indian art in the 20th century and beyond.

I was lucky to get to know Souza in the 1990s, in New York City. He entered
my life an irascible, twinkling-eyed, highly compelling shamanistic figure
who lived an almost derelict existence, surrounded by stacks of paintings
that only he believed were an inestimable treasure. Lit from within by pure
genius – I recognized it immediately – he also exuded a distinct noble
pathos that lingers in my mind very strongly. It is as the great John
Berger wrote in memoriam: “After 40 years, I still have a vivid memory of
Souza’s presence, as embodied in both his paintings and his person. If I
had to sum up that presence, I would say it was that of a martyr. The
confrontation within him between pain and voluptuousness, fury and calm,
are comparable, I believe, to those often discovered in martyrdom.”

Berger witnessed what I think is Souza’s high point in his high-strung
journey of sheer determination from Portuguese Goa in the 1920s to chief
instigator of the Progressive Artist’s Group in Bombay in 1947, directly
towards the global nerve centres of modern art in the West and the annals
of art history. They met in London, where the young artist migrated with
the support of his first wife Maria, who was a decade older and one of his
original collectors. It was hard going for some time, but lightning struck
in 1955: Souza left Maria and their young daughter Shelley for Liselotte
Kristian, an actress who had trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
The disruption also opened up another world for him in bohemian London
(where the poet Dom Moraes was another fixture), and he soon published an
essay that would make him famous called ‘Nirvana of a Maggot’ in an
important magazine called *Encounter*, which was edited by the famous
English poet Stephen Spender. A few months later, this pioneer from Goa had
an historic sold-out exhibition at Victor Musgrave’s seminal taste-making
Gallery One. The first great modern artist of India was born.

The Lovers comes from that Gallery One show in 1955, and appeared in an
oft-cited monograph by Edwin Mullins in 1962, which represents impeccable
provenance in the veritable ocean of dubious and fake Souzas that otherwise
plagues the marketplace, especially but not exclusively in India, and
including from what you might be given to think are respectable art
galleries, dealers and auction houses. Given this rare opportunity to
handle an unquestionably major work, however, it is extremely disappointing
to see how much of Christie’s lot essay is pure drivel, which is just
another indicator how badly scholarship about this most important artist
continues to lag far behind his sale prices. To my mind, for just one
example, it’s quite absurd to claim about the painting you see on this page
that “The present lot spectacularly combines the artist’s fascination with
religion and sex, his commentary on the Church and his exploration of the
theme of lovers, into a single harmonious composition.”

There’s no point in further picking on Christie’s of course, even if there
is lots more that is equally hapless in their text, because it was
swallowed up eagerly along with the painting for nearly five million
dollars, which is the only thing that really matters to them and their
clients. But what about Souza’s interests? I often think about how my
friend would have been considerably richer if he had survived to celebrate
his centenary alongside his equally amazing friend Libby Lobo Sardessai
(they were neighbours while growing up at Crawford Market in Bombay) but I
doubt very much that he would recant what he wrote in A Fragment of
Autobiography, published in *Words & Lines* by Villiers in London in 1959:
“Better had I died. Would not have had to bear an artist’s tormented soul,
create art in a country that despises her artists and is ignorant of her
heritage.”

By the time I met him in his 70s, in the pattern of so many other great
self-exiled Goan artists and intellectuals – the close friends Bakibab
Borkar and Angelo da Fonseca in Poona in the 1950s comes to mind – Souza
had long since liberated himself from the expectations of others, and
worked directly to the impress of history. He told me in one of his
characteristically ebullient letters that “I am doomed to paint” but in
fact it was his very being. As he wrote in 

[Goanet] In Dibrugarh with Damodar Mauzo (O Heraldo, 30/3/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/In-Dibrugarh-with-Damodar-Mauzo/219565

Just one month after our own Goa Arts + Literature Festival, it was an
honour to be invited alongside the beloved laureate of Konkani
literature Damodar Mauzo to the first-ever Dibrugarh University
International Literature Festival, all the way across the country in
Upper Assam. Our most eminent writer is also by far our best cultural
ambassador, and it was a very special treat for me to witness and
savour the non-stop back-and-forth love embracing ‘Bhaiyee’ wherever
he moved amongst the people with his characteristic grace, humility,
and savoir faire. We were 3200 kilometres away from Goa in that
pleasant college campus surrounded by tea estates spilling down to the
mighty Brahmaputra, but it really did feel distinctly like home.

This is but another step in an established continuum that tracks back
to GALF, which Bhaiyee and I co-founded in 2010 on behalf of the Goa
Writers group in partnership with the International Centre Goa, where
Assam and the surrounding states have always remained central to the
festival DNA. Our logic was clear then and now: like so much else in
the country in our times, the cultural landscape is being
corporatized, captured and homogenized via New Delhi nexus, for which
Goa is permanently stereotyped as an irrelevant and provincial oddity.
The arrogance – indeed ignorance – is hard-wired, and nothing can be
done about it. That is why GALF was created to celebrate Goa’s own
alongside the very best talent from across the subcontinent that is
being similarly excluded from the corpus of the cabal. From day one,
this curatorial emphasis resulted in an extraordinary flow of talent
from the North-East states.

Looking back at the give and take that has played out so positively
over twelve editions in fourteen years, it is interesting to remember
what our two very distant locations have meant to each other at
different times. Here is what the terrific Guwahati-based novelist and
translator Mitra Phukan said in her straight-from-the-heart keynote at
GALF 2013: “Goa’s culture of inclusiveness that is so different from
what much of Assam is now going through, constantly amazes. Of course
it is nobody’s case that smaller groups, and ethnicities should be
overlooked, or swamped in any way. But in Assam today, what we are
witnessing is a sharp and terrifyingly violent fragmentation of a
once-rich mosaic that made up our totality. There seems to be no space
for dialogue, no give and take leading to meaningful discussions
between groups, as the whole entity corkscrews into small, and
unviable sections.”

Phukan said that she was glad young people from the North East were
pouring out of the region because “it is an eye-opener for these young
people to move from the stifling atmosphere of their own home states
to the invigorating air of freedom in these places [like Goa, and] it
is absolutely vital that the young and even the old move out to
experience the way other states, other regions have been moving
forward, and developing. It is important for these stifled minds to
come to a state such as Goa where literature is being written in
several different languages. Amazingly, Konkani is written in four
different scripts, yet it is the same language [and] it has been
pointed out that historically, Goans have written in thirteen
languages. And miraculously, this diversity is not divisive, for
together, these form the writings of Goa. It is sometimes said that
the uniqueness of Goans is that they understand different cultures.
Not only that. They also help others understand each other’s cultures.
To people like us, who are coming in from a region that seems to be
self-destructing, this quality, this mindset, is of immense value.”

It’s hard not to feel ashamed when you think about what happened to
India’s smallest state and its cultural footprint in the intervening
years since Phukan made those perceptive observations. As just one
part of the catastrophic misgovernance that has brought ruin to so
many different aspects of contemporary Goa, all our premier arts and
literature institutions have been wrecked to mere shadows of what they
were then. Grotesque ignorance and incompetence reigns, and every time
any politician or administrator speaks about literature, art and
culture in recent years it only induces further shame about how far we
have fallen. But here’s the twist in the tale that no one expected:
it’s not like that in Assam, or most of the rest of the North East
either. From the evidence of the vibrant, highly impressive Dibrugarh
University International Literature Festival, they are now far
outclassing us with much more signal, far less noise, and zero
ultra-vulgar propaganda of the kind that has become so ingrained in
our part of the world.

In all this, of course, Bhaiyee has been one shining exception, and
our genial and soft-spoken man of steel did Goa proud as usual, with
his robust defence of the right to freedom of 

[Goanet] Follow the Money (O Heraldo. 17/3/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Follow-the-Money/219044

In what may yet be seen as the last gasp of India’s constitutional
democracy, the Supreme Court’s rulings against the billion-dollar flow of
anonymized electoral bonds have unexpectedly ripped the lid off an
extraordinarily sordid nexus of corruption, coercion and blackmail. It has
long been clear things are bad, but even the partial revelations of the
past few days have been shocking in the extreme, with implications almost
too painful to contemplate. There can be no further pretences about “of the
people, for the people and by the people” because it’s perfectly clear that
everything is actually bought and paid for right up front, by corporations
and criminals alike.

We still do not have all the information State Bank of India has been
trying to keep secret, and what has been reluctantly divulged under threat
of being held for contempt remains fragmentary. Nonetheless, what we’ve
learned is damaging enough, as the clear-thinking Tamil Nadu minister
Palanivel “PTR” Thiaga Rajan said on Friday: “the electoral bonds scheme
was atrociously bad. It built a platform where the government knew not only
who was donating to it but also who was donating to its opponents. Whereas,
the opponents knew nothing, the public knew nothing [and] the rest of the
state, the country and the people were left in the dark. [Actually, it]
should have been struck down as unconstitutional on the day it was
announced, or shortly thereafter.”

PTR explained that “the data shows so many cases of quid pro quo both
positive and negative, that is people [who are] already raided and targeted
end up paying money to get the investigation quashed, and people who are
about to get contracts pay money to get [them] while people who have got
contracts go and pay money, so this quid pro quo against the very fabric of
democracy is institutionalized.” He pointed out the SBI has yet to reveal
details of 2500 crores “donated” before 2019 of which 95% went to the BJP,
warning that “now you have full-fledged crony capitalism, and the state
being used as a weapon by one party. Democracy is in grave danger, and has
been for several years.”

In an editorial note for his excellent online publication *Article 14*,
focussed on research and reportage on issues related to the rule of law in
India, the veteran editor of Goan origin Samar Halarnkar wrote that “in a
functioning democracy, these revelations would have been enough to bring
down the government. But India, as the latest global democracy index told
us this week, remains an “electoral autocracy” with falling scores, ranked
108 between turmoil-ridden Niger and the Ivory Coast.” He said “the list of
electoral bond buyers reveal more than the existence of a sprawling
government-controlled hafta-vasooli operation. It exposes a fundamental
truth about Modi’s new India and its hierarchy of influence.”

Halarnkar’s publication specializes in bringing sunlight to the darkest
corners of Indian governance, so I emailed him to ask what was fresh enough
to surprise him in the SBI data despite everything he already knows. He
said it was “the depth and brazenness of what is essentially a
government-controlled protection racket. Now we see the country is heading
into elections with the election system deeply compromised and undermined
by corruption through electoral bonds. It is ironic that the BJP - which
rode an anti-corruption wave to power - is now instead spearheading an
unprecedented wave of government-backed corruption. Voters must appreciate
how electoral bonds have, far from cleaning up campaign funds, created an
entirely new system of legalised extortion.”

Will this corruption debacle have any effect on public opinion and the
upcoming elections? I was struck by what another veteran editor of Goan
origin Sunit Arora – he is the grandson of AL Dias of Assagao, the ICS
officer and former Governor of West Bengal from 1971-77– cautioned on
Twitter: “Rarely do we get a peek into the matrix that rules India today, a
business-political enterprise that is fuelled by bullying, favours and
kickbacks. Remember the Niira Radia tapes more than decade ago? What
happened to all of that?”

Vie email, Arora told me “that the country is managed by this toxic
cocktail of shared interests is by itself no surprise. Over the past three
decades, the confluence between the political establishment and business
has only become more sophisticated. A quick parsing of the sectors —
gaming, metals and mining, real estate, infrastructure, telecoms — that
have given the most funds show the government's role here is crucial, both
at the centre and the state. For all the talk of tenders, transparency and
audits, this brazen system has institutionalized crony capitalism.”


Arora says “what is surprising, perhaps, is the scale [but] but the
continuing brazenness of the ruling party and its supporters is surprising
too. For a political party that came to power on an 

[Goanet] Life Support for the Old GMC (O Heraldo, 9/3/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Life-Support-for-the-Old-GMC/218714

It was not so long ago, but few people like to remember the magnificent Old
Goa Medical College building on the Mandovi riverfront was given to
Delhi-based realtors in 2007 to remake into “an upscale shopping mall.”
This was done at the behest and with the blessings of Manohar Parrikar, the
late chief minister and longstanding MLA of Panjim, who had revamped the
heritage precinct to host the International Film Festival of India three
years earlier, but now insisted the sprawling 19th-century premises would
be best used for peddling luxury goods to tourists. And that is precisely
what would have happened except for an unlikely activist intervention in
the form of Aparanta, an art exhibition curated by Ranjit Hoskote and
mounted by a handful of partners (including me) led by GTDC managing
director Sanjit Rodrigues.

Today it is taken for granted that Panjim is brilliantly suited for
large-scale cultural events, with people from all over the country flying
in to host their jamborees. But that was not the case in 2007, when the
exact opposite was true: even the best Goa-based writers and artists were
compelled to go elsewhere to showcase their work because conventional
wisdom held that India’s smallest state possessed no audience that
mattered. For just one example, I will never forget the dismissive,
derogatory comments of Fundação Oriente’s representative of the time when
asked for his support: “there’s no point – if you want to do anything that
matters take it to Mumbai or Delhi.” Those kinds of belittling comments
fired lasting anger, and fuelled our collective determination to make
Aparanta the blueprint for an alternative future.

Hoskote laid it out precisely in his magisterial curatorial essay *Mapping
the Invisible River: Contemporary Art in Goa*, itself an important
milestone in the making of our contemporary cultural trajectory: “Aparanta
intervenes in an existing context; at the same time, it gestures towards
the new contexts that it can help frame around the art-works that form its
content. As a curator, I have always found exhibitions to be most
productive when they deal with the problems that beset an art-making ethos,
not when they celebrate what are taken to be the triumphs of that ethos. A
problem, attentively handled, can be more rewarding than a triumph,
complacently assumed [and] Aparanta is intended to make a major statement:
that Goa, far from being a cultural backwater remote from the centres of
Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore, is a seed-bed of artistic excellence.”

Part of the problem was hidden history: “Goan art has long been an
invisible river, one that has fed into the wider flow of Indian art but has
not always been recognised as so doing. This, despite the presence of such
master spirits of Goan origin – active throughout the colonial,
postcolonial and globalisation periods – as A X Trindade, Angelo da
Fonseca, F N Souza, V S Gaitonde and Laxman Pai. This, also, despite the
presence on the contemporary Indian gallery circuit, of consummately
accomplished artists like Antonio e Costa, Querozito De Souza, Theodore
Mariano Mesquita and Viraj Naik. The glossy stereotype is a more effective
blinder than the heated needle of the mediaeval executioner: the
associations of sun, sand, sex and carnival are so pervasive that even the
better-informed denizens of the Indian art world seem unaware of the
vibrancy of the art scene in Goa.”

But there were also fundamental misunderstandings to be addressed: “Any
sensitive viewer who spends a few days in Goa, visiting studios and
galleries (they are often the same space, since the absence of a
well-anchored gallery practice obliges artists to be their own agents,
entrepreneurially producing and distributing at the same time), will find
that Goa has brilliant, meteorically brilliant artists. But the lack of a
context has left them afloat in a void of discussion. Geographical
contiguity does not mean that Goa and mainland India share the same
universe of meaning: Goa’s special historic evolution, with its Lusitanian
route to the Enlightenment and print modernity, its Iberian emphasis on a
vibrant public sphere, its pride in its ancient internationalism avant la
lettre, sets it at a tangent to the self-image of an India that has been
formed with the experience of British colonialism as its basis. The
relationship between Goa’s artists and mainland India has, not
surprisingly, been ambiguous and erratic, even unstable.”

As though this vital context were not pressing enough, Hoskote also pointed
out that “one of the reasons for our urgency was the threat of re-purposing
that was already hanging over the exquisite building in which the
exhibition unfolds, when our discussions began, at the end of February
2007. In the seven weeks that it has taken us to translate ‘Aparanta’ from
drawing board into physical existence, the Old GMC Building has been handed
over to a New Delhi-based promoter 

[Goanet] India's Global Exodus (O Heraldo, 3/3/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/India%E2%80%99s-Global-Exodus/218478

Here’s one of the most startling facts about our rapidly changing
world: in 2023 alone, the United States caught and expelled 96,917
illegal immigrants from India along its borders with Canada and
Mexico, an astonishing five-fold increase in just three years and up
from basically zero just ten years ago. Now, almost unbelievably, an
estimated 750,000 Indians make up the third-largest population of
undocumented “aliens” in the USA, gaining fast on El Salvador (where
the growth is minimal) and Mexico (from where the numbers are actually
in reverse). Another highly revealing data point: the highest
proportion of these desperate unfortunates are from Gujarat.

Of course, it’s not just America. Earlier this week, UK authorities
reported almost 1200 Indians risked crossing the English Channel in
small boats to seek asylum last year, which is 60% more than in 2022,
and – again – up from literally zero just five years ago. This puts
India amongst the top sources of those risking this dangerous journey,
along with strife-ridden and war-torn countries like Sudan, Syria and
Iraq. By contrast, there were just 103 from Pakistan. Also noteworthy:
Indians supply the largest number of illegal immigrants to the UK via
the more tried-and-tested - not to mention safer - route of
overstaying their visas, as often pointed out by Suella Fernandes
Braverman, the former Home Secretary with ancestral roots in Assagao
and Calangute, whose resolute opposition on this issue is holding up
the long-awaited India-UK Free Trade Agreement.

What is happening in terms of legal migration by India’s best,
brightest and most qualified, who have legitimate means and avenues to
leave the country? If anything, those numbers are even more shocking.
According to the Organization for Co-operation and Development – the
OECD is a club of 38 developed countries – India catapulted high above
China as the biggest source of migrants to their member states
directly after the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, the difference was
already 41 Indians to 23 Chinese, and the gap has only grown
wider ever since. Migrants from India now outnumber all others in a
bewildering array of countries: Sweden, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand.

What does all this imply for those who remain in India? How should we
understand “the great escape” underway all around us? I found some
valuable context and perspective in an analysis by Ashoka Mody – the
former IMF and World Bank executive who teaches international economic
policy at Princeton – that was first published on the India House
Foundation website, which says its mission is to “to empower the
Indian diaspora in the United States and around the world with
accurate, unbiased, and comprehensive information about the
socioeconomic and political realities of India. We are committed to
fostering a deeper understanding of India's challenges and
opportunities among diaspora members, enabling them to make informed
decisions, engage in meaningful dialogue, and actively participate in
efforts to drive positive change.”

Mody says “over the last five years, 70 million Indians have sought
work in the deeply unproductive segments of Indian agriculture. This
is a cataclysmic regression, as anyone acquainted with the development
process will recognize. A healthy developing economy—particularly one
with shiny digital and physical infrastructure—should experience a
sharp decline in the agricultural workforce and an increase in modern
industrial and service jobs. But the Indian economy generates too few
industrial or urban jobs. Outside of agriculture, the limited
opportunities are in financially (and often physically) precarious
construction and low-end service roles such as street vendors,
housekeepers, security guards, and drivers. Hence, those seeking work
are often driven to an agricultural sector plagued by declining
groundwater and the weather vagaries induced by global warming. The
result is high indebtedness, crop losses, and an increasing number of
farmer suicides.”

He points out that “not surprisingly, the largest number of illegal
migrants originate from agricultural areas in Punjab and Prime
Minister Modi’s home state of Gujarat, famed for its purported Gujarat
model of development. Importantly, the migrants have a reasonable
standard of living by Indian yardsticks. They are from what might
constitute the lower middle class rather than the poorest
group—migration is an expensive business that costs tens of thousands
of dollars. It is noteworthy, therefore, that Indians who have
achieved some measure of success and possess a financial cushion today
are, not unreasonably, worried about the future for themselves and
their children. They prefer to sell their land or other assets, and
borrow from friends and moneylenders to leave while they can.”

The bottom line is extremely alarming. Mody warns that “the Indian
government has long since run out 

[Goanet] #GALF2024 LIVESTREAM

[V M]

https://www.youtube.com/live/SzhcL-WrRu0?si=ju-2yznlQAqvQ4U5

[Goanet] #GALF2024 LIVE

[V M]

 https://www.youtube.com/live/SzhcL-WrRu0?si=ju-2yznlQAqvQ4U5

[Goanet] GALF 2024: Different Ways of Belonging (O Heraldo, 10/2/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/GALF-2024-Different-Ways-of-Belonging/217608

At the age of 67, on my invitation as one of the organisers of *Aparanta*,
the path-breaking 2007 art exhibition with an activist agenda, the great
Bombay Goan poet and professor Eunice de Souza did her first public reading
in her ancestral homeland, under the vast spreading branches of a rain tree
that no longer exists, in what is now the Old Goa Medical College heritage
precinct (but was then on the verge of being transformed into a shopping
mall). It was a sensational debut in a moment filled with angst. At this
point of her storied career, we had been told the fierce Ms. de Souza was
mellowed, but what we got was pure dynamite. I can never forget when these
lines rang out in the night:





*No matter thatmy name is Greekmy surname Portuguesemy language alien.There
are ways of belonging.*

This was potent intervention, at a time there was still considerable
resistance to any cultural assertion from Goa that did not fit the familiar
crude stereotypes. In his landmark essay for *Aparanta*, the curator Ranjit
Hoskote pointed out that “Goa has brilliant, meteorically brilliant
artists. But the lack of a context has left them afloat in a void of
discussion. Geographical contiguity does not mean that Goa and mainland
India share the same universe of meaning: Goa’s special historic evolution,
with its Lusitanian route to the Enlightenment and print modernity, its
Iberian emphasis on a vibrant public sphere, its pride in its ancient
internationalism avant la lettre, sets it at a tangent to the self-image of
an India that has been formed with the experience of British colonialism as
its basis. The relationship between Goa’s artists and mainland India has,
not surprisingly, been ambiguous and erratic, even unstable.”

This problem was paramount in our minds during *Aparanta,* until Eunice de
Souza gave us another way to think about it. It struck home. Why do we all
have to belong in the same way? Surely, if there is one overarching lesson
to learn from Goa’s extraordinarily rich, ancient and many-layered history
it is that of inclusion. Like the rest of the Konkan and Malabar coasts,
this culture was born in confluence, and continuously remakes itself in
dialogue with the world. Many cities and countries around the world have an
impactful Goan history: Nairobi, Karachi, Rangoon, Aden, now Swindon and
Southall too. They belong to us, and we belong to them. It cannot be denied
there is great strength in all these different ways of belonging, with this
caveat: we must ensure we can accommodate them all without getting divided
for no good reason.

When the International Centre Goa approached the Goa Writers group to
collaborate on creating a new literature festival in 2010, our own Damodar
Mauzo had already been developing this idea for some time. Konkani
literature’s beloved ‘Bhaiyee’ – who later won the 2021 Jnanpith Award –
realised that Indian publishing was developing into a Delhi-centric
juggernaut which consigned much of the rest of the country to “the
margins”. We thought to reverse this absurdly blinkered hierarchy, and
focus on the many areas of excellence that were being unfairly overlooked,
both in terms of regions and genres: the North East states, Kashmir,
translations, poetry. From the very first Goa Arts + Literature Festival to
next week’s 12th edition, the central theme and inspiration has remained
different ways of belonging, as you see reflected in the classic GALF
poster artwork by Amruta Patil that runs on this page.

Since the pandemic, GALF has faced many challenges, including the down side
of remaining strictly independent, non-profit and volunteer-driven. There
is much to celebrate however, including some of the best and most engaged
discussions in the world of literature and the arts. This year, there are
also performances by the great singer-songwriter Akhu Chingangbam of Imphal
Talkies (on the 15th) and Stuti Choir (17th) as well as Sonia Shirsat
(closing dinner). Some of those coming to Dona Paula next week include the
eminent Toronto-based food writer Naomi Duguid, the pioneering
Franco-Indian novelist Ari Gautier, highly regarded debutants Devika Rege,
Sohini Chattopadhyay, Yogesh Maitreya, and Manish Gaekwad, and many other
national literary treasures like I Allan Sealy, KR Meera, Robin Ngangom,
Vivek Shanbhag and Mini Krishnan.

Identical to the state which it represents, GALF is small but extremely
diverse. This edition includes Mani Shankar Aiyar’s memoir about Rahul
Gandhi and Abhishek Chowdhary’s biography of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We will
showcase Rahman Abbas’s Urdu novel *Ek Tarha ka Pagalpan* based in the
Konkani Muslim community, and Vasudhendra’s Kannada novel *Tejo
Tunghabhadra* that tracks between Lisbon, Goa and the Deccan in the 16th
and 17th centuries, and Damodar Mauzo’s Konkani novel *Jeev Diun kai Chya
Marun* in translation by Jerry Pinto (whose amazing new translations of
Tukaram will also 

[Goanet] Not Belonging with Geetanjali Shree (O Heraldo, 27/1/2024(

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/details.php?n_id=217076

On January 22nd earlier this week - an historic day filled with complicated
feelings - I had the distinct privilege and pleasure of talking and walking
across the breadth of Panjim from Campal to Fontainhas in the company of
the brilliant Hindi-language novelist and writer Geetanjali Shree (who won
the 2021 International Booker Prize for *Ret Samadhi*, translated as *Tomb
of Sand* by Daisy Rockwell) and her husband, the distinguished historian
Sudhir Chandra. It was an opportunity to think deeply about what it means
to belong to India at this majoritarian moment, as the prime minister
declared at the new “temple of national consciousness” that “Ram is the
faith of India, Ram is the foundation of India. Ram is the idea of India.
Ram is the law of India. Ram is the prestige of India. Ram is the glory of
India. Ram is the leader and Ram is the policy.”

 This is where we have reached 2024, but my introduction to Goa’s distinct
cultural history for Shree and Chandra started in the 19th century, with
the statue of Francisco Luis Gomes, the 19th century physician, economist,
politician and writer who argued for liberty, equality and fraternity for
all Indians. In some ways, he is also Shree’s direct intellectual ancestor,
because his impassioned anti-caste 1864 *Os Brâmanes* is one of the first
Indian novels. However, there’s also a straight line from Gomes to Ambedkar
due to their emphasis on economics, and unyielding demands for parity in
all dimensions. The great Goan pioneer could be lyrical, as in his famous
1861 letter to Alphonse de Lamartine, the poet-statesman of France’s Second
Republic: “I was born in India, the cradle of poetry, philosophy and
history, today its tomb. I belong to that race which wrote the Mahabharata
and invented Chess – two conceptions that bear in them the eternal and the
infinite [but] this nightingale has lost its voice. I demand for India,
liberty and light!” But he also highly effectively deployed the language of
rights, insisting “there should not be any distinction between the natives
of India and those of Portugal, other than that of merit.”

On the 22nd, our slow, voluble stroll towards the oldest precincts of
Panjim took in many of the city’s monuments to resistance: the
building-sized mural tribute to Sita Valles, the gutsy and glamorous (and
martyred very young) Pasionára of Angola’s freedom struggle by the
sensational young British-Israeli-Goan artist Solomon Souza; the Azad
Maidan memorial for Tristão Braganza Cunha, who ardently advocated for
Indian nationalism in 1920s Europe; and the dramatic statue of José
Custódio (Abbé) Faria next to Palácio do Idalcão, where there is both
literary history (because this Candolim-born priest is immortalized in *The
Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas) and the political, as Faria and
his father plotted against the Portuguese colonial regime.

Making our way through pleasantly empty streets, my walking companions and
I kept dwelling on the ideas of India that still bind us together, across
places and cultures as disparate as the profoundly cosmopolitan ancient
entrepôts on the Konkan and Malabar coastline and the “Hindi heartland”
which has come to dominate the contemporary national polity. Later, when I
emailed Shree, she told me that “the entire morning with you and Goa was
important for me because it was an assertion - reassertion, if you will -
of our being another way than what was being celebrated that same time in
Ayodhya and elsewhere; of us being syncretic, pluralistic, co-mingled and
co-shaped (if I may coin the term!) in our cultures, traditions, religions,
everything.”

These sentiments have preoccupied the author throughout her career, as she
writes in a revealing 2011 essay in *Caravan*. After her first novel was
published in 1993 came “frenetic years in our national life. They brought
to the fore certain cataclysmic changes that had been brewing
subterraneously. Those changes began surfacing obtrusively with LK Advani’s
Rath Yatra, which culminated in the first unsuccessful assault on the Babri
Masjid, and a spate of violence against Muslims in several cities.
Eventually, these events climaxed in the demolition of the masjid and the
eruption of unprecedented cruelty against Muslims in Surat and Mumbai. The
best the nation had upheld lay shattered. As a writer, I felt paralysed.
Could I possibly write about anything but this? How could I write about
this? Would it not be vulgar to think of aesthetics in writing about this?
Aesthetics apart, could one understand what one was condemned to
witnessing? It seemed that something beyond settled habits of thought,
familiar categories and received modes of saying things was required to
make sense of, and articulate, the events of this period. Instead, every
time I sought to think and say something differently, it ended up being
expressed in the same hackneyed way. Yet, it was impossible not to write.”

The immediate 

[Goanet] An Unprepared Generation? (O Heraldo, 21/1/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/An-Unprepared-Generation/216841

The latest Annual Status of Education (ASER) report from Pratham – one
of the largest and most respected NGOs – has compiled an important
data set on students in rural areas between the ages of 14-18, from
the generation whose successes and failures will define the country’s
future. There are hopeful signs, but also many red flags: more than
half these teens cannot solve simple mathematical problems, and a
quarter of them fail to read at 2nd Standard level. There’s also an
excruciating gender gap in access to crucial technology of our times
like smartphones and laptops, with far more boys online than girls.
There is reason to celebrate that greater numbers of Indians enjoy
more years of schooling than ever, but the outcomes will need to
improve in order to prevent the vaunted “demographic dividend” from
turning disastrous.

ASER surveyed 35,000 teenagers in 28 districts across 26 States
(unfortunately Goa does not participate). In an article at
asercentre.org, the organisation’s head Wilima Wadhwa says their
report “gives a snapshot of the lives of young people in rural India –
their school and work status, their digital engagement, their ability
to do simple everyday calculations as well as common digital tasks and
their aspirations.” The good news is “most young people are enrolled
in some educational institution – 86.8% of 14-18 year olds are
enrolled in either school or college. One major worry at the time of
Covid was that with livelihoods being threatened, older children would
drop out of school. That fear turned out to be unfounded.”

However, says Wadhwa, “there does not seem to be much change in their
foundational literacy and numeracy skills. In 2017, 76.6% of 14-18-
year-olds could read a Std II level text. In 2023, this number is
slightly lower at 73.6%. In arithmetic, in 2017, 39.5% of youth could
do a simple (Std III/IV level) division problem. In 2023, this
proportion is slightly higher at 43.3%. Needless to say, there are
differences across grades and by enrolment status – more youth in
higher grades can do these tasks and similarly learning levels of
youth who are enrolled in school/college are much higher than among
those who are not enrolled. For instance, 78.1% of youth who were
enrolled in school/college could read at Std II level as compared to
43.2% of those who were not enrolled in school. Similarly, 47.5% of
enrolled youth could do division as compared to 14.7% of those who
were not currently enrolled. However, this doesn’t take away from the
fact that a sizeable proportion of our youth do not have basic reading
and numeracy skills.”

The inequalities are starker between boys and girls. Another article
on the ASER website by Suman Bhattacharjea outlines how the survey
included “self-reported questions on ownership and use of smartphones,
as well as actual tasks that sampled youth were asked to do using a
smartphone. There were five such tasks in all. Among these, one asked
the youth to use Google Maps to figure out how long it would take to
get from their current location to the district bus stand on a two- or
four-wheeler. Among all the youth who were given the digital tasks,
fewer than 4 of every 10 were able to answer this one correctly (37%).
Moreover, this statistic hides enormous gender differences. Almost
half of the males who were asked this question could use the app to
figure out how long it would take to get to the district bus stand
(49%). Only half that proportion – 25% of girls and young women –
could do so.”

Bhattacharjea says the findings “reflect a conundrum.” On the one
hand, “these data show that more females in this age group aspire to
continue to higher levels of education than their male counterparts.”
Nonetheless, it “does not imply they are gaining the knowledge,
skills, or confidence needed to successfully negotiate their lives as
adults” because “on every single one of the 17 assessment tasks
spanning applied arithmetic, applied reading, financial calculations,
and digital tasks, far more females failed to attempt the task than
males [and] by far the highest no-response rate was for the Google
Maps task (which was given only to youth who could bring a smartphone
for the assessment): fully 55% of the females to whom it was
administered refused to even attempt the task, as compared to 32% of
the males. They did not even try to figure it out.”

ASER’s findings are highly relevant in Goa, which the RBI ranks the
worst in the country in rural employment. Although literacy and
education are comparatively high, unemployment is even higher, over
double the national rate. Part of the problem is most current job
opportunities are ruthlessly exploitative – thus filled by desperate
migrants - but it’s also true many ostensibly well-educated
job-seekers in India’s smallest state are underprepared for the 21st
century economy. “A malaise seems to be fostered by our tedious
education 

[Goanet] Make Vivek Great Again (Mint, 18/1/2024)

[V M]

https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/vivek-ramaswamy-s-best-shot-at-power-is-as-trump-s-campaign-partner-11705508835333.html

An absurdist scenario has played out for months in the bizarrely
binary racial politics of the US, with one Indian-American identifying
as “Black” in the vice-president’s office (Kamala Harris generally
downplays her mother’s Tamil heritage) and another passing for “White”
(Nikki Haley’s parents are Punjabi Sikhs) in her quest for the
Republican party’s presidential nomination amidst a tight field of
candidates that included Vivek Ramaswamy, the only undisguised
Indian-American among the three, till he withdrew from the race this
week. This mercurial 38-year-old entrepreneur splashed out $17 million
of his own money to garner only about 8,000 votes in Monday’s Iowa
caucuses, a moment of truth that led him to drop out in support of
Donald Trump, with the controversial ex-president hinting of an
extended relationship: “It’s an honour to have his endorsement. He’s
gonna be working with us... for a long time.”

Ramaswamy rocketed to attention with an unconventional internet-first
strategy, relentless hard work on the campaign trail and an eagerness
to break with Republican orthodoxy. In the first televised debate last
September, he channelled former president Barack Obama—who remains
anathema to Republicans—by introducing himself as another “skinny guy
with a funny last name” and quickly pivoted to slam his fellow
candidates: “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t bought and
paid for.” Two months later, he complained, “We’ve become a party of
losers. It’s a cancer in the Republican establishment,” then called
for the party chairperson to resign on live television, and attacked
Haley as “Dick Cheney in high heels” (referring to George Bush’s
vice-president from 2000 to 2009).

Such outlandish tactics would have been unacceptable in any previous
era of American politics, but Trump upturned all prevailing norms in
the course of his own wrecking-ball campaign of 2016. The first former
president in US history to be criminally indicted—he is currently
charged with 91 criminal offences in 4 major cases—continues to
rewrite the rules of politics by ignoring debates, and dominates
opinion polls despite barely ever getting off social media to tour the
country. Yet, he is favoured to win against President Joe Biden if the
two face each other again, which means that Haley, Florida governor
Ron DeSantis and Ramaswamy are left jockeying for a chance to be his
running mate.

Will it happen for one of the Indian-Americans? At this point, it
seems more likely for Haley, who stays away from overtly attacking
Trump while keeping the Republican establishment in her corner,
including mega-funders like the Koch brothers. The former South
Carolina governor could help soften Trump’s image to win over women
voters (on account of whom he had lost to Biden). She has also worked
to project an indeterminate “White-adjacent” ethnicity, even listing
her own race as “white” in voting records, and emphasizing her
conversion to Methodist Christianity. As a newcomer, Ramaswamy has
learned hard lessons in Iowa about these basic requirements to win
national elections in the US. Earlier this week, one voter told his
wife Apoorva there’s resistance “because of his dark skin, and they
think he’s Muslim.”

Is there a glass ceiling for Indian-Americans in politics, even for
those who have played to the establishment as assiduously as Ramaswamy
(a high-school valedictorian and Harvard graduate who attended Yale
Law School)?

I asked Vikram Patel, the Paul Farmer professor and chair of the
department of global health and social medicine at Harvard, who told
me: “I haven’t heard much talk about his Indian heritage being an
asset, but it is notable that two of the four Republican candidates
going into Iowa were full-blooded desis. This is, of course, at odds
with the political leanings of Indian-Americans at large, who are
heavily Democratic in orientation.” He thinks Ramaswamy’s run ended
“because he is so far off the spectrum of acceptability even in a
party which heavily supports Trump,” adding, “I don’t think we have
seen the end of the race for Indian- Americans. Let’s not forget that
the US has had two Indian governors in recent years, both Republican.
If anything, I think the star of Indian-Americans in politics is on
the rise precisely because they are seen as a model minority who
embrace the core US value of hard work as a route to the American
dream.”

That perception—and varying degrees of willingness to act out ‘the
good immigrant’—is the crux of what Ramaswamy and Haley must navigate
in a country that computes race in unhelpful binaries of black and
white. The system demands a kind of perverse minstrelsy from them,
because they have no political future running as themselves. In this
context, it was especially off-putting to watch Ramaswamy bend over
backwards to ingratiate himself with potential voters, 

[Goanet] The Changing Faces of Brand Goa (O Heraldo, 13/01/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Changing-Faces-of-Brand-Goa/216490

Michelle Mendonça Bambawale’s charming and unique book launch in Siolim
last week was an interesting illustration of the newly charged and
changed-up post-pandemic cultural landscape of Goa. The event unfolded at
sunset under coconut palms in the garden of the author’s creatively
reconfigured 160-year home that was originally built by her
great-great-grandfather - where she has swapped out the balcão for a Thai
pergola – and was the first fully-scripted book discussion I’ve ever
attended, with vivacious back-and-forth Q dialogue from her husband
Bharat (an expert in marketing), 32-year-old son Kunal (a product and
marketing executive) and 28-year-old daughter Divya, who is an elementary
school teacher in San Francisco.

Bambawale’s literary debut – and indeed her ample Goa life as evidenced by
the enthusiastic crowds at her launch – is itself part of the pandemic
fallout in India’s smallest state. She explains in* Becoming Goan: A
contemporary coming-home story *– the first chapter is aptly entitled *Who
Am I? A Real Goan or a Pandemic Migrant?* that “it was Covid-19 that
propelled the four of us and our Labrador, Haruki, to relocate to Goa in
June 2020. I was looking to find safety in a place my grandparents had
left…had always had a complicated relationship with my Goan lineage. I had
never lived in Goa full-time and I did not speak Konkani. I knew little of
this land, its many histories and mysteries, and was the clichéd global
citizen.”

As lockdown extended, “the Covid-19 timeout allowed me to reflect on my
Goan identity. I felt that it was time to write my reflections on this
lived paradox – a look at Goa from the outside, as well as a journey of
discovery.” Bambawale says “after eighteen years of living as an expat and
looking in from the outside of the host country, I now find myself in a
strange position living in Goa. I wonder if I am an insider, given my Goan
heritage. As an expat, you know your stay is temporary and that you are
always an outsider. I now find myself torn between two worlds – the Goan
and the outsider, but I don’t belong in either. I guess we all suffer from
some incarnation of the impostor syndrome. Turbulent Covid-19 times made me
question – Is the pursuit of happiness to find love, home, family and
safety? Is home a place or a people?”

These are highly relatable questions explored with guileless sincerity, and
Bambawale’s book slots alongside *Glad Seasons in Goa* (1994) by the late,
great adman Frank Simoes, and Katarina Kakar’s excellent 2013 *Moving to
Goa*, both of which traced identical journeys of understanding, and putting
down new roots in Goa. The big difference between them is timing. Back in
the late 1980s when Simoes moved from Bombay to live in still-pristine
Candolim, his friends thought he had lost it, and the eccentricity would
soon pass, but *Becoming Goan* emerges into an era bristling with unlimited
hordes of Indian elites with Goa aspirations (almost all of which exclude
the pesky, inconvenient Goans themselves). Unavoidably, it was that
precipitous journey from blissful “backwater” obscurity to half-destroyed
playground for the world’s worst tourists that kept playing in my mind as
dusk fell over the launch at Siolim.

The thought occurred: what would marketing experts say about Goa’s
transformed and still-shifting brand identity? Given that Bharat Bambawale
was already in my line of sight, after decades of high-level experience in
international marketing communications, including a stint as Airtel’s first
and only global brand director, I ventured to ask this acclaimed
consultant, whose own debut *Nine Timeless Nuggets: Essential Marketing for
the Young and Ambitious* was published by Penguin in 2020, and was
immediately impressed by his perceptive analysis: “Goa has always possessed
a certain magnetism to people all over the world which has always been
disproportionate to and much larger than its actual place in the economy.
The exchange between visitor and host was benign. The influx of outsiders
was culturally and physically non-invasive and non-corrosive. Both sides
were rewarded - the host Goan with (modest) financial gains and the visitor
with relaxation and tranquillity. Both sides wished to maintain the status
quo, and indeed did. Were there other desti-nations in India that mirrored
some if not all of Goa’s physical features? Of course there were, some with
similar or arguably better features. But none could come even close to Goa
in one remarkable way: how it made people feel. Goa made people feel a
certain way – and still does. This touches a very im-portant aspect of
branding and brand soft power - brands are not just about what they do
functionally, they are crucially about how they make people feel. Goa made
people feel happy, relaxed and rejuvenated in a manner few, if any, other
places in India did.”

In marketing terms, all this is pure magic. Bambawale says the 

[Goanet] Another Annus Horribilis? (O Heraldo, 7/1/2024)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Another-Annus-Horribilis/216193

Good governance has always been elusive in Goa, but the past decade has
been an unmitigated disaster for the people, culture, environment and
democracy in India’s smallest State. It didn’t have to be this way, after a
good start post-1961 with decent administrators working towards meaningful
social justice priorities under Dayanand ‘Bhausaheb’ Bandodkar, and there
was another dawn of hope during the rise of Manohar Parrikar, the first
IITian to become MLA and CM in the country. All that promise was squandered
however, in the depressing pattern of arrogance, incompetence, corruption
and impunity that continues to hold sway. Things were already bad when the
CM expired in office in 2019, and then have only become unimaginably worse.

This ongoing catastrophe presents more than one conundrum. Why does India’s
best educated, wealthiest, and most cosmopolitan electorate tolerate
abysmal misgovernance, and the rampant destruction of its own quality of
life? How do voters ignore the converging crises in front of their noses:
youth unemployment nearly 30%, garbage overwhelming the landscape, mayhem
on the roads, rampant illegality and an epidemic of crime? When did it
become risky – even dangerous – to simply state these truths in public, as
though the right to information has already been extinguished?

There is broader context here that must be taken into consideration. Goa is
disgracefully misgoverned compared to Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and several
other States near and far, but its worst problems are due to the collapse
of accountability and oversight at the Centre. Many of the crucial
institutions have ceased functioning in the way they were intended, often
deployed to purely political ends. The damage is systemic. According to the
excellent Sweden-based Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) multinational
project, India ceased being democratic in 2019 and is now officially an
“electoral autocracy”.

Here too, the bigger picture demonstrates an alarming pattern, because
V-Dem’s *2023 Democracy Report* says 72% of the world’s population lives in
“electoral or closed autocracies”, an increase from just 46% in 2013. Over
the past decade, the world has seen a wave of “autocratization” - Russia,
Nigeria, and Turkey are in the same category as India – to go along with
already closed societies like China, Myanmar, and Iran. We can easily
recognise the signs: “Toxic levels of polarisation hinder cooperation among
elites and induce citizens to abandon democratic principles to keep their
leader in power and get their preferred policy. That way, toxic levels of
polarisation often increase support for autocratic leaders and empower
their illiberal agendas. Disinformation, polarisation, and autocratization
thus reinforce each other.”

Unfortunately, this crisis is exacerbated because the existing global
powers are fatally compromised to lead by alternative – Gaza is only one
example – and newly comparatively weak. This means much of ‘the developing
world’ has liberty to act out in ways they never have before. India
utilises this historic opportunity with brilliant effect on the
international stage, but the problem is what occurs with similar abandon at
home. *Le Monde* editorialised accurately earlier this year: “Attempts to
suppress the media, harassment of opponents and minorities, manipulation of
the justice system, educational revisionism: Modi’s record speaks for
itself. This makes it all the more regrettable that countries that claim to
defend democratic values prefer to remain silent, so as not to upset a
regime that is asserting itself in the new global geopolitical order.” It
should be noted one of the most prominent enablers is Emmanuel Macron,
eager guest of honour at the 75th anniversary Republic Day parade in New
Delhi later this month.

2024 will make the difference, because more than half the world’s
population will vote on their future. *Time *quotes V-Dem’s director
Staffan Lindberg saying it is a “make or break year for democracy in the
world”, and notes that “of the 43 countries expected to hold free and fair
elections this electoral megacycle, 28 do not actually meet the essential
conditions for a democratic vote [and] 8 of the 10 most populous countries
in the world, including India, Mexico, and the US—all of which head to the
polls this year—are grappling with the challenge of ensuring voter
participation, free speech, and electoral independence while
authoritarianism is on the rise.”

In this regard, the January 2024 edition of *Journal of Democracy *has some
insightful analysis by Ashutosh Varshney and Connor Staggs of Brown
University in an essay entitled Hindu Nationalism and the New Jim Crow (the
latter term refers to American laws that enforced racial segregation):
“What makes Modi’s India and the Jim Crow United States comparable? It is
the idea that electorally legitimated majoritarianism can be used to create
an ensemble of 

[Goanet] Standing with Giants (O Heraldo, 30/12/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Standing-with-Giants/215855

Such pleasure and privilege for me earlier this week, to help launch *Hope
for Sanity: Selected Writings of Julio Ribeiro 2002-2021* in conversation
with the 94-year-old author (and distinguished police officer and civil
servant) in his ancestral village of Porvorim, along with an intimate
audience including three generations of his family as well as his
92-year-old younger brother Edgar Ribeiro, the former chief planner of the
Government of India. The two men are personal heroes of mine, and so many
others, with their unstinting and unbroken record of service and commitment
to the country and their fellow citizens. Separately and together, they
have represented the finest tradition of Goan contributions to the making
of modern India, and the fact they continue to do so with undimmed passion
is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

On the evening of the book launch, I asked the brothers how it is that
lightning struck twice in their family, and delivered two towering figures
into one household. They demurred modestly, and made jokes, and Edgar went
so far as to say they were no different from “all the Goan families of the
time”, besides their father too had been extremely diligent in his own
career in the India Postal Service. Yet, we can all see those are not any
kind of sufficient explanation for the sheer bravery and fighting spirit
these otherwise entirely gentle men possess in full measure, nor the
indomitable mettle that has led them to repeatedly stand up and speak where
others remain scared and silent. I liked how Samar Halarnkar put it in his
brief Foreword to the new book: “Nations frequently require citizens who
remind them of what is right and wrong. History tells us this not a popular
task, but this is what Julio Ribeiro has done since he retired as one of
India’s finest: he has become one of our conscience keepers.”

This refusal to tell anything less than the truth, in as forthright a
manner as possible, was fully apparent during the launch of *Hope for
Sanity: Selected Writings of Julio Ribeiro 2002-2021*. Like everyone else
in our fraught times, I am fully aware of many truths that are meant to be
left unsaid, of lines that you are not meant to cross in public when
referring to the government, amidst the very close and constant attention
of people constantly monitoring for any signs of dissent, disagreement, or
what Orwell called “thought crimes.” In this increasingly claustrophobic
environment, it takes rare guts to go ahead and speak your mind anyway, and
it is especially because that characteristic is conspicuously lacking in
2023 Goa that it was so stirring to hear and see the fearless nonagenarian
state it exactly like he believes it in Porvorim earlier this week.

Halarnkar summarizes this trait nicely: “Ribeiro has – through his popular
newspaper columns and public letters – chided former colleagues on
extrajudicial and illegal approached to their job, criticized the
demonization of minorities, described and offered solutions to the fraught
job of policing the new India and never hesitated to hold a mirror to his
people and his country. It would have been easy for Ribeiro to do none of
this and spend his retirement basking in adulation, which is what most men
and women in uniform favourably regarded by the public when in service tend
to do. But doing the safe and popular thing has never been his approach to
life…as his career indicated, he has always been guided not just by the law
but his conscience, even at the cost of personal safety, as the
assassination attempt on him and his wife in 1991 when he was ambassador to
Romania made clear.”

*Hope for Sanity* is an interesting selection of writing that also reminds
us that Ribeiro is almost unique in speaking truth to power in the way he
does. The titles alone tell the tale quite bluntly: Mumbai Police Needs
Leadership, Criminals in Uniform, How Political Masters are Orchestrating
the Delhi Police in Riots Case, The Dangerous ‘Yes Men’: Growing Political
Interference in Appointments Doesn’t Bode Well, Choosing Wrong Men to Lead,
As a Responsible Political Figure, Devendra Fadnavis Ought to Moderate his
Impulses, Rakesh Asthana’s New Job Shows How the Administration is Out to
Destroy Our Institutions. There are excellent pieces on many topics,
including a moving introspection about Indian policing after the death of
George Floyd galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA and
beyond: “Racism in the US and Islamaphobia and casteism in India are on the
same shameful planc. Our leaders should contemplate on the larger picture.
It shows us as narrow-minded bigots, unworthy of sitting at the high table
in the comity of nations unless we decide that hating minority communities
diminishes the human race. Islamophobia and caste prejudice should nudge us
to go down on bended knees to beg forgiveness of those we have wronged.

In conversation at the book launch in Porvorim, in 

[Goanet] Mapping the Future in Bengaluru (GQ, December 2023)

[V M]

https://www.gqindia.com/content/bengaluru-unleashes-a-new-creative-impetus-that-matches-its-energy-and-ambition

A curious paradox has reigned in Bengaluru since it began boiling with
money after liberalization in 1991, and the famously bucolic “Garden City”
became the epicentre of India’s globalization story. Now the
fastest-growing city in the entire Asia-Pacific region, its population has
tripled in the greatest urban economic boom in the subcontinent since 1947.
Yet, even while defining the country’s future prospects in many different
crucial areas, all that limitless ambition seemingly stopped short when it
comes to art and culture, which continued to languish
under-institutionalized and incongruously informal. Now, all in a rush in
the post-pandemic era, that too is being rapidly transformed, as a host of
independent ventures are rising up to fill the vacuum. Trail-blazing this
bold new direction is the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), which opened
in February earlier this year, and has already galvanized the art world
with its impressive tech-forward online and physical avatars. Intrigued by
what it has achieved in just a few months, I recently visited MAP to better
understand how this cultural start-up is navigating an expanding set of
international ambitions alongside its home city’s rooted identity.

“The native and the global are always in conflict in Bangalore, it is part
of our evolution,” says Suresh Jayaram, an integral bridge figure between
the colonial-­era cantonment city and its 21st-­century ambitions, whose
studio-gallery-residence 1Shanthiroad has functioned as an influential
creative crossroads since he built it on family property in 2003. I have
been an admirer since he attended the Goa Arts and Literature Festival many
years ago—where I am a cocurator along with the Jnanpith Award winner
Damodar Mauzo—and last year thoroughly enjoyed his self-­published labour
of love *Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and the City*,
which “grounds itself in local histories and presents”. The evening before
venturing to MAP, we spent pleasant hours talking together in the shaded
courtyard of 1Shanthiroad, which was hosting an excellent exhibition by
Kapila Nahender, where the artist statement explained: “I have access to an
eclectic iconography and various traditional practices, juxtaposed and
living side by side in the Halasuru neighbourhood, and surrounding areas of
Fraser Town and Shivajinagar where I live in Bengaluru. [They] inspire me
to create works of art that afford a certain acceptance and ambiguity. It
helps me in understanding this urban energy, its vibrant mishmash of a
lovely, pulsating and hopeful way of life.”

Perhaps more than anyone else in constantly shapeshifting Bengaluru,
Jayaram has experienced the city’s diverse art scenes up close, and
singularly embodies both its Kannadiga roots and 21st-­century
international networks. It is his life’s work and his life itself:
1Shanthiroad is home, where he extends “radical hospitality” to everyone
who enters, in an intentionally disarming way of being that generates
instant familiarity and friendship. This one-man lifeline for artists has
made a huge difference all by himself, recounting that “the 1990s were
unmistakably a paradigm shift, where Bangalore was caught in the global
climb of IT, but this new economy was not reflected in the arts, and was
more seen in rampant unplanned urban growth that changed the city and the
mindset of people. The ‘art boom’ in Mumbai and Delhi hardly mattered to
the local scene, which has diverse forms of regional modernism and
subversive art and experimentation. My way of addressing this problem has
been ‘solidarity economics’. A space with zero administrative and
bureaucratic designs, which adapts in accordance to the possible. Over 20
years after it came into existence, 1Shanthiroad continues to present the
‘alternative’ as an institutional critique.”

There is important context here, in the Indian art world’s ever-present
existential anxieties following the shocking collapse of the still-nascent
modern and contemporary art marketplace in 2008, followed by the consistent
mismanagement of most of the country’s museums. Almost everything of value
has withered disgracefully over the past decade, and while there’s still
considerable hype it is not at all backed by numbers. The comparison to
countries like China, which were exactly in the same place just one
generation past, could not be more painfully stark. They have thousands of
museums, and keep building more, while our few dozen crumble from neglect.
Their collectors drive a huge portion of global trade, while ours don’t
even add up to 0.5 per cent. Here in India, it’s a shameful fact that most
people can’t ever see our own greatest masterpieces in person, with my home
state the ultimate example. Vasudeo Gaitonde and Francis Newton Souza of
the seminal Progressive Artists Group share deep ancestral roots in North
Goan villages, but 

[Goanet] What Child Is This (O Heraldo, 24/12/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/What-Child-is-This/215628

Today of all days we cannot turn away. This evening at midnight, countless
millions of people in every part of the world will celebrate the birth of
“whom shepherds guard and angels sing.” That is Palestine, where there will
be no Christmas celebrations in the original Manger Square in front of the
nearly 2000-year-old Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. “People are
grieving and sad about what is happening in Gaza,” the parish priest
told *Deutsche
Welle *earlier this week. “This is the first time that the place where
Jesus was born, I see it empty like this.”

Father Issa Taljieh is a Bethlehem native who has served the famous
pilgrimage site for 12 years, where he’s responsible for the Greek Orthodox
premises (by ancient agreement, the church is shared with the Catholics and
Armenian Apostolic Church). Today, it is under the loose administrative
control of the Palestinian National Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, at
the heart of an envelope of territory hemmed in by two bypass roads and 37
separate enclaves for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers. Just like
every other part of the occupied West Bank, these are tense environs
shrouded in an atmosphere of violence, and it has remained that way for a
very long time.

I had the opportunity to experience this fraught “holy land” way back in
1984, when my family was granted special permissions to visit Israel that
came printed on little slips of paper that were meant to be discarded after
we left Ben Gurion Airport on the way home. In those years, like all other
Indians, our passports carried this prominent proscription: “Not Valid for
Travel to Israel, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia”. Since then, it has
become relatively common for many of us to make similar trips, and tens of
thousands of Goans have undertaken pilgrimage tours to all the iconic
Biblical sites: Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee. But that was not
the case 40 years ago, and we had known no one else from our backgrounds
who had made it out there for the apex event that is Midnight Mass in
Bethlehem, in what is most likely the oldest Christian site of worship in
the world.

Unbeknownst to us, that very same Christmas Eve turned out to be an
important turning point for Palestine and the Palestinians. The territories
of the West Bank had been originally seized from Jordan in 1967, after the
so-called Six-Day War, when Israel decisively defeated an Arab coalition
(and simultaneously occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza
Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt), but were left relatively alone and
handled comparatively gingerly until Midnight Mass in 1984, when my family
and everyone else was entirely shocked when Shimon Peres suddenly showed up
– the first Israeli leader to ever visit the iconic shrine – and popped up
onstage in Manger Square to exhort us: “I bring a greeting of peace to all
those who seek peace.” It’s an indelible memory: Peres delivering promises
that sounded like threats, with an army of snipers standing out against
cloudless dark skies on all the surrounding rooftops. The holy night became
tinged with menace.

What happened since then – the massive expansion of settlements, Intifadas,
constant violence and the steady devolution of Israel into an apartheid
state – has directly led to the war of extermination being waged against
the Palestinians in Gaza, enabled by an increasingly obviously
ethnonationalist coalition of the west led by the USA. To the stark horror
of yet another generation of young people who expected better from the
world, we are seeing exactly how the “rules-based international order”
applies only selectively, with some lives valued more than others.
Arundhati Roy described this terrible moment in time at an award function
in Kerala earlier this month: “Something in our moral selves will be
altered forever. Are we going to simply stand by and watch while homes,
hospitals, refugee camps, schools, universities, archives are bombed, a
million people displaced, and dead children pulled out from under the
rubble? The borders of Gaza are sealed. People have nowhere to go. They
have no shelter, no food, no water. The United Nations says more than half
the population is starving. And still they are being bombed relentlessly.
Are we going to once again watch a whole people being dehumanised to the
point where their annihilation does not matter?”

A couple of days ago on Twitter, the outstanding writer and public
intellectual Priyamvada Gopal (she is a professor at Cambridge University
in the UK) posted that “I’m dreading the evening we think about a baby born
in Bethlehem. Too painful to contemplate.” I agreed at first, but now it
seems to me this Christmas Eve is perfectly timed precisely because we are
firmly enjoined – via scripture, tradition and historical circumstance too
– to think and talk about Palestine. And of course, it’s not only about
Palestine but the future 

[Goanet] Oedipus Next (GQ, Dec 2023)

[V M]

https://www.gqindia.com/content/panjim-based-writer-and-dad-to-three-boys-vivek-menezes-explores-the-dynamics-of-modern-fatherhood

After two baby boys as beloved as can be, my wife and I assumed the next
one would be a girl. Everyone expected it: our parents and siblings, the
cross-cultural web of community that enfolds us in Goa, and every far-flung
relative in our close-knit global families. It’s what I wanted most
sincerely too, because a younger brother is my sole sibling and my mother
only had three brothers, while my father is one of another five boys (with
two sisters far outnumbered among them). When we were expecting again, this
entire tide of heaving masculinity anticipated what we assumed was
inevitable, which is when our youngest son emerged into the world. My first
reaction was shock and disappointment, and then another unexpected jolt
when my entire being seemingly involuntarily flooded with relief. I was
hoping for a daughter, but that possibility had obviously caused some
pent-up anxieties deep inside me, which disappeared like magic at the
appearance of my son. A bit later, there was some guilt as well. Is the
patriarchy alive in me as well? Am I part of the problem?

Let’s face it, these are questions that no previous generation has been
compelled to confront, but they’re unavoidable now that all of us have
become painfully aware of the accumulated perils that accompany
testosterone. The data is stark, copious, and undeniable: It is us guys who
perpetrate almost all the violence in the world including 98 percent of
murders. We man up—literally—the overwhelming majority of every lynch mob
and hateful assault, wherever it happens on the planet, in an incredibly
ugly track record that has justifiably turned contemporary discourse
against our gender. The very language has soured as a result: paternalism,
mansplaining, toxic masculinity. As a result, in many complex ways, this
new paradigm of understanding poses an existential challenge to human
civilization as we’ve practised it from the dawn of time, leaving men like
me in an uneasy state of limbo.

Patriarchy must fall, fully agreed, but how do we put that principle into
action among the fathers and grandfathers we love, and the sons we’re
responsible for ­raising into men? Make no mistake, I am not making any
kind of plea for the boy child, let alone my own privileged progeny. We are
all well aware that the simple fact of being male in India comes with
unassailable advantages that are impossible to justify, and can never be
reconciled in comparison to what girls and women have to endure. The 2023
Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum, where India is
ranked an abysmal 127 out of 146 nations, painfully delineates how women in
this country eat far less than their husbands, brothers, and sons, and
suffer greatly reduced access to education and employment (which has
actually declined steeply even as the economy has supposedly expanded).

Unicef reports that “globally girls have higher survival rates at birth,
are more likely to be developmentally on track, and just as likely to
participate in preschool, but India is the only large country where more
girls die than boys [and are] also more likely to drop out of school”. All
these urgent realities demand immediate redress, and we can all accept that
the first step is awareness. Ironically however, turning on that light bulb
results in considerable murkiness about the road ahead for men like me,
with the responsibility of fathering three boys to thrive and prosper in
our admittedly unequal world. Is there still anything at all that is
useful, and relevant, about the way I was raised that remains essential to
pass onwards to the burgeoning new generations? And, of course, what should
be jettisoned entirely?

Another more difficult question: How do I empower my sons to recognize and
distrust the many different systems of discrimination that perch them atop
by accident of birth, and then work to dismantle their own privileges,
which they know perfectly well have been ostentatiously enjoyed by every
previous male in our lineage? One important thing I’ve learned about
fatherhood over nearly 25 years is some biological imperatives are simply
impossible to control. For just one obvious example, I definitely want to
be friends with my sons, and cherish that intermittent aspect of our
relationships, but they also keep on butting heads with me relentlessly,
and never cease measuring themselves against their old man in an utterly
exhausting pattern of behaviour that is as old as time. That is why the
annals of scripture and greatest works of literature are full of tragically
bad dads—from Sophocles to Shakespeare, and on to Homer Simpson. What’s
more, we all root for the kids, in the deeply embedded archetype that Freud
summarizes most pithily: “A hero is a man who stands up manfully against
his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him.”

Is there any possible relief in this 

[Goanet] Portuguese Racism through the Looking Glass (O Heraldo, 18/11/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/PORTUGUESE-RACISM-THROUGH-THE-LOOKING-GLASS/213769

It’s not something to take very seriously as yet, but the distinct uptick
in racism in Portugal has begun to target Goans in that country, as seen in
the poster alongside this column, which began circulating widely on social
media after the shock resignation of António Costa last week. This
cartoonishly bigoted meme evidently originated before the political
upheaval, from an ethno-nationalist Telegram network advertising itself as
“identity channel for Portuguese by blood (“para Portugueses de sangue”),
and interestingly illustrates what is usually strenuously denied. It is an
unusual paradox which needs to be understood in detail: on the one hand,
21st century Portugal is certifiably less racist than most European
countries – and especially so with regards to Indians – but at the same
time, the country and its citizens both stubbornly resist any feedback or
commentary that suggests racism is any kind of problem at all, as well as
the suggestion there is more work to be done in order to become more
accepting of its own citizens of different ethnicities.

There are many factors in play here, including the dramatic surge of
support for the far-right political party Chega (the name means “Enough” in
Portuguese), which started its political innings in the 2019 polls with
just one seat in parliament, but then catapulted into third-place overall
in last year’s snap elections (when Costa led his Socialists to an
extraordinary outright majority) with 7.2 percent of overall votes and 12
members of parliament. Its worrisome rise also neatly encapsulates the
Portuguese conundrum: this overtly xenophobic party is continually racist
in its messaging – for just one example, its president André Ventura called
for a fellow MP to “be returned to her own country” – but even its most
fervent opponents bend over backwards to parse the hate as “populist”
instead of admitting the obvious. In 2020, entirely ludicrously, Chega even
led a parade through Lisbon, in which the avowed racists kept chanting that
“Portugal is not racist.”

Such surreal politics are patently absurd to any outside observer, and
derive directly from Portugal’s schizophrenic relationship to its colonial
past. In this regard, I appreciate the analysis of Cláudia Castelo,
historian from the University of Coimbra, in her paper ‘Portuguese
Non-Racism: On the historicity of an invented tradition’, which delineates
how the myth of “better colonialism” was foisted on the Portuguese people.
This patently silly notion was born in the 18th and 19th centuries, she
writes, and then became the official position of the government when
“the *Estado
Novo* – the Portuguese authoritarian and colonialist regime that ruled in
Portugal between 1933 and 1974 – appropriated the ideas of the Brazilian
social scientist Gilberto Freyre about a supposedly special relation of the
Portuguese with the tropics. Luso-Tropicalism argued that the Portuguese,
in contrast with other colonisers, possessed a special ability for adapting
to life in the tropics, through miscegenation and cultural
interpenetration. This tropical vocation was not the product of political
or economic self-interest, but rather resulted from an absence of colour
prejudice and a creative empathy that, for Freyre, was innate to the
Portuguese people.”

Under the myopic, out-of-touch Salazar – his own secretary of state Jorge
Jardim reports the dictator called his Mozambican subjects “little black
folk” – Castelo says “the *Estado Novo* produced and disseminated a
nationalistic version of Freyre’s luso-tropicalism to negate that Portugal
had non-self-governing territories under the Article 73 of the United
Nations Charter. The Portuguese “overseas provinces” (the new designation
for the colonies in the 1951 revision of the Portuguese Constitution) and
the provinces in Europe formed a multicontinental and multiracial nation
where everyone lived in harmony.”

In a distinct echo of the farce we see being enacted today, “in 1955,
Adriano Moreira, at the time professor of the High Institute of Overseas
Studies and Portuguese delegate to the Inter-African Conference on Social
Sciences, considered that there was no need to teach racial tolerance at
Portuguese schools as UNESCO had suggested, since there was no racial
discrimination among the Portuguese people; instead, it could be of great
interest to highlight “Portuguese antiracist tradition” in primary and
secondary education in Portugal.”

These are the roots of Portugal’s bizarre denial of what everyone else can
easily see: “notwithstanding the internal logic of the colonial system,
based on racial inequality and exploitation, the state political and
ideological apparatus, through the education system, media, propaganda and
censorship conveyed a Luso-tropicalist message out of step with the
political and social reality in the colonies and instilled in the
Portuguese the idea that they were 

[Goanet] Adeus, amcho António (O Heraldo, 12/11/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Adeus-amcho-Ant%C3%B3nio-Costa/213497

The final analysis is yet to be written, but we already know that
António Costa’s shock resignation earlier this week brought an end to
one of the most impressive political innings of the 21st century. When
this master politician of Goan origin first emerged centre-stage in
2007 as the mayor of Lisbon, his country Portugal was an economic
basket case scorned as ‘the new sick man of Europe’. First, he turned
the capital into one of the world’s most desirable cities to live,
winning ever-bigger mandates in 2009 and 2013. Then, in 2015, he
manoeuvred directly into the prime minister’s office, adroitly
slashing public debt to foster the greatest growth in many decades,
and becoming one of the most admired world leaders, including firm
friends with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who proudly gave his
counterpart an Overseas Citizenship of India card. Last year, after
his Socialists won an outright majority, it only underlined his
dominance. Nothing will tarnish this distinguished record of
achievement, no matter what happens in the case which triggered his
departure.

Costa resignation followed his chief of staff being arrested, and many
public buildings – including the ministries for environment and
infrastructure - raided by the State prosecutor’s office, which says
it is investigating corruption and influence peddling associated with
‘the use of the prime minister’s name and his involvement’ in lithium
mine concessions and lucrative new plans for a green hydrogen plant
and data centre. All these are vast EU investments which the prime
minister was pushing hard to secure for Portugal, and he chose to
resign immediately because ‘the dignity of the prime minister’s office
is not compatible with any suspicion on his integrity, good conduct,
and even less so with the suspicion that any criminal acts were
committed.’ Tearing up, the still-popular PM declared “I want to say,
eye to eye to the Portuguese, that no illicit or even reprehensible
act weighs on my conscience [however] I am not above the law, and I
totally trust the justice system.” Nonetheless, “this is a phase of my
life that comes to an end.”

What happens next is somewhat opaque. The investigation will run its
course, and we are likely to find out what evidence exists – if any –
that Costa did indeed break the law. But the truth is he’s been
angling to quit for some time now anyway, and was already the European
socialist parties’ top candidate for EC president next November (when
the incumbent has to quit). That might still happen, if Portugal’s
courts move with unaccustomed alacrity, but in the meanwhile we are
already seeing a rightist swing that could well deprive his Socialists
their current comfortable majority in the elections being called in
March 2024. Interestingly, for the first time since he was greeted in
Lisbon as ‘Gandhi’ many years ago, there’s also a distinct uptick in
outright racism aimed at Costa as well as other Goans, who have risen
into the Portuguese elite. Just yesterday, a poster was making the
rounds on social media listing 16 people with roots in India’s
smallest State who represent ‘an invasion of the blood, a robbery of
wealth, an assault on our thoughts.’

To learn more about this sudden crisis in Portuguese politics, I spoke
with Constantino Xavier, the remarkable 42-year-old India-Europe
bridge figure and Fellow of the Centre for Social and Economic
Progress in New Delhi, who immediately gave me an astute analysis:
“many African countries fell prey to the resource curse in recent
decades, with an excessive focus on oil and other primary products.
Sri Lanka recently fell prey to what I call the connectivity curse,
with massive external investments in the infrastructure sector,
including ports and airports. The political crisis in Lisbon is based
on a wide range of corruption scandals in the new energy and
technology sectors, including on lithium, hydrogen and a data centre:
this may indicate a new type of economic curse for smaller countries
such as Portugal, with declining industrial and manufacturing
capacity, and therefore prone to sudden spurts of foreign investment
in these new, critical and frontier sectors of the global economy."

What will happen to relations between our two countries, since the
enthusiastic Modi-Costa bromance is curtains? Xavier says “Costa’s
Indian origin and personal connect with Modi was one, but not the main
reason of the upswing in Portugal-India ties in recent years. Portugal
is keen to diversify away from its focus on Chinese investments,
especially in strategic sectors such as energy. And India is keen to
engage with smaller European countries to find new export markets and
political support for its quest to reform multilateral institutions.
Both these drivers will remain, even without Costa leading from
Lisbon, and Portugal and India will keep converging. Jaishankar’s trip
to Lisbon this month shows that there is 

[Goanet] Unveiling the Wonders of the Modo Goano (O Heraldo, 4/11/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Unveiling-the-Wonders-of-the-Modo-Goano/213104

Controversy overwhelms all public conversations about the oft-violent and
coercive processes by which the majority of “natives” in the Estado da
Índia became Catholic in the 16th and 17th centuries, but the truth is
conversion worked in both directions. Portugal and Europe – and indeed the
“New World” in the Americas – were dramatically transformed after “the
west” co-mingled with “the east” in our ancient entrepôt on the Mandovi
river, where the city we call Old Goa exploded to twice the size of
contemporary London within decades of Alfonso de Albuquerque’s victory in
1510. That extraordinary cultural history is the main subject of David de
Souza’s stunning, state-of-the-art photographic archive in *The Jesuits,
Goa and the Arts*, newly published by the Xavier Centre of Historical
Research and edited by Rinald D’Souza and Anthony da Silva.

This is an expensive book with the cover price of Rs. 4300, and I was
grateful to receive a review copy because the images are instantly
invaluable, the best ever published of some of the greatest works of
religious art ever made, and painstakingly compiled by an exceptionally
meticulous photographer (see daviddesouza.com). Here is the history of the
East-West encounter wrought in silver, carved in teak and inlaid with
ivory, as Christianity was adroitly converted into an Indian religion. This
is the *Modo Goano*, described by the historian Cristina Osswald as
“applying to the unique characteristics embodied by the buildings and art
of this region.”

Osswald’s essay in the new book summarizes her excellent 2013 book *Written
in Stone *(Goa 1556) in which the architectural historian António Nunes
Pereira wrote this relevant preliminary note: “if the Jesuits in Europe
were puritanically investing in the spiritual content of the spoken word as
a means of battling the Reformation, in the Orient they felt compelled to
work on the level of the senses.” This initiated another remaking, as
Pereira points out: “we know, from the end of the 16th century, Jesuit and
European art also became very fully sensuous and made an extraordinary
contribution to the Baroque. We might ask ourselves, in what way did the
Oriental experience – and not so much the other way round – influence
Jesuit art and communication concepts in Europe? I believe that this
history is still unwritten.”

Unfortunately, that history remains unwritten. Nonetheless, thanks to David
de Souza and XCHR, we can experience it breathing through the objects of
the times, brought up close like never before. The impact is awe-inspiring,
especially those photographed *in situ*, where they continue in service of
the unbroken civilizational strand of the Goan communities which originally
commissioned them. The late architectural historian Paulo Varela Gomes
explained so well in his 2011 book *Whitewash, Red Stone* (Yoda Press) how
the *Modo Goano *“has generally been explained with the concept of
‘encounter’ between East and West [but] this explanation, as all others
based on ‘influences’ and ‘contacts’ fails to account for the character and
integrity” of Goan [art].” In fact, “their builders and patrons knew how
they wanted it to look and how they wanted it to be experienced. To anyone
with architectural or artistic sensitivity, these don’t seem to be the
end-result of a compromise, but the affirmative artistic statement of a
cultural position.”

That world view is analysed usefully in *The Jesuits, Goa and the Arts *by
the art historian Mónica Esteves Reis: “In every successive historical
layer, Goa’s society shifted and ‘shared’ diverse cultures, practices, and
experiences by creating an identity of its own showing there are no full
stops in history, only long continuities.” She says “that makes today’s Goa
unique. However, it has yet to see the full recognition of its heritage
layers due to numerous factors, mostly arising from its internal politics.
Although heritage, at an intangible level, lives to tell this story, its
material culture continues to face a significant risk of destruction and
total disappearance.”

What does David de Souza think, after chasing down this material culture
for almost two years? When I emailed him that question, the Moira-based
photographer responded promptly: “The pearl of great price exists in our
back yard. When you look at Europe, all their treasures are spread out over
the continent. That all these distinct masterpieces exist in a small radius
in Goa is overwhelming. The revolving tabernacle with the life of Christ
painted on it in Azossim is one of a kind in the world. It’s beautifully
preserved, largely because the wood has swollen and stuck, so it has not
been rotated for a long while. I feel that a protocol should be observed
when rotating it in the future, or it will be damaged.”

There are many important objects and locations we get to examine anew in *The
Jesuits, Goa and the Arts* but what stopped me 

[Goanet] Never Again? (O Heraldo, 29/10/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Never-Again/212806

Soon after daybreak on Simchat Torah – an important Jewish holiday
signified by “rejoicing under adversity” on October 7 earlier this
month – the British-Goan-Israeli artist Solomon Souza was startled to
hear the relatively rare sound of air raid sirens blaring across
Jerusalem. He says “I came into the kitchen to see my wife and babies
looking out the window. We wondered - it must be a test run, but why
on Shabbat? Taking no chances, I hurried them into our shelter just as
the rockets started falling.” This was the surprise beginning of
“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” launched by Islamic Resistance Movement (aka
Hamas) from the intensely crowded little Palestinian enclave of Gaza
on the Mediterranean Sea next to Egypt, about 75km away from Souza’s
home, where “the incoming barrage continued relentlessly throughout
the day.”

It took some time for the world to realize this 5000-rocket fusillade
from Gaza City – which is exactly the size of Dharbandora, the
smallest taluka of Goa – was just cover for an unprecedented
co-ordinated assault on the heavily militarized fences which keep the
Palestinians separated from Israel. With drones, paragliders, trucks,
bulldozers, speedboats and a fleet of motorcycles, hundreds of armed
militants sped across the border after the Hamas military commander
Mohammed Deif’s call to “kill the enemy wherever you may find them.”
The resulting bloodbath lasted almost an entire day, in which the
gunmen killed over 1400 people, mostly civilians, including guest
workers from Thailand (at least 30 dead), Nepal (10), Philippines (4)
and Sri Lanka (2), and seized over 200 hostages.

All this would be extraordinary trauma for any society – remember
India after 26/11 – but even darker thoughts awakened in Israel. The
spectre of the Holocaust, when Germany and partners effectively wiped
out the Jewish presence in most of Europe, murdering millions. But
also, unavoidably, the post-war Nakba, the human catastrophe in which
the same countries responsible for WWII imposed a new Jewish state in
Arab-dominated Palestine, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
were forced from their homes to become refugees, including 70% of the
population of Gaza. The central premise of modern Israel is those
facts on the ground will remain impregnable, now shaken to the core
when descendants of the expelled came rushing back. The shock has been
primal, existential, the worst nightmare come alive.

After that another litany of horrors, as the Israeli war machine is
unrestrainedly flattening Gaza, with civilians bearing the brunt. It
was clear this would happen immediately after Israel closed the gates
on Gaza again, as Sara Bashi of Human Rights Watch warned Isaac
Chotiner of The New Yorker two weeks ago: “International-law
obligations are nonreciprocal. If the other side commits war crimes,
that doesn’t mean you can commit war crimes. We don’t make comparisons
between different kinds of war crimes. Hamas killing civilians
deliberately on a massive scale, taking civilians hostage, and even
threatening to execute civilians—those are war crimes. That doesn’t
justify the Israeli government committing its own war crimes. And I’m
very concerned. I’m worried that the United States is appropriately
condemning the horrific acts committed by Hamas, but is then
forgetting that those same principles of protecting civilians also
apply to the Israeli military operation in Gaza.”

Bashi also voiced another long-dormant terror: “For many of the
refugees in Gaza, especially the elderly who remember 1948, this feels
like a replay of what Palestinians called the Nakba, when they were
told to leave or they fled and they were never allowed back. And the
fact that the Israeli military has also called upon Egypt to open its
border and has called on civilians in Gaza to flee to Egypt just ramps
up those fears.” Everything that has happened since has underlined the
validity of those anxieties, as Adam Tooze asks in his invaluable
Chartbook: “What kind of place is Gaza, that it can be subject to such
instructions? How can a territory that is home to more than 2 million
people be disposed of in this way? Why are there no powerful interests
that react against the ruthless logic of a military campaign that
simply designates a city for destruction? How did Gaza and its people
become so isolated, so absolutely objectified?”

These vital questions are being drowned out by manipulative propaganda
on social media and television, and I appreciate how Professor Oded
Na’aman of Hebrew University of Jerusalem describes it: “This moment
is characterized by a widespread conviction that recognition can only
go in one direction: that any show of empathy toward Israelis is
tantamount to supporting the oppression of Palestinians, and that any
show of empathy toward Palestinians is tantamount to supporting the
massacre on October 7. Those who subscribe to this dichotomy see
attempts to 

[Goanet] Henry Threadgill: Failure is Everything (O Heraldo, 21/10/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Henry-Threadgill-Failure-is-Everything/212405

Non-stop encomiums and accolades have already piled high for *Easily Slip
into Another World*, an incandescent new autobiography from the iconic
African-American composer and multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill, but
here’s one passage that made my own jaw drop, about his initial impression
of Goa when his band Very Very Circus came down for the Jazz Yatra at the
cusp of the 1990s: “The festival was right on the beach – we watched the
sun descend under the horizon behind the crowd as we played our set. We
were rocking that night, but the crowd’s reaction to our music still took
me by surprise. They had folding chairs and the audience started out
seated. But they responded physically to the music to a degree that I’d
never witnessed in any concert I’d ever given [as] people stood up and were
dancing in the aisles – not just a couple of free spirits, but what looked
like a majority of the crowd. Some were running up to the edge of the
bandstand and spinning around in circles or falling on the ground like they
were catching the spirit. I suppose the only way to describe it is to say
that they were catching the spirit. I’d seen congregants transported to the
point of possession and speaking in tongues in evangelical churches in
Chicago, and I’d seen my share of frenzied thrashing and slam dancing in
the punk scene in New York. But I’d never seen one of my ensembles provoke
quite this degree of collective delirium.

Threadgill - who will turn an elegant 80 next February - has achieved
appreciable eminence in the intervening decades, including the 2016
Pulitzer Prize for Music and the 2021 National Endowment of the Arts Jazz
Masters Fellowship for lifetime achievement. But even three decades ago
when still in his 40s, he was an experienced veteran of the world – as well
as the US Army in its disastrous Vietnam War – who had pretty much seen it
all. Yet, he says that concert in Goa stood out: “It was so extreme that it
freaked out the band. They didn’t stop playing, but their eyes got wide and
they kept shooting me anxious looks. I kept going and tried to convey the
message that we should just hold steady in the tumult we’d unleashed. I
ignored the pandemonium in the crowd and concentrated on the music. I
didn’t know what else to do. We had taken the crowd to the plateau – now
the only option was to try to sustain it. When we finished our last tune,
the audience erupted in a raucous ovation, and I exchanged glances with the
band. Clearly there was something special about this place.”

Now came heart-stopping magic, after “night had fallen like an opaque
shroud over the coast.” The tired musicians were led back to their cottages
by lamplight, but their leader “decided to take a little time for myself
[and] misjudged how disorienting the darkness had become, almost
immediately lost my way and found myself enveloped in the foliage. There
were trees with leaves as big as my body, and underbrush so thick that it
cut off the trickle of light from the beach. I could barely see my own hand
in front of my face. I paused for a moment to catch my breath and let my
eyes adjust to the darkness. I stood there trying not to panic. Suddenly a
little old woman stepped out from the bush right in front of me. I was
startled, but it happened so quickly that there was nothing to do: I just
stared at her. She was a rail-thin old lady, black as coal, with some sort
of basket strapped to her back. She walked right up to me as though she was
expecting to find me there. The whites of her eyes gleamed as she got in my
face, so close I could smell her breath as she exhaled. She pointed her
finger at me and spoke to me in English. ‘You belong here,’ she declared.
And then she turned and melted into the bushes.”

Thus began an intriguing, bountiful and previously almost unknown artistic
engagement with India’s smallest state, where the influential jazzman felt
compelled to return: “I knew I was going to have to go back. I needed to
spend more time there to try to figure out what it meant.” That happened
after another thunderclap arrived in the person of Sentienla “Senti” Toy, a
talented singer/songwriter from Nagaland, and they commenced married life
together in an old house in Moira: “it was a feeling of arrival – a
certainty, even before we actually saw it, that this house was our
destination.” When their daughter Nhumengula was born in 1996, “we brought
her up as much in Goa as in Manhattan. She would run around the village
barefoot on her own [and] even as a toddler Nhumi knew her way around the
village better than we did. And she was perfectly safe in that environment
– everybody in town knew her, and people would keep an eye on one another’s
kids. That mutual responsibility was taken for granted.”

Finding new love and starting life afresh is one of the familiar storylines
of contemporary Goa, but what happened to Threadgill’s artistic output in
those years 

[Goanet] Madness at Miramar (O Heraldo, 15/10/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Madness-at-Miramar/212114

Even worse than the shockingly incompetent brutalization of Panjim’s
interior roads and public spaces is the badly planned and even worse
executed orgy of destruction underway on the city’s ancient
riverfront. This hugely damaging new blitzkrieg of concrete is
unsustainable and hideously inappropriate, delivering the opposite of
what is being sold as ‘restoration and protection’. Instead, hundreds
of precious trees have been mowed down in the last remaining casuarina
groves, and an entire mountainside of huge rocks piled on the sands
from Campal through to Miramar and beyond.

By now, of course, residents of Goa’s capital have endured many
unbelievably stupid Smart City antics, where vast pots of money
disappear while the quality of life keeps deteriorating. Still, even
by these very poor standards and criminal lack of accountability, the
madness at Miramar stands out because it’s happening for the second
time in rapid succession. As recently as November 17, 2021, Chief
Minister Pramod Sawant inaugurated the previous high-expenditure
‘Beautification of beachfront promenade at Miramar’ while expressing
great pride that “no trees have been cut” – actually many had been –
as “people feel sad when they visit the beach and see cut trees.” Less
than two years later, everything showcased then is crumbling to junk –
even the signage has embarrassingly fallen apart – while more concrete
cleaves to the waterline, with hundreds of trees lost to the
bulldozers.

All aspects of this debacle are excruciating for Goa – and especially
painful for residents of Miramar like me – but it is true the same is
happening elsewhere too, with widespread allegations against Smart
City shenanigans in numerous locations: Pune, Jalandhar, Chennai and
Shillong. Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan of the Centre for Public Policy
Research points to a “trend of deep apathy towards sound reasoning as
well as principled approach to making public policy processes work”
and “a huge mismatch between the scale of aspirations of people in
general and youth in particular and the infrastructure quality of the
cities in the country. With the presence of vested interests,
rent-seekers and cronies, the transformation of cities along with the
aspirations of people has become impossible.”

Balakrishnan says urban renewal projects should observe the Union
Ministry of Urban Development’s 2016 notification “to create a
City-Level Advisory Forum (CLAF) comprising all major stakeholders
including elected representatives of that city, local youth, technical
experts, associations of taxpayers, residents’ welfare, trade and
commerce associations, etc.” These “were all crucial and would have
played a critical role to bring out the much-needed projects at
city-level and ward-level with sustainable models.” But that has never
happened so “the smart cities ecosystem of public policy-making has
become more riddled with new silos which always operate ad-hoc, out of
desperation for rent-seeking or things cooked up on self-made priority
and the needs not identified by the expert committees or based on
independent research.” In the end, “the aspirations of
people—especially the younger generation upon which the nation banks
its trust—would not be fulfilled even after a few generations.”

That sorry plight is made worse here, says Goa College of Architecture
professor Vishvesh Kandolkar – he is also the programme coordinator
for its excellent M. Arch degree in Urban Design – because India’s
smallest state is perceived and treated as ‘a pleasure periphery.’ In
his paper entitled ‘Tourism’s unsustainable consumption of Goa’, he
writes “Goa is at once India, but not quite – localized as a nearby
neighbourhood, yet maintained as a space of otherness. By turning Goa
into India’s neighbouring getaway, [the development model being
imposed on the state] privileges the desires of elite consumers over
the immediate needs of Goa’s own people [and] seen as a land where the
people are not part of its distinctness – they can be erased and
replaced – while their culture and their land are appropriated.”

In fact, this is precisely what is happening along the Mandovi from
Patto to Dona Paula, and best understood as the rampant
‘casinofication’ of every available inch of public land. While many
city residents do avail of increased and better access to the river,
that is both accidental and secondary to the main goals of
appropriation, privatization, the distribution of spoils to insiders
and cronies (see the astonishing expansion of Panjim Gymkhana) and the
constant raising of fresh barriers to impede democratic access. Over
the phone earlier this week, Prof Kandolkar told me “everything being
done is an assault on the commons, in an old – and failed – model that
has been imported from the west, where the fundamental rights of the
mass of citizens are degraded in favour of something that can be
easily consumed by the elites 

[Goanet] Reap in Joy: Brahms Requiem in Goa (O Heraldo, 7/10/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Reap-in-Joy-Brahms-Requiem-in-Goa/211677

The stunning revival of Goa’s centuries-old choral tradition crests
another landmark next week, when the 100-singer Stuti Choral Ensemble
performs Johannes Brahms’ unconventional masterpiece “Human Requiem”
at three of our most magnificent heritage churches in Loutolim, Anjuna
and Old Goa, along with another appearance at the Museum of Christian
Art (which is not a full concert). Directed by Parvesh Java, and
accompanied by the 20-member Stuti String Ensemble led by Eshvita
Menezes with pianists Nadine Crasto and Smit Shah, along with soloists
Farah Ghadiali, Oscar Castellino, Rahul Bharadwaj and Subin Mathai,
this is another huge step forward for classical music in our part of
the world, of a magnitude far beyond India’s smallest state.

To be sure, there is unique context here in Goa, where India’s tryst
with this kind of music first began. The late, great polymath José
Pereira meticulously documented how choral traditions were initiated
by the Jesuit priest Gaspar Barzeu (1515-1555), “native of Flanders
and heir to a great tradition of Gothic mysticism and Renaissance
music, who implanted western music in Goa, when he instituted the post
of choirmaster (mestre capela), and initiated the custom of sung mass
and of chants accompanied by the organ. Church schools taught children
to sing the catechism, and we are told that their chants, echoing
through Velha Goa in the evening, made the city itself seem "a chorus
of music". By 1683, when the Pope’s emissary attended mass at Bom
Jesus (where Stuti performs next Sunday), he was bowled over: “It was
celebrated by seven choirs with the sweetest instrumental interludes.
I felt I was in Rome. I could not believe how proficient these [Goans]
are in this music, how well they perform it, and with what facility.”

That was then – and it should be noted that good and often outstanding
choirs did emerge throughout the intervening centuries – but when the
dynamic Dr. Fr. Eufemiano Miranda first put together what would
eventually become Stuti in 2004 (in collaboration with the visiting
Kala Academy music teacher Nigel Dixon) there was nothing much
remaining to build upon. He recounted to me that when an acclaimed
visiting British choir director asked about what he could listen to at
the time “it pricked me at the core of my heart, because I knew very
well that we have this wonderful choral tradition, but there was
nothing to show him. It very much hurt my Goan pride.”

Father Eufemiano will turn an elegant 80 next May, but even in
retirement still travels twice-weekly from Cortalim to Porvorim to
practice with Stuti, where he’s now the oldest member (while
16-year-old Shanaya Vás is the youngest). He told me “the cause of
music is above everything else, ahead of any personal ambitions” and
has been a way of life for him since earliest childhood, when – like
many Goans of his generation – uplifting classical compositions were
ever-present at home, from his mother’s lullabies from Chopin and
Mozart to his father’s favourite Beethoven symphonies. Later, while
making his way through the seminaries of Saligao and Rachol – both
have famous musical legacies – he persisted in these interests “within
the limitations of our times” which – hindsight reveals – culminated
in the historic 2009 founding of Stuti Choral Ensemble.

Those were exciting days for classical music – especially vocal – in
Goa, with lots of energy generated from multiple sources. The great
Goan-British soprano Patricia Rozario launched her pioneering Giving
Voice to India project the same year, quickly followed by teaching
courses which nurtured a host of young singers. Then, in 2013, the
game-changing Goa University Choir – the very first university choir
in the country – came to life under the ebullient Argentinean-Spanish
conductor Dr. Santiago Lusardi Girelli. Not long afterwards in 2015,
it was Stuti’s turn to revamp, after Father Eufemiano encountered
Parvesh Java, the disarming, distinguished young pianist, conductor
and impresario (he prefers to describe himself somewhat inscrutably as
“music factotum”) who was on his way to becoming resident in the
state, and immediately drew the older man’s admiration: “I could see
great competence in him: very good training in Chicago, Italy and
Germany, really knows his instruments, but what is really important is
his sensitivity to the music, and to our traditions.”

Java is half the age of Father Miranda (in fact his 40th birthday is
today), but his contributions to Goa and the Goan music scene have
been of incalculable importance in these difficult pandemic years
filled with suffering and loss (including the tragic demise of Maestro
Girelli and the subsequent disbanding of his marvellous choir).
Stepping into the breach with tremendous facility and flair, he
ensured that Stuti has an ideal home – Kamra in Porvorim retains the
physical profile of an old Goan house, but the old wooden doors 

[Goanet] Slimed by South Delhi (O Heraldo, 1/10/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Slimed-by-South-Delhi/211407

Last week, the grand new Parliament building inaugurated by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi as ‘the temple of democracy’ was grossly befouled by his own
party comrade Ramesh Bidhuri, the Lok Sabha representative from South
Delhi. In an abusive rant that plumbed an unprecedented new low for
national discourse since 1947, the 62-year-old career politician and
lifelong RSS man volleyed hateful *gaalis* at Danish Ali of the Bahujan
Samaj Party: “*yeh Mullah aatankwaadi hai, ugrawaadi hai. Bharwa, katua,
baahar phenko iss mulle ko*.”

The victim described his assault in a dignified letter of appeal to Modi:
“in addition to Shri Bidhuri’s threats to confront me outside Parliament,
in a manner more akin to a street altercation than a parliamentary setting,
certain unknown individuals are persistently sending me threatening and
menacing messages. I urge you to remind all Members of Parliament of the
importance of upholding the highest standards of decorum and conduct within
the House, as the whole world looks upon us as a torchbearer of
parliamentary democracy. Such indecent incidents should have no place in
our democracy.”

All that is impressively high-minded, but the truth is disgraceful
indecency is now commonplace in Indian democracy. What is more, Bidhuri has
not been punished – although a ‘show-cause notice’ has been issued – and
instead entrusted as ‘party in-charge’ of the campaign to unseat Sachin
Pilot in Rajasthan. This level of brazenness bodes very badly, as Vir
Sanghvi puts bluntly in his latest column: “India is sinking deeper and
deeper into the morass of divisiveness and hatred [which] has now
penetrated so deep that nobody can stop it.”

Sanghvi says these previously unthinkable outbursts have official sanction:
“We know why the Modi government is doing nothing to condemn Bidhuri’s
remarks - it is election season again. It needs to keep the Hindutva
faction faithful on its side in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and other
states. That may also explain why Bhopal MP Pragya Thakur has been allowed
to get away with calling Nathuram Godse a ‘deshbhakt’ (patriot) yet again.
When she praised Godse on previous occasions, she was upbraided and the PM
said how unhappy her remarks made him.Not this time, though. There is an
assembly election coming up.”

Whatever the cause, no one can remain unconcerned by the rapid
normalization of loutish rhetoric and behaviour, because Bidhuri is no
outlier. At the heart of things in South Delhi, he is amongst the most
prominent public faces of the newly rich who define the country at this
juncture. It’s difficult to digest, but here’s the undeniable fact: these
are the wealthiest and (at least superficially) most globalized North
Indians in history, and this boorish vulgarian is their chosen
representative. Watching this debacle from Goa, where these same South
Delhi elites are descending in unseemly droves, it begs an obvious
question: what kind of mess are they going to create here next?

“The growing and disturbing feeling is that the majority of South Delhi’s
elite think bigotry is part of life now,” says Sunit Arora, the well-known
journalist and editor who has spent most of life in that iconic locality:
“many people in this well-off constituency do not agree with Bidhuri's
views, but are conspicuous by their silence. The elite has come to accept
mainstreaming of hate, and most view speaking out as dangerous and unwise.
Remember that in August, next-door Gurgaon shut down due to communal
violence. It does not seem far away and nobody is totally insulated, so the
pragmatic South Delhi-*wallah* will keep his/her counsel. They are not
going to man the trenches in the battle against hate.”

Rather uniquely, Arora spans the South Delhi elites and their favourite
North Goa neighbourhoods, because his grandfather was Anthony Lancelot Dias
(1910-2002) of Assagao and the Indian Civil Service (later IAS) officer,
who served as the Governor of Tripura and West Bengal throughout the 1970s.
When I wrote to ask about Bidhuri’s cohorts swarming his ancestral village,
he cautioned me to remember good things South Delhi people could bring,
like “a sense of business, hustle and an ability to make things happen.”
But this was his unavoidable bottom line: “they might ignore or stay
neutral when they see hate and unfairness being stoked there. It all
depends on the enabling environment. I do fear hatred will find oxygen in
Goa too, despite the beautiful balance sustained over many hundreds of
years.”

Who will take moral responsibility for the havoc South Delhi is visiting
willy-nilly on the safety and stability of the entire country? In this
regard, I was struck by the questions the brilliant, prolific and
multi-talented author Rakhshanda Jalil posed on social media earlier this
week: “Dear Friends in South Delhi, many of you have chosen Ramesh Bhiduri
to represent you in the Lok Sabha for the second consecutive term. Are you

[Goanet] Anjali Arondekar's Experiments with Abundance (O Heraldo, 23/9/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Anjali-Arondekar%E2%80%99s-experiments-with-abundance/210942

It is only now, six long decades after decolonization, that some of the
inconvenient truths about Goa’s complicated histories - which pose
continual, and indeed often insuperable challenges to the prevailing
simplistic, majoritarian or nationalist readings - are being analyzed with
the close attention they’ve always merited. With her brilliantly
conceived *Abundance:
Sexuality’s History (*https://orientblackswan.com/details?id=9789354424540),
Professor Anjali Arondekar (who teaches Feminist Studies at the University
of California at Santa Cruz, where she is the Founding Director of the
Center for South Asian Studies) has reset the bar very high, with one of
the best, richest and most important books of Indian historiography ever
written. It’s a huge achievement, with even huger implications for how we
assess and think about our collective past.

Although not yet well known in her ancestral homeland, Arondekar has been
an academic rockstar for a long time. Born in 1968, she left India at 17
after being awarded a scholarship to represent India at the Armand Hammer
United World College in New Mexico, then received her undergraduate degree
as a college scholar (reserved for students of “exceptional academic
promise”) at Cornell University, and went on to earn her PhD at the
University of Pennsylvania. Her debut monograph For the Record: On
Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (Duke University Press, 2009)
won the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for the best book in lesbian, gay or
queer studies in literature and cultural studies from the Modern Language
Association. Now, her UCSC page says that “broadly speaking, I read and
write within established disciplines (history, literature, law) and field
formations (area studies, queer/sexuality studies), mobilizing South Asia
through its multilingual and divergent colonial and national formations.”

There is an additional crucial biographical twist here, however, which
imbues much of Arondekar’s work with incandescent urgency. That is,
*Abundance* is not only an intellectual tour-de-force, but also an
insider’s presentation. As the author herself puts it, her book “The past
is not only usable here but always somewhere close at hand. I grew up
within the bawdy, colorful and expansive lower-caste politics of the
Gomantak Maratha/Kalavant Samaj, and it is those familial genealogies that
first opened me up to the urgencies of archives and politics. My questions
thus emanate from those intimacies; they are of them, but not about them.
Contravening the protocols of data collection (be they of collectivity,
family, caste, music) was not just a familiar feature of my Samaj life, but
a profoundly political matter. One’s history was not a place of capture; it
was a compositional lexicon of self-making, to be continuously taught,
modulated, inhabited and shed. I can do no better than to tell that story.”

For abiding by her task with such determined verve and vigour, backed by
over 400 sources (with some 50 pages of footnotes an absolute treasure in
themselves), we owe an immense debt of gratitude to Arondekar’s ongoing
lifetime of toil. The result is any number of profound and game-changing
insights, because the relentless making and unmaking of selves that is the
story of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj – once admiringly referred to as
Bharatil ek Aggressor Samaj– is at the heart of modern Goan identity as
well. I especially liked how this was put: “Unlike oft-circulated histories
of devadasis in South Asia that lament the disappearance or erasure of
devadasis, the history of the Samaj offers no telos of loss and recovery.
Instead, the Samaj, from its inception, has maintained a continuous,
copious and accessible archive of its own emergence, embracing rather than
disavowing its past and present attachments to sexuality.”

*Abundance* is the sum of Arondekar’s highly impressive engagement with
that all-important Samaj archive, and it would be a mistake to summarize
too much further from this instant classic now that it is easily available
in India. But I did email the author at her home in California to ask some
questions, including how to best categorize this elegant, beautifully
produced book (about which my initial reaction was to think of Susan
Sontag, and then Teju Cole). Her response: “Less than antecedents, I draw
inspiration from the many scholars and activists who have been working on
caste, gender and sexuality in South Asia— all of them have pushed back
against the mandates of conventional history, and demanded we seek new
vernaculars for carving out our lives and futures. This book is very much
in conversation with that struggle.”

How did she manage to navigate all her personal entanglements in this
subject matter? Arondekar said that “as a minority scholar, I don’t think
one ever eludes the burden and/or responsibility of representation. All one
can do (as I have tried 

[Goanet] The Danger Zone (O Heraldo, 17/9/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/The-Danger-Zone/210677

Rain continues to fall in Goa this weekend, but just across the border in
Karnataka it is painfully clear the monsoon has failed. Earlier this week,
the Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, who heads the state sub-committee
on disaster management, reported that an astonishing 195 out of 236 talukas
across India’s eighth-largest state are officially suffering drought, with
161 of them already experiencing severe shortages. This crisis goes far
beyond water supply, to pose huge threats to food security across the
region, because at least 50% of standing crops have withered into the dust
due to drastic precipitation deficits over the past month alone. The grim
forecast is that more damage is likely to occur in coming weeks, which
brings to this agonising new reality: our neighbouring state, which
supplies most of our vegetables and fruits, is now home to the second
largest tracts of dry land in the whole country (after Rajasthan) and
almost 80% of its arable land has become critically prone to drought.

This very bad news is uncomfortably close to home, but even worse has been
playing out the past few days as an unmitigated horror show of
climate-related catastrophes all over the world. To the east, both Hong
Kong and Shenzen are reeling from tropical storm Haikui, which dumped more
rainfall on these two vital economic nerve centres than ever recorded
before, since they began maintaining the data over 140 years ago. Across
the Pacific in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, yet
another concurrent cyclone deposited over a foot of rain in less than 24
hours, with floods and landslides resulting in dozens of deaths, the
highest toll ever for a climate event. Worst of all by far was the
wrecking-ball devastation wrought by Storm Daniel which careened across the
Mediterranean to unleash unprecedented havoc in Greece – the equivalent of
three years of rainfall in two days, which has submerged the country’s
breadbasket into an unfarmable giant lake – and then slammed into Libya to
trigger extraordinary devastation: 5,000 presumed dead with 10,000 missing
and total casualties likely to pass 20,000 in the end.

The sad truth is none of these shocking events are any kind of anomaly any
more. Instead, these kinds of previously inconceivable – or, at worst,
once-in-a-lifetime – disruptions are only to be expected as routine in our
age of climate change, that has been caused by human activity’s effects on
the ecosystems that have sustained us over the past 10,000 years in the
time period known as the Holocene, which comprises the combined
achievements of all of our civilizations. That grim fact became even
plainer earlier this week, when, for the first time ever, scientists
working with the Stockholm Research Centre provided us with an important
framework to understand and gauge the “planetary boundaries” which have
until recently shored up the “safe operating space for humanity”. Their new
research paper in the journal *Science Advances* identifies nine processes
“that are critical for maintaining the stability and resilience of Earth
system as a whole” and concludes that “all are presently heavily perturbed
by human activities”. What is more, six of those nine have already been
transgressed, which has brought us all the way to an unforeseen precipice.
Now, we are in the danger zone for life itself.

The new paper’s co-author Johan Rockström offered this trenchant analogy to
understand its findings: “This update on planetary boundaries clearly
depicts a patient that is unwell, as pressure on the planet increases and
vital boundaries are being breached. We don’t know how long we can keep
transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to
irreversible change and harm.” He explained that “science and the world at
large are really concerned over all the extreme climate events hitting
societies across the planet as we move through the third human-amplified El
Niño in only 25 years. But what worries us even more is the rising signs of
dwindling planetary resilience, manifested by the breaching of planetary
boundaries, which brings us closer to tipping points, and closes the window
to having any chance of holding the 1.5°C planetary climate boundary. If
you want to have security, prosperity and equity for humanity on Earth, you
have to come back into the safe space and we’re not seeing that progress
currently in the world.”

What is the current bottom line for our prospects on Earth? The findings
from Stockholm Research Centre’s team of scientists are neatly illustrated
in the elegant, useful chart that accompanies this column. In their report,
it carried this explainer: “Six of the nine boundaries are transgressed. In
addition, ocean acidification is approaching its planetary boundary. The
green zone is the safe operating space (below the boundary). Yellow to red
represents the zone of increasing risk. Purple indicates the 

[Goanet] Celebrating the New Fado de Goa (O Heraldo 12/8/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Celebrating-The-New-Fado-de-Goa/208865

By now we are accustomed to being blown away by the musical genius of
Sonia Shirsat, who has traversed an improbable journey from Ponda and
Panjim to become a truly spectacular fado singer, and one of the
foremost global ambassadors of this iconic Islamic-African-Iberian art
form. But now, even more incredible and unprecedented, an entire
generation of new fadistas is developing from India’s smallest state
to rewrite the genre in an emergent style all their own. Last weekend
at Panjim’s wonderful Madragoa (cipagoa.com/madragoa) – the world’s
first casa de fado and mando is itself totally unique – some of these
young stars-in-the-making rocked the house with absolutely brilliant
style and substance that must be experienced to be believed.

Make no mistake: this is no renascença or any kind of nostalgic
hangover from the past. Instead, what is happening with fado in Goa is
considerably more interesting and important, as post-colonial 21st
century Indians have reinvented the musical form in ways that never
existed before. It’s the result of almost two decades of selfless
dedication by the great diva Sonia, and master instrumentalists Carlos
Meneses and Orlando de Noronha along with other notables. Thanks to
them – and probably to the surprise of the Portuguese - the venerable
SPIC MACAY has confirmed fado as an authentic musical genre of India.

Fado de Goa is different in crucial ways which were on display at
Madragoa when 27-year-old Nadia Rebelo and 23-year-old Sherwyn Correia
took centre-stage in the absence of Sonia (who is travelling). Both
singers showed terrific vocal chops when they first emerged some years
ago, but no one could have predicted how much they would grow as
artists since then – first-rate in each solo, and utterly dazzling in
their duet. The audience viscerally understood it was something very
special, and when I shared the video on Facebook, that feeling was
immediately confirmed from the original home of fado, via Susana
Sardo, the acclaimed professor of ethnomusicology at University of
Aveiro who is also the Cunha Rivara Chair at Goa University:
“Everything is magnificent. It's a beautiful experience to hear fado
being performed like this.”

Sardo is an outstanding expert on Goan musical culture, who began her
research here 36 years ago. Looking back, she says “there were very
few venues available for enjoying music, and the tourism industry was
also just taking its first steps. Consequently, hotels used to engage
the services of the four established musical groups: the Grupo
Folclórico de Panjim led by Timóteo Fernandes, Grupo de Fanquito
Martins, Goa Cultural Group - under the leadership by Mimoso Gonçalves
-, and another group organized by Athos Fernandes. The touristic
venues were limited to the Hotel Mandovi (established in 1952), Fort
Aguada Beach Resort (established in 1972), Hotel Cidade de Goa
(established in 1982), and the touristic boat journey along the
Mandovi.”

This is important: “back in 1987, the performance of music within
domestic settings, such as rituals, family gatherings, and parties,
remained quite common, making public performances somewhat
unnecessary. However, over the course of the past 36 years,
significant changes have occurred. The traditional music that once
thrived in domestic contexts (like mando, dulpod, deknni, fugddi,
dhalo, etc.) has now become almost marginal, leading to its resurgence
in public settings through dynamic processes like festivalization
(more than 50 Festivals between September and April), revivification,
and revivalism. Concurrently, a multitude of independent musical
projects have emerged, covering the jazz scene, popular music, and
even Western art music. In the present day, Goa's music scene,
although primarily staged, conveys tremendous vibrancy. The query of
"why" compels us to embark on a more profound analysis of the
situation... yet, this should not be disregarded as a crucial example
of how music can instigate transformations within society.”

I am grateful to Prof. Sardo for her most generous responses to my
emailed inquiries following our mutual delight over the Madragoa
performances, including this analysis of our homegrown style: “Goa's
interpretation of fado features innovative expressions, such as the
captivating experiment of Fado Raga led by Sonia Shirsat, as well as
fado performed in Konkani. This interplay between canonical fado and
various musical traditions and languages signals a remarkable vitality
and serves as a testimony that fado can transcend its colonial
origins. Moreover, Fado de Goa now boasts singers from diverse
religious backgrounds. The presence of talented Hindu women performing
fado is particularly noteworthy and serves as a powerful indication of
how music can pave the way for coexistence and social transformation.”

This is another important point, which reminded me of a previous fado
performance by 

[Goanet] Souza (and Moraes) in 1961 - O Heraldo, 6/8/2023

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Souza-and-Moraes-in-1961/208518

Take a long look at the unforgettable masterpiece by Francis Newton Souza
printed with this column, because it’s the first – and quite possibly last
– time it will be freely available in the public eye, having surfaced from
nowhere in the catalogue for this month’s auction of modern and
contemporary Indian art from the Glenbarra Art Museum (in Japan) and the
Pundole Family Collection of the eponymous Mumbai gallery and auction house
(www.pundoles.com).

At the time he painted ‘Hunger’ in the early 1960s – in its full extent, it
is a full-frontal nude – the daring genius from Saligao had already
successfully vaulted from Goa to JJ School of Art in colonial Bombay (from
where he was expelled for outspoken nationalism) and then, via sheer guts,
directly into London’s post-WWII artistic hothouse. He was the first
international star of modern Indian art and championed by the likes of John
Berger. From the Pundole’s catalogue: “Souza had achieved both fame and
critical acclaim…in 1964, a leading critic, Mervyn Levy, described him as
“one of the most vigorously stimulating and committed painters of our time.”

Souza earned that reputation – directly alongside Lucian Freud and Francis
Bacon – with blockbuster canvases, possessed with visceral power that must
be experienced to be believed. But of even more interest to us in Goa is
another item also on offer at this auction: an entire sketchbook from 1961,
with 76 pencil-on-paper drawings of inestimable value to Indian art
history. If we lived in any kind of just world, and the state of Goa had
its act together even minimally, this sketchbook would be on permanent
display in Souza’s beloved homeland, instead of merely winging in and out
of sight. Next year is the great pioneer’s 100th birth anniversary, and
it’s an incomprehensible disgrace his legacy continues to languish
unacknowledged where it matters most.

The 1961 sketchbook is beautiful and amazing: a proliferation of drawings
vividly illustrating where Souza came from (classically rendered
portraits), what was on his mind (Picasso! Toulouse-Lautrec! Religion!
Sex!) and his playful, productive state of being: one drawing is by his
daughter Karen (now Keren, the mother of next-generation
Goan-British-Israeli prodigy Solomon Souza) ,and the cover riffs on the
artist’s path-breaking little book *Words & Lines *(1959, Villiers) that
had so recently made his reputation as one of the most interesting creative
forces in the Anglosphere.

Here's what the Pundole’s catalogue says about this tiny treasure trove:
“these sketches are insightful, as they document an important process of
systematic experimentation that reveal an artist confident in his skin,
keen to stretch his own artistic boundaries, yet in a manner that remains
true to his own artistic vision.”

For sure, these drawings are an invaluable insight into an artist’s inner
world, as Souza set himself up to paint supercharged canvases like Hunger
to make him famous. Here is Edwin Mullins in 1964: “One cannot walk into a
roomful of Souzas without at once being forced to participate in certain
passions and fears which make these violent distortions of the visual world
explicable and sympathetic. Frequently these passions are not only violent
but destructive, as though each painting liberated the artist from a
private nightmare…his most successful work seems to contain something of an
emotional clash – vulgarity and tenderness, or agony and wit, pathos and
satire, aggression and composure. They have some of the sheer inventiveness
of Picasso – and the same unresolved tumult.”

The auction catalogue doesn’t mention it, but Goa shows up early in this
sketchbook, and there are shades of Souza’s ancestral culture throughout.
We already know he was thinking about home a lot in that fateful year of
decolonization, and the swift military decapitation of the 450-year-old
Estado da India. He painted several important paintings as it was
happening: an extraordinary grotesque of roses rimmed with barbed wire, and
The General (1961), another rarely-seen masterpiece in the vein of Hunger.

That isn’t all, as we know from Dom Moraes – whose father Frank Moraes was
the pre-eminent newspaper editor of India in those years – from *Never At
Home*, the second volume of his brilliant autobiography, “Towards the end
of that year, 1961, there were rumbles in the English press about what was
happening off the western coast of India. They evoked some echoes in me,
since Goa, the place in question, had been the home of my forefathers.”

Moraes  has a highly dubious take on the history of his ancestral land:
“The Portuguese had been slothful and slack for more years than anyone
could remember. They had arrested and imprisoned a few people who had
clamoured for independence, but they had been otiose rather than
oppressive. It was reasonably clear that most Goans wanted the Portuguese
out, but this was largely 

[Goanet] Art in the Age of Climate Change (O Heraldo, 29/7/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Art-in-the-age-of-climate-change/208101

When torrential rains set in over Goa earlier this month, the volcanically
talented artist Praveen Naik found it too humid to use his favourite paints
on paper and canvas, but kept working in different genres “to explore my
uncomfortable zones”. As usual, this highly productive 43-year-old – his
day job is at the Dr. K. B. Hedgewar School at Cujira – shared his
experiments on social media, and when he tried out cartoons they had
instant visceral impact, as you see in the wry, sorrowing illustration
along with this column. Here is the view from the street in the grand
democratic lineage of both RK Laxman and Mario de Miranda, but even more
invaluable because such doses of reality are otherwise almost totally
absent from Goa’s contemporary public sphere.

“I feel like shouting,” says Naik, “this is my voice as an artist. It is my
reaction to the pathetic Smart City, and new infrastructure like Atal Sethu
requiring to be repaired already. The disaster at Kala Academy, and
refusing to accept the high court’s wisdom to save our Mhadei, It’s the
common people’s voice that should be heard instead of the same idiots who
created the problems.”

Naik has been in an excellent groove since the pandemic struck, when he
began sharing an impassioned torrent of what I described as “prophetic
visions” in *Art India*’s issue about lockdown art: “It was an
extraordinary experience to watch along as he shared something every day -
collages, water-colours, oils, and the occasional drawing. His
relentlessness, and ceaseless invention, as well as the cheeky political
content, reminded me strongly of Rauschenberg at his peak.”

I also noted “he is part of an impressive generation of artists who have
emerged from Goa’s villages in waves over the past couple of decades, who
tend to share similar preoccupations. Paramount amongst these is the sense
of overwhelming loss caused by rapid changes being imposed on India’s
smallest state, where massive – often illegal – concretization is
accompanied by immense demographic displacement. The quality of life has
plummeted in just a few years, as democratic norms are being subverted to
thwart the people’s will in favour of powerful special interests. All of
this is in Naik’s art.”

What is the point of “mere” painting, or any of the arts, in the dark
crisis of today? Here is what Ranjit Hoskote said about his new book of
poems: “I have been deeply aware of certain key questions, as we transit
into a very precarious future. As vulnerable actors in a broken world,
damaged by ourselves, how do we re-calibrate our lives, how do we
articulate our love and compassion even in the most difficult
circumstances? How do we bear witness to our own deep flaws as individuals
and as a species, spreading toxicity even as we hope fervently to transform
our societies and environments for the better? How can we imagine a future
based on equity and mutuality and healing, when some of us think that the
best solution to managing our ship- wrecked planet is either to polarize
turbulent societies yet further and yet more violently, or to escape to
other planets, presumably to exploit and destroy them in the same way,
armed with the same extractivist mentality? *Icelight* is, in one of its
dimensions, a protest against such failures of the social and political
imagination.”

In his recent interview with Nidhi Verma for *Platform*, Hoskote explained
how he writes with “everyday knowledge of living in a coastal metropolis,
Mumbai, which is almost certainly doomed to suffer submergence prompted by
the global sea-level rise within my lifetime. And to have to suffer, on
every side, large-scale infrastructure projects that planners have
inflicted on us — the coastal highways, the metro and monorail systems —
serenely untroubled by the ecological apocalypse that is on its way.” This
is precisely Praveen Naik’s standpoint - the only sane and supportable one
– and it remains deeply shocking that it is so rarely aired in mainstream
discourse in India, let alone its criminally misgoverned smallest state.

*Icelight* bears this glowing testimonial from Amitav Ghosh – who shares a
strong sense of connection to Goa with Hoskote, with both writers having
spent years living here – “Like jewelled windows in a war-torn city, Ranjit
Hoskote’s exquisitely crafted poems offer tantalizing glimpses of a
disintegrating world.” It was his landmark 2016 *The Great Derangement:
Climate Change and the Unthinkable *– in my view, the most important book
of the 21st century – which first truly acutely analysed the global
imaginative failure to describe what is happening: “these changes are not
merely strange in the sense of being unknown and alien; their uncanniness
lies precisely in the fact that in these encounters we recognize something
we had turned away from; that is to say, the presence and proximity of
non-human interlocutors.”

Ghosh asked then: “Can the timing of this 

[Goanet] Anatomy of Collapse (O Heraldo, 23/7/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Goa/Anatomy-of-the-Kala-collapse-How-escalated-contracts-were-given-with-escalating-episodes-of-negligence/207860

Earlier this year, just a few days after it was inaugurated by MK
Stalin, I visited the Keeladi Museum outside Madurai in Tamil Nadu.
Built across two acres, this pristine low-rise complex of buildings is
the superbly conceived showcase for thousands of artefacts from an
extraordinary archaeological site nearby. Since 2015, digs there have
kept on producing more evidence of a rich Sangam Era urban
civilization starting almost 3000 years ago, which has revolutionized
what we know about the very earliest Indians. Now, this lovely new
space has been constructed to be what the CM says is “a fitting
tribute to our ancient Tamils, their workmanship and life.”

In many ways, Tamil Nadu feels like an alternate reality to the rest
of the country. It sits atop numerous categories: most industrialized
state, but also agriculturally dominant, number one in everything from
coconut to banana to cloves. There is an almost unbelievable gender
parity, including nearly half of the country’s entire total of
professionally employed women. In all this, of course, there is a
profoundly painful contrast of quality of governance with Goa, but the
deep sense of shame I felt at Keeladi – now flooding back after the
debacle at Kala Academy – will never leave me. It took Tamil Nadu less
than three years to bring to life this sensitively curated,
brilliantly democratic free museum, after then-CM Eddappadi
Palaniswami laid its foundation stone.  Read this and weep: the state
PWD (which, highly admirably, has its own heritage wing) barely
overshot its estimate of 12.2 crores, and the entire project was
finished for 18.43 crores.

Highly competent Tamil Nadu built an important contemporary Indian
cultural landmark by spending that much money, but how much will it
cost to fully destroy one? Piles of cash started disappearing at the
Kala Academy almost 20 years ago, says passionate young architect
Tahir Noronha: “it began in 2004 with 23 crores "renovations", for
which Charles Correa offered to take up the work, but it was awarded
to a Mumbai-based architect who finished his in just three months. One
consequence of rushing was the unscientific layering of a
waterproofing course on top of the existing layer, which overloaded
the slabs. The building suffered, and started showing signs of
distress through cracks and bends that appeared over the next decade.
But these structural issues were neglected, and the damages were
painted over.”

Noronha is only 27 – he graduated from Goa College of Architecture in
2018 – and worked at the Charles Correa Foundation (CCF) in Fontainhas
for four years before pursuing further studies in Urban and Regional
Planning at the University of Michigan, where his research focuses on
adapting historic buildings and cities to climate change through
policy and planning. Last month, he started duties as a part-time
planner for the City of Detroit, assisting the government with
formulating and enforcing regulations. All this has given him valuable
perspective on what has been happening back home in Panjim, and so I
emailed him after this week’s disaster.

Back in 2019, after the government made its first bid to demolish
parts of Kala Academy, Noronha recalls “the people of Goa raised their
voices, and three structural audits gave the building a clean chit.
However, all three called for holistic repair rather than the cosmetic
solutions applied earlier. Once the decision was made to repair, it
was enshrined in a consent judgment by the Hon. HC of Bombay at Goa in
PILSM 2/2019. Now, with their demolition halted, the state started to
get secretive.”

Noronha says that “CCF and IIT Madras jointly proposed overseeing the
work at a cost of 15 lakh, (with CCF waiving its fees and IIT
maintaining its standard institutional rates.) Unfortunately, that
proposal was dismissed, and a 49-crore work order was issued for
consulting and undertaking the work. This inflated to 59 crores the
following year. It does not seem like the specialized agency followed
basic protocols, neglecting necessary assessments and overlooking
standard conservation practices. CCF alerted the government to this
several times, even appealing to appoint a private conservation
architect to take responsibility for the work and make the plans
public.”

Nothing positive came of those anxious warnings - now proven 100%
right – and what happened instead is thorough blundering. Noronha
reminds us “all three structural audits indicated the critical areas
were terraces, roof slabs, and the open-air auditorium (which has
collapsed). These needed the most care and attention, and a sensitive
approach. The repair methodology is unclear, but if the renovations of
the building were not finished, why was the scaffolding removed? In
Goa, any competent architect or engineer knows the monsoon brings
additional threats, imposing additional 

Re: [Goanet] Uday Bhembre's Faith on Fire (O Heraldo, 15/7/2023)

[V M]

Apologies for the incorrect attachment in the previous email. This one has
today's column -->

On Sat, Jul 15, 2023 at 8:14 AM V M  wrote:

> https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Uday-Bhembre%E2%80%99s-Faith-on-Fire/207518
>
> There is something certifiably miraculous about this cultural moment in
> Goa, despite an ongoing brutalization of the social harmony and
> many-layered heritage of India’s smallest state. Even as the body politic
> is rendered by a thousand cuts, there’s an undeniable intellectual and
> artistic renaissance – best illustrated by Damodar Mauzo winning the 2022
> Jnanpith Award - as well as an unprecedented re-evaluation, and more
> profound collective understanding of Goan history. Uday Bhembre’s 2021
> novel *Vhodlem Ghar*, recently republished as *Faith on Fire* in
> translation by Vidya Pai, is another important landmark in this beautiful
> journey of understanding, truth and (potentially) reconciliation.
>
> Near centre-stage for many crucial episodes in the making of modern Goa,
> Bhembre was born in Zambaulim in 1939 - just over a decade after Tristão de
> Bragança Cunha founded the Goa National Congress - and grew up steeped in
> the passions of the liberation movement, due to the involvement and
> inspiration of his father, Laxmikant Bhembre (1906-1985).
>
> Here's what J. Clement Vaz writes about senior Bhembre in *Profiles of
> Eminent Goans Past and Present*: “With the qualification of Matriculation
> of the University of Bombay and the third year of Portuguese Lyceum,
> Bhembre proved to be an impressive teacher much appreciated by the students
> of Union High School as well as Popular High School in Margao, One of his
> aims was to create political consciousness amongst the youth [and] he came
> out openly with his strong patriotic views when he presided over the
> historic meeting of the 18th of August 1946 at Londa [when all the
> nationalists rallied to Bragança Cunha]. Later, he offered satyagraha in
> Margao and was arrested, tried and sentenced to four year’s exile in
> Portugal.”
>
> Less than a month after his son’s 8th birthday, Laxmikant Bhembre was
> jailed in Peniche Fort but he "was not a person to remain idle even in
> prison. He protested against non-segregation of political prisoners, and
> about the food served to them. His demands were ultimately accepted [but]
> even after he was out of jail he had to stay in Lisbon under police
> surveillance for about eleven years. He utilized the time fruitfully by
> practicing law, and conducting classes on the *Bhagvadgita* for
> Portuguese enthusiasts. He also wrote regularly for Dudhsagar of Bombay and
> Navjeevan of Belgaum.”
>
> Uday Bhembre was 22 when his father came home to Goa in 1962, following
> Nehru’s mercifully swift decapitation of the 451-year-old Estado da Índia.
> It is immensely moving to look back on the young man’s own idealistic
> journey, starting from an influential anti-merger role in the 1967 Opinion
> Poll, via his column *Bhramastra *in the Marathi newspaper *Rashtramat*.
> Then, as a pillar of the language agitations that led to the stunning
> achievement of Konkani being recognized in the Indian constitution. On that
> stirring march to statehood, this multifaceted public intellectual –
> lawyer, editor, legislator – even provided the lyrics to Channeache Rati,
> the indelible anthem voiced by *Goem Shahir *Ulhas Buyao.
>
> Recently, the distinguished 83-year-old has reinvented *Bhramastra* in an
> editorial video format that is passed around widely on social media. *Faith
> on Fire *is best understood in this pedagogical context, as the author
> admits up front in his excellent and useful introduction: “I became
> convinced that it was the Inquisition that had created untold misery and
> injustice in the 16th century and it was important that Konkani speakers
> who regard Goa as their ancestral land should be made aware of this
> history. I felt this was necessary as many people were ignorant about this
> historical event. Others had wrong notions about it and some people
> believed the Inquisition had not occurred at all.”
>
> Bhembre explains: “There were two avenues open to me to get information
> about this event to Konkani speakers. I could write a historical tome
> dealing with the Inquisition; or I could write a novel using the historical
> events that occurred during that period as a backdrop. It struck me that
> only those who were interested in history would read the historical tome,
> but I could reach a wider readership if I took the literary route, so I
> decided to write a novel. [However] I set myself a single rule at the
> start…the novel I would write would be a literary exercise, but I would
> take no liberties with history. [So] I had to be very c

[Goanet] Nicole-Ann Lobo on Amancio D'Silva (originally published in Parmal from Goa Heritage Action Group)

[V M]

What is it about *Ballad for Goa* that draws me in? When I listen to its
aching melody, why does my heart break? The composition arouses emotions in
me that are hard to place, a certain sadness that, despite its
implausibility, feels deeply personal. And of all six tracks on *Hum Dono*,
each self-sustained works of musical genius, I kept finding myself
returning to it. It possesses a particular ennui that feels at once
familiar, pleasurable, and devastating.

I like to think it has something to do with the particular essence it
conjures, familiar to any Goan: *saudade*, that bittersweet melancholy
embedded in Goan DNA. The Portuguese essayist Eduardo Lourenço once
described the temperament as memory itself, an “awareness of the essential
temporality of the being who has and cannot have on himself a higher
contemplation than that of himself as a past in feverish quest for the
future.” Goans exist, after all, in a state of permanent nostalgia given
the changing status of our homeland. *Saudade* in the modern Goan context
is often interpreted as a longing for susegad, that ineluctable Goan way of
life that is relaxed, in perfect harmony with the cadences of the natural
environment, which prioritises the dignity and interior life of the
individual. Susegad is the antithesis to capitalism: it rejects notions of
efficiency and expendability, takes a perfect contentment with the rhythms
of life. It evinces a way of being that is fundamentally impossible given
the pressures of modern life, and the tragic fate of Goa in contemporary
India.

https://scroll.in/article/1052160/ballad-for-goa-guitarist-amancio-dsilva-strikes-a-nostalgic-note-for-an-identity-being-erased

[Goanet] Goa's Art Tragedy (O Heraldo, 9/7/2023)

[V M]

http://epaper.heraldgoa.in/articlepage.php?articleid=OHERALDO_GOA_20230709_6_2=406px=oHeraldo=6

Superb works by Goan artists supply many highlights in ‘Maharaja’s
Treasures’, an excellent exhibition drawn from the Air India collection of
modern and contemporary art, that opened last month in the storied Cowasji
Jehangir Hall in Colaba, which has been the National Gallery of Modern
Art’s outpost in Mumbai since 1996.

My recent viewing re-illuminated twinned truths. First, the undeniable –
yet routinely unacknowledged – fact that Goa contributed far
disproportionately to the canonical Indian art of the 20th century. On the
flip side, it’s necessary to acknowledge our collective failure to
adequately preserve, understand and celebrate our own magnificent artistic
and cultural legacies in order for the future generations to benefit from
the labours of the giants of the past. In regard to state policies
especially, the dereliction of duty is shocking and abysmal, and keeps on
getting worse, as we see with the blatant disrespect of Mario de Miranda’s
oeuvre by the same G20 gatherings meant to demonstrate India’s commitment
to “ensure all cultural resources are truly protected”.

The collection on display at the NGMA Mumbai is an important document of
national cultural aspirations in the post-colonial era, when Air India was
one of the foremost prestige projects for the country. Although the
government had been the majority shareholder from 1953, the visionary
J.R.D. Tata remained chairman until 1977, and the airline led the way as
the first Asian carrier to enter the jet age in 1960, and then becoming the
world’s first all-jet airline in 1962. Alongside, it acquired an impressive
swathe of premium real estate around the globe, furnished with an aesthetic
ambition to represent independent India.

Here's how Nazneen Banu, the NGMA Mumbai director, puts it in her message
at the exhibition entrance: “The impressive diversity and broad spectrum of
the Air India collection holds an unparalleled position in the history of
any commercial airline. To give a glimpse of the nation's rich artistic
heritage, the company started displaying and decorating its booking houses,
pavilions and lounges with its impressive art collection that captivated
the minds of travellers throughout the globe. The Air India pavilions
dazzled like a palace with display of gold *zari* embroidered and woven
textiles, gilded Thanjavur paintings, polychrome wooden temple sculptures
and replicas of classical Southern bronzes. The exhibition consists of a
thematic display of around 200 artworks meticulously chosen that brings to
you a portion of the collection that Air India used to redefine air travel
in its own 'Maharaja' Style.”

 There are a handful of outright masterpieces here: an astonishing
snake-adorned ceramic ashtray designed by the iconic Spanish surrealist
Salvador Dali (for which he demanded and received a baby elephant in
compensation), a fantastic seaside Holi scene by the Progressive Artists
Group pioneer K.H Ara, and two magnificent abstract paintings by his
comrades SH Raza and Vasudeo Gaitonde (the genius son of Ucassaim). I also
loved the charming and unusual Goa scene – it is pictured along with this
column - by yet another important Progressive of Goan origin, Laxman Pai,
and spent considerable time relishing the irresistible humorous details in
the set of Mario de Miranda illustrations of what goes on behind the scenes
in airline offices.

All these comprise part of what the acclaimed poet, critic and curator
Ranjit Hoskote describes as “an invisible river” of artists from Goa who
substantially shaped the trajectory of Indian art but have “not always been
recognized as so doing.” In his prescient, powerful curatorial essay for
the game-changing 2007 exhibition *Aparanta: The Confluence of Contemporary
Art in Goa *– which also had the salutary effect of saving the Old GMC
building from being turned into a shopping mall - he pointed out that
“geographical contiguity does not mean that Goa and mainland India share
the same universe of meaning: Goa’s special historic evolution, with its
Lusitanian route to the Enlightenment and print modernity, its Iberian
emphasis on a vibrant public sphere, its pride in its ancient
internationalism avant la lettre, sets it at a tangent to the self-image of
an India that has been formed with the experience of British colonialism as
its basis. The relationship between Goa’s artists and mainland India has,
not surprisingly, been ambiguous and erratic, even unstable.”

That is certainly so, but the profusion of Goan artists in ‘Maharaja’s
Treasures’ demonstrates their importance to the Indian national cultural
project. Besides those named earlier, there’s Prafulla Joshi Dahanukar, who
was born in Bandora and also became a Progressive alongside her mentor
Gaitonde, and Marie Dias Arora, the daughter and grand-daughter of the
first two ICS officers of Goan origin, who studied on scholarship in Paris

[Goanet] Whose Passport Is It Anyway? (TOI+. 6/7/2023)

[V M]

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-three-times-more-goans-surrendered-their-passports-than-punjabis/articleshow/101504611.cms

A poignant scene plays out at Azad Maidan in Panjim every weekday
morning. This pleasant tree-shaded old square (it was called Largo
Afonso de Albuqerque until 1961) in the Latinate heart of the state
capital is dominated on one side by the formidable 19th-century
Quartel Militar building housing the police headquarters and the
Foreigners Regional Registration Office. Here, two queues assemble in
a ritual that closely tracks demographic shifts in India’s smallest
state: one line of foreigners seeking to stay on and live in this
blessed slice of the Konkan coastline, and another line of locals
engaging the paperwork to hand in their Indian passports as the final
step of giving up citizenship.

The latter cohort flashed into national headlines last week, when the
Ministry for External Affairs (MEA) released data for 2011-2022 which
accounted for nearly 70,000 people who surrendered their passports
around the country. An outsized proportion was from Goa: 28,031 or
40.45% of the overall 1,621,921. That is more than double the next two
states - Punjab with 9557/13.79% and Gujarat with 8918/12.87% -
combined, and the numbers have sparked considerable debate about what
could explain them.

The first thing to remember here is that 70,000 represents only a
small fraction of the Indians who took foreign citizenship. According
to the MEA, an astonishing 225,620 did so last year alone. In fact, no
country in the world has as large an overseas presence as the Indians
abroad: there are 32 million in diaspora, and the both Non-Resident
Indians (NRI) and People of Indian Origin (PIO) numbers keep going up
with an estimated 2.5 million migrants now leaving each year [source.

So, who are these 70,000 we learned about last week? That number only
tallies those who gave up their passports while resident in the
country, which is obviously far fewer than all who did so at embassies
and consulates abroad (for example, 78,284 went through that process
just in the USA in 2021).

In addition, it excludes everyone who doesn’t surrender their
documents, which could well be an even bigger total than those who do.
In this regard, it’s important to note there are huge contingents of
illegal immigrants from India in many different countries, and almost
150,000 have been apprehended at the borders of the USA in the last
three years alone.

Of course, there are innumerable reasons why people seek to move from
one country to another, with as many rationales as there are migrants.
On the other hand, the compulsion to switch passports is more easily
explained by what António Guterres, the United Nations
Secretary-General, calls “Travel Apartheid.” All passports are not
equal, and Indians carry one of the least desirable. The most recent
Passport Index “mobility scores” ranks India an abysmal 144th out of
199 countries in terms of ease of travel, and one of the main reasons
for that is the extreme reluctance of most western countries to grant
entry to the citizens of India.

Here, then, is precisely why Goans give up their Indian passports in
the small trickle that occurs each year. Unlike every other foreign
colonizer in this part of the world, at various junctures in the
451-year history of its Estado da Índia, the Portuguese state rolled
out full citizenship for its subjects in Goa, and continues to honour
that commitment in law. Thus, anyone born prior to decolonization in
1961 already possesses Portuguese nationality (should he or she wish
to exercise that right) and so do their children and grandchildren.
This is such a good deal it’s quite shocking how few take it up. Just
imagine the exodus if Gujarat or Punjab had similar rights.

“In my opinion, no decision is purely rational or purely emotional,”
says Rahool Pai Panandiker, the sole person of Indian origin on the
Portuguese Diaspora Council (under the aegis of the President of
Portugal and that country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs) since 2014,
who has been on its board of directors in 2020. This deeply thoughtful
52-year-old grew up in Goa, then earned his doctorate in the USA
before moving to the faculty of the University of Lisbon, and now
works as the Managing Director and Senior Partner of the Mumbai office
of Boston Consulting Group. He explains that “people make rational
choices when making critical decisions. No one moves to Portugal
merely for the love of the past, or of Portugal as a symbol of the
past. It is an onerous decision to make for a better future.”

I asked Panandiker why he gave up Indian citizenship for Portugal, and
the veteran management consultant encapsulated beautifully: “The short
answer was access to opportunities; to travel “effortlessly” and
experience different cultures and environments, to further my career,
to contribute and support clients and companies and make a difference
in many different parts of the world. 

[Goanet] Hidden Truths (O Heraldo, 25/6/2023)

[V M]

http://epaper.heraldgoa.in/articlepage.php?articleid=OHERALDO_GOA_20230625_6_2=377px=oHeraldo=6

Parashuram and Portugal are reliable distractions in India’s smallest
state, where governance has effectively collapsed, and the economy is
unable to provide decent jobs. Unemployment crested to nearly 17% in
January, and it still remains double the rate of the rest of the
country. Rule of law is conspicuously absent in the crucial aspects of
any functioning society. Meanwhile, an extraordinary onslaught on the
environment is personified by the ongoing brutalization of the
once-lovely Mandovi riverfront of Panjim. Now we have learned even the
Gods won’t be spared, as we see with the hasty installation of an
incomplete statue of Gomantabhoomi Janaka Parashuram to preside over
the torn-up landscape and vulgar casino blight. It is a fitting symbol
of the veritable Kali Yuga in contemporary Goa.

There’s an extreme cynicism to the recent unveilings in the capital,
where an entire mountainside of rocks has been dumped to overwhelm the
riverside ecology, and hundreds of trees were bulldozed to lay down an
elevated concrete promenade. There was no public consultation, no
approval process, no environmental assessment, and no response to
agitated appeals from concerned citizens. On the contrary, there have
been only insults to public intelligence, like naming the grossly
illegal bridge across the St. Inez creek as “Yog Setu”. As the Roman
historian Tacitus wrote about the worst plunderers over 2000 years
ago: “they make a desolation, and they call it peace.”

It is the job numbers that truly indicate the depth of Goa’s crisis.
On the one hand, higher than average literacy and education levels
prevail when compared to the rest of the country. Yet, when it comes
to learning outcomes, all the surrounding states are far better:
Maharashtra, Karnataka, and especially Kerala. That is one clear
indication of mismanagement, which shows up even more starkly when it
comes to jobs. There is no other explanation other than comprehensive
failure of governance for why Goa’s unemployment remains three times
higher than every one of its neighbours, year after year without end.

To learn more about this predicament, I reached out to Dr. Nilesh
Borde, the professor of finance and strategy and Vice Dean (Academic)
of Goa Business School at Goa University, who told me that
“unemployment data is a good indicator of what the economic situation
in Goa is, but the methodology has to be sound. The ways these surveys
are conducted are questionable, with skewed or problematic samples.
Having said this, there surely also exists disguised employment, such
as engineers working as data operators, and an alarming quantum jump
in forced entrepreneurs.”

All this is crucial evidence that Goa is failing to nurture an
economic model where its own citizens benefit, and instead trapping
most young people into underemployment, which Wikipedia describes as
“the underuse of a worker because a job does not use the worker's
skills, is part-time, or leaves the worker idle.” Borde says “in my
opinion this happens when decisions taken are haphazard, and there is
lack of vision or strategic intent in policy makers.”

Borde explained further: “the construction industry needs unskilled
and uneducated labour, and obviously an educated and socially
conscious Goan will not work there. When it comes to casinos, an
educated Goan will not work there either, but there is a gradual
change, as 12th standard or recently graduated kids are seen joining
this because of the money. but it thwarts the intellectual growth of
Goa as a state. So, what is needed is a strategic vision to help Goa
plan out the type of industries that it needs, and focus on what's
needed to develop them. All policies and planning should revolve
around that. Or else we will come to a state like today, where we wish
to make Goa a tourist capital but the construction industry is
destroying the hills which is actually detrimental for the growth of
tourism.”

I am connected on Facebook to Borde, and have noted palpable anguish
in his recent posts about the Mandovi riverfront. Earlier this week,
he posted pictures of the wholescale destruction heading across the
dunes towards Caranzalem, and asked, “What will happen to Goa? Is
anyone really bothered? This is Miramar getting butchered and abused
under the name of development and beautification. Sad, very sad.”

Via email, he elaborated “as a Ponjekaar I am really upset at
concretisation of Goa, whether it is the widened roads without
planting enough good quality trees, or excess construction at the cost
of butchering hills, the so-called “beautification” of naturally
beautiful beaches, or building of the walkway on the river. It is not
good for Goa. We are killing the natural biodiversity and dangerously
playing with nature.”

Another huge problem in the grotesque concretization is the
abandonment of half-finished “infrastructure” to the utter lawlessness
that 

[Goanet] If He Could Turn Back Time (Times of India Plus, 12/6/2023)

[V M]

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-goa-cm-is-talking-about-wiping-out-portuguese-influence/articleshow/100897928.cms?from=mdr

Earlier this week on June 6, at an event in the coastal village of Betul
that commemorated the 350th anniversary of Shivaji’s coronation, the chief
minister of Goa declared that “after 60 years we are trying to wipe out the
traces of the Portuguese and start afresh. This is the need of the hour.”
His bellicose posturing quickly garnered national headlines, along with
some international attention, but the reality in India’s smallest state is
completely different. For just one example, this very weekend on June 11,
the filled-to-capacity Portugal Day celebrations in the state capital of
Panjim will be hosted at the 17th century Palacio dos Maquinezes premises
of the Entertainment Society of Goa, which is chaired by the very same
chief minister, Dr. Pramod Sawant.

That is only the beginning of the ironies and contradictions, because
Portugal and India have been close allies for decades, and – entirely to
the credit of the diplomatic corps in Lisbon and New Delhi – actually
present the best model of post-colonial partnership anywhere in the world.
The main reason is precisely the unique history forged in the crucible of
globalization that was the 451-year colonial Estado da India in Goa, but
there is also exceptionally warm personal rapport between prime minister
Narendra Modi and his counterpart António Costa, who is not only Goan, but
also the first major world leader to proudly possess overseas citizenship
of India (with two additional Goans serving in his Cabinet for most of his
tenure).

Make no mistake: it is only the profound impact of Portugal in India (and
vice versa) that cemented the remarkable bond between Modi and Costa, with
innumerable spillover effects for their two countries. Thus, when the
Portuguese PM made his first official visit to the land of his ancestors in
2017 as the chief guest at that year’s Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, both
countries released stamps “to commemorate 500 years of diplomatic
relations”. Later that year, on his own first official visit to Portugal,
the Indian PM hailed Costa as “the best of the Indian diaspora across the
world” and took visible pleasure in handing over his OCI card. Two years
afterwards in 2019, at the specific request of the PMO, the Portuguese
leader once again visited India to serve on the Organising Committee
overseeing the global commemorations of the 150th birth anniversary of
Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu@150).

It should be noted all this is an ideological anomaly, that is firmly
grounded in “the traces of the Portuguese in India” which Sawant finds
objectionable, because António Costa’s Socialist Party (or PS for Partido
Socialista) is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Narendra
Modi’s BJP: unshakeably liberal and progressive, strongly pro-immigration,
and friendly to refugees. When the PS swept past the right to win big in
midterm elections in 2019, the Indian PM tweeted “Congratulations to
@psocialista and my friend @antoniocostapm. Looking forward to continuing
working together to further enhance India-Portugal friendship” and got this
response from Costa: “Thank you Prime Minister and dear friend@narendramodi.
Also looking forward to continuing deepening the friendship between India
and Portugal and our Peoples.”

If such celebratory “bhai-bhai” has become the bedrock of India’s
contemporary relations with Portugal, which Sawant has also
enthusiastically participated in – most recently during the 2020 visit of
the President of Portugal to Goa – why is the chief minister grandstanding
about issues long resolved by the passage of time? The first thing to
remember is that is his job: the main reason this notably weak and
constantly beleaguered CM has maintained his position against aggressive
challenges from his own party is his willingness to mouth these kinds of
extremist talking points to satisfy his bosses from outside Goa, no matter
how damaging to his own reputation, or contrary to the sentiments of
 citizens of the state.

This has played out many times, to the obvious horror of most voters, but
seemingly to some gain for Sawant from his political handlers and the “high
command.” That is why he keeps on doing it, especially appalling Goans last
year by proclaiming he wanted to be like Yogi Adityanath - “he inspires me
with his method and style of functioning” - and then railing against
religious conversions “even by mistake”. Then, when he took office again
after barely retaining his own seat in the most recent elections – his main
challenger was reportedly bankrolled by a Cabinet colleague – he began
ratcheting up the rhetoric. The CM flamboyantly set aside 20 Crores in the
state budget for “rebuilding” temples destroyed in the 16th and 17th
centuries, before declaring that his government was unable to find official
records (which are actually in the state library) so would proceed to act
on 

[Goanet] The Plastic Tsunami

[V M]

http://epaper.heraldgoa.in/articlepage.php?articleid=OHERALDO_GOA_20230611_6_1=385px=oHeraldo=6

Earlier this week on World Environment Day on June 5, the Goa
government unveiled a new public art installation at Miramar that was
explicitly intended to highlight the devastating impact of plastic
wastes on our ecology, and inadvertently wound up also illustrating
the scale and intractability of the problem.

Not only was the ‘Plastic Palu’ – a menacing-looking giant fish
sculpture – made out of single-use plastics, ostensibly to share an
anti-pollution message, but so were the accompanying flags and some
poorly edited signboards. Here, once again, as we now see so often in
India’s smallest state, only lip service is being paid to an important
issue, while directly adding to the problem, in the presumption that
there will never be any accountability.

“I am exhausted by plastic,” said Clinton Vaz at another, much more
meaningful event this week, hosted on World Oceans Day on June 8 by
the Worldwide Fund for Nature’s Goa office in Miramar, just down the
road from the Plastic Palu. The 42-year-old has dedicated his entire
adult life (starting at 19) to understanding and tackling the problem
of garbage, and his company vRecycle now handles the waste of an
impressive 45000 households from two processing facilities in the
Margao industrial estate. But even as his capabilities grew
exponentially over two decades, they were far outstripped by the
severity of the crisis: “we are all doing much more than before,
including the government, but we’re still overwhelmed. It feels like
the majority of people just don’t care.”

That sentiment is set to be tested, after the launch of WWF Goa’s
easy-to-use Plastic Reporter WhatsApp chatbot, which aims to build a
realistic snapshot of the plastic waste overwhelming Goa’s oceanfront.
Via the telephone number +91 7498982409, everyone can now report,
document and location-tag every instance of this kind of pollution,
and we can begin to understand what it is, and where it comes from.
Huge credit is due WWF Goa, and especially the outstanding programme
co-ordinator Aditya Kakodkar. Since he took over the state outpost of
this global organization, this talented 40-year-old Marine Science
professional has led a series of excellent projects in different areas
of study.

Here's what the WWF says it wants to do: “The Chatbot offers a
user-friendly platform for the general public to report the location,
quantity, and images of beach litter. This data will help map the
extent of unmanaged plastic waste in natural habitats and aid in
identifying effective solutions. Utilising the widely accessible
WhatsApp platform, individuals can contribute to the cause by simply
sending a message 'plastic' to WWF's WhatsApp number - +917498982409.
The Chatbot will guide participants through predefined questions to
gather the necessary details.”

The efforts are Konkan-specific, to “address the pressing issue of
marine plastics generated by tourism activities in Goa and Southern
Maharashtra. These regions, known for their pristine natural beauty,
are faced with the challenge of protecting endangered marine species
and vital habitats such as coral reefs.”

And they are part of a broader campaign to conserve the most precious
coastal habitats: “The growth of nature tourism, including coral reef
scuba diving and dolphin watching, has brought increased plastic
pollution to these fragile ecosystems. Recognising the urgent need for
intervention, apart from the chatbot, WWF-India is also working
closely with dive and dolphin tour operators to implement effective
plastic waste management strategies. The operators will be provided
training to ensure proper management and disposal of plastics on-board
and on jetties. Moreover, they will be encouraged to participate
actively in reef clean-up activities and responsible disposal of
plastic waste. Local Goa and Southern Maharashtra stakeholders will
collaborate to establish and strengthen a reliable plastic management
system.”

All this is already underway, in an invaluable intervention from WWF
Goa, but it does beg the question why the Goa government isn’t doing
anything like it, and instead insulting the intelligence of its
citizens with dreck like the Plastic Palu. Meanwhile, from a standing
start in the middle of the pandemic, when the coastlines cleared
almost completely from plastic pollution, the state has become
inundated with garbage, quite possibly past the point of any
redemption. On that same World Oceans Day earlier this week, 100
scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography at Dona Paula
spent a few hours cleaning up just 1km of sands at Caranzalem, and
collected an astonishing 185 kg of plastic, plus another 40kg of
glass, and another 15-20kg of household waste. Multiply by 131
kilometres of beachfront, and hundreds more upriver.

What I really appreciated about the launch event of the WWF Goa
plastic chatbot was the ebullient blend of 

[Goanet] State of Confusion (O Heraldo, 30/6/2023)

[V M]

http://epaper.heraldgoa.in/viewpage.php?edition=oHeraldo=OHERALDO_GOA=2023-05-30=1#Page/15

On my recent visit to Pondicherry, the contemporary plight of Goa was
constantly being referenced as the cautionary tale that former French India
wanted to avoid at all costs. It is a strategy that has worked well since
decolonization, when Paris cannily played “good imperialist” to contrast
with Portuguese dictator’s Salazar’s deranged intransigence, and managed to
get such an excellent deal from New Delhi that the French flag only finally
came down in 1962, with umpteen benefits for Franco-Indians that Goans can
only dream about.

Today it is the nakedly criminal misgovernance in Goa, and the catastrophic
demographic displacement underway in India’s smallest state, that
stakeholders in Pondicherry seek to circumvent by any means necessary. They
have seen how every environmental, economic, cultural and social advantage
has been ground to smithereens by an incompetent, venal and selfish
political cadre in just a few decades, and justifiably congratulate
themselves for having evaded a similar fate. Again and again, from all
different walks of society, I was told “we’re better off than you because
this place remained a Union Territory. Your first mistake was becoming a
state.”

There is perverse irony to this conclusion, which labels democracy the
culprit for Goa’s contemporary plight, because Goans have single-mindedly
sought equality on democratic principle for hundreds of years, starting
from the clear-eyed demands of my fellow-islander from Divar, the first
Indian bishop Dom Matheus de Castro, who upset Portuguese relations with
the Mughal court under Shah Jehan by unstintingly pointing to colonial
discrimination, and kept demanding that Goans should never be treated as
less than anyone else.

This trait horrified the British, who kept the rest of India comfortably
at-heel in their Raj, as you can see in Richard Burton’s entertainingly
bilious 1851 *Goa, and the Blue Mountains; Or, Six Months of Sick Leave*:
“The black Indo-Portuguese is an utter radical. He has gained much by
Constitution, the “dwarfish demon” which sets everybody by the ears at Goa.
Although poverty sends forth thousands of black Portuguese to earn money in
foreign lands, they prefer the smallest competence at home, where equality
allows them to indulge in a favourite independence of manner utterly at
variance with our Ango-Indian notions concerning the proper demeanour of a
native towards a European.”

This week, India has Savarkar on its mind, so it’s useful to revisit the
kind of language that British colonial subject deployed in his famous
petition for mercy in 1913: “If the government in their manifold
beneficence and mercy release me, I for one cannot but be the staunchest
advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English government
which is the foremost condition of that progress. I am ready to serve the
Government in any capacity they like, for as my conversion is conscientious
so I hope my future conduct would be. The Mighty alone can afford to be
merciful and therefore where else can the prodigal son return but to the
parental doors of the Government?”

Such craven supplication isn’t exclusive to Savarkar, of course, though it
must be noted many Indians never grovelled to that degree, but contrast
directly to how Francisco Luis Gomes expressed himself in the Portuguese
parliament in 1861, when he roundly denounced slavery on moral grounds, and
refused to countenance inequality in the imperial writ. Look at his letter
to Lamartine, full 50 years before Savarkar’s prostrations: “I was born in
the East Indies, once the cradle of poetry, philosophy and history and now
their tomb. I belong to that race which composed the Mahabharata and
invented chess. But this nation which made codes of its poems and
formulated politics in a game is no longer alive! It survives imprisoned in
its own country. I demand for India liberty and light; as for myself, more
happy than my countrymen, I am free – civis sum.”

Gomes illustrates a curious paradox that defines the singularity of Goan
history. The terrific Lisbon-based historian Ângela Barreto Xavier
summarizes succinctly in her landmark 2022 book, *Religion & Empire in
Portuguese India: Conversion, Resistance, and the Making of Goa*: “the
majority of the population of the villages of the Old Conquests consented
to live under Portuguese imperial rule. This consent was essential for the
invention of Goa as well as for the conservation of Portuguese imperial
power. The manifestations of this consent were not limited to contributing
to the economic, financial and military sustainability of the imperium: the
consent was internalised to the extent that the imperial cause became, for
many, their own.”

This is super-important, because consent is at the heart of democratic
principle, and the facts of our history present a conundrum that is perhaps
best posed in question form. If we accept, per 

[Goanet] Pride of Goa (O Heraldo, 28/5/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Pride-of-Goa/205523

No writer better represents the stunning retrieval and renaissance of
Konkani – the central pillar of Goan identity - than Damodar Mauzo, whose
acceptance of the 57th Jnanpith Award yesterday at Raj Bhavan was an
historic milestone in the story of the Goans. It is a great individual
honour for the laureate of our literature, and also an impressive tribute
to the strength and power of his beloved language, which has managed to
survive almost unprecedented tribulations to begin to flourish anew.

The Jnanpith citation correctly identifies some important aspects of the
78-year-old master’s great literary worth: “[He] is the most prolific
contemporary Konkani writer. For over the last fifty years, he has
footprints in many genres, including short stories, novels, criticism, and
children’s literature. The themes of Mauzo’s stories are bold and many are
women-centric; his narratives are unconventional and even philosophical at
times. He speaks about human relations, social change, male chauvinism,
caste, religion, and other facets of humanity in his creations. Although
his creations are mostly set in Konkani frames, the ideas gained him
pan-Indian appreciation.”

All that is true, but only one facet of Mauzo’s impact and legacy. For some
decades, he has been the foremost beacon and ambassador for “the better
angels” of our many-layered culture and identity, the unique native
humanism described by Bakibab Borkar as *vegllench munisponn*. The way he
embodies it – utterly humane but entirely indomitable at the same time – is
irresistible to readers and the general public alike. Everyone feels
instantly close to their ‘Bhaiee’ which is why literary communities in
several states rejoiced unreservedly when this latest honour was announced,
and the jubilation in Goa has been across the board like nothing in recent
memory.

Just how unique is Bhaiee? Let me count the ways! He is a litterateur of
lofty attainment, but also an unshakeable man of the people who is firmly
integrated into the working-class fabric of his ancestral village after
decades serving community needs as the proprietor of their one-stop general
store. Then, he is incomparably eloquent in Konkani and Marathi and Hindi
and English, to a degree that no one else I have met can match. To add to
that, in an atmosphere of increasing polarization, and the rampant
radicalization of his co-religionists, this is one Hindu whose (almost)
entire corpus of writing effortlessly inhabits the lifeworld of Catholics,
and firmly holds the line against the politics of division despite becoming
increasingly isolated in that position. In this regard, Mauzo is absolutely
lion-hearted, and I especially love his persistent reminders that another
icon from Majorda – the late musician and composer Anthony Gonsalves – is
his literal *dudh bhau*, because both were nursed by the latter’s mother.

As we know very well in Goa, many things are becoming unsayable in our
fraught, desperate times, where – in grotesque irony – the unspeakable has
instead become public routine. This is where Mauzo stands alone, with
immense individual bravery and heroism that sets him completely apart for
standing up for what everyone knows is right. And here is another grotesque
irony: in our entire span of history since he was born in the old Estado da
India, it has never been quite so lonely – all the way through the freedom
struggle until decolonization, the Opinion Poll era where the state fended
off being merged with Maharashtra, to the stirring Konkani language
agitations and Goa’s ongoing struggles for self-determination.

In all of those cases, there was an unmistakable popular outpouring of
sentiment for the forces of liberation, justice, equality and freedom, but
in our disgracefully degraded times all that has been almost extinguished.
Now vultures command the heights, with attack dogs of intolerance baying
for blood in every public arena, and the state itself turned craven,
contorting into ever-more-cowardly paeans of appeasement to the extremist
fringe. In this shameful scenario, it’s perfectly rational to be afraid,
and the public stays uncomfortably mum. But not Mauzo, who calmly continues
to name names, and call out the obvious, which is why this surpassingly
gentle man and thorough gentleman is now compelled to go everywhere with an
armed bodyguard provided by the government.

For himself, Bhaiee could care less about government approval. Nonetheless,
it is a matter of considerable shame for Goa that our state has never
awarded this great litterateur anything like his just due, or even pursued
what he has always richly deserved (such as the long overdue Padma award).
Make no mistake, this is appalling negligence. Any other part of India with
responsible governance would have long since taken advantage of this man’s
calibre, and entrusted him with responsibility for some of our vital
cultural institutions that are being 

[Goanet] Postcard from Mussoorie (O Heraldo, 20/5/2023)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Postcard-from-Mussoorie/205228

Highly unexpectedly, I found Goa on the minds of many in Mussoorie this
weekend, during this spectacularly situated little Himalayan mountainside
city’s 200 th anniversary celebration. Next week, our tourism minister
Rohan Khaunte is scheduled to arrive in Dehradun on the first regular
direct flight between two of India’s most popular and significant
destinations, and the locals are exuberant about this new beginning. As his
counterpart, the genial, enthusiastic Uttarakhand minister of tourism
Satpal Maharaj told me in the storied Savoy Hotel at the official
anniversary dinner earlier this week, “we are bringing our mountains closer
to your ocean. It is an historic occasion.”

Maharaj and the tourism stakeholders of Uttarakhand are expecting the new
flight connection to help attract the elusive “high value tourists” (which
actually translates directly to foreigners) to their beautiful state, where
the marketplace has become dominated by unstoppably huge numbers of Hindu
pilgrims visiting ‘Devbhoomi’, the traditional “home of the Gods”. At the
same event at The Savoy, the president of the Hotels & Restaurant
Association of Uttarakhand, Sandeep Sahni told me “our challenge here is
that we get millions of tourists, but 90% are religious travellers on a
strict budget. Of course, it is our duty to host them, but we need to find
better ways to do it.”

The backdrop to Sahni’s comments is the terrifying “subsidence” – a literal
collapse – which afflicted the holy town of Joshimath earlier this year,
where hundreds of houses cracked and crumbled, while rendering entire
neighborhoods vulnerable in this crucial transition point between Rishikesh
and Badrinath. At that time, the geologist SP Sati summed up
succinctly in *Hindustan
Times*: “what we are witnessing today in Joshimath is definitely a result
of haphazard construction that has been going on in the town. The
mushrooming of urban settlements is not a parameter of development but just
physical growth.”

It is true that we get very few pilgrims amongst the millions of domestic
visitors who throng Goa every year, but I still felt great déjà vu hearing
Sahni describe the nature of the mass of arrivals in Uttarakhand. The
majority shows up in their own vehicles, which are overloaded with supplies
so that very little money is actually spent in the state. They often carry
gas cylinders – a ticking time bomb issue – to cook wherever they want, and
then simply throw their garbage down the sides of the roads and into the
rivers. This is identical to what we have been experiencing in India’s
smallest state since the turn of the new millennium, and one big lesson may
be that tourism in this country will always be like this. Instead of
anything sustainable, or even desirable, the industry in this part of the
world inevitably deteriorates to an ugly, brutish devastation that damages
far more than it produces.

This lesson has been painfully learned in Goa, of course, and it is not
necessary to dwell on the extraordinary costs this once-blessed slice of
the Konkan coastline has had to pay. What is truly tragic in 2023, however,
is having to watch other parts of the country subsume themselves to the
same destructive forces, as though no lessons can ever be learned. That is
certainly the case in Mussoorie, which is fundamentally utterly beguiling,
with an incredible cultural history of – contrary to Kipling’s maxim – East
meeting West and people from all over the world mingling together in a
range of pioneering institutions, including The Savoy. It's wonderful that
many precious buildings do remain, but heart-sinking to see their
condition, and the detritus that has come up all around them.

It is not as though the basic solutions to these problems are unknown, or
even particularly mysterious. The first principle has to be strict control
on the numbers of arrivals, with an unwavering emphasis on maintaining
environmental, cultural and economic sustainability. Right alongside with
this focus on carrying capacity must be zero tolerance for all
illegalities, in conjunction with rigorous regulation of the tourism
industry and all its adjuncts. Unfortunately, whether in Goa or
Uttarakhand, neither of these essential measures seem to be politically
viable. In my conversation with Sandeep Sahni, it is notable that he
brought up Bhutan as an ideal role model. It is indeed true that may be one
part of South Asia which gets tourism right, but it’s no coincidence the
Himalayan country is an absolute monarchy (albeit with some recent
constitutional measures).

I was fortunate to attend the 200th anniversary celebrations in Mussoorie
thanks to my friend Ganesh Saili, the terrific writer, photographer, and
chronicler of Garhwal. He lives on a spectacular promontory at Mullingar,
the very first settlement, and The Savoy is on another spur all the way
across the mountain. We drove there skirting an extraordinary setting, with

[Goanet] This Is The End (O Heraldo, 16/4/23)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/This-Is-The-End/203866?

No need to wait for history to judge this disgracefully incompetent
government, and its catastrophic mismanagement of India’s smallest
state. The evidence is everywhere: ravaged hillsides, grossly
overbuilt coastlines, an utterly wrecked capital, and the shameful
dereliction of duty to maintain law and order. There is no silver
lining. On the contrary, it’s painfully clear that everything Goans
know, love and recognize about their homeland – the blessings of
generations of ancestors who chose more wisely – is being rapidly
extinguished in front of our eyes.

Make no mistake: there will be no recovery, because every system of
redressal is broken. Constitutional democracy has ceased to function
in Goa, as evident from this week’s latest truth-telling (to Karan
Thapar of The Wire) by Satya Pal Malik, the BJP’s own Governor during
the Covid-19 “second wave’, who said he complained to Narendra Modi
directly about corruption in our state: “you can ask even small
children in Goa what everyone knows about the chief minister [and now]
I can confidently say that [even] the prime minister does not have a
strong aversion to corruption.”

Even such blatant criminality is only one aspect of the comprehensive
failure of governance in Goa, as highlighted by the shockingly
destructive, wasteful and trashy “makeover” of Panjim in order to host
G20. We’re being told to celebrate “a watershed moment in [India’s]
history as it seeks to play an important role by finding pragmatic
global solutions for the wellbeing of all” but that’s is just
delusional rhetoric compared to the reality on the streets:
untrained, under-equipped – and often visibly underaged – labourers
erecting a grotesque, haphazard, less-than-skin-deep simulacrum of an
actual working state which cares about its citizens.

I visited the memorial to Tristão de Bragança Cunha at Azad Maidan
this week, in pondering what the “father of Goan nationalism” might
have said about this deeply troubling juncture in his beloved
homeland. For those who do not know, this fearless man of principle
was – as per diplomat/historian K. M. Pannikar – “nationalist India’s
first ambassador [to Europe] who, single-handed, was able to break
through the news blockade which Britain established in respect of the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre.”

Cunha alerted the likes of Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse to
iniquities visited upon his fellow Indians, and always had the guts to
speak out when others were silent. Pannikar particularly praises his
“great and historic fight against a system of indentured labour under
which Kunbi labourers from Goa were recruited and sent to the
plantations in Assam. It was almost a single-handed fight but he was
able to awaken the conscience of his countrymen both in India and Goa
to the injustices of this system, and get it abolished.”

Re-reading Cunha’s own writings on this, I got a painful shock of
recognition: “the government did not take the least step to help those
unfortunate people. On the contrary, its passivity went to the extent
of conniving with the people responsible for the cruel treatment
inflicted on our countrymen.” That was almost 100 years ago, with the
Portuguese and British colonialists as familiar villains, but in 2023
the identical horror has come directly to Goa, where the most
vulnerable young Indians are being compelled to toil, in inhuman –
indeed, totally illegal – conditions, in the total absence of
protective equipment, with the overseer our own state. How far we have
fallen.

Of course, it is not just citizens’ rights being bulldozed, because
Goa’s environment is also being destroyed at high speed with full
connivance by the state administration. This is especially evident at
Reis Magos – thus directly in the view of many G20 venues – where
monstrously inappropriate giant buildings are rising to obliterate the
ancient landscape.

Who approved these egregiously dodgy projects? What happened to the
Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, passed in 2016 “to
infuse transparency and credibility” into the building sector, which
specifically encourages “construction of environmentally sustainable
and affordable housing”? For just one obvious question: where is the
water going to come from, when Reis Magos has been suffering literal
drought each summer over the past few years? And what about
demographic displacement- has anyone bothered to ask the villagers
what they think about a thousand new neighbours on that one hillside?

Yes, these are largely rhetorical questions. And it’s also true Goa
appears helpless to correct the disgraceful state of current affairs,
but we must nonetheless note that most Goans are fully cognizant of
what is being done to them by their own so-called “leaders”. In this
regard, I really appreciated what Suraj Shenai – the founder and CEO
of Goa Brewing Co. – wrote on the Goa Speaks forum on Facebook earlier
this week on 12 April, to 

[Goanet] Do They Know? (O Heraldo, 25/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Do-They-Know/198602

It is almost four full decades since the highly unlikely figure of Bob
Geldof (a scruffy punk rocker from Ireland who fronted the Boomtown Rats)
spearheaded Band Aid, an unprecedented “supergroup” of world-famous pop
musicians who recorded the fastest-selling song in UK chart history, and
hit number one in at least a dozen other countries. *Do They Know It’s
Christmas?* came out at the end of 1984, after a full year of an
extraordinary “biblical famine” in Ethiopia, and asked some searing
questions of everyone who was immersed the usual hyper-commercial
“traditional” revelry: “Here's to you/ Raise a glass for everyone/ Spare a
thought this yuletide for the deprived/ If the table was turned would you
survive/ Do they know it's Christmas time at all?”

Let us recall that the song was roundly panned for both its style and
substance. No less than the leading music publication *NME* dismissed the
“turkey” with just one line: “Millions of Dead Stars write and perform
rotten record for the right reasons.” Many others were rightly irate about
the extreme condescension dripping from every aspect of the project,
especially Bono’s appalling lyric: “Well tonight thank God it’s them
instead of you.” Nonetheless, the record and its associated concerts wound
up despatching over $150 million to charity, and it also had an additional
salutary effect because Geldof and his mates returned focus to what is
supposed to be the main event anyway: the birth of an innocent refugee,
whose family is in perilous flight from certain death. We tend to forget
all this, so it’s worth asking anew: do we know what’s Christmas time at
all?

I really appreciated how Jerry Pinto seeks to probe this very question in
his foreword to *Indian Christmas: Essays, Memories, Hymns *(Speaking
Tiger), a fine new anthology in which Verem-based artist Nishant Saldanha,
the 2022 Jnanpith Award winner Damodar Mauzo and I are also included to
represent Goa: “The central celebration is the birth of a child. There is
no culture that does not celebrate this event, because all of us who belong
to the human race can see our collective future in the pudgy little face.
We marvel at this conjuring act, the miniature miracle, at its tiny
fingernails and bud-like nose…let us forgive our species its parochialism,
and let us agree a human birth is indeed special. The world seems a
generous, beautiful place in that moment, full of promise and hype.”

Here’s the twist, however: “stop a moment – there is a different reason why
that birth in Bethlehem moves us so much, year after year. Here is a child
in perilous circumstances. His parents are exiles. They are homeless. They
are refugees.” Desperately seeking refuge, “they knock on door after door
and they are turned away. Later, the boy grown to wisdom will say:
‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren that you do unto me.’
(Beware, you nations that turn the refugee away and build walls to protect
the wealth that has been built on expropriation. If you trumpet your
Christian beliefs and thump your Bible as you do so often when elections
come around, turning the refugee from your door is tantamount to turning
away the Holy Family in its hour of need.”

As a child, Pinto remembers asking his father about the “shepherds who
watched their flocks by night. He got an answer based on our collective
Indian experience: “My father said, ‘They must have been nomadic
shepherds’. I knew of nomads in our own parts, homeless tribes living on
the streets, and I understood: the Good News, the Godspell, was first
announced to the poor. The savants saw it in the sky as a star. The angels
themselves came down to announce the news to the shepherds. But the rulers
of the time were terrified. The star foretold a grim destiny for them and
so we have the story of the slaughter of innocents, all children under two
to be done to death to make sure that one threat will be neutralized. I
recognized the horror again when I heard the story of Krishna’s death – his
mother imprisoned and every baby she birthed snatched from her and dashed
to the ground. Little Jesus survived. Warned by an angel, Joseph took the
family to safety in Egypt.”

It is not just the Pintos, of course, because Indians naturally picture the
“Holy Land” in their own surroundings, as you can see from the 1961
painting by Angelo da Fonseca accompanying this column. The Jesuit scholar
Délio de Mendonça puts it very well in his monumental new book on the great
artist from Santo Estêvão, and favourite pupil of the Tagores in
Shantiniketan, “Fonseca’s sacred and secular repertoire calls our attention
to the urgent need to carefully protect the cultural and spiritual heritage
that we tend to overlook. His art sprang from his desire for an inclusive
society, an ideal for which he incessantly struggled, and though rejected,
he was able to pass it on.”

That is actually the common strand of all the various reminders from 

[Goanet] The Hopes and Fears of All the Years (Mint, 25/12/2022)

[V M]

https://lifestyle.livemint.com/news/opinion/christmas-in-bethlehem-is-about-looking-beyond-miracles-111671894840580.html

Way back in 1984, when I was still only a teenager, my family received
special permissions to visit “The Holy Land” that were printed on pieces of
paper we were told to discard upon departure from Ben Gurion Airport. At
that time, our passports—like those of every other Indian—carried this
prominent proscription: “Not Valid for Travel to Israel, South Africa and
Southern Rhodesia”.

Today, as we all know, it is not at all uncommon for urban Indians of every
background to visit Israel, and many thousands of Konkani Catholics just
like my family from Goa have undertaken tour-operated pilgrimages to
various locations that are mentioned in the Bible. Back then, however,
relatively few ventured to those iconic sites—Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea
of Galilee—and no one we knew had made it out there for the apex event that
is Midnight Mass in Bethlehem, in the Basilica of the Nativity, the oldest
site of Christian worship in the world and the supposed birthplace of Jesus.

Unbeknownst to us, that very Christmas Eve wound up being an important
turning point for the West Bank, the occupied territory that would rapidly
become more than 200 Israeli settlements, scattered amongst almost as many
“islands” of civil authority which most countries—including India—now
recognise as the State of Palestine. It had been first seized from Jordan
in 1967, after the so-called Six-Day War when Israel decisively defeated an
Arab coalition (and simultaneously occupied the Golan Heights from Syria,
and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt), but overt controls were
exercised relatively gingerly until the precise moment in 1984 that my
family headed there, which is when Shimon Peres also unexpectedly turned up
as the first Israeli leader to visit the iconic shrine.

We had been expecting crowds, but now found ourselves penned in immobile,
standing shoulder-to-shoulder for hours just to be screened for entry to
Manger Square. Finally making it all the way through, we were startled to
see the gnomic Israeli prime minister pop up onstage, from where he
exhorted us in English: “I bring a greeting of peace to all those who seek
peace.” It was an indelible moment that has remained seared in my memory:
this earnest, forbidding figure looming in the middle distance and
delivering amplified promises that sounded distinctly like threats, while
an army of alert snipers stood poised against cloudless dark skies on the
rooftops all around us. I recall feeling trapped, and more than a little
helpless. The “holy night” became tinged with menace, and the unmistakable
spectre of violence.

This was something new, which permanently shifted my perspective, because,
until that moment, our family Christmases had only ever followed the
typical Goan Catholic formula of unstinting merriment and community-centred
good cheer. It is the time of year when the classic Mario de Miranda
illustrations spring to life: hand-made stars lit up from within,
multi-generational clan banquets, the groaning table filled with
delicacies, with violins and voices raised in song. The way we celebrate is
wonderfully inclusive, loving and multi-denominational, where everyone
belongs and has a place at the table. The first time it really sunk in to
me that things aren’t naturally like that for everyone was behind the
barbed wire in Bethlehem in 1984.

In retrospect, from the vantage of 2022, more than two decades after the
catastrophic World Trade Centre attack in New York on 9/11, followed by the
devastating “War on Terror”, it is quite hard to describe just how
different Israel and the West Bank felt back then. There was no giant wall
cleaving the two populations into an archipelago of fragments, and, every
day, tens of thousands of Palestinians headed to work back and forth
“across the border” with minimal fuss. At that time, even the idea of Hamas
(which would eventually become a dominant political and military force in
Palestine) was still some years away. After our intense Christmas Eve
experience, my family proceeded to thoroughly enjoy our visit, with the
others falling hard for the more cosmopolitan precincts of Jaffa and Haifa,
while my own soul stirred most profoundly in the primeval wadis (valleys)
that rise in sharp, serried ranks from the Dead Sea.

Those landscapes of Ein Gedi—they’re mentioned in the Song of Songs in the
Hebrew Bible—drew me back the following year to volunteer for Israel’s
Nature Reserves Authority. Now, most of my day was spent tracking leopards
and counting ibex (and also picking up garbage), but it was highly
educative to work alongside Arabs under Israeli bosses, and I also learned
a lot from up-close observation of the troubled assimilation of the
Falasha, thousands of Ethiopian Jews who had just been airlifted to “the
Promised Land” where they faced the humiliating demand by rabbinical
authorities that they be 

[Goanet] Libia Lobo Sardesai’s Voice of Freedom (O Heraldo, 24/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Libia-Lobo-Sardesai%E2%80%99s-Voice-of-Freedom/198571

History came crackling alive on 20th December earlier this week, when the
great Libia “Libby” Lobo Sardesai delivered an unexpected
up-close-and-personal account of the *Voz de Liberdade* underground radio
station (aka The Voice of Freedom, or *Sodvonecho Awaz*) that she operated
along with Vaman Sardesai in the crucial years of anti-colonial resistance
leading up to 1961. At a dignified ceremony at the Central Library offices
at Patto, during which the formidable nonagenarian formally gave the state
an entire copy of the copious archives she has safeguarded for over 60
years, she startled and delighted her small audience with this
spell-binding synopsis.

“The radio was not just one of those things that happened as a matter of
course,” said Lobo, “in fact it was the only peaceful alternative that was
left to the Goans.” She recalled how the colonial military brutally
attacked unarmed satyagrahis in 1954, so “to put sense into the Portuguese
regime, the government of India declared the borders with Goa closed and
also imposed an economic blockade, which meant preventing all free
movement, traffic and trade between the two territories. All existing sea,
road and rail links were snapped. Indian dock workers boycotted all ships
touching Goa. From then on, therefore, any communication could only be
clandestine and with great risk.”

Tensions kept mounting: “Instead of seeing reason, the Portuguese
government displayed an arrogant attitude, increased their repression on
the people and made their lives even more unbearable by house searches,
raids, interrogations, arrests and physical brutalities on mere suspicion,
strict vigilance and endless harassment. Their aim was to crush the
nationalist movement and the aspirations of the people for freedom. This
challenge had to be met. Under the aegis of the Goa Vimochan Samiti, an All
India Satyagraha was started on 15th August 1955 to support the Goan people
and to give a final warning to the Portuguese to Quit Goa, This was met
with even worse brutalities on the patriots who were only marching
peacefully. They fired point blank at them and mowed down scores. They
dragged their bullet-ridden bodies and flung them like cattle across the
border. World opinion and right-thinking people everywhere were shocked at
such atrocities. To avoid further loss of lives, the Indian government
ordered the Satyagraha to be immediately suspended.”

That is when Lobo (she would later marry her staunch comrade Vaman Sardesai
on 19th December 1964) answered an unusual call. At the state library, she
recalled in gripping detail how “in Goa censorship was in force. Not even
an invitation card or a calendar could be printed or circulated without it
carrying the Seal of the Censor. No civil liberties whatsoever, while
people were kept totally in the dark. As no outside newspapers or printed
matter could come in, the official Emmisora de Goa radio station and the
couple of local newspapers were feeding the people only with lies and false
propaganda, though the Liberation movement was steadily growing and gaining
support both inside and outside. It became imperative to expose the lies of
the Portuguese and raise the morale of the people by informing them of the
reality. The answer came in the form of an underground radio station.”

All this is matter of fact, but the details are amazing. An unlikely trio
of Goans set up in the Western Ghats jungle – for a short period Lobo and
Sardesai were joined by Nicolau Menezes (who happens to be my grand-uncle)
but the older man couldn’t cope with the isolated conditions – and they
went on by themselves to broadcast the literal “voice of freedom” every day
for six years. Lobo told us the “task was fourfold. To sustain the morale
of the people by giving them correct information of the progress of the
movement. To demoralize the Portuguese troops and officials by exposing
their lies and atrocities. To counter their lies against India, and to show
ours was not a solitary struggle but one with all the other anti-colonial
struggles in Asia and Africa which were progressing with determination and
support of one another.”

This is important: “All dates of national importance were observed. Every
meeting, incident, supportive statement coming from any corner of the world
and condemning Portugal was reported. Statements of the leaders in the
Indian Parliament, even supportive articles appearing in foreign newspapers
were broadcast verbatim. Happenings that closely affected us like the
proceedings of the Hague Tribunal; the defence of the Indian Attorney
General MC Setalvad and also the marathon speech of the then Indian Defence
Minister VK Menon were broadcast verbatim. When the decision of the
International Court of Justice in the Nagar Haveli case was announced, the
Portuguese informed the Goan people through their channels that they had
won the case and celebrated it with 

[Goanet] O Come All Ye Faithful (to MoCA) - O Heraldo, 17/12/2022

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/O-Come-All-Ye-Faithful-to-MoCA/198268

In this holiday season filled with good cheer, and gorgeous artistic
outpourings extending all across the Mandovi riverfront to every corner of
India’s smallest state, it is wonderful to see the newly reconfigured
Museum of Christian Art stand out, and hold its own with the best in the
country – indeed the world – as a beacon of Goa’s unique cultural heritage.

This increasingly invaluable institution’s jewel-like setting on the Holy
Hill of Old Goa, in one old wing of the spectacular 17th century Convent of
Santa Monica (which is still the largest in Asia) has never looked better,
and it is genuinely moving to walk through MoCA’s superb medieval and early
modern collection directly into *Engraved Treasures*, where an eclectic,
knowingly selected coterie of contemporary artists of Goa has responded to
Lina Vincent’s curatorial challenge with excellent, thoughtful and
provocative artworks.

Vincent must be credited for an exceptionally well-conceived concept, which
she parses carefully in her essay to accompany the exhibition: “The artists
were invited to respond to a single object, an 18th Century Bible [from the
MoCA collection] with engraved works within it. We built a focus around
imagery reflecting the birth of Christ and his young life, to commemorate
the time of Christmas. In the process, each of the artists interacted with
the material at multiple levels – through a physical plane, with the book
and its relevance as a text; through the history of European art and
printmaking; from the point of view of the legacy of the printed page and
publishing; and through the collective contemporary experience of being in
Goa, a former Portuguese colony that reveals a complex mingling of
cultures.”

The full title is *Engraved Treasures: Past and Present in Continuum*, and
Vincent explains that “Histories bind us together like the threads in a
multihued tapestry, stretched across time and space. Metaphorically viewed
as a whole, some parts could be faded, disappearing; others could be
fragile, with torn portions held together by mere strands – yet other parts
can be vivid and shiny, as strong today as when they were made. A museum
has the ability to show us this tapestry that we are part of, a collective
whole of which the parts remain connected despite differences, or
similarities for that matter. Culture, whatever form it may take, resonates
with civilisational shifts and changes that in turn respond largely to
human acts of socio-political interaction. In creating a lens that draws
together aspects of the past and present within the same dialogue, the
exhibition addresses these points of intersection between various layers of
tangible and intangible experience, and heritage.”

There are many stand-out artworks in this winning MoCA show. I happened to
walk through earlier this week with the great British photographer Derry
Moore, and both of us were thoroughly wowed by the subtle, stunning images
of Old Goa interiors by Lester Silveira. Vincent puts it well: “The notion
of time and space, and their physical and transcendental dimensions become
part of Lester Silveira’s photographic series. In his observation of
biblical illustrations, the use of light depicted as linear rays bursting
through the clouds or entering through architectural apertures formed a
critical component to convey the presence of God, or the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, in church architecture, a divine atmosphere was created by
channelling light through various spatial and structural configurations
like domes, vaults and clerestories. Silveira’s images explore these
moments of ethereal light that can be experienced by anyone entering these
spaces.”

There’s an unexpected connection between *Engraved Treasures* and *Indian
Christmas: Essays, Memories, Hymns* (Speaking Tiger), the attractive new
anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle. That is *Nativity* by
Nishant Saldanha, the Verem-based artist who is on MoCA’s creative team
(note: Damodar Mauzo and I also represent Goa in the volume). Here, it’s
worth dwelling what Pinto says in his introduction: “I think the birth of
Mary’s child moves the world to joy and generosity because we all – even
those not of the faith – carry the image of the apostle of peace nailed to
the cross. His suffering was great; the price he chose to pay so we would
learn to love. He would raise no armies, wield no weapons, fight no wars,
but we would turn no one away. It is this knowledge – that love and peace
will not be extinguished by rejection, betrayal and cruelty; that the child
will become a man who will teach us this lesson for eternity – which makes
us celebrate the miracle of his birth as our own private miracle, renewing
our faith in life. In humanity. In ourselves.”

This is so finely and usefully framed. Joy to the world, by all means, but
only in acknowledgement of the passion, the struggle, the losses and the
good fight that is 

[Goanet] Mazel Tov Nadav Lapid (O Heraldo, 18/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Mazel-tov-Nadav-Lapid/198320

We’re almost at the end of an extremely tumultuous end-pandemic twelve
months filled with astonishing events, but there is no doubt who is Man of
The Year when it comes to speaking truth to power, and standing up for what
is right. That is Nadav Lapid, chairman of the jury at the 53rd
International Film Festival of India, who showed his mettle right here in
Goa last month by simply stating what everyone already knows, but is afraid
to say in public. What is more, the 47-year-old Israeli auteur never backed
off, and kept on quietly repeating the facts in an act of public courage
that both shames and inspires the rest of us. Mazel Tov to him, and toda
raba as well.

It was bears repeating what exactly set off the astonishing media maelstrom
with Lapid at its epicentre. After an unusually smooth and efficient
edition of Asia’s oldest - and India’s largest - banquet of international
cinema, in which the jury saw 15 movies for consideration for the
prestigious Golden Peacock award (it was eventually won by the Costa Rican
production *I Have Electric Dreams*), its chairman’s evaluative comments at
the closing ceremony (which included the Minister of Information and
Broadcasting, and Israel’s Ambassador to India) culminated with these
lines: “We were all of us disturbed and shocked by the 15th film, *The
Kashmir Files*, that felt to us like a propaganda, vulgar movie
inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious
film festival. I feel totally comfortable to share openly these feelings
here with you on stage since the spirit of the festival can truly accept
also a critical discussion, which is essential for art and for life.”

As we know, all hell then broke loose. Social media was bad enough – though
it was sad to see some Goans who should know better act intemperately - but
television was even worse. For just one example, it will be impossible to
forget Rahul Kanwal’s shrill hectoring of Lapid. Another lowlight occurred
when the Israeli ambassador barraged his own countryman with nonsensical
non sequiturs on Twitter: “In Indian culture they say that a guest is like
God. You have abused in the worst way the Indian invitation to chair the
panel of judges at @IFFIGoa as well as the trust, respect and warm
hospitality they have bestowed on you” and “The friendship between the
people and the states of India and Israel is very strong and will survive
the damage you have inflicted.”

These kinds of media-driven maelstroms are not rare, and have become even
more common in our era of creeping totalitarianism. We have reached past
the point George Orwell predicted in *Nineteen Eighty-Four*, where there
are many perfectly true things that are effectively taboo “thoughtcrimes”,
and if you are suspected to harbour this “crimethink” the mob will
definitely be unleashed. That is precisely what happened at IFFI last
month, but it didn’t end up as usual, because, instead of meekly
apologizing and then disappearing - which is what everyone expected – Lapid
turned back to India and carefully explained why he spoke out, and what is
at stake.

“I don’t regret what I said about *The Kashmir Files*,” the Israeli
director told New Indian Express, in just one of many interviews: “I had
the feeling it needed to be stated. At a certain level, the way things
turned out, I think my intuition was right; these words needed to be
spoken.” He explained that “the story is not about me. It’s not even about
the film. The real question is something different. People can like or
dislike or admire or hate a movie. All of this is valid, and I’m not
against an emotional, engaged discussion. However, a big part of the
reactions to what I said was sheer madness. At the end of the day, it’s
your country, it’s your society, but I ask whether you are scared to speak
your truths because it results in a storm of violence and menace. I saw and
read things in the media and wondered if it is normal to react to a film
critique in this manner.”

Lapid pointed out what has been painfully obvious all along: “*The Kashmir
Files* is a fake film. It is a propaganda film. It behaves as though it is
trying to create a piece of art about life, existence, historical events,
about a moment in time, about human beings – as most movies do. But in the
end, it is just promoting – in my opinion – in an extremely vulgar and
cheap way, an evident set of political positions, using a variety of, what
I consider, extremely cheap cinematic manipulations. Cinematically, I
cannot take this film seriously. From the outside, it seems like a kind of
joke. But the fact that this film has been treated extremely seriously by
its makers – and by many people who watched it – and the decision of the
International Film Festival of India to include it in its most prestigious
international competition section, you feel forced to take a stand on it.”

There is huge credit due to Lapid, because took 

[Goanet] 25 Years Downstream with Orijit Sen (O Heraldo, 10/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/25-Years-Downstream-with-Orijit-Sen/197925

 His artwork has attracted international attention pretty much throughout
his adult life, but it is Corjuem-based Orijit Sen’s acute, sparkling
writerly prowess that really wowed me in the brilliantly produced 25th
anniversary edition of *River of Stories*, the first graphic novel from
India when it was originally published in 1994, which was re-released at
last month’s Goa Heritage Festival in Campal.

In his introduction to the handsome new hardback from Blaft Publications,
Sen puts it most pithily about the main narrative of his pioneering book –
the ultimately unsuccessful people’s resistance led by the Narmada Bachao
Andolan against vast dam projects in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and
Maharashtra: “The question that [we] raised so forcefully back in the
1980s: “Development for whom, and whose cost?” remains un-addressed four
decades later. The Indian state continues to accelerate policies that usurp
the lands, waters, rights and resources of forest-dwelling people, farmers,
artisans and others – as it sides more and more nakedly with the interests
of large-scale extractive capitalist entities. The idealism and energy of
those times seem like part of a collective dream that has dissipated. Or
has it?”

A valid question, with uncertain answers, but there’s one thing we can be
certain about: this 59-year-old artist’s own flame burns as brightly as
ever, and – as happens only with the best – continues to burnish most
impressively as he grows older. No less than Arundhati Roy notes in her
Foreword, “In the years since this book first came out, Orijit Sen has
grown to become one of India’s most valuable graphic artists. He has a fine
line and an angry, pugnacious political understanding.”

There are several unusual aspects to *River of Stories *in its superb new
avatar, and the most important is actually appended in the back. These are
excerpts from Sen’s sketchbooks, accompanied by the artist’s meticulous
explainer. This “road to the river” is an instantly invaluable contribution
to our collective understanding of the making of Indian art, derived from
the artist’s “most important learnings that I have received from a lifetime
spent in reading and making comics and graphic novels.”

Some of these lessons – from *Amar Chitra Katha* and *Tintin* – will be
familiar to many Indians. Others are distinctively personal: “My father was
a cartographer, and I grew up around mapping instruments – going on field
trips with him and observing how he plotted landscapes with lines, markings
and colour codes. And so geography became an early repository of stories
for me. The two-dimensional surface of a map was a veil that only had to be
lifted to reveal a brave new world of distant mountains, hushed forests and
glimmering lakes.”

Back in 1991, Sen “travelled to the Narmada river valley [with] no clear
notion of what I was going to do there, but I knew that I wanted to
experience the land, meet the people who belonged to it, sit on the banks
of the ancient and storied river, and watch it flow…I attended Baghoria
festival fairs, wedding feasts, religious ceremonies and political rallies,
journeying on trains, buses, jeeps, bullock carts, bicycles and on foot.
Everywhere, I sketched, made notes, took photographs and listened to
people’s stories.”

Out of this unformed mountain of experiences came *River of Stories*:
“Gradually, the people, the river, the hills, forests, streams, roads,
bridges, plantations, hamlets, houses, tools and objects became
internalized as a part of the visual vocabulary with which I sought to
fashion the story of the Narmada Valley and the struggle of its people. I
laboured not just to capture slices of life, but to absorb entire chunks of
lived experience in the Narmada Valley. I felt this was the only way one
could tell the truth about a place and its people.” In effect, “my
sketchbooks became a series of densely compacted suitcases containing a
vast collection of experienced sounds, sights and interactions, in the form
of scribbled pages that I would carry back to my studio in Delhi – and
unpack in order to use for the telling of my story.”

Make no mistake, it’s extremely rare – not just now, but in any era – to
encounter an artist who can simultaneously deploy language and visuals with
this degree of facility and precision. That might explain why Sen is
regularly hounded by would-be censors, most notoriously in 2016 when two
striking nudes were banned on Facebook. In fact - again like only the very
best – this artist is by far his own most perceptive critic. See this
disarming admission about what he thought about when considering
republishing *River of Stories*: “If I were to create a book like this
today, I would do it very differently. There are so many layers that I
wasn’t sensitive to back then. I felt a little embarrassed even by the
book’s flaws, its unformed-ness. I worried it was callow and perhaps
over-eager in 

[Goanet] Casino-mukt Goa? (O Heraldo, 11/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Casinomukt-Goa/197979

All the snarled traffic and disrupted schedules notwithstanding,
Panjim’s citizens have one big reason to thank Narendra Modi for
today’s flying visit. It turns out the prime minister so dislikes the
cheap vulgarity of the gambling “industry” that Goa’s administrators
have hastily pulled down every scrap of tawdry casino advertising that
usually blights the Mandovi riverfront. The difference is palpable and
immediate. It feels like being released from mental torture, which
begs the inevitable question: why is Goa being subjected to this
punishment in the first place? And what does it say about the
so-called “leadership” that is racing to hide the grotesque mess they
themselves created, while transparently intending to restore it all
when the PM turns his head?

The long-overdue visual cleansing was alerted early on Facebook by the
building conservationist, researcher and writer Poonam Verma
Mascarenhas, who posted this message: “Glad to see that all posters of
[brand name removed] casino - that were put on both sides of the
Miramar-Caranzalem road have been taken down. Also noticed that
traffic barriers have new adverts and not of any Casino- at the
Science Centre junction. Hope this is not just a fake makeover!!!”

Mascarenhas is one of India’s leading heritage architects, who has
completed well-regarded projects all over the country, from Jaipur to
the Shimla Town Hall. With regard to her home state, her commitment
has been especially rich and fruitful, including co-founding the
invaluable Goa Heritage Action Group over two decades ago (of which I
am a more recent member). Back in 2017, she also edited and compiled
the invaluable reference book The Mapped Heritage of Panaji, which
comprises over 900 detailed entries for all the buildings of
historical importance within our pocket-sized state capital’s 13
distinct neighbourhoods.

“It has been feeling like we are under siege from the casinos the past
few months,” said Mascarenhas to me via email, after I reached out to
ask her to elaborate on her initial post. “I have just returned from
Ahmedabad, where I happened to visit the Sabarmati Ashram. That was
playing in my mind, and it was reinforced at the Ahmedabad airport,
where a side wall features historic pictures and inspirational quotes
from Gandhiji. Then, from the moment of arriving back home in Goa,
both inside and outside the airport on giant billboards, I felt
assaulted, and aggressively exhorted to gamble, And I thought to
myself with a sinking heart and enraged mind - this is what we have
done, pinned all the truly important core values of simplicity,
honesty, responsibility and collective harmony to one side, while
mindlessly marketing crude hedonism in the name of entertainment.”

Mascarenhas told me ruefully that “not so long ago, talk was rife
about rebuilding the “lost” temples in Goa, but now it feels much more
like the ‘Yudhisthirs’ of the state are trying to enact the
Mahabharata by gambling away all of our resources: the khazans,
forests, beaches, rivers and seashore, along with every bit of the
sanctity and security of the Goans. Everywhere, in every direction,
all is being sold to the highest bidder, and gambling is the only the
forerunner in this disgraceful auction of public space and community
assets. The fact is the casino takeover has spawned a shocking
reality: I can’t even think of taking an evening stroll on the
historic - and once upon a time most beautiful - promenade of the
Mandovi waterfront by myself anymore. It has already become an unsafe
zone.”

This thuggish, illegal takeover of precious public space is only one
part of “the siege” outlined by Mascarenhas: “We must acknowledge that
it is not just a visual relief to see the casino signage removed from
the long Miramar-to-Caranzalem stretch, but something much deeper. The
sight represented, and still represents, a glimmer of hope that our
cultural devastation is not yet permanent. We all know every signage
matters: that visuals impact neurons which shape the intellect, so
just think about what message has continually been transmitted to our
children from every ten metres on every road. Now, at this juncture,
it’s very clear the taking down of casino advertising is an
acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the city and state authorities. If
they replace it all after the PM leaves, it will be an equally open
proof of their apathy, and total negligence towards the society they
have supposedly taken an oath to serve.”

To be sure, evidence of that last sad fact has long been in view from
the most entrenched political forces in Goa, after (just one decade
ago) the late chief minister Manohar Parrikar reversed his
pre-election protestations against casinos, and revealed himself to be
their most significant champion. Nonetheless, the long-time Panjim MLA
and Modi confidant (whose long-dormant memorial on Miramar beach was
also haphazardly raced to completion for 

[Goanet] Serendipitous Opportunities? (Navhind Times, 18/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.navhindtimes.in/2022/12/18/magazines/panorama/serendipitous-opportunities/

Considering the minuscule scale of Panjim, and the giant ambitions of the
Serendipity Arts Festival that has already played out citywide four times
previously (during which time I myself curated three exhibitions in six
venues) it’s absolutely astonishing how this now-well-established event
continues opening up new heritage spaces for culture. That is certainly the
case in 2022, with some outstanding winners already immediately apparent.
Before everything gets dismantled by the end of this week, I highly
recommend visiting the refurbished Excise Building (roughly opposite Clube
Nacional) and the lovely Post Office Museum opposite the GPO.

It must be acknowledged that events of such size are inherently complicated
for city residents, and strain the already overburdened infrastructure of
Panjim which is simultaneously beset by the destructive caprices and deeply
dubious motivations of so-called “Smart City”. In combination, the two have
produced something truly surreal: full-scale “feast bazaar” blending in and
around Serendipity artworks, set up in an egregious moonscape of dug-up
roads.  As a result, one cannot be sure, at first or even second glance,
what has been planned or simply occurred accidentally. The entire city
feels like an abstruse installation.

My recommendation for coping is the spell-binding *Orientalist Archives:
Indo-British Painting in Colonial India* at the Post Office Museum. We must
hope the concerned authorities - notably Sudhir Jakhere, the excellent
Senior Superintendent of Post Offices (Goa) - will urgently ensure the
exhibition stays open for at least another month, so that as many citizens
as possible can savour this curatorial masterwork by the eminent art
historian Dr. Jyotindra Jain with Jutta Jain-Neubauer.

Their main wall text explains how the “so-called Company School is a
mélange of various visual styles and expressions, but it is so-called as
these paintings were mostly patronized by the officials of the British as
well as other European East India Companies operating in India from the
mid-18th to the end of the 19th century, spilling over into the early 20th.
Executed in miniature format, the paintings were done on paper or sheets of
mica with water-based pigments. The main centres of their production
included: Trichinopoly, Madras, Madurai, Tanjore, Malabar, Coorg and Mysore
(in the South); Murshidabad, Patna, Calcutta, Benaras, the Oudh region with
Faizabad and Lucknow (in Eastern India); and Delhi, Agra, and the Punjab
region (in Northern and Western India).”

Across this scattered grab-bag of sources, the wall text says “artists
trained themselves to construe their subjects through the eyes of their
European patrons instilling in their commissioned works an anticipated
sense of wonder, distance, aversion and power. In doing so, they dramatized
and tableau-ized the everyday, excerpting each theme from its larger visual
context which, in combination with their own amateur painterly skills,
effected a charming naïveté, as if matching it with their patrons’ fleeting
impressions of Indian life. More than their stylistic unity, these
paintings cohere on account of their synoptic representation of India as
observed by the alien patrons, and as a result, adhered to by the artists.”

This is the notorious “colonial gaze” reducing every “native” to status,
profession, and usefulness to the project of extracting resources. The
artists also very obviously “self-Orientalized” by exotifying their
commonplace, in profound and pervasive ways. In this way, their work
“clearly share[s] the huge bulk of the equally type-casting texts that were
written in the period under the rubric of “People of India” or “Tribes and
Castes of India” series, or the colonial Census or Gazetteers of India
[and] became a sort of knowledge bank of Hindu paganism, a reference
archive for Christian missionaries as well as an exotic visual account of
the ‘monstrous’ deities of the Other.”

Look closely at these utterly beautiful objects however- I was bowled over
by the luminous paintings on mica – and you will detect other impulses:
slyness, indifference, badinage. These are important reminders that agency
is inherently fluid, and can cascade unpredictably between artist and
patron, even from ostensible “colonizer” to the supposed “colonized.” We
know the latter happened uproariously completely in Goa, which experienced
an extraordinary cultural efflorescence – what we now celebrate as Goan
art, architecture, music, cuisine – in the same exact period other Indians
in every part of the subcontinent were trapped in “Company School”
caricatures.

These facts are both undeniable, and still perplexingly absent in the
popular imagination: Goa had a hugely different 19th century to any other
colonized territory in South Asia. Across generations at that time, Goans
gained and exercised considerable freedoms that the rest of 

[Goanet] Identity, Mispronunciations, Heritage: Goa Writers

[V M]

https://scroll.in/article/1034362/identity-mispronunciations-heritage-seven-goa-writers-consider-whats-in-a-name

[Goanet] "So Quick The Deep Sea Did Swallow Them All" - O Heraldo, 3/12/2022

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/%E2%80%98So-Quick-The-Deep-Sea-Did-Swallow-Them-All%E2%80%99/197583

Last month, I received an unusual email from Mervyn Maciel, my long-time
correspondent (although we have still not met in person). “I don’t know if
you are aware that I lost five members of my family when the ship they were
returning to East Africa from Goa was torpedoed by the Japanese in November
1942,” wrote the sprightly UK-based 93-year-old, “my father, step-mother
and three very young siblings perished. And while there were many
survivors, amongst those who lost their lives on this ill-fated ship
included young Goan brides on their way to Mombasa, and several other
Indian families. Mine, I gather, was the only entire family that was lost.”

Maciel pointed me to an article published in *The Eastern Eye*, a
publication for and about British Indians, which mentioned the launch of a
new website: www.tilawa1942.com. This account by Emile Solanki contained
many fascinating details of this almost entirely overlooked incident: “On
November 20th, 1942 at 17:00, the British-built ship left Mumbai for South
Africa. There were 222 crew members, with 732 passengers, 9 lifeboats, and
over 6,000 tons of cargo, including 60 tons of silver bullion. Its route
was from Mumbai to South Africa via the Seychelles, Mombasa, and Maputo,
ending in Durban. Passengers were mainly Indian nationals.”

Here, we must zoom out to understand the geopolitical scenario. World War
II was ablaze on multiple fronts. In that same month in 1942, the Americans
were surging to victory at Guadalcanal, and (mostly) British troops began
their invasion of what had been French North Africa. On November 11, the
second battle of El Alamein ended in decisive Allied victory, and two days
later General Montgomery seized Tobruk. On November 19, the day before
Mervyn Maciel’s family shipped out from Bombay, British troops used gliders
to fly into Telemark in Norway to try and sabotage a chemical plant, but
failed with 41 casualties, and on November 21, defying all reason, Hitler
forbade his severely depleted 6th Army from retreating from Stalingrad.

War historians tend to remember November 23 for two important shifts in the
balance of power: the Soviet Red Army’s Operation Uranus succeeded in full,
with the hapless Germans fully encircled at Stalingrad, and the
strategically vital port city of Dakar in what was French West Africa
shifted to Allied control. Most accounts also record the German submarine
U-172 ambushing and sinking the British merchant ship SS Benlomond off the
coast of Brazil (from which wreckage the second steward Poon Lim famously
survived 133 days adrift before being rescued).”

What has been generally not been remembered is detailed by Solanki: “in the
early hours of the morning, 930 miles northeast of the Seychelles, Tilawa
was attacked by the Japanese Imperial Army. The I-29 B-1 Submarine, twice
torpedoed Tilawa. After the first torpedo attack, the first officer
transmitted SOS messages. Unfortunately, little could be done, and once the
second torpedo hit the ship sank quickly. For the next 2 days, all aboard
would fight for their lives and see their fellow passengers and loved ones
drown to death. Eventually, a rescue mission led by a Royal Navy Cruiser
HMS Birmingham and S.S. Carthage ensured 682 people were rescued. A total
of 280 lives were lost. Those rescued were taken back to Mumbai by November
27th 1942.”

Solanki, whose great-grandfather Nichhabhai Chibabhai Solanki drowned in
the attack, writes, rather poignantly, that “it is unknown why S.S. Tilawa
was sunk in the Indian Ocean. Did the Japanese Imperial Army know there was
bullion on the ship, or, did they see the ship as a military threat? Where
were HMS Birmingham and S.S. Carthage when Tilawa was attacked? Did the
British, Indian, or Japanese Governments hold any classified information,
including any communication between these vessels during the attack? It is
believed S.S. Tilawa was the only passenger cargo liner attacked in the
Indian Ocean during the war. Few know of the incident, yet many families
suffered.”

Why are some losses remembered and memorialized, while others ignored
almost entirely? The short answer, of course, is racism: most of those who
died (and all those who kept the torch of memory alive) are of Indian
origin. But there’s also the question of post-colonial nationalisms, and
the inherently in-between “African Asians” whose life histories tend to
fall outside the tendentious, blinkered narratives of nativism. In this
regard, Mervyn Maciel’s family and their ilk pose profound conundrums to
contemporary simplifiers. Should their deaths be “acknowledged as part of
India’s war efforts”, as Alex Gemmel, the British High Commissioner, argued
at a memorial last month? Or does that medal belong on the opposite set of
chests, because that same deadly Japanese submarine went on to transport
Subhas Chandra Bose safely from Madagascar to Tokyo?

Here, it’s 

[Goanet] The Immigrant World Cup (O Heraldo, 4/12/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Immigrant-World-Cup/197622

Sometimes the images streaming out of Qatar are almost too
contradictory to process. Here’s only one example - just last month on
October 3rd, the French parliament was suspended after Grégoire de
Fournas – a newly elected far-right member – kept shouting “go back to
Africa” to Carlos Martens Bilongo (whose parents migrated to France
from Congo). After that, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who
recently led her openly xenophobic party to its best electoral
performance with an unprecedented 89 MPs, was defiant, posting on
Twitter that “"the controversy created by our political opponents is
obvious and will not fool the French people.”

But while that ugly racism is undeniably one face of France in 2022,
we saw another one altogether earlier this week on November 30, when
‘Les Bleus’ took the field against Tunisia with exactly one ethnically
European player in the starting 11. All the other ten had African
roots that derive from a range of different countries, while Steve
Mandada (Zaire) and Eduardo Camavinga (Angola) were actually born
“back in Africa”.

Of all the remarkable stories on and off the field at this year’s
World Cup, above all is the narrative of globalization, and its
inevitable corollary of migration. It’s also the main story underlying
global football, about which, the Switzerland-based International
Centre for Sports Studies (known by its French acronym as CIES) tells
us “the number of expatriate players within the teams of 135 leagues
[from UEFA to CONCACAF to our own AFC] has strongly increased” over
the past five years. “On the 1st of May 2022, 13,929 footballers were
playing outside the country in which they grew up: +1,946 players in
comparison to the same date in 2017 (+ 16%). Expatriates now represent
22% of the total number of players.”

In its 75th monthly report issued in May this year, the CIES noted
“Brazil remains the principal exporter of footballers. However, after
the peak recorded in 2019, the number of Brazilians abroad has fallen
for the third consecutive year. Conversely, the foreign presence of
nationals from the second biggest exporting country, France, has
reached its all-time high in 2022. The gap between Brazilians and
French has thus passed from 407 expatriates in 2017 to 241 in 2022. In
the not-so-distant future, France could thus become the number one
exporter of footballers.” That prediction has become reality in Qatar,
where an astonishing 59 players representing 10 countries were born in
France.

Those numbers are part of an unstoppable trend: 137 players – or 16%
of the overall total -are foreign-born, and many others have dual or
multiple citizenship, with the choice of playing for other teams.
Consider the case of Tim Weah, the silky-smooth USA forward who scored
against Wales on 22nd November. He is the son of George Weah, who is
not only the only African to ever win the Ballon D’Or (which is
awarded to the world’s best player) and FIFA’s World Player of the
Year Award, but also reigns as the popular President of Liberia. In
fact, the younger Weah was actually born in New York, but five of his
team-mates were not, including Antonee Robinson (who came up through
Everton’s youth academy), Sergiño Dest (formerly Ajax), and Cameron
Carter-Vickers (Tottenham Hotspur).

Nonetheless, before anyone gets too cynical about carpet-bagging, we
must recall that migrant stars have always been prevalent at the very
top of international football. Look at the very great Eusebio, for
instance, who top-scored at the 1966 World Cup for Portugal, but was
born and raised in Mozambique, and only moved to Lisbon as a teenaged
recruit for Benfica (where we went on to score an almost unbelievable
473 goals in just 440 matches). Much less straightforward – and
perhaps more interesting – examples have created overlapping, and even
conflicting narratives on the pitch, such as the exhilarating,
unforgettable 2018 World Cup match between Switzerland and Serbia,
where Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri drove half of Europe into
frenzy after they flashed the Albanian eagle hand signal of Kosovar
identity after scoring against the country which had warred brutally
against their ancestral homeland.

Here it’s interesting to note it is actually Qatar – along with some
other countries -which originally forced FIFA to tighten its rulebook
about switching countries. Back in 2010, the controversial honcho Sepp
Blatter had declared that “if we don't take care about the invaders
from Brazil, then at the next World Cups we will have 16 teams full of
Brazilian players. It's a danger, a real, real danger." That was after
emergency rule changes when it emerged that Qatar had offered the top
scorer in the Bundesliga, the Brazilian forward Ailton, who had never
even been to the Middle East, at least $1 million to come play for
their country. Eventually, FIFA clarified “the existence of a genuine
link” was required between the 

[Goanet] Here Comes Claire (O Heraldo, 13/11/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Here-comes-Claire/196628

It feels almost routine when another child of the Konkan ascends
ever-greater heights in the west, but this week’s appointment of Claire
Coutinho as the UK’s new Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing
really takes another giant step into the unprecedented. The 37-year-old is
– amazingly enough – the second Goan woman minister in Rishi Sunak’s
government, with Suella Fernandes Braverman as Home Secretary. Meanwhile,
across the parliamentary aisle in the Shadow Cabinet, is the well-regarded
veteran Valerie Vaz. This means there are as many Goan women in the British
parliament as in the state legislature back home.

That isn’t the end of it because you also have Shirley Rodrigues, the
dynamic Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, and Leo Varadkar
also counts: the game-changing Irish politician who is scheduled to become
prime minister again next month (and whose father’s roots are in Malvan).
Then, across in Portugal, the prime minister Antonio Costa is not only Goan
but an Overseas Citizen of India, who received his OCI card directly from
Narendra Modi. He has two more Goans in his own Cabinet.

Who is Claire Coutinho, the quietly competent politician understood to be
close to Rishi Sunak, and – just like her boss – both pragmatic and
efficient, with centrist political leanings quite different from the
unhinged fringe that has recently dominated the UK public sphere? We know
she’s the privately educated daughter of NHS doctors who migrated from
India in the 1970s. She studied mathematics and philosophy at Oxford, and
served the government as a special advisor before winning East Surrey in
2019.

My attention fixed on Coutinho in January 2020, when she made an extremely
charming maiden speech, starting with gently ribbing the incumbent before
her (who had rebelled against his party during the Brexit debacle): “I’d
like to begin by paying tribute to my predecessor Sam Gyimah. We have more
in common than representing East Surrey. We are both the children of
immigrant doctors. I too, am 5 foot 4 and a half. And although we may have
slightly different views on Brexit, I know that he was passionate about the
prosperity of this country which our families now call home.”

I was struck by what Coutinho chose to emphasize: “In Outwood near
Godstone, work began in 1665 on one of the oldest working British
windmills. The owner is said to have watched the Great Fire of London rage
25 miles away from its roof. And I’m proud that what East Surrey helped to
pioneer in the renewable energy sector in the 17th Century, has now become
one of the most remarkable success stories in the UK today. Not only are we
the world leader in offshore wind, seven out of ten of the biggest wind
farms in Europe are right here in the UK. I commend the ambitious
Environment Bill put forward in Her Majesty’s Gracious speech to forward
this work and I look forward to seeing the Green measures in the upcoming
Budget which will undoubtedly build on this work further.”

Then, even more impressively, came this touching denouement: “I would like
in this speech to mention my grandmother, who may be the single greatest
emblem of Conservative values that I know. She was a teacher in India who
in my memory took her fashion lead firmly from the Queen. She raised seven
children with little resource but with a strong sense that with hard work
and determination you can achieve the impossible. Her children were doctors
and teachers and Grade 8 musicians and are now scattered all across the
globe. If she could see me here today – in ‘the noblest Government in the
world’ - she would, I’m sure, tell me to work hard, be determined and
achieve the impossible. Politicians today have a near impossible task. We
live in a world of changing technology, behaviour, demographics and indeed
- as has been the subject of many excellent speeches today – environment. I
hope in this place to contribute in a small way to preparing this great
country for the future to come.”

Simple, heartfelt, straight to the point and eminently sane: all
increasingly rare attributes in our era of relentless extremism. One gets
the distinct impression that Coutinho is genuinely interested in service,
which is how democratic politicians were always supposed to be, but
nowadays so very rarely are. And that same sentiment also came across in
her reaction to the big appointment this week: “I spent a good chunk of my
career looking at how we help families and give children the best possible
start in life. Education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet
for success, so I’m very excited to share that I’m now Minister for
Children, Families and Wellbeing.”

Coutinho is the opposite of polarizing, and any serious country would be
satisfied – even proud – about having someone as capable as her running an
important ministry. But is there any significance to her ethnicity? In this
regard, it’s interesting to 

[Goanet] Ideas @ Goa Heritage Festival, Campal (Nov 15-19)

[V M]

*FREE & OPEN TO ALL*

*goaheritagefestival.in *



*15th November, Tuesday*



10am:  Festival Inaugural with Damodar Mauzo + Launch: *Parmal: Aicat Mozo
Tavo*

11:   Gabriella D’Cruz: Edible Estuary

11:45   Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues: Falsehoods about Goa

12:15   Surbhi Agarwal: Art and Indian Nationalism



3pm:Book Launch: *Cozinha de Goa: A Glossary *Fatima Silva Gracias with
Vikram Doctor

4pm:Suitable Conversations: Laila Tyabji *My Life in Sarees*

5pm:Book Launch: *Stories from Goan Houses* Heta Pandit with Shaila
Mauzo and Shrinivas Dempo



*16th November, Wednesday*



10am:  Film Screening *O Clube* with Nalini Elvino Souza

11.30:  Book Launch: *Romalina*: *Goodbye Africa, Adeus Portugal, Namaste *
*Goa* Clarice Vaz with Glenis *Mendonça and Ryan Lobo*

12.30: Book Launch: *A Beautiful Decay* Karan Madhok with Pragya Bhagat



3pm:Asad Laljee: Lessons from the Royal Opera House

4pm:Suitable Conversations: Anuradha Roy with Vivek Menezes

5pm:Book Launch: *Mumbai: A City Through Objects –101 Stories from the
Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum* Tasneem Zakaria Mehta with MoCA’s Heta Pandit and
Natasha Fernandes



*17th November, Thursday*


10am:  Book Launch: *Tejo Tunghabhadra* Vasudhendra with Damodar Mauzo

11:   Treasures from the Moda Goa Museum with Jerome Marrel and Shreedevi
Deshpande Puri

12:   Book Launch: *Enter Stage Right-The Alkazi/Padamsee Family Memoir
*Feisal Alkazi with Vivek Menezes


3pm:Suitable Conversations: Fiona Fernandez

4pm:Suitable Conversations: Kartik Shanker

5pm:Book Launch: *Masala Memsahib* Karen Anand with Maria Goretti



*18th November, Friday*



10am:  The Paperclip: Heritage on Social Media

11:   Vikas Dilawari: Conservation Conversations

12:   Book Event *Armenians of Calcutta* Alakananda Nag with Lina
Vincent



3pm:Book Launch: *River of Stories* Orijit Sen with Vidyun Sabhaney and
Rakesh Khanna

4pm:Suitable Conversations: Pablo Bartholomew *Indian Émigrés from San
Francisco to Lisbon*

5pm:Book Launches: *Stage Lights* and *Time to Act* by the Mustard Seed
Art Company

5.15:The Mustard Seed Art Company: *It’s a Bebinca, Stupid *



*19th November, Saturday*



10am:  Festival Roundtable: Laila Tyabji, Anuradha Roy + Karen Anand with
Pritha Sardessai

11:   Siddhesh Gautam: My Awakening

12:   Surbhi Agarwal: Lessons from the Mussoorie Heritage Society



3pm:Book Launch: *Swimming in Our Oceans* Pragya Bhagat with Hune
Margulies

4pm:Book Launch: *Starfish Pickle* Bina Nayak with Frederick Noronha
and Pamela D’Mello
5pm:Book Launch: Nature Conservation Foundation *At the Feet of Living
Things: Twenty-Five Years of Wildlife Research and Conservation in India*
Aparajita Datta, Sartaj Ghuman and Elrika D’Souza with Nirmal Kulkarni

[Goanet] Karen Anand: Masala Memsahib (O Heraldo, 5/11/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Karen-Anand-Masala-Memsahib/196231

Long before Nigella Lawson (who was born in the same year, but began
focusing on food much later), India had its own posh, alluring “domestic
goddess” in Karen Anand, who started writing in *Gentleman* and *The
Independent* while she was still in her 20s. As the Indian economy – and
its urban appetites – opened up to the world, this remarkable pioneer
ventured into everything possible in this arena: over 20 books, television,
restaurant consultancies, gourmet food production, and farmer’s markets. As
described in her delightful new *Masala Memsahib: Recipes and Stories from
My Culinary Adventures in India*, it has been “one helluva rollercoaster
ride.”

Some of the details of Anand’s adventuresome life will be familiar to those
who have followed her career. She was born in Bombay to Goan parents, and
raised in London. Whilst pursuing diploma studies in Paris, like so many
visitors to France before her, she had a culinary awakening, which became
her passion after moving to India when she married the late film producer
Gul Anand. As the newly liberalizing nation became interested in what we
still mostly call “continental food”, here was our picture-perfect
interpreter, guide, champion and cheerleader. What is more, she was (and
remains) super-hard-working and highly reliable, with an unusual
meticulousness about getting things exactly right.

*Masala Memsahib: Recipes and Stories from My Culinary Adventures in India*,
which will be launched at the Goa Heritage Festival on November 17th in
Campal, is unlike anything Anand has done before, with an unusually
intimate tone that is as much memoir as recipe book. It has six chapters:
Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Memorable Meals (which
ranges very widely from Assam to Kashmir to Coorg). There are recipes, but
also lots of food memories, along with acute, lovely pen portraits of
people who have been important to the author’s journeys. For Goa, for
example, there’s Chef Urbano Rego of the Taj, Caetano D’Costa (legendary
founder of Florentine in Saligao), Marie Wadia (Anand’s great-aunt), the
formidable grande dame Maria de Lourdes Figueiredo de Albuquerque, gourmet
*chorizkars* Dominic and Rosalina Fernandes, Corinne Miranda (whose son
Pablo is now one of the hottest chefs in the country), Celia and Ruben
Vasco da Gama of the brilliant Palacio do Deao in Quepem, and Naomi and
Lenny Menezes (who happen to be my parents).

Via email, I asked Anand about her fascinating life in food, starting with
the question of how this Bombay-born Goan wound up in London at the age of
6. She told me that “we were actually on our way to Canada and stopped in
London for a few months. My father’s brother and mother were already there,
and a few months stretched into forever. I think my father felt it would be
a new beginning. Like many Goans and Anglo Indians, he felt that
independent India wasn’t as hospitable as expected, and they felt
marginalized in many ways. They didn't speak Hindi very well and my
father's next post (he was working for Caltex) would have been a big
promotion to Delhi, which he wasn't looking forward to. One of the key
factors that prompted the move I think was our education. He was well
qualified and found a job quite easily. My mother on the other hand, took a
long time to adjust...to the weather, to cooking, to doing housework.”

Anand has often written that meals were not particularly inspiring at home,
partly because her mother was compelled to make it (and, it should be
noted, the food in England was generally godawful until large-scale
migration changed the scenario). It was in Paris that she first became
inspired, and started to understand what she loved: “I was totally immersed
in French lifestyle, living with a French family on the left bank, went to
the Sorbonne, spoke French like a native, ate French food, learned to cook
French food (from the nanny in the family who was from Lyon, the heart of
French gastronomy). I was like a sponge at 18 and absorbed everything. I
thought I would live in Paris forever. My world started and ended in Paris.”

So far, so good, in the familiar diasporic story, but Anand became that
rare outlier who looked back to India. She says “I didn't plan anything!
There was nobody doing European food in the 80's in India. Even luxury
hotels struggled with contemporary international cuisines, and the poor
chefs had no exposure to the rest of the world. Those were the days with no
international credit cards, and $500 allowance to travel abroad, and I had
come fresh off the boat - so to speak - from London and Paris, full of
ideas and raring to go. I had studied Political Science and French, and
there was nothing much I could do with that in Mumbai. I had worked briefly
in media with the Cookery Editor at *ELLE* and really enjoyed that. I was
young, nice looking, had a funny accent and went to the right parties in
Bombay [so] doors opened, and 

Re: [Goanet] Reading About Rishi (O Heraldo, 30/10/2022)

[V M]

Excellent observations, Mervyn. I appreciated each + every one.

On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 10:11 AM Mervyn Lobo  wrote:

> VM,
> I like your article but here are a few observations.
>
> 1) I always thought that Canada would have an ethnic Indian PM before
> Britain.
>
> 2) In six short weeks, the UK has shown us the lofty heights of a system
> that allows a party to remove its own leader and the depths of the same
> system that replaces the inept leader with something worse.
>
> 3) The Tory party in GB today is nothing less than a pit of vipers. While
> I have no doubts about how street wise Sunak is, he has to deal with much
> more than meets the eye. I wish him luck - but I do not see longevity.
>
> 4) The problem Britain faces today is that of its own making. The locals
> there were force fed the idea that they would prosper if they kept away
> from trade agreements with their neighbours. The opposite usually happens.
> Britain and the people who live there are now paying the price for exiting
> from the EU. Things are going to get a lot worse and this winter is going
> to be horrendous for households there.
>
> 5) Personally, I would like Boris back - if only for the entertainment
> value he provides.
>
> 6) Sunak's wife entered into the marriage with her own wealth. That wealth
> is not Sunak's. To make this easy for the British to understand, Sunak is
> like a Prince Phillip. His wife controls the wealth.
>
> 7) In 2022, I have no problems with a leader of one country holding rights
> to reside in another. About a decade ago, someone in contention for the PM
> of Canada admitted he was a French citizen.
>
> 8) The paramount expectation from your leader is the ability to navigate
> the road to economic advancement.
>
>
> Mervyn
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sunday, October 30, 2022 at 02:25:16 a.m. CDT, V M 
> wrote:
>
>
> https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Reading-about-Rishi/195919
>
> The elfin 42-year-old is a walking trigger warning. The first UK Prime
> Minister since Disraeli whose ethnic roots lie outside the British Isles,
> and the youngest in 200 years, Rishi Sunak is also an observant Hindu who
> made his first official appearances wearing the distinctive *kautuka*
> around his wrist. It’s impossible to ignore the historical symbolism of
> someone like him taking residence in 10 Downing Street, where Winston
> Churchill told his India Secretary that “I hate Indians. They’re a beastly
> people, with a beastly religion.”
>
> Given this context, we can spare – indeed ignore – the jubilation amongst
> many Indians that Sunak now leads the erstwhile colonizer. Never mind that
> it never would have happened as the result of any general election, and
> even his own Conservative Party membership preferred to scrape the bottom
> of their barrel to proffer Truss. The new prime minister knows that given
> another chance they’ll go for Braverman, which is why the extraordinarily
> polarizing daughter of Assagao is back as Home Secretary. It’s interesting
> to see how close to the bone her most recent jibe about “tofu-eating
> wokerati” strikes her boss as well. At this point, it’s not quite clear
> which of these limitlessly ambitious young British Indians will wind up
> with the winning hand.
>
> I really liked how Rana Dasgupta cut to the core of what’s happening on his
> Facebook account. The award-winning author – his upcoming *After Nations*
> “considers the future of global political organization” – wrote that “we
> have reached a point where the people who are capable of winning elections
> are, for that very reason, incapable of running the country - and vice
> versa. So it is almost impossible to create a plausible union between the
> nation-state - which increasingly obeys inhuman purposes directly at odds
> with those of its citizens - and a human "leader". This is a situation of
> sheer panic. All our political capacities are invested in the nation-state,
> and if that monopoly crumbles, we are left with nothing.”
>
> At the juncture Dasgupta was writing, just one week ago, there was an
> increasing clamour to “Bring Back Boris” and reinvest the recently
> disgraced and deposed former prime minister. He noted that, “We call out
> for a patriarch. All the better if he is corrupt - because this is no
> moment for legality and restraint! We need him to lie and cheat and murder
> on our behalf. We need him to trample every nicety, every law, every female
> spirit standing in our way. That is the unhinged nature of our present
> political arrangements. It is not that people are stupid. A good system
> does not collapse because of people's varying intellectual powers. It is
> that people are so squeezed out of history, that the

[Goanet] Reading About Rishi (O Heraldo, 30/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Reading-about-Rishi/195919

The elfin 42-year-old is a walking trigger warning. The first UK Prime
Minister since Disraeli whose ethnic roots lie outside the British Isles,
and the youngest in 200 years, Rishi Sunak is also an observant Hindu who
made his first official appearances wearing the distinctive *kautuka*
around his wrist. It’s impossible to ignore the historical symbolism of
someone like him taking residence in 10 Downing Street, where Winston
Churchill told his India Secretary that “I hate Indians. They’re a beastly
people, with a beastly religion.”

Given this context, we can spare – indeed ignore – the jubilation amongst
many Indians that Sunak now leads the erstwhile colonizer. Never mind that
it never would have happened as the result of any general election, and
even his own Conservative Party membership preferred to scrape the bottom
of their barrel to proffer Truss. The new prime minister knows that given
another chance they’ll go for Braverman, which is why the extraordinarily
polarizing daughter of Assagao is back as Home Secretary. It’s interesting
to see how close to the bone her most recent jibe about “tofu-eating
wokerati” strikes her boss as well. At this point, it’s not quite clear
which of these limitlessly ambitious young British Indians will wind up
with the winning hand.

I really liked how Rana Dasgupta cut to the core of what’s happening on his
Facebook account. The award-winning author – his upcoming *After Nations*
“considers the future of global political organization” – wrote that “we
have reached a point where the people who are capable of winning elections
are, for that very reason, incapable of running the country - and vice
versa. So it is almost impossible to create a plausible union between the
nation-state - which increasingly obeys inhuman purposes directly at odds
with those of its citizens - and a human "leader". This is a situation of
sheer panic. All our political capacities are invested in the nation-state,
and if that monopoly crumbles, we are left with nothing.”

At the juncture Dasgupta was writing, just one week ago, there was an
increasing clamour to “Bring Back Boris” and reinvest the recently
disgraced and deposed former prime minister. He noted that, “We call out
for a patriarch. All the better if he is corrupt - because this is no
moment for legality and restraint! We need him to lie and cheat and murder
on our behalf. We need him to trample every nicety, every law, every female
spirit standing in our way. That is the unhinged nature of our present
political arrangements. It is not that people are stupid. A good system
does not collapse because of people's varying intellectual powers. It is
that people are so squeezed out of history, that they are no longer guided
by anything save their existential terror.”

In the end, of course, Boris didn’t make it back. And so Sunak, in an
unprecedented *Balle Balle *ballyhoo including lots of ludicrous
American-style breast-beating about the superior workings of British
multculturalism. Here’s Sajid Javid – the Conservative Party MP who has
previously served as both Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer –
with a typical tweet: “Britain is the most successful multiracial democracy
on earth and proud of this historic achievement.” It’s an odd claim to make
about the very same country that just went through public paroxysms about
the death of its hereditary monarch, along with the shocking suppression of
all dissent about her legacy.

““Diversity” is a meaningless term unless it heralds real change”, wrote
Priyamvada Gopal in *Al Jazeera*. “Even Mahatma Gandhi noted that his
patriotism did not mean people could ‘be crushed under the heel of Indian
princes, if only the English retire’. Sunak is very much a British Indian
prince, not just privately educated and extremely wealthy but an
ideologically committed activist for the riches and privileges of Britain’s
small oligarch class to be bolstered at the expense of the many. Britain is
reeling under a crushing dozen years of Tory rule during which wealth has
been concentrated in the hands of a record number of billionaires. Sunak
only promises more of the same if not worse.”

Gopal is on the faculty at Cambridge University, and among the
clearest-eyed analysts of the UK today, which is why she’s often
caricatured in that country’s deeply disgraceful, openly ethno-nationalist
right-wing media. As she points out, “Sunak represents the triumph of a
carefully managed and trivialised diversity that serves to conceal the
reality of the unvarying oligarchy that Britain has become,” What is more,
“it is bizarre to invite people to set aside a politician’s politics to
celebrate their ethnicity. It’s like asking people to set aside a fashion
designer’s style or a chef’s ability to cook in judging their work. But we
must also reject the racist notion that the content of what a Black or
Asian leader offers is not relevant to 

[Goanet] ABC of Alexyz (and Marialena) - O Heraldo, 28/10/202roh2

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/ABC-of-Alexyz-and-Marialena/195879

50 strong, sparkling years into her professional career at the epicentre of
the western classical music world in Vienna, you would never have expected
to find Marialena Fernandes playing her heart out by the roadside in
Siolim. Nonetheless, that’s where this wonderfully elegant pianist chose to
be on Wednesday evening earlier this week. Fighting hard against noise from
incessant traffic, she – and others - brought beautiful music to this
highly unlikely setting, under the gaze of what must surely be the only
life-sized statue of Ludwig von Beethoven anywhere outside Europe.

There are so many singularities involved here, that we must pause to
understand them. This concert in Gaunsavaddo was the first post-pandemic *Noite
de Beethoven*, organized by the brave little Friends of Beethoven
collective which constituted itself in 2007. The location is because of the
idiosyncratic monument, which was unveiled in 1976, and bears this
dedication: “The statue of the great master has been presented to Lydia
Leopoldina Sousa Pinto, born in Rio de Janeiro South America and was
unveiled by Eugenia Ignatievna Sousa Pinto (nee Napolova).” The original
*Siolkar* patron, Manuel Sousa Pinto – who spent his own life mostly in
Brazil – added this quirky coda: “Like every Goan, Ludwig was born with a
fiddle in his hand. Thank God he is now here, quite at home in my beloved
Goa.”

Beethoven in Siolim is not that strange if you consider the cultural
history of this part of Goa, now on the verge of obliteration by the
tsunami of concrete being forced upon Gaunsavaddo, and pretty much every
village across the length and breadth of India’s smallest state. What is
being lost – literally blasted apart – is no less than who we are: an
outward-looking people who have embraced the world for what is great in it,
whether Beethoven or the Beatles. Siolim is also the home of India’s pop
icon Remo, the one-of-a-kind trumpeter/novelist Reginald Fernandes (who
wrote hundreds of Konkani *romanses* while performing all over the
country), and the hugely famous Joaozinho Carvalho of the legendary Johnson
& His Jolly Boys.

There were very many traffic sounds intervening at Wednesday’s concert,
which is par for the course in the post-pandemic Bardez bedlam, as the
whole of North Goa is under relentless pressure from newly moneyed
urbanites fleeing the rest of India. And yet, onstage, there was an
unmistakable flicker of the old, familiar, gracious cosmopolitanism. New
mother Kim Costa gave an assured performance in German, and Sonia Shirsat –
as usual - blew us all away with truly gorgeous fados. Unfortunately,
personal commitments compelled me to miss half the programme, but I was
lucky to be there when Marialena Fernandes got up to talk about Austria and
India and her way of bringing them together, and belonging to both.

“I call her Mariavienna,” says ever-smiling artist Alexyz Fernandes, the
quietly formidable force behind the Friends of Beethoven. He told me the
pianist was his classmate at St. Xavier’s College in Bombay in the late
1960s: “She was a prodigy. Her mother Hetty Fernandes was a popular music
teacher, and Marialena imbibed her passion for music in her mother’s womb.
In our college years, she was a pulsating live wire. Vibrant, vivacious, a
gorgeous gal bursting with energy in all the college culture clubs. Her
forte was obviously music, in which she was a shining star in her own
right, in the rich Xavier’s tradition and history that has launched many
international musicians. both in the western and eastern genre. There was
simply no doubt that she would one day achieve the iconic pedestal status
with which she is now acclaimed.”

With pride in the accomplishments of his dear friend of so many decades,
Alexyz recounted how “soon after her graduation Marialena won a scholarship
to Germany via a competition promoted by the Max Mueller Institute in
Bombay, for which she had played the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. From
Germany she moved to Vienna at the invitation of her music professor, where
she lives in the awesome ambience of music she was born to play.” While
that was happening – and so many other classmates also migrated abroad to
seek better opportunities – there were others who were moved by another
kind of idealism. This is the tight-knit band of Claude and Norma Alvares,
and Alexyz himself, who chose to commit to the grassroots, and left the big
city for almost unimaginably somnolent Goa in the early 1970s. Just look at
what they have accomplished for all of us in the intervening years – so
much good, such benefit to environment, culture and society.

In this regard, there may be no more unassuming powerhouse anywhere than
Alexyz. This gentle and supremely gentlemanly artist has produced an
historic body of work, while incalculably enriching his community in small
and very big ways that have never been properly recognized. Staying rooted
to his ancestral 

[Goanet] Goa’s Great Derangement (O Heraldo, 23/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Goa%E2%80%99s-great-derangement/195591

Although parts of his instant classic were written here, Amitav Ghosh
wasn’t thinking specifically about Goa in his urgent, game-changing *The
Great Derangement *(University of Chicago Press, 2016). The great novelist
and writer’s ambit was more expansive and ambitious, ranging across the
full extent of contemporary global imagination. And yet, it cannot be
denied his analysis strikes painfully true about what is happening in
India’s smallest state. Every scrap of evidence indicates an existential
threat is already upon us, from rising ocean levels triggered by global
warming, but no one in charge ever pays any attention at all. One more
tragic data point in “the broader imaginative and cultural failure that
lies at the heart of the climate crisis.”

In an excellent interview with *The New Statesman* earlier this week, Ghosh
warned that “climate change is essentially becoming an all-out war and this
is just the beginning. When you come from a poor country such as India, you
learn not to listen to what politicians say, but to look at what they do.
They are basically preparing for war. No one is even pretending anymore.”
He said “nationalism, military power and geopolitical disparities are
fundamental to the dynamics that have repeatedly stymied efforts to reach a
global agreement on rapid decarbonisation [and] rich, powerful countries
assume that the people who will be affected will be black and brown people
in faraway places. This is another great delusion.”

Ghosh’s interview is in an issue guest-edited by Greta Thunberg, in which
the resolute teenager herself continues to pull no punches: “The world’s
political leaders are in denial, actively delaying change and distracting
the electorate. Rather than coming together to combat the crisis, the
global community is fragmenting as wars are waged and great powers compete
for control over scarce resources and territory. We should abandon the
illusion that our politicians will come to the rescue of planet Earth,
especially those who delight in calling themselves climate leaders. Time
and again they have betrayed the faith that has been placed in them – using
greenwashing and PR strategies disguised as politics.”

Pay close attention to Thunberg’s conclusion: “A critical mass of people –
especially younger people – are demanding change and will no longer
tolerate the procrastination, denial and complacency that created this
state of emergency. I believe in democracy and in the power of collective
wisdom. It is not too late. We have a duty to help as many of our fellow
citizens as possible understand the dire situation we are in. We must all
do more to explain, inform and educate; public pressure can create profound
change. At the age of 19, I already feel like a broken record – but we need
to keep repeating the message on climate action, constantly. For hope
begins when we open our eyes and swap the impotence of words for the power
of collective action.”

Those are stirring sentiments, accompanied by Thunberg’s trademark call to
action, but can it work in places like Goa, where the leadership is in
lockstep in the exact wrong direction? I thought to ask Puja Mitra, of the
superb North Goa-based conservation and social impact enterprise Terra
Conscious, and MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from Oxford,
who is an invaluable force for good in Goa’s fledgling movement towards
responsible tourism. Over a solid decade – starting with breathing new life
into WWF-India’s outpost in Miramar – this tireless 38-year-old has
constantly advocated for best practices and better thinking about nature,
the marine environment, and the ever-present crisis of climate change.

Mitra sent me the* State Action Plan on Climate Change, 2020* by the Goa
State Biodiversity Board, which looks ahead to 2030 with this shocking
assessment: “Goa stands to lose a large percentage of its land area,
including many of its famous beaches and tourist infrastructure.” She said
the plan clearly lays out “threats and vulnerabilities” but “without any
clarity” on solutions. “The language is vague. How are sea walls 'natural
mechanisms'? What do you mean by 'climate proofing'? There is a very real
and tangible disconnect between the devastating concretization being
unleashed on the ground, and the rhetoric of ecotourism, and wanting to
preserve heritage and culture.” If we do not act fast now, “whatever is
laid out in the state action plan will happen, and we will have no ability
to withstand it.”

How can one tiny state sustain so many high-impact projects, asks Mitra,
“and still become climate resilient simultaneously” to the extent required
to face its own official predictions about what’s just around the corner?
“We state that we want to 'climate proof' but we also refuse to abandon our
vision of ‘development’ or even ‘progress’. Plans mean nothing without
action, which requires awareness and 

[Goanet] The Marvellous, Mysterious JoeGoaUk (O Heraldo, 22/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Marvellous-Mysterious-JoeGoaUk/195539

This is my long-overdue tribute to an intriguing senior citizen, known only
by the cryptic Internet moniker of JoeGoaUk. Over many years, this intrepid
anonymous correspondent has shared tens of thousands of photographs, along
with hundreds of hours of video, in an invaluable online contribution
spanning many different genres: citizen journalism, cultural documentation,
political commentary, Konkani *Mog*, locavore connoisseurship,
trainspotting enthusiasm, and much more besides

Who is Joe? It doesn’t matter. What’s really important is his work. It is
an exhaustive archive of our times that is continually being augmented in
almost-real-time. This is shoe leather journalism at its best, in crucial
areas of collective interest: urban infrastructure, essential commodity
prices, all aspects of public transport, and the ins-and-outs of
bureaucratic procedure. Make no mistake about this “news you can use” from
one marvellous man of mystery. Joe provides better coverage of his
interests than all of the legacy media combined.

“There are limitations on how much of the "story" a camera can tell,” says
veteran journalist, Frederick Noronha. “Yet, JoeGoaUk does a fascinating
job of reporting on the grassroots, and informing us about culture
(especially tiatrs, for which he has earned some ingratitude). It shows
what is possible if the average citizen is empowered to speak out and
report. JoeGoaUk's is an extreme case though. I can't imagine how many
could sustain it for so long, on such a range of topics and places, without
getting paid a rupee.”

Noronha says “for work to gain a longer lease of life, I would suggest the
adoption of Creative Commons licenses, by all those willing. It would be
great if JoeGoaUk could share his work, say, on Wikipedia or spaces like
archive.org (a free global archive). Such attempts might just outlast us
all, who knows?  People often believe they could lose earnings by sharing
their creative work; In most of their cases, they neither earn their
millions, nor do others get to share it. Of course, credit for all such
work should be scrupulously given; it's most irritating when people just
lift it and reuse, as if they have some right to it!”

Joe’s archive has already proven its value for any number of purposes.
Valmiki Naik of the Aam Admi Party (he is on its national council) gave me
one example: “I am fighting a legal battle against the atrocious Captain of
Ports terminal building coming up inside the waters of the Mandovi. The
state was insisting that this is just a reconstruction, but. I knew it was
not the case. The proof was found in Joe’s fantastic archive – he had
documented the old terminal from many different angles. Using those photos,
supplemented with drone images, I was able to prove that this was no
reconstruction at all, but something entirely new being imposed within the
river waters and not on land!”

Naik says he believes “Joe simply loves Panjim – and Goa – so much that he
wants to document everything about it: good, bad, ugly. It gives me comfort
that he cares so much. However, we as citizens need to do more to use this
treasure trove of information, to save what we are rapidly losing. That’s
the beauty of his work – selfless and unglamorous, but an expression of
true love. He is, in a way, the Banksy of Goa, creating his own version of
art in the form of photojournalism and online activism.”

It’s an apt comparison, which has also been on my mind, because Joe is an
unironic, unapologetically no-frills photographer - the opposite of
Instagram-friendly - but aspects of his work unquestionably cross over to
the realm of galleries and museums. His extraordinary Fish Curry Rice
series in particular (available in different Flickr locations) is
absolutely Biennale-worthy. Image after image after image of annotated fish
thalis, and various other accompaniments, from an infinite variety of local
“joints”. You start off intrigued, and then – after all we’re Goan -
your tastebuds get triggered with more than a bit of FOMO. Strong feelings
arise: childhood, your granny, the environment, questions of
sustainability. This cumulative effect is one of the greatest contemporary
artworks about Goan identity.

“Thank you so much for introducing me to the work of JoeGoaUK - it is
delightful” wrote back the brilliant critic, curator and cultural theorist
Ranjit Hoskote, after I emailed a link to Joe’s photos earlier this week,
accompanied by the basic query: “Is it art?” My friend responded, “Yes
indeed this is art. In our present epoch, creative expression has
necessarily distributed itself across a variety of media and platforms -
and the work of JoeGoaUk is consonant with this tendency. In his images, I
see an interplay between the ephemeral and the archival - a series of
meals, for instance, which builds into a large portrait of appetite,
culinary culture, shifts in cuisine, what is constant and what is

[Goanet] Adeus, Panjim? (O Heraldo, 16/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Adeus-Panjim/195251

Earlier this week, lifelong Panjim resident and Travel & Tourism
Association of Goa office-
bearer Jack Sukhijia – he is named for his grandfather, the ‘Father of
the Opinion
Poll’ Jack Sequeira – posted on Facebook: “Have heard statements from
the camps of two powerful
ministers today that the casino industry is too powerful to take on,
and can do what they wish
in Goa. Hope this is not a hands-up to surrender more of the Panjim
riverfront to them,
starting with the real estate which was earlier leased to the Mandovi
[Hotel] as an event space
and restaurant.”

Sukhijia was writing in the wake of startling new encroachments, and
an irresponsible
blitzkrieg of tree-felling, dune-razing devastation on the heritage
waterfront of Panjim, with
no oversight or accountability whatsoever. Just one horrific example:
almost all the ferry
ramp was already gifted – no one can say how and why – to the floating
gambling dens, but
now that space is fronted by building-sized roadside neon “hoardings”,
that blind drivers
coming from Azad Maidan. No responsible authority could possibly
approve this deathtrap,
but here it blazes with impunity next to police headquarters.

Track up from that point, and it is only casino, casino, casino, with
the deep disgrace of lurid
come-hither directly facing the statue of Bhausaheb Bandodkar. Head
the other way towards
Aguada, however, and that is where bulldozers are concentrating: many
trees felled, and huge
quantities of stone and rubble extending an unwanted, environmentally
devastating concrete
promenade through Campal Creek, past Kala Academy, and – now building
directly on sands
– onwards to Miramar and ahead to Dona Paula.

Whose priority? What permissions? How can this be done without any
consultations? We
have no answers, because this is how things are now in Goa. Our
neighbourhoods – and,
indeed, our selves – are being brutally violated, but what is even
worse is being told we like
it. It’s an absolute crisis of democracy. Can public sentiment be so
thoroughly suppressed?
As the senior city resident Arun Baba Naik put it in his comment on
Sukhijia’s post: “Let us
reconcile ourselves to the fact that casinos here have the backing of
the supreme power of the
nation. Can we therefore oppose it without the fear of being labelled
as urban naxals? Let's be
frank.”

Sukhijia’s reply had an unmistakable echo of his revered namesake:
“Sir, it does not matter
who calls us what as long as our conscience is clear. No power,
however large, can foist
something on someone else against their wishes and will. I am sure
that the supreme power
can be convinced with the right messaging not to take over more of our
city’s beautiful land,
or push more ugly defunct boats in the Mandovi. The problem is if the
gatekeepers between
us and the supreme power themselves think the casinos are ones to do
business with.”

The next day, Sukhijia elaborated to me: “It is sad, frustrating and
mind-boggling to see what I
consider to be the most beautiful promenade in India rendered into
what at night looks like a
cheap, chaotic strip joint. Around two decades back, we had a chance
to head towards being a
cultural capital by utilizing our heritage. Manohar Parrikar began
promisingly, with the
refurbishment of the Old Goa Medical College. But since then, we have
headed straight to disaster. At this point, we absolutely have to
ensure that casinos do not take over our city
completely. Besides everything else, it’s bad economics to put all
your eggs in one basket,
especially one which crowds out other ways of being, and everything we
value about
Panjim.”

Sukhijia broke the problem down nicely: “One of the side effects of
our democracy is that there are
so many interest groups, who do not see beyond their narrow interests,
that a politician is
often bewildered and panicky about making decisions (having said that,
this is a fate they
themselves have brought on, by choosing the path of least resistance).
There’s also the
cyclical nature of new masters, so new projects, rather than simply
maintaining and managing
an already beautiful natural and built infrastructure. In addition, we
have a bloated and
oversized government with negligible interdepartmental coordination,
and different bodies
working at cross purposes.”

Is there any way out of this mess? I wrote to Vinayak Bharne, the
born-and-bred Panjimite,
who is an urbanist and professor based in Los Angeles (and new
Honorary Advisor to
Vishwajit Rane’s Town & Country Planning department). He responded
that “for me, the
idea of shaping the future of a town or city should be a collaborative
negotiation between
diverse interests - economic, political, cultural, environmental. We
absolutely need economic
engines of various kinds, but exactly how much, and where, and in what
form, are questions
that need to be deliberated collectively. My hope is that such a
process will begin in Goa, and
soon. It will help 

[Goanet] Nasreen Mohamedi: Against the Grain (O Heraldo, 15/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Nasreen-Mohamedi-Against-the-Grain/195191

Uncommon paradoxes abound in the art, reputation and startling posthumous
trajectory of Nasreen Mohamedi, the enigmatic modernist who died at 53 in
1990. In the past two decades, her spare, subtle oeuvre – in paintings,
drawings and photographs – has been appropriated wildly divergently by
institutions around the world. In the process, mountains of scattershot
verbiage have piled up about an artist who fundamentally resists
categorization. Thus, it is our good fortune that the landmark
exhibition *Nasreen
Mohamedi, From the Glenbarra Art Museum to India* opened yesterday at
Sunaparanta in Panjim, and we have until 22nd November to directly view an
excellent body of work from one of the most important artists of the 20th
century.

There are so many different takes about this great minimalist that it
inevitably recalls the parable about blind men and the elephant (where each
one imagines the whole based on fragmentary understanding). Way back in
1961, just before this Karachi-born and London-trained adept headed to
Paris, Richard Bartholomew set the pattern with his assessment of “graphics
in the truest sense of the word [and] calligraphy as pure as classical
Chinese.” That pattern of looking to far horizons to describe Mohamedi’s
work has persisted. In the monumental new *20th Century Indian Art: Modern,
Post-Independence Contemporary* (edited by Partha Mitter, Parul Dave
Mukherji and Rakhee Balaram for Thames & Hudson) Grant Watson nails down
the “tendency to discuss Mohamedi’s work in terms other than simply formal
ones, and to feel the need to allude to a range of additional
interpretations.”

Watson cites one list from Geeta Kapur: “Zen Buddhism, Islamic
architecture, Sufi poetry, Persian calligraphy, and a poetics drawn from
nature or, rather, from a culturally favoured geography – desert horizon,
the moon’s life cycle, the Arabian Sea connecting the shores of India and
Arabia. Also modern technology, precision instruments, elegant cars and
heavy cameras, all of which she handled at ease.” But that’s not all. In
her soulful *Elegy For An Unclaimed Beloved: Nasreen Mohamedi 1937-1990* –
it is in Glenbarra Art Museum’s elegant exhibition catalogue – Kapur adds
even more references and allusions: *vacana* poetry, Ananda Coomaraswamy,
Abelard and Heloise, Camus, Malevich and Klee and on and on.

>From the same catalogue, I liked Emilia Terraciano’s refreshingly focused
approach: “Mohamedi’s drawings are the result of careful perceptual
translations of her immediate environment.” She accurately roots this
artist in hard-edged “commitment to abstraction” acknowledging how “that
emerged against the grain of contemporary trends within the Indian context.
In this respect, her work continues to complicate and unsettle categories
within Indian art history.”

Here, of course, is another refraction of the tragedy of the Indian art
world in the 21st century, which spills over with ersatz “glamour” and the
social anxieties of the newly rich, but backs up the hype with almost
nothing of value: nearly zero scholarship, broken authentication, legions
of crooks, and the absence of even the minimal level of connoisseurship
required to cleanse its own fraudulence. In this miasma of mediocrity,
neck-deep in fakes, anyone can say anything. Which brings us directly to
Goa’s own V.S. Gaitonde, another toweringly great abstractionist, who
provides an uncanny doppelgänger to Mohamedi, not least because their
ouevres keep on being subjected to the most ludicrous flights of
critical/theoretical fantasy. There’s an unmistakable symmetry between
their art practices and commercial revivals. The best way to understand one
is alongside the other.

In her outstanding 2016 book *Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude*,
Meera Menezes describes one of the crucial seedbeds of the
transdisciplinary modernist impulse in India, after the Progressive
Artist’s Group “gradually disbanded"- “In the early 1950s, the art scene
[in postcolonial Bombay] received a fillip with the establishment of the
Jehangir Art Gallery and the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute.” The first one
still flourishes. The latter was “a nerve centre where the variegated
strands of artistic creativity conjoined to spark new ideas and energise
both the Bombay art scene and the artists contributing to it.”

Menezes vividly describes how “an old, two-storey family home was
partitioned to offer much-needed studio space to Gaitonde and the other
artists who worked there – Dashrath Patel, M. F. Husain, Prafulla Joshi,
Madhav Satwalekar, Homi Patel, graphic designers Ralli Jacob and his wife,
ceramic artist Perin, and sculptors Adi Davierwala and Piloo Pochkhanawala.
Later, Tyeb Mehta’s wife, Sakina, ran a little bookshop on the verandah…It
was here that director Ebrahim Alkazi ran his theatre unit’s School of
Dramatic Art and where Ravi Shankar established the Kinnara School of
Music…There were apparently no 

[Goanet] Becoming "Cruella" (O Heraldo, 9/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Becoming-%E2%80%98Cruella%E2%80%99/194927

The most powerful woman of Indian origin in the world tilted further into
cartoonish villainousness this week, during the Conservative Party
conference in Birmingham. At every given opportunity, Suella Fernandes
Braverman – her father is Goan from Assagao and Nairobi, and her mother is
Mauritian Tamil - served up more extremist talking points to the
reactionary Tory base, in what is turning out to be her permanent campaign
to become prime minister. Make no mistake: it was highly effective, and
there’s an excellent chance she will now get there. In the thoroughly
rigged current UK scenario, the only votes that count belong to roughly
15 mostly elderly party members (less than that number voted the last
time around) and she said exactly what they wanted to hear.

“True Blue Braverman” is what The Telegraph called the UK Home Secretary –
one of the four “great offices of state” that run the country – “a new
heroine of the Tory grassroots.” That may be true, but many others were
repulsed by the casual cruelty served up with a smile by this ambitious
42-year-old: “I would love to have [front page headlines] with a plane
taking off to Rwanda [containing unwillingly deported asylum-seekers],
that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”

The radio host James O’Brien voiced that other consensus, "It seems to me
very strange that Conservative politicians who wear their Christianity most
prominently on their sleeves, the ones who actually talk about it, are the
ones who often seem to engage in the most callous and disgusting of
conduct. They used to be on the fringes, they used to be beyond the
boundaries of acceptability. Imagine dreaming of desperate people being
deported against their will to a country they might never have heard of
before. Dreaming of that and living in a country, or rather living in a
bubble where relishing that prospect is not just acceptable but even
perhaps admirable. What is wrong with this woman? How can anybody have
ended up this curdled and cruel?"

In fact, there’s no great mystery, and O’Brien perfectly accurately
diagnosed the situation himself: it’s the “consequence of treating people
like Nigel Farage as if they had anything valid or decent to contribute.
That weaponization of refugees and asylum seekers and immigrants in general
has polluted every corner of this country.” Over the past two decades,
arrant xenophobia has become the new UK religion (of course the phenomenon
is not restricted to that country) and the path to power requires playing
that card. Here, again, our Suella distinguishes herself for both
theatricality and ruthlessness, by opposing her own prime minister’s trade
agreement with India, which includes limited increases in visas: “I do have
some reservations. Look at migration in this country – the largest group of
people who overstay are Indian migrants. We even reached an agreement with
the Indian government last year to encourage and facilitate better
co-operation. It has not necessarily worked very well.”

Of course all this is tailored to underline her suitability to
paleo-conservatives, but Braverman’s political genius – and capacity to say
literally anything to get ahead – really emerged in an extraordinary
interview that has since gone viral, where she directly addressed
ethnicity. “Your parents are from Mauritius and Kenya. How do you feel
about stopping people from coming here,” asks an obviously complicit
interlocutor. Braverman, dismissively, “I have no qualms about that,
absolutely. This is a common argument trotted out about by the left, that
because of the colour of my skin, and my heritage, I have to think a
certain way, and I can’t declare certain truths on migration.”

The interviewer blithers about annoying the left, which brings a smile to
Braverman’s face: “I hope I’ve annoyed them. That would be my delight. But
no, my parents came here through safe and legal routes. My mother was
recruited by the NHS, and my Dad came here because he was effectively
kicked out of Kenya, but they came here legitimately [and] that was the
policy of the government. They came here, they integrated, they loved this
country from afar as children of Empire. They don’t, by the way, have any
qualms about extolling the virtues of the British Empire. It was the
British Empire that brought infrastructure, the legal system, the civil
service, the military to countries like Mauritius and Kenya, and my parents
are so proud. I’m not going to apologize for our past history.” Another
interjection – “should we be proud [instead]”? – and she shrugs her
shoulders. “Yes, I am proud of the British Empire. Yes.”

How did we get to this pinnacle of ugliness and absurdity, and is there any
way to recover? Here, I really liked what Rana Dasgupta wrote on Facebook,
where the acclaimed British Indian author – he has won the Commonwealth
Prize and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award, and his *Capital: A Portrait of

[Goanet] The Rise (and Fall?) of Goa's Book Ecosystem (O Heraldo, 8/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Goa%E2%80%99s-Book-Ecosystem/194886

27 long years ago in 1995, along with many other curious people, I
connected my telephone to my computer and dialled up to the Internet for
the first time. This was on Netscape Navigator, and the best search engine
was AltaVista. It was an almost unimaginable opening-up. For someone like
me - born in 1968 - the idea that you could search the entire World Wide
Web for anything and everything, with answers spit back in seconds, was
beyond mind-boggling. So, what did I look for above and beyond all else, in
my initial scans of the global imaginary? It was Goa, of course. I
navigated the “information superhighway” directly into Goanet, and quickly
encountered Frederick Noronha.

There are some true facts that the Che Guevara of Goan Cyberspace objects
to my sharing in this manner, so I will limit them to this paragraph.
Several people participated in birthing, fostering and safeguarding the
Internet’s possibilities in and for India’s smallest state, but he is
indisputably first amongst those equals. The especially admirable aspect of
his legacy has been its steadfast adherence to Copyleft and Open Source,
and crowdsourced resources like Wikipedia, as the most appropriate
solutions to our challenges. In this way, in my considered opinion, Noronha
has been the crucial catalyst in how tiny Goa has always bravely punched
way above its weight in the digital domain.

Here, it’s fascinating to revisit the 2011 YouTube interview (
https://youtu.be/L02FNPUXfrI) that I conducted with my childhood friend
(Noronha and I were im different schools, but exchanged books whilst
growing up in 1970s Saligao) when the Indian Internet was beginning to be
transformed by smartphones. He recalls that in 1995 – he was working at
this newspaper – they got online by dialling Bombay after 10pm (when the
rates were cheaper), and there were barely 100 of us on Herman Carneiro’s
mailing list. At that time, Eddie Fernandes – another great pioneer of Goan
cyberspace who created the excellent goanvoice.org,uk – visited O Heraldo
to evangelize about the new medium: “they asked him, do you earn anything
from it. He said no. Then they asked him, do you pay anything to write in
it. He said no. So, they lost complete interest in it.”

Not Noronha, who persevered highly consequentially. Although none of us
realized what we were doing, Goa began to reflect some of the promise of
the new medium. From London, Eddie Fernandes – an expert librarian by
profession – kept scouring the web to share information about the diaspora.
Lisbon-based historian Prof. Teotonio de Souza maintained the standard of
scholarship scrupulously high. Almost all the regular contributors to that
network were based in the west –understandable, because the infrastructure
was more easily available – but there’s no doubt we were all hooked by the
steady flow of real time news from Goa, and for many years that was the
production of one man’s solitary late-night labours in Sonarbhat, Saligao.

Watch the even more luxuriantly moustachioed Frederick Noronha in that
YouTube interview, and he’s cautiously optimistic: “I don’t have a crystal
ball to gaze into, but if everyone tries hard, and we don’t have too much
infighting amongst ourselves, then the future is bright. For me the
touchstone is [becoming] producers rather than consumers of knowledge.”
This was the real point, and by now he had taken the further step of making
it happen via the independent publishing house Goa 1556, which describes
itself like so: “Launched on a rainy day (June 20, 2007), Goa, 1556 is a
quest to do things differently, and with goals that are different. Our aim
is to democratise the production of knowledge. In our own small,
alternative way. And we strive for quality simply by laying down high
standards, while actively pursuing the goal of creating space for ‘other
voices’ to be heard.”

In its run of the past 15 years, Noronha and team have produced some 150
books, in an extraordinary contribution to our collective culture: Jose
Pereira’s masterpiece on Mando, Robert Newman’s superb essays, Paul Melo
Castro’s marvellous translations, Fatima Silva Gracias’s classic on Goan
food, the list is endless and ongoing. Just last week, we were delivered
Nuno Lopes’s *Heritage of Defence: Goa 1510-1660*, which explains how the
Estado da India’s complex security infrastructure stands apart – not just
in the subcontinent – for its complexity and ambition, in yet another
example of truly meaningful scholarship that few of us would encounter if
not for Goa 1556.

During the purposeful, productive launch of that latest book – it was at
Instituto Camoes - Noronha spoke about the difficulties that have beset
publishing in Goa. Via email, he later outlined how “we’re seeing a lot of
platitudes and promises” regarding the promotion of book culture “but no
action.” State libraries are “in a state of collapse” except for the
showpieces in 

[Goanet] Listening to Putin (O Heraldo, 2/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Listening-to-Putin/194673

Prideful and ornery, and speaking directly to history, Vladimir Putin made
an extraordinary global address earlier this week. At the Sept 30 Kremlin
ceremony formally annexing four regions of Ukraine that the Russian
military occupied after its invasion in February, the 69-year-old president
– who has ruled unimpeded since 1999 – angrily indicted the prevailing
international order: “All we hear from all sides is that the West stands
for order based on rules. Where did they come from? Who even saw these
rules? Who agreed? Listen, this is just some kind of nonsense, sheer
deception, double or already triple standards! It’s just designed for
fools.”

If you go by what we are being bombarded with in the information wars,
Russia is on the retreat in Ukraine, and this annexation is an
acknowledgement of it. *The Guardian* editorialized: “Arguably, this was
set in motion as soon as it became clear – days after the February invasion
– that his plans to swiftly topple the Ukrainian government had failed. It
became more likely once it was evident that Russia was faring badly on both
military and diplomatic fronts, and that domestic discontent was stirring.”

Whatever the case, we are witnessing dramatic escalation in an already
alarming conflict, alongside further Russian mobilisation, and the
mysterious sabotage of Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany. This is
literally an existential crisis - Putin keeps threatening the use of
nuclear arms, and did so again on Friday. “The United States is the only
country in the world to use nuclear weapons twice, destroying the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the way, they set a precedent.”

There’s an unmistakable pathos about Putin’s freewheeling diatribe,
reminiscent of Saddam Hussain’s open letters to the world after 9/11, where
he tried to argue against what was already inevitable: his country’s defeat
and his own humiliation. Just like those missives, there’s an unusual
truth-telling about the way the world actually works, from someone who
intimately understands it: “It is the so-called West that has trampled on
the principle of the inviolability of borders, and now, at its own
discretion, decides who has the right to self-determination and who does
not, who is not worthy of it. Why they decide so, who gave them such a
right is not clear. To themselves.”

Putin said “Western countries have been repeating for centuries that they
bring freedom and democracy to other peoples. Everything is exactly the
opposite: instead of democracy – suppression and exploitation; instead of
freedom – enslavement and violence. The entire unipolar world order is
inherently anti-democratic and not free, it is deceitful and hypocritical
through and through.” Even now, “they actually occupy Germany, Japan, the
Republic of Korea and other countries, and at the same time cynically call
them equal allies. Listen, I wonder what kind of alliance is this? This is
a real shame. A shame both for those who do this and for those who, like a
slave, silently and meekly swallow this rudeness.”

What’s happening now, suggested Putin, is the beginning of the end of all
of that. “The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations
of a fundamental nature. New development centres are being formed to
represent the majority – the majority! – of the world community and are
ready not only to declare their interests, but also to protect them, and
see multipolarity as an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which
means to gain true freedom, a historical perspective, their right to
independent, creative, original development, to a harmonious process. A
liberating, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is already
developing within the most diverse countries and societies. It is this
force that will determine the future geopolitical reality.”

To get some expert perspective on this fast-changing situation, I turned to
Ajay Kamalakaran, the passionately Russophile writer who has strong ties
with both Russia and Ukraine, and is general-secretary of the decades-old -
but newly revived - India-Russia Friendship Society, a voluntary
non-political initiative to build cultural, economic and spiritual ties
between Indians and Russians (meaning all Russian speakers) which also has
Ukrainian and American members. His excellent online newsletter "on life,
culture, languages and history” is at ajaykamalakaran.substack.com.

My friend – who made an impressive debut at the inaugural Liberty & Light
Festival of Goa in Panjim earlier this year – remains constantly
up-to-the-minute with Russia. He told me, “I read *Rossiyskaya Gazeta*, *RIA
Novosti*, *Kommersant,* *Vedomosti*, and also websites that represent
dissenting and opposition voices. The *Echo of Moscow* radio station is
streamed daily on my laptop, wherever I am (this station tends to be highly
sceptical of the government). The conflict, which felt distant in March 

[Goanet] The Africander Odyssey (O Heraldo, 1/10/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Africander-Odyssey/194628

The upcoming issue of *London Review of Books* will be remembered for its
landmark essay by Mahmood Mamdani, in which the highly regarded 76-year-old
Indian-Ugandan academic – he was at Columbia University in New York and is
now the Chancellor at Kampala International University – directly addresses
some of the myths and blind spots that continue to prevail about the
roller-coaster history of migrants from the subcontinent to colonial states
in Africa. *The Asian Question* begins with the paradox he encountered
during research amongst people like himself, who had been abruptly expelled
from Uganda in November 1972.

“I made a point of asking most of the Ugandans I met to share their
thoughts about the expulsion,” says Mamdani. “For most of them, it wasn’t
the decision to expel the Asian population that was troubling, but the way
the expulsion had been carried out: this was the beginning of wisdom for
me. Ten years later, whether we met in Uganda or in Britain, I put the same
question to friends, former neighbours and schoolmates of Asian heritage
from the pre-1972 period. To my surprise, more than 90 per cent of them
said they would not want to return to the years before Amin ordered them
out: whatever they experienced at the time, they – like the ‘indigenous’
Ugandans I’d been questioning since 1980 – had nothing against the
expulsion. Why did an overwhelming majority of current or former residents
in Uganda, brown or black, feel this way?”

Mamdani explains: “At the heart of the problem were Uganda’s citizenship
laws, drawn up when Britain relinquished its protectorate. A clause in the
Independence Constitution of 1962 restricted citizenship by birth to those
born of Ugandan parents, one of whose grandparents must also have been born
in Uganda. My guess is that no more than 10 percent of Ugandan Asians would
have qualified for citizenship under this clause at the time of
independence. Six years later, Britain added an ‘indigenous’ ingredient to
its own citizenship laws, and another layer to the complexities facing
Uganda’s Asians. As Ian Sanjay Patel argues in We’re Here because You Were
There, the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrant Act ‘was the first immigration law
specifically designed to target non-white British citizens not resident or
born in Britain.”

This, then, is the nitty gritty of why so many Indians – including tens of
thousands of Goans – bounced far from Africa in waves of exodus that are
still reverberating. It wasn’t any fanciful “winds of change”. Instead, as
Mamdani expounds at much greater length in his 2020 book *Neither Settler
nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities* (Harvard
University Press) “the political effect of colonialism was not limited to
the loss of external independence, to the drawing of external borders that
demarcated the colony from the outside. More importantly colonial
governance drew borders inside the colony.” Thus, “two sets of citizenship
laws, in Uganda and Britain, were a vice in which tens of thousands of
Asians were squeezed. After 1968, no British passport-holding Asian in
Uganda could obtain a work permit or trading licence in Uganda, or gain
entry into the United Kingdom.”

Trapped in that way, the substantial majority of Indians in East Africa
tried to decamp wherever they were accepted. The UK turned hostile –
remember Enoch Powell’s noxious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech – but some
thousands (including Mamdani) did get refugee status there. Canada also
took in thousands, and many others went to India. Others scattered widely,
including one tiny cohort in Norway, which is how Thomas Pereira (born in
Sarpsborg in 1973) became one of the first Indian-origin players in
top-flight European football, including eight caps for his country. And it
also explains why the first really great literary achievement to come out
of the Goan-Indian-African experience was first published in Norwegian (Ivo
de Figueiredo’s *Em fremmed ved mit bord* was launched in its excellent
English translation as *The Stranger at My Table* at the Goa Arts +
Literature Festival in Dona Paula in 2019).

Figueiredo puts it most pithily, about an inconvenient history that you
will never glean from history books in the West, or Africa either: “The
harsh truth was that now my family became redundant people, mere slag from
the grinding wheel of history. They were a people with origins, history,
but no territory of their own. The empires that had created them had gone
and now they were left standing among the colonial ruins under the
scorching sun.” He writes, “Goans seem in many ways to be one people no
matter where in the world you meet them [but] there will always be a
difference between those who went away, and those who stayed. For many
families, this separation happened twice over. First in their departure
from Goa, then, a generation later, in their departure from East Africa. In
both cases those who stayed had to 

[Goanet] Hindus and Muslims, and Amos Noronha (O Heraldo, 25/9/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Hindus-and-Muslims-and-Amos-Noronha/194396

There are many odd, disturbing and worrisome aspects to the
unexpected, unprecedented flare-up - on ostensibly Hindu-Muslim lines
- in the ancient city of Leicester in the UK, and also the sheer
mystery of why 20-year-old Amos Noronha is the first person to go to
jail for it.

Here’s what’s on the Leicestershire Police website: “A 20-year-old man
has been sentenced 10 months in prison following his arrest during the
disorder in East Leicester. Amos Noronha, of Illingworth Road,
Leicester pleaded guilty to possession of an offensive weapon. He was
arrested Saturday night during the police operation in East Leicester.
An additional 18 people were arrested on Sunday night for a number of
offences including affray, common assault, possession of an offensive
weapon and violent disorder. In total, 47 people have been arrested
for offences in relation to the unrest in the east of the city.”

The police took pains to note that “Some of those arrested were from
out of the city, including some people from Birmingham”. Temporary
Chief Constable Rob Nixon said, “We saw last night a group of people
from other cities come to our city to disrupt and cause harm. We will
not stand for this unrest in our city. Be reassured: we are working to
keep you safe and to arrest and bring to justice those that are
causing harm in our communities.”

What happened in Leicester? Don’t believe social media because one
thing we do know is Indians are being stoked to outrage about it. BBC
journalist Abdirahim Saeed outlined on Twitter that, “there were at
least 500K English-language tweets from last 7 days that mentioned
#Leicester in context of recent tensions. Over 50% originated from
accts geolocated in India. However, 97% of volume for 'Hindu under
attack' tags were made up of retweets. This is a tell-tale sign of
inauthentic amplification.”

So, whatever happened in the faraway East Midlands, there seem to be
big stakes for political gain in India. This is to be expected says
Pratap Bhanu Mehta in his latest Indian Express column: “Long-distance
diasporic nationalisms have always been a feature of global politics.
Culturally, these have often been more intractable than the politics
in home countries for a variety of reasons. Diasporic nationalisms and
identities are often more abstract, eschewing all complexity, and able
to indulge in those abstractions because there is no skin in the game.
They often do not have to face the consequences of the violence and
dislocations of that identity-mongering.”

Nonetheless, the marked hostility of the clashes in Leicester – and
the recent incident of bulldozers paraded in New Jersey – do signal
something new. Mehta says, “there are three things that make this
moment in diaspora fractures more distinctive both in the US and the
UK. In the Eighties, after clashes broke out, there will still an
attempt across communities to see their respective states, or
mainstream politicians in those countries, as a relatively neutral
arbiter; in fact, the whole point was not to draw politicians in the
UK or US in accusations of partisanship in India’s communal conflicts.
We are still awaiting a full, authoritative account of the events at
Leicester. But in the discourse, at least, one is struck by the fact
that the narrative of “Hindu victimhood” is even pointing fingers at
the local state, as if it was somehow partisan in failing to protect
Hindus.”

Mehta says, “the second big change is the explicit involvement of the
Indian state. The Indian state’s statement condemned “the violence
perpetrated against the Indian community in Leicester and the
vandalisation of premises and symbols of Hindu religion”. Notice no
appeal to Hindus not to take out intimidating marches, or the
acknowledgement that marches chanting Jai Shri Ram might be adding to
the tension… In short, the Indian state itself is now going to
intervene in a partisan manner in these conflicts. It will not be a
party of peace but of more polarisation.”

Then, “the third big change is that their global ideological patrons
of conflict will have an investment in politically milking these
incidents, in a context where all inhibitions on ethnic nationalism
are gone. Now, we are not in the realm of long-distance nationalism,
but in a global political market that is looking to construct
narratives of victimhood that can be used in any global context.”
Mehta says, “there is also no doubt that Hindutva is not about the
defence of Hinduism or Hindu interests, but a global ideology of hate
and asserting cultural dominance. It is bizarre to think you can have
this much dissemination of hate without it having violent political
consequences. Now that inhibitions have been broken, brace for more
conflict.”

Is that going to happen in Leicester, the very first UK city to
register “majority minority” with more than 50% “non-white British”
citizens? I emailed the question to Keith 

[Goanet] Fire on the Mountain (Kodai Chronicle, September 2022)

[V M]

https://www.thekodaichronicle.com/uncategorized/the-rest-is-history/

Earlier this year, in an unusually bracing March chill that kept dusting
the ridges of Landour with snow, I made my way down the crest of Mussoorie
from behind the extravagantly turreted Chateau de Kapurthala, past the back
entrance of the Savoy, across the dug-up detritus of the famous old Mall,
and back up to Christ Church. This is the first church ever built in the
Himalayas, and the fulcrum of Christianity in Devbhoomi—the fabled abode of
the Hindu gods that is Garhwal.

In settings like these, it’s impossible to avoid contemplating the
fleeting, essentially fragile nature of human endeavour. When the British
essayed forcibly into these ancient mountains, it was in the secure
knowledge their writ would remain permanent. Their Raj would always last.
European dominance was incontrovertible. This is why the new rulers made no
concessions to the setting’s own cultural history. Instead, the Bishop of
Calcutta, who presided over the project, expressed considerable glee that
it was to be ‘the first church built in India after the pattern of an
English parish church’.

>From our 21st century vantage, laboriously clambering up derelict lanes,
it’s impossible to reconcile these scenes of utter neglect with what
flourished here in Mussoorie’s heyday. Writing in 1878, Mrs Robert Moss
King (her husband was the collector of Meerut) reported: ‘It is a funny
sight to a newcomer to see the crowds of dandies [hand-borne palanquins]
ranged outside, looking like miniature canoes that have been beached. If
the congregation consist of 200 women and 100 men, that means 200 dandies,
which, with an average of three coolies to each gives 600 attendant
coolies, besides 100 ponies and 100 syces.’

Those masses of churchgoers are long gone. Mussoorie’s native population of
Christians has very clearly dwindled under 1,000 (though official
statistics indicate a slightly higher total). Thus, when I reached Christ
Church, in its choice location commanding the slopes above the sweep of
‘the Doon’, I was unsurprised to find no signs of life. It was only after
two small boys emerged from throwing stones in the plastered portico and I
rousted them to wake up the groundskeeper, that the side door was cracked
open to allow entry.

Think back to early March. The Russians had just invaded Ukraine (on 24
February) and the world was aswirl with propaganda and misinformation. It
was apparent Vladimir Putin intended on rearranging the map of Europe, and
had even evoked the spectre of nuclear war. At the same time, Pakistan,
India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka faced down huge pressure from the West to
abstain together in highly unusual lockstep on the US-sponsored UN
resolution to condemn Russia. A new world was being born, but it was yet
unclear what shape it would begin to take.

Russia and Ukraine were on the minds of many during my days in Mussoorie,
which has an unobtrusive but substantial military presence, including the
elite Institute of Technology Management (ITM) of the Defence Research and
Development Organisation, as well as the collective future cadres of the
Indian Administrative Service under training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri
National Academy of Administration. The incipient war in Europe was also
pressing in on my own thoughts on that long walk up to Christ Church. It
was the topic of my upcoming *Dhaka Tribune* column—I had just finished
talking to Admiral Arun Prakash, one of India’s most astute and
accomplished military men.

On that morning, the 77-year-old had startled me repeatedly with his
straight talk and clear thinking, beginning with his assertion that
‘humanity is at an inflection point’. Admiral Prakash warned that the world
could not afford to allow the Thucydidean dictum to reign: ‘the strong do
what they can and the weak suffer what they must’. The world was compelled
to action, he said, ‘Russia will pay a big price and it has to happen that
way, otherwise it will be open season, and a recipe for the world as we
know it to dissolve into chaos.’

There’s no questioning Admiral Prakash’s sagacity, or his military and
political reasoning. Unfortunately, that kind of high-minded conventional
wisdom tends to fail, and sometimes it can contribute to catastrophe. Here,
one can never forget that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles settlement imposed
on Germany directly led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and the
unimaginable suffering of World War II.

Being part of the Anglosphere means being submerged in an ocean of
indoctrination about the World Wars. But here in India, which was spared
the brunt of that particular carnage except at the (admittedly epochal)
Battle of Kohima, there’s another problem of persistent erasure: the
subcontinent having supplied hugely significant cohorts of fighting men
that made the difference in both conflicts. All these priceless living
memories have been downplayed since 1947 due to the misguided notion that
millions 

[Goanet] They're Killing Miramar (O Heraldo, 18/9/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Opinions/They%E2%80%99re-killing-Miramar/194112

Shock and anger at Miramar this week, as bulldozers suddenly showed up
to tear through the last remaining stand of casuarina trees near the
entrance, in yet another undesirable orgy of concretization being
imposed without any clarity or public consultation. Once again, the
citizens of Panjim are helpless victims of Smart City running rampant
in its consistently shocking pattern of criminal disregard for due
process, the environment, and any aspect of public interest. This
latest outrage is beyond all previous folly: rampaging monsoon seas
continue to erode the land, but the government itself is dismantling
the city’s last surviving defences against the tides. However badly
the capital has already suffered from flooding in the era of climate
change, we know it’s going to get much worse. In addition, of course,
we now also know whom to blame.

“A beach is the property of the ocean,” says veteran scientist Dr.
Antonio Mascarenhas, who studied Miramar extensively over many years
of service at National Institute of Oceanography at Dona Paula.
“Beaches function like playing fields of the mighty ocean. A wide and
high beach, backed by tall and massive dunes, and capped by luxuriant
vegetation, is the one and only alternative for the natural coastal
ecosystem. There is no compromise on this scheme.” However, we have
gone so far in the wrong direction in Goa that “in my opinion, the
tipping point is over. There is no working link between politics,
politician, policy, society. Unless this happens - and it appears
unlikely - the funeral of our sandy coast, in particular, is not too
far.”

Mascarenhas says “the rising trend of sea levels is a phenomenon
already identified the world over. Climate change is real; it is
happening. The associated weather changes such as enhanced cyclonic
activity for example, translates itself into stronger winds, higher
wave heights, agitated sea – the net effect being that sea waves break
further up the beach, and the wave run-up directly attacks sand dunes.
This is one of the causes of enhanced annual erosion that we observe
lately. The United Nations secretary general has already issued a
‘code red’ as an international warning. More is yet to come, but it
appears our managers have relegated these reports to the dust bin.”

About the unnecessary wreckage of Miramar’s precious surviving
vegetation, Mascarenhas says, “it is obvious that the smart city
managers have zero knowhow about coastal regulations. Dune vegetation
implies sand binding which contributes towards beach stability. It
protects the hinterland from strong winds and high waves. The tsunami
of 2004 has proved this. Villages behind dunes and forests were
protected in totality. Here, an aggressive dune plantation program of
coastal native floral species is needed. A progressive zonation of
floral species from grass, creepers, shrubs, bushes, taller trees is
ideal. Note also that the entry point of Miramar beach is impacted by
excessive footfalls, and should necessarily have just two designated
pathways to the beach. A sincere management initiative is needed
here.”

That last point is crucial, because Smart City has the record of
erratic, amateurishly conceived and appallingly mediocre (but
extremely costly) interventions that massively alter public spaces,
and also an extraordinary negligence to the necessary maintenance,
upkeep and management. This rogue agency builds very badly, then
abandons, with no oversight or any moral regard to responsibility.
This is why the Miramar walkways that were originally built for prime
minister Narendra Modi’s visit last December are already in shambles,
and broken to bits in several sections, with their main purpose
seemingly having been to allow garbage to accumulate more profusely,
and suffocate every last scrap of green in that once pristine beach
environment.

It doesn’t have to be this way, says Dr. Nandini Velho, the
distinguished wildlife biologist who grew up just down the road: “We
are lucky to have open spaces like Miramar, a colony beach to
residents which has important mental health benefits for all of us,
something that we appreciated during Covid. Researchers have reported
the wide-nose guitarfish and sea horses in hand nets here, and plus
there are endangered Indian Ocean Humpback Dolphins that I frequently
see in the shallower parts. We are lucky to have researchers like Dr.
Antonio Mascarenhas here, who have Miramar as their study area.
Therefore, it seems like a wasted opportunity when the government and
Smart City aren’t able to bring citizens and people together for the
better health of this great public asset. When we went for a walk on
the beach a few months ago, Dr. Mascarenhas and I said we both feel a
great loss about its deterioration, but it’s difficult to know where
to start, and how to articulate this.”

Vehlho told me the Facebook group Goa Collective (it describes itself
as 

[Goanet] When Jerry Met Sujata (O Heraldo, 17/9/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/When-Jerry-Met-Sujata/194077

Precisely twelve years ago in September 2010, the Bombay-based writer Jerry
Pinto showed up at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bookworm Library.
in Taleigao “It was like a birthday party,” recalls Sujata Noronha – the
cheerily formidable force who leads this famous haven of kids books – “and
Jerry watched it all very closely. There was an immediate spark of trust
and recognition between us. It was like kindred spirits finding one
another. Soon after he went back home, there was a cheque from him to
support our activities, and another the next year. Books, art supplies: not
always grand gestures, but this warm consistent presence that means so
much.”

Fast forward the dozen years since that instant connection, and Sujata and
Jerry are still going strong. Each has racked up unique records of
achievements, but they have also come together for the Mehlli Gobhai Visual
Arts Programme, which is scheduled to be celebrated in two Bookworm
locations today: the main library in Panjim at 11, and later in the evening
in the brand-new Vinay & Jean Kalgutkar Community Centre in Saligao.
Visitors are welcome to both - and will also get the chance to purchase
Pinto’s new book The Education of Yuri – but only the latter includes an
exhibition of 70 artworks.

“I am in exile from Goa. I am in flight from Goa. Both these statements are
equally true,” writes Pinto in his introduction to *Reflected in Water:
Writings on Goa*, the 2006 Penguin Books India compilation (disclosure: I
am a contributor). “Mahim ka Jerry” - as he used to be known on Twitter –
explained that he was part of the diaspora who only visited Goa in the
summer vacations, but that changed in adulthood: “choosing to go, instead
of returning instinctively. I know that each time, Goa surprised me a
little. I know that each time I leave, I feel I have left a little of me
behind. And I know that when I reach home, back to the slick allure of the
city of my birth, it is a part I can manage to live without.”

As readily evident from even that short passage, Pinto’s writing possesses
uncommon sensitivity. So much so that when he first became a professional,
his prose was in such demand that he was inveigled to operate under several
pen names, in an astonishing range of publications including the financial
newspapers and women’s magazines. Even while churning that journalistic
tsunami, his calibre was always evident, and the only question was when the
breakthrough would come. This was the deeply affecting 2012 novel *Em and
the big Hoom*, which won The Hindu Literary Prize, the Crossword Book
Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize
(one of the world’s richest literary prizes). Salman Rushdie accurately
described it as “one of the very best books to come out of India in a long,
long time.”

Since then, Pinto has further distinguished himself as one of the
invaluable cross-cultural literary giants of our times, most especially via
his string of path-breaking translations: *Cobalt Blue* by Sachin Kundalkar
and *I Baluta* by Daya Pawar (from Marathi),* I Have Not Seen Mandu: A
Fractured Soul-Memoir* by Swadesh Deepak (from Hindi). Coming up is his
first translation from Konkani, by the Jnanpith Award 2022 winner Damodar
Mauzo. Meanwhile, though it received fewer plaudits than his debut novel, I
really liked *Murder in Mahim* - which its jacket description accurately
calls “a compelling, often poignant exploration of loneliness, greed and
unlikely solidarities in the great metropolis – and now there is *The
Education of Yuri* to look forward to, said to be “among the best ever
written on urban adolescence in India.”

In parallel, with happy consequence, there has been an increasing
relationship with his ancestral homeland. Pinto explains it very well
in *Reasons
for Returning*, in the catalogue of Aparanta: The Confluence of
Contemporary Art in Goa, the paradigm-shifting art exhibition curated by
Ranjit Hoskote in the old Goa Medical College building (which I was also
involved in organizing). He said his eyes were opened by an Archaeological
Survey of India guidebook: “I stood there, a Goan in a Mumbai bookshop,
getting to know about my state. I stood there, reading the measurements of
the naves of the churches of old Goa, laborious descriptions of the ruins
of a monastery, of an old jetty and the remnants of an arch built by a
king, and I wondered if I had done my native place justice.”

Aparanta had been about exactly this: to understand the magnificent
cultural heritage of Goa, in the incontrovertible presence of paintings
tracking the “invisible river” (in Hoskote’s brilliant phrasing) of
generations of Goans who have profoundly enriched Indian art. Pinto noted
that “My Tamil friends, my Bengali friends, my Andhra friends, their
parents, all told me we were a lovely people, so nice, so easy to get on
with. They never spoke of culture. That was their terrain. Ours was 

[Goanet] Sunset at Curlies (O Heraldo, 11/9/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Sunset-at-Curlies/193868

Long before the notoriety that has brought bulldozers to its once-idyllic
location in South Anjuna, this beach shack was the last bastion of hippie
soul from an era of countercultural adventures that extended from
Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco across to Europe, and via Turkey and
Afghanistan to India, with separate trails up to Kathmandu and down to Goa.
Even as recently as 2005 – when the accompanying photograph was taken –
that remarkable cultural history was still alive. And there was no better
place to experience it than Curlies, where the entire multi-generational
“scene” gathered ceremoniously each evening, to watch the sun go down in
the haze from hundreds of chillums.

The first time all this played out in front of me – it was on assignment
for the late, lamented *Time Out Mumbai* – I recall being stunned by the
scale and significance of what was happening. There were hundreds of
foreigners interspersed with Indians, everyone enjoying themselves hugely,
with super-smart young Goans running it all with great style and
efficiency. Many were smoking marijuana on the steps in front (which became
packed as the sun started to go down) but there were also many families,
with scores of children playing in the surf. It was hedonist, but also
holistic. As the sky flamed scarlet, I was introduced to “the man who
started this all”, and it turned out to be true. This was Yertward
Mazamanian, 81-year-old Eight Finger Eddie himself.

The old American (he eventually died in 2010) is important, because you
cannot possibly understand what South Anjuna is today – the kind of place
where 42-year-old political aspirant from Haryana (and former TikTok
celebrity) Sonali Phogat would spend her final evening “being drugged” –
without remembering what happened here since 1966, when Eight Finger Eddie
(he was born with only three fingers on his right hand) first showed up.
This early ambassador of the “turn on, tune in, drop out” generation later
explained that “I abhor work, begrudging every moment I've wasted as a wage
earner. My aim in life is to get through life doing what I want to do.”
Then, “I was the first freak in Goa. I turned up and liked it so much, I
just wanted to stay. And then others started coming. In those days, they
came overland from Europe in camper vans, and no one had any money.”

Eight Finger Eddie would make simple food and hand it out in coconut shells
to anyone who needed it, and pioneered the famous flea-market. The scene
burgeoned: Anjuna chronicler Dominic Fernandes once said “[The hippies}
were in love with this place. And we fell in love with them, because of the
way they lived.” By 1976, when the writer David Tomory visited (his *Hello
Goodnight: A Life of Goa* is an excellent record of the first waves of
tourism), the little coastal village was already world-famous “with the
movers and shakers and [had] a certain mystique. Its fame spread.”

Tomory writes that “the movers and shakers began to appear all over the
planet in silk, silver, brocades and exotic jewellery, telling tales so
beguiling that by the mid-seventies Anjuna was being overwhelmed by its
admirers. Once upon a time there had been naked hermaphrodites to astound
the fully dressed men, The mobile Californian commune called the Hog Farm
had visited. There was at least one Family of unrelated adults; there were
the Green People, each bearded patriarch marshalling his wives and babies.”
Alongside, of course, the inevitable contradictions, “I met a man searching
for the very spot where he had been spontaneously seduced by a “nymphet” in
1972, on his way home from a party. He told me that spontaneity had been
everything, openness had been everything, freedom had been everything, and
now he was on Wall Street.”

There’s one particularly poignant line in Tomory’s account: “there was
nowhere like it; it was too rare to last.” Part of the problem was the
drugs: psychedelia was liberating, but often led to much darker places.
Certainly, as we see in Cleo Odzer’s terrific *Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years
in India*, by the mid-1970s themselves, the “scene” was already turning
from consciousness expansion to simply getting wasted: “Anjuna Beach
hierarchy sorted itself out to me – those with a lot of coke, those with
some, and those with none. The people with quantity formed the focal points
of social situations, and we others fluttered between them. As soon as
someone pulled out a stash, five or six people materialized out of nowhere.”

It is interesting to see how this blithe, beautiful New Yorker (she died in
Goa in 2001) describes the Anjuna sunset ritual of 1975, near-identically
to what I witnessed thirty years later: “Their long hair flying loose, the
men came in lungis. The women wore long flowing skirts, and many were
bare-chested. Both males and females were loaded with antique Indian silver
jewellery on ankles, arms, necks and waists. They lounged on the sand and

[Goanet] Afrah Shafiq’s Alternate Reality

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https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Afrah-Shafiq%E2%80%99s-alternate-reality/193833

If you have not yet visited, do not miss the last week of Afrah Shafiq’s
engrossing multimedia masterpiece *Sultana’s Reality* at the increasingly
invaluable Sunaparanta arts centre on the crest of Altinho in Panjim. One
of the best and most compelling recent artworks from India – after star
turns at the 2019 Kochi Muziris Biennale and the 2020 Lahore Biennial –
this interactive browser-based installation delights, awes and educates in
equal measure. Considering the artist has been happily based in Goa for
years, it’s surprising it took so long to be exhibited in what is now her
home state.

Better late than never, because *Sultana’s Reality *is an extraordinarily
rich engagement with archival materials, that is both rooted and liberated
by visual culture. Also available online at entersultanasreality.com, this
surprise-filled “history of women and books in India”, is inspired by the
pioneering 1905 short story *Sultana’s Dream* by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain,
where women have all the power while the men are isolated in purdah. These
two questions are in the concept note: “If it’s said that well-behaved
women seldom make history, why is it that our history textbooks rarely have
women behaving ‘badly’? Are the readers forgetting certain kinds of books
or are the writers forgetting certain kinds of stories?”

Shafiq is 33, grew up in Bangalore, and earned degrees from Christ
University (BA in media studies, literature and psychology) and Symbiosis
in Pune (MA, media and communication in audio-visual production). In an
essay entitled *Animating the Archive*, she explains how “working with
archives can sometimes feel like swimming in the deep dark ocean or
navigating an endless sea of new window tabs on a computer browser. The
more I read the more lost I become until I completely forget how I got
where I am and what I came looking for in the first place.” In addition,
“much has been said about the “archival impulse” and its associated fevers
in both the art and academic spaces and it isn’t really a novel practice
anymore to breathe new meanings into old materials.”

Nonetheless, “I repeatedly find myself drawn to the archive, finding that
the depth of the ocean where the sun never reaches can be a pretty magical
place of discovery. The archival burden begins to lighten as I look at the
act of research as play, navigating through hidden “treasures” lucidly,
almost as one would solve a detective case. I often enter archives with a
hunch, a premonition, a gut instinct of what I am interested in and begin
looking for clues, allowing for accidental stumbling and playful remixing
outside the logical categories of form, collections, period, and data. And
the discoveries, they abound!”

That is putting it mildly, because *Sultana’s Reality* is a profoundly
rewarding artwork that satisfies at many levels simultaneously. As
described by the artist herself, “the story is told through animated video,
graphics, gif’s, comics, collages and other digital art forms made by
collating, re-mixing, re-interpreting and re-imagining traditional visual
imaginations of the female form. It tries to explore the multiplicity of
women’s history and also image making – the ways in which it is told and
remembered. Sultana’s Reality is perhaps an exercise in questioning
history. Not the history of the image, but a history that is constructed
with the image. Women gazing out of windows are perhaps not romantic
pictures connoting sensuality, luxury and the feminine form in all its
glory. They may rather be images of women who are bored, who are imprisoned
(sometimes within their own minds), who are uninspired.”

One thrill in viewing *Sultana’s Reality *in Panjim is the reminder that
some of the best artists anywhere are actually right here, and some of
their works are best understood in the context of this unique cultural
strand, with its “different ways of belonging” (in the poet Eunice de
Souza’s trenchant phrasing) to “the mainstream.” This is 100% Shafiq, who
produced the very Goan 2021 masterwork *A Tale of Two Sisters* – it was
also displayed at Sunaparanta, in collaboration with Goa Open Arts Festival
–which “used the form of the grinding stone to churn together religious
iconography, the syncretic nature of worship in Goa and the connections
between two of its most prominent female deities, Mother Mary and
Shantadurga.” She has also been building *Our Lady of I Can Be Anything You
Want Me To *(https://ourladyoficanbeanythingyouwantmeto.com) which will
debut at MoCA in January.

When I asked Shafiq about making art in Goa, she joked that “I really want
to make a quick fun video game where we can mow down tourists who block the
Parra "coconut tree selfie road.” More seriously, “what has felt very
conducive to making art in Goa (and I guess just mentally thriving here) is
the rhythm of the place. The day is made up of a lot of space, and yet has
anchors. In the 

[Goanet] India's Best Restaurant + India's Best Bar + my "new" Goa food picks (GQ, September 2022)

[V M]

https://www.gqindia.com/live-well/content/gq-hype-india-best-restaurant-and-best-bar


ON THE MORNING OF 28 March 2020, just four days after India plunged into
“the world’s strictest lockdown” to combat COVID-19, chef Avinash Martins
set up to cook in front of his phone camera in the garden of his ancestral
home in Velim, in the rural hinterland of South Goa.

His first full-length video featured kingfish head cooked with raw mangoes
from the ancient trees overhead. In a world sectioned off into quarantine
isolation, it struck a chord and quickly racked up thousands of views.
Martins had already been thinking about shifting gears at Cavatina, the
steady and well-regarded restaurant he runs with his wife Tiz Lyngdoh in
nearby Benaulim. Now the talented 41-year-old resolved that cooking by the
numbers with imported ingredients no longer made sense. Henceforth, his
supply chain would be his own backyard in the gorgeously beautiful taluka
of Salcete, and his food would celebrate the farmers, foragers, and
fishermen who toiled to provide his ingredients.

The term “farm to table” is routinely bandied about in India, but in this
case it was no gimmick. From the moment Martins started implementing his
new culinary blueprint, it was readily apparent he was in the sweet spot of
everything desirable in contemporary haute cuisine: sustainable, seasonal,
ethically sound, seriously playful, and full of technique. Once he reopened
Cavatina with its new tasting menu at the end of 2020, streams of culinary
pilgrims started heading to South Goa. An insistent buzz began to grow:
Chef Martins is pushing the envelope of excellence, and serving the best
and most interesting modern restaurant food in India.

Few people can relate to how that feels, and that short list is headed by
chef Thomas Zacharias, whose Bombay Canteen reigned decisively for some
time as the consensus number one in India. Having moved on to found The
Locavore—a new media enterprise “committed to doing good through food”—he
told me Martins has his priorities right: “In high-end dining in India,
there is this obsession with mimicking other parts of the world. What a lot
of great chefs seem to be missing is the culinary wealth locked away in
their own country. Chef Avinash is emotionally invested in the stories he’s
trying to tell on the plate, and it is a real treat to see the vigour and
enthusiasm with which he talks about a particular tradition that’s
practically lost, or an ingredient that is barely cooked anymore.”

That unbridled passion is front and centre at Cavatina, where the tasting
menu doubles down on the cherished flavours of Goan home-cooking: “kalchi
kodi” (thickened day-old “yesterday’s curry”), “tambdi bhaji” (red
amaranth), and mango “miskut” pickle. These are already the foundations of
deeply satisfying soul food, but Martins riffs from there in unexpected
ways that surprise and delight in equal measure. The traditional “xec xec”
(a sumptuous Goan crab curry) is reinvented as a bisque, roundels of beef
are encrusted in the beloved “girem mirem” spice mix, and the cheesecake is
made with old-fashioned coconut jaggery.

Martins told the journalist Mini Ribeiro that his mind was already made up
to go local, but after COVID-19 curfews were lifted, “I stepped out and met
the farmers and began buying from them [directly]. From one community of
farmers and local fishermen, artisans, toddy tappers, and coconut-pluckers,
I got connected to others, and today there are almost 300 of them in my
network.”

No other chef in India has developed anything like this intricate web of
producers. It’s one big reason Martins is hailed as a beacon for the future
of fine dining in India. With remarkable chutzpah, he created an
appreciable advantage that none of his urban competitors can challenge.
They may have similar ethics—and even talent—but they don’t work adjacent
to the abundant South Goa coastline, surrounded by traditional farming
communities, in the lap of the boundlessly bountiful Western Ghats. An
additional X factor in the spectacularly globalized cozinha de Goa itself:
the traditional foods of India’s smallest state are kaleidoscopically
diverse, with influences and ingredients from Africa, South East Asia,
Europe, and Brazil.

 “THE MORE I SEE the best in the world, it keeps getting more obvious we’ve
always been on the right track in Goa,” said the late chef Floyd Cardoz in
his last interview with me in 2020, just days before he contracted an
early—and tragically fatal—case of the coronavirus. Thirty years earlier,
he had been the first to take the flavours of India (with an emphasis on
his Goan roots and Bandra upbringing) into the most rarefied precincts of
the Western restaurant universe, first with the New York City landmark
Lespinasse—as a sous chef under Gray Kunz—and then Tabla, where he laid the
foundation for modern Indian food.

In his foreword to Cardoz’s excellent 2006 *One Spice, Two Spice* (William
Morrow), the restaurateur Danny 

[Goanet] Suella Rising, Again! (O Heraldo, 4/9/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Suella-rising-again/193631

Save the malingering shambles of Boris Johnson himself, there is no more
telling example of failing upwards in UK public life than Suella Fernandes
Braverman, the wildly – some used to say irrationally - ambitious Attorney
General who backed Liz Truss in the leadership contest that limped to close
last week, with Rishi Sunak said to be running distant second. When the
results are announced on Monday, it’s likely they will be followed by the
appointment of this Goan-Mauritian Brexiteer even higher in the Cabinet to
Home Secretary, one of the four “great offices of state” of the British
polity.

What a ride it has been for Braverman, whose career began with defeat
against the pioneering Goan member of parliament Keith Vaz in 2005. She
kept trying for another decade, before winning Fareham in 2015. From debut,
she tacked hard right, campaigning vociferously to leave the European
Union, and continually doubling down on dodgy messaging that has ranged
from naked xenophobia to an absurd “war on woke.” Rather remarkably, in the
wasteland of UK politics in 2022, where the scenario is rigged to keep the
Conservatives in power no matter how badly they perform, this ideological
extremism has propelled her all the way to the top. Now the daughter of
Christie Fernandes of Assagao and Nairobi is one of the most powerful
politicians in the world.

This is a surreal situation, even for the UK, the only major country where
utterly incompetent (and mostly hereditary) elites have managed to
strengthen their stranglehold on political power despite the Internet,
universalization of education, and transnational flooding of global
capital. Consider how this “democracy” works in the picking of Johnson’s
successor, after one of the most abysmal political performances imaginable:
just 200,000 members of the conservative party have the right to vote
(that’s 0.3% of the population), of which an amazing 44% are over 65 years
of age, and an astonishing 97% are so-called “white.”

This one-dimensional voting pool is why the appalling Liz Truss will be
slingshot all the way into 10 Downing Street, despite the safe choice of
Rishi Sunak being available. Shashi Tharoor put it very nicely in *The Week*
last month: “Sunak’s main problem is something that no British commentator
is prepared to concede. He is not white. No one likes to admit that such
considerations exist, because saying so is seen as politically incorrect in
these supposedly enlightened times. But they are fundamental. No one should
underestimate the lingering racism of the general British public. As the
brown-skinned son of immigrants who is openly and unapologetically Hindu,
Sunak, despite his upper-class British accent, cannot hide his foreignness.
To many white Britons, he just isn’t one of them—and never will be.’

Tharoor writes that “no one will say it, but the unspoken realisation
across the country will be that Britain still is not ready for an Indian
prime minister. Still, Sunak has brought the Indian community in Britain a
long way towards the highest office in the land. It is a journey that began
in 1892, when Dadabhai Naoroji, the Indian nationalist who authored the
“drain theory” about British colonial exploitation of India, stood as
Liberal Party candidate for Central Finsbury and won. Two other Indian
Parsis, one the pro-empire Mancherjee Bhownaggree, the other the communist
Shapurji Saklatvala, were also elected in the early 20th century. But they
remained curiosities, and none of them had a particularly long or
illustrious parliamentary career. None ascended to any prestigious
positions in government.”

Here, unfortunately, but as is common in such accounts, there is hidden
Goan history that has not been accounted for. That is the case of Sir
Ernest Soares, the son of a Goan merchant from Uccasaim, who was elected to
parliament from Barnstaple in 1900, and went on to serve prime minister
Asquith as his Junior Lord of the Treasury. Fast forward all the way to
Braverman’s day, and there are actually three Goan women in the current UK
parliament (to compare with just three in the Goa legislature) with another
serious up-and-comer in the Tory ranks - the outstanding 37-year-old Clare
Coutinho, who is also set for an important government job in the next
administration, even though she backed Sunak.

What’s most fascinating about Braverman’s rise is that she has failed to
distinguish herself in any role except ideologue. She has only issued
statements to chart the very fringe of what’s acceptable, and that has been
qualification enough to keep getting ahead. Her actions have been
doctrinaire hard right. As listed by *Prospect Magazine*, when it warned
against her appointment as Attorney General: “Braverman voted against gay
marriage. She voted against legalising assisted suicide—which remains
against the law despite her complaining that the courts are intervening in
the issue. She has 

[Goanet] The Ballad of Edgar and Sita (O Heraldo, 3/9/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Ballad-of-Edgar-and-Sita/193593

Of all the remarkable true-life lore of freedom fighters from Goa, who have
stood up to demand equality in at least ten different countries, the case
of Sita Valles in Angola is exceptionally dramatic.

As the veteran Portuguese journalist Leonor Figueiredo put it in *Sita
Valles: A Revolutionary Until Death* (Goa 1556) – which was launched in an
excellent translation by D. A. Smith at the Goa Arts + Literature Festival
in 2018 – this icon of anti-colonial resistance “lived an intense life
during the final years of fascist Portugal and the early years of newly
independent Angola, and her political journey was marked by important
events in the colonizing country and the former colony.”

Valles was just 26 when she was executed without a trial. Figueiredo
writes, “those who ordered [her] to be shot, those who tortured her, those
who pulled the trigger with refined malice – they belonged to the MPLA,
which Sita had fought for. Not even the then Angolan president Agostinho
Neto allowed her the right to defend herself.” It’s one of the saddest
incidents of those dark times: “The international backdrop was complex,
polarized between the two great powers, the USSR and the USA, each seeking
spheres of influence. The Cubans and Soviets were in Angola out of
“international solidarity”; the South African and Zairean troops present
there had opposing political objectives.”

This was 1977, close to the cessation of Cold War hostilities, and indeed,
Mikhail Gorbachev – the crucial architect of the end – took over the USSR
just 11 years afterwards. But at the time in Angola, it was one of the most
senseless episodes in the history of decolonization. Figueiredo quotes
Edgar Valles – the youngest of three Valles siblings, who later became a
lawyer in Portugal – that at least 20,000 people were massacred in
“repression so brutal that it has no parallel in any independent African
country, including the Sudan in 1971.”

Gorbachev died this past Tuesday, which provided an interesting historical
backdrop to meeting Edgar Valles in Panjim, to view the Solomon Souza mural
of his sister in her indelible avatar of the Pasionára (passion-flower),
that was painted as part of a Serendipity Arts Festival 2019 special
project under my curation. The image instantly recalls the 1970s heyday of
revolutionary politics, but then the world changed so much so rapidly in
ways that could never have been predicted. At this very moment, for
example, Luanda is the world’s most expensive city, and the prime minister
of Portugal is an Overseas Citizen of India, and there are two more Goans
in his Cabinet.

Edgar Valles told me he was involved with the anti-fascist communist
movement in Portugal and Angola like his sister (another brother was also
shot tragically in prison), although more recently he switched to the
Partido Socialista. He tells me if Sita had lived, she would have been an
important figure in post-colonial Angola “in an organic way.” It is a
tantalizing counterfactual: could the glamorous medical doctor have been
successful in representing cosmopolitan aspirations for the new Angola,
like her Goan countryman Aquino de Bragança managed for a while in
Mozambique before he died in a dubious 1986 plane crash?

The youngest Valles sibling knows all about what happened in Mozambique, of
course, as well as what happened in Kenya, where Pio Gama Pinto and Fitz de
Souza (along with the part-Maasai bridge figure of Joseph Murumbi Zuzarte)
substantially contributed to the making of the modern nations. Nonetheless,
Edgar says it never occurred to him to connect the dots between these
anti-colonial revolutionaries. And when it comes to Angola, specifically,
he says “the Goan community was overwhelmingly conservative.” They mostly
went along with the colonial hierarchy where racism was less de jure than
de facto, in an Apartheid-style state where most Goans were tolerated for
their complicity.

That was less the case with the Valles siblings, however. Edgar told me his
family’s anti-colonial sentiments were stirred by witnessing the degraded
work conditions for the native African staff of the agricultural department
premises where they lived (their father had a good bureaucratic job after
earning his degree from the College of Agriculture in Poona). He says “we
used to talk with the workers”, as children normally do, and when she was
just 13 or 14, Sita was asked by some of the workers to request higher
wages, and actually went ahead to complain about exploitation to the
director. “He was very angry afterwards.”

Figueiredo quotes Ana Maria Valles – Edgar’s wife – about her late
sister-in-law: “We have to accept that there are people incapable of living
a normal life. They need something in order to live outside of reality.
They’re either heroes or saints. Sita was like that. And people are how
they are.” Separately: “the only child spared [still] lives with the memory
of two 

[Goanet] Goa is Fracturing (O Heraldo, 28/8/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Goa-is-fracturing/193393

An unusual interview with Damodar Mauzo in the latest issue of *Outlook
Magazine* is yet another warning sign that Goans are drifting apart in
fundamental ways, with dreadful implications for the future. Speaking to
Mayabhushan Nagvenkar, the distinguished 2022 Jnanpith Award winner shared
his apprehensions that communal divisiveness has corroded the famous
harmony of India’s smallest state: “Even during the Portuguese times I have
never felt this. Because I move around, I find people who are educated, who
are sensible otherwise, they speak about things which I cannot even
imagine. People are thinking in such terms, particularly when it comes to
Hindu-Muslim or Hindu-Catholic issues.”

Mauzo’s writings are rooted in his experience growing up and living in
coastal Salcete, where he spent decades serving the community from his
ancestral family general store. Now, he says, “Many of my well-wishers,
good friends in the village would invite me to conduct their house-warming
ceremonies in my presence or to raise a toast at (Catholic) weddings. I
have raised a toast at not less than a dozen church weddings till some
years back. It has stopped now, why? I am not haunted by this, but I see
this change happening.”

What could have made this cultural shift? It’s hard to pinpoint: “I have
played football with fellow Catholic students. Nowadays, it is slowly
brewing. Earlier, say ten years ago, I was invited very often to functions
at the Church during Christmas, New Year. Of late, it has stopped.
Probably, they are not on bad terms with me, but they do not want to give
exposure to me or maybe look at me as ‘the other’, which I am opposed to.”

This cri de coeur from from Goa’s pre-eminent intellectual presence recalls
the late Padma Shri award winner Maria Aurora Couto’s 2015 public statement
at the time of the medium of instruction (MoI) imbroglio that was being
cynically stoked into sectarianism: “I am deeply saddened by the spiralling
descent into communalism in Goa, among my friends who have valiantly fought
for secularism and liberal values all their lives. Intolerance which is
vitiating the air nationally will do irreparable damage to Goa’s legendary
secular ethos. Debate and dissent by all means, but do not vilify an entire
community and its leaders. The communal virus, if allowed to infiltrate the
Goan psyche will not leave a Goa we wish our children to inherit.”

Right about the same time that Couto spoke out, she surprised the brilliant
young architect Vishvesh Kandolkar (he is now on the faculty of Goa College
of Architecture) at their first meeting, by asking him what he thought of
then-chief minister Manohar Parrikar’s remark that “a Catholic in Goa is
also Hindu culturally, because his practices don’t match with Catholics in
Brazil except in the religious aspect. A Goan Catholic’s way of thinking
and practice matches a Hindu.” Kandolkar responded, “on the contrary, Goan
Hindus are culturally Catholic.”

Kandolkar’s account is in his excellent *Unmooring Goan Identity: Maria
Aurora Couto and the Architecture of the Hotel Mandovi*, part of the
inaugural issue of *The Peacock Quarterly,* the new flagship cultural
magazine from the Entertainment Society of Goa which was launched at
Maquinez Palace earlier this week (where I am on the editorial team). The
architect recalls that “Parrikar’s assertion that Goan Catholics were
culturally Hindus seemed to have disturbed Couto, and she therefore became
fascinated with my reply, exchanging emails with me on the topic up until
2021. Thinking back, the architectural history of the venue of our first
meeting, The Hotel Mandovi is a perfect example which represents the
complexity of framing Goan cultural identity.”

This is a fascinating reading of the imposing presence of one of Panjim’s
most beloved landmarks (which has been somewhat mysteriously shuttered
since 2019). Kandolkar says Hotel Mandovi “was constructed during the
Portuguese colonial period in 1952, to cater to pilgrims” who were expected
in the greatest number ever that year, for the fourth centenary of St.
Francis Xavier’s death, and “among other buildings in Panjim from that
period, marks a departure from the use of region’s Indo-Portuguese style of
architecture in Goa [in] connection to the Art Deco movement that
flourished in British Bombay during the 1930s-40s; the hotel is designed by
Bombay-based architects Master, Sathe, and Butha.”

Kandolkar muses that “while the patrons of The Hotel Mandovi used
architecture to make a symbolic gesture towards Goa Indica, the very
occasion for which it was built in the colonial time period disrupts easy
categorizations. The fact that The Hotel Mandovi was built to cater to the
1952 Exposition, a Catholic religious festival, means the building’s
history is intrinsically linked to Goa’s Catholic identity. More
importantly, pilgrims venerating St. Francis Xavier belong to various
religions, 

[Goanet] Radharao Gracias: Roundtrip to Majorda (O Heraldo, 27/8/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Roundtrip-to-Majorda/193349

In his handwritten manuscript for the classic 1942 novella *L'Étranger*
(which is usually translated into English as *The Stranger*), Albert Camus
penned a most penetrating insight, “fiction is the lie through which we
tell the truth.” The great French philosopher-author, who won the 1957
Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of just 44, oftentimes wove together
existential explorations with real life including absurdist twists, to
produce some of the most acclaimed books of the 20th century. I could not
help recalling his maxim upon encountering *A Shortcut to Tipperary (From
Goa)*, the spirited debut novel by Radharao Gracias, which is being
launched this evening at Ravindra Bhavan in Margao.

There are many things to love about this lively effort to tell the truth
via the prism of fiction, starting with its author description that is all
fact but reads like pure legend: “Radharao Gracias is known for his vast
knowledge, contrarian views, and a dogged determination to stand up to the
high and mighty. He is one of those rare breeds who never cares about being
politically correct, which lands him in regular controversies and hias
consequently suffered assaults, engineered by those who differ with him,
but the survivor that he is, has ultimately lived to tell the tale.”

There is more detail here, which bears retelling to understand the
background of this unexpected novelist, who previously earned his
reputation “over decades as lawyer, legislator, activist, columnist,
debater and orator with an abiding interest in birds and wildlife.” He “was
in the forefront of the agitations to get recognition of Konkani as
Official Language and the rights of parents to choose the medium of
instruction for their children. He suffered serious injuries in police
baton charge and spent days in hospital leading the agitation for
re-alignment of the Konkan Railway route. He defended hundreds of persons
who were arrested and prosecuted in the course of these struggles, all pro
bono. He is one of the few in this land of shifting political loyalties,
who has stuck to his party the UGDP through weather, fair or foul.”

All this is the blood and sweat of democracy as pursued pell-mell, on the
streets and in the law courts, so one could well have expected Gracias to
scorch his readers with more of the same in *A Shortcut to Tipperary (From
Goa)*. But that is not the case at all, as the writer-translator Xavier
Cota notes in his judicious Foreword: [This book] is a meticulously
crafted, delightful, morality play that heralds the arrival of an extremely
talented, insightful writer on the English fiction scene and has readers
anticipating a speedy sequel.”

Cota – who is described by Gracias as “my neighbour down the road” – has
rendered yeoman service to Goan writing over many years by translating a
considerable portion of Damodar Mauzo’s fiction into English from Konkani.
That highly acclaimed ouevre, which most recently won the richly deserved
Jnanpith Award 2022 is also often rooted in Majorda – where Gracias and
Mauzo are “co-villagers” – and as Cota notes, “Radharao weaves a
compelling, sometimes improbable, but always captivating tale that holds us
in thrall as we meet the staples of Goan village life- Church, School,
Beach, Fishermen, Farmers and the ubiquitous Taverna. Some of the places
and characters that people the novel are taken from real life – names and
all!”

In these ways, *A Shortcut to Tipperary (From Goa)* fits into an
established genre: the nostalgia for Goa of bygone simpler times, when an
intact village community still maintained its traditions. This is ground
explored by numerous memoirists, the great artist/illustrator Mario de
Miranda, and novelists like Victor Rangel-Ribeiro (who is still writing
excellent fiction at the age of 96).

In his turn, Gracias writes with great feeling about “this little village
of Calata” (a neighborhood in Majorda) in which “I have learnt the simple
joys of living and giving. People are poor but not depraved. A place where
poverty itself enriches you.” He writes, “if there is no food in the pot
just take a walk. Fruits and wild berries abound. Or take a machete; you
might find a beehive. Just cut into the tree and scoop it up. Or climb a
coconut tree and pluck tender coconuts. Only take care the landlord is not
within sight! Or dig into the drying muck of a pond and pick up the tasty
and nutritious bulbs of the pond lily or lotus. You may eat them raw. And
in season you freely get cashews in plenty. And you do not have to look out
for the landlord! No one cares; you may take as many as you can eat. Only
leave the nuts behind. And mangoes and jackfruits too…Little demands easily
fulfilled. Poor land where no one dies of hunger.”

Sections of *A Shortcut to Tipperary (From Goa)* leave no doubt the author
is writing fiction for the first time. Nonetheless, for the most part, I
was struck by his vivid prose, and unique 

[Goanet] The Question of Loot (O Heraldo, 21/8/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/The-question-of-loot/193122

It is extremely pertinent that the word “loot” entered the English language
during the 18th century from Hindustani - the mother language of both Hindi
and Urdu – soon after the 1757 Battle of Plassey delivered Bengal to the
British East India Company under the ruthless plunderer Robert Clive. That
notorious commander raided enough treasure to become the wealthiest
“self-made” European of his times, and his legendary stash, which is still
hoarded mostly intact in Wales by his descendants, remains richer than any
Mughal-era collection in the subcontinent. Thus, it is unsurprising “loot”
showed up in Charles James’s military dictionary in 1802: “goods taken from
an enemy, stolen property”.

Plassey was only the beginning, because the East India Company and its
successor state that was the British Raj (which took over the reins in
1874) kept pillaging their colonial possessions unrelentingly. As the
economist Angus Maddison famously - albeit not without controversy -
attempted to quantify, India’s share of the global economy went from 27% at
the height of Aurangzeb’s reign to roughly 23% after the first British
depredations, and then plummeted catastrophically to just over 3% by the
time of Independence in 1947.

In between were epic crimes, and also the making of the modern world we
live in (itself now unmistakably teetering on the verge of collapse). As
the great novelist and writer Amitav Ghosh writes in his 2021 tour de force
The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, “colonialism, genocide
and structures of organized violence are the foundations on which
industrial modernity was built.” He explains how “capitalism was never
endogenous to the West: Europe’s colonial conquests and the mass
enslavement of Amerindians and Africans were essential to its formation.”

If not the specifics, this lingering brutality is certainly what Goa’s
chief minister Pramod Sawant had in mind when he told the media a few days
ago - at the launch of the state’s extensive Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav
programmes – that the Portuguese Estado da  Índia had been just like the
British: “Goa was not poor, it was rich. And because of this the Portuguese
came to Goa. While ruling for 400 years, they definitely looted our wealth.
Goa was blessed with iron ore and natural resources. It’s not wrong to say
this.”

Although his comments sparked predictable hullabaloo, the fact remains the
chief minister was entirely correct in saying that the Portuguese were
attracted to 16th century Goa because it was prosperous. Nonetheless, what
happened here after Afonso de Albuquerque’s bloody victory was
substantially different from the relentless ransacking that characterized
British rule in India. This twist of history cannot be denied, and it’s
important to understand how and why it happened that way.

The first essential fact to note is the main source of precolonial Goa’s
wealth - the reason Afonso de Albuquerque targeted it– was trade, and that
trading economy expanded exponentially under Portuguese writ. In his
excellent paper *Trade and Commerce in Sixteenth Century Goa*, K. S. Mathew
notes what “was quite a flourishing city before the Portuguese conquest”
transformed after 1510, as “the local and external trade of Goa received an
unprecedented fillip.” He describes an unprecedented East-West emporium:
“The merchants found in this city belonged to diverse religious groups and
nationalities, Jews, Hindus, Christians, Jains and Muslims were among them.
There were merchants from Persia, Arabia, Italy, Abyssinia, Germany,
Portugal, Armenia, Gujarat, Kanara and the Malabar Coast.”

Mathew’s study is in *Goa Through the Ages: An Economic History*, an
invaluable collection edited by the late Teotonio de Souza for Goa
University in 1990. Another fine paper, *Goa-based Seaborne Trade:
17th-18th Centuries* by M. N. Pearson, details how even after “the glory
days of the sixteenth century had gone” and Portuguese power declined,
“many Goans still could make money and be innovative as they traded all
over the Indian Ocean and beyond.” And here’s the twist, “it was not so
much the Portuguese and mestiços who did best from it, it was local people,
in other words Hindu and some Christian Indians, especially the former.”
Just one eye-opener: “in the 1630s, the investment in Goa’s interport trade
was put at 2,850,000 *xerafins*, and of this 2,000,000 belonged to
non-Christian Indians.”

Pratima Kamat’s outstanding 1999 *Farar Far: Local Resistance to Colonial
Hegemony in Goa 1510-1912* outlines how “If centuries ago, the gaud
saraswat brahmins (GSBs) had established their economic hegemony over Goa
through the colonization of the low-lying khazan lands, now with renewed
grit and determination, in the face of an aggressive proselytizing European
colonial presence, they seem to have ‘captured’ the two symbols of
Portuguese colonialism, the sea and the cross.” Eventually, “the GSBs

[Goanet] The Dictator Who Would Not Die (O Heraldo, 20/8/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Dictator-Who-Would-Not-Die/193088

Earlier this month, the British writer and documentary film-maker Matthew
Teller wrote a viral thread on Twitter that started like this: “Exactly 54
years ago, 3 Aug 1968, Portugal’s authoritarian prime minister António de
Oliveira Salazar, 79, slipped over in the bath & hit his head. He seemed to
be ok, but then complained of feeling ill. In hospital he lapsed into a
coma. It looked like he was about to die. Portugal’s president appointed a
new prime minister to replace Salazar, who had been in office since 1932.”

Now came the twist, “Salazar woke up. Rather than break the news to the
dictator that he had been dismissed, his aides set up an elaborate scheme
to fool him that he was still in charge. Ex-ministers held “policy”
meetings with Salazar. Every night the editor of Salazar’s favourite
newspaper printed a fake edition that removed mention of the new govt &
substituted bogus stories as if Salazar was still PM. The dictator read the
fictional newspaper unawares. The charade carried on for two years. The
dictator had no idea he was being duped. Eventually, on 27 July 1970,
Salazar died, Less than four years later the authoritarian state he had
built collapsed.”

It's an incredible story, which hits particularly hard in Goa, where it was
apparent that Salazar was extraordinarily delusional long before he slipped
and hit his head. As we see in the British historian Tom Gallagher’s adept
recent biography *Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused to Die* (2020, Hurst &
Company), it was a way of life that first made him, and then proved his
unmaking:  “He would use the indomitability which had marked his family’s
story to define Portugal’s relationship with the rest of the world, and
especially with the great powers.”

Gallagher writes that Salazar was frugal and punctilious, and never
travelled outside Iberia except once, to whistle-stop through France to
Belgium and back. He was happiest in the village of Santa Comba Dão where
“only major crises prevented him from being back in the autumn for the
gathering-in of grapes or the bottling of the wine on his small estate.”
But behind this ostentatious austerity was rampant cronyism. Mario Soares
pointed out that he “left that clique of vultures uncontrolled [and able]
to go on creating an inextricable web of political and economic
connections.”

Timing is the crux of legacy. Salazar burst into the historical frame when
his country needed his bent, convictions and skills. In just one year, he
balanced the budget and stabilized the escudo. Then - an unquestionably
great feat – he navigated Portugal’s neutrality through World War II. But
immediately afterwards came the winds of change, which he failed to
recognize, and refused to believe. The same characteristics which were once
his strengths proved his country’s undoing.

Gallagher says Salazar was “simply too old to shed his paternalistic and at
times racist approach to empire.” Certainly, even by the standards of the
time, the dictator was shockingly ignorant about the world, including
Portugal’s own African and Asian territories. In one meeting with Jorge
Jardim, his former Secretary of State, he disrupted proceedings by
referring to “little black folk.” The elegant Maria de Lourdes Figueiredo
de Albuqerque, who sat in the Portuguese parliament, was surprised to
discover he believed most of her Goan compatriots had European blood.

Even more than the post-accident farce, it is Salazar’s abysmal
miscalculations in Goa that most accurately reveal his mania. While always
losing, he absurdly claimed victory. Instead of negotiating with dignity,
he preferred to burn the house down. It is not as though there hadn’t been
enough warning. By 1950, there was huge support for decolonization building
both within and outside the territory. This could easily have been resolved
the Pondicherry way, where a general election resulted in the peaceful
transfer of territories. But that was anathema for the Portuguese dictator,
who argued ridiculously that “Goa is the expression of Portugal in India
and the Goans have no wish to be freed from Portuguese sovereignty.”

In fact, Salazar had already received the secret report of Orlando Ribeiro,
who testified, “I have visited all the Portuguese territories in Africa,
starting from Mozambique, and have studied Guinea and the islands of Cape
Verde; I have spent four months in Brazil and observed its deep recesses. I
had thus acquired a good preparation to initiate my research [and] Goa
appeared to me as the least Portuguese of all the Portuguese territories I
had seen so far, even less than Guinea, which was pacified in 1912!”

Ribeiro concluded, “The predominant relationship is of distance and
suspicion, when it is not an outright or camouflaged antipathy. I had
witnessed a near total ignorance of our language, the persistence of a
society, not only strange and indifferent, but even hostile to our
presence, our limited 

[Goanet] Bungling the Jungle (O Heraldo, 14/8/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Bungling-the-jungle/192887

As if the last surviving remnants of Goa’s green cover were not already
under extreme duress, the state forest minister Vishwajit Rane (he also
holds the health, town and country planning, urban development, and women
and child development portfolios) set alarm bells ringing when he tweeted
on August 11: “In a fruitful meeting with Shri Chandra Prakash Goyal, DG
Forests & Special Secretary to the @moefc, he assured to assist us in
transforming the Forests of Goa. With several proposals in the pipeline, we
will lead the way in making Goa a wildlife destination.”

The previous day, Rane had met the union minister for environment, forest
and climate change Bhupender Yadav, and said afterwards that “following the
footsteps of an animal safari developed in Kevadia, we sought advice from
the Union Minister to work closely with the ministry in developing a
state-of-the-art animal safari in Goa.” His other proposals for “integrated
development of wildlife habitat” include “enrichment plantation with
fruit-bearing trees, creation and maintenance of forest roads, camping
facilities in protected areas, and the creation of artificial watering
holes in protected areas.”

Some context is required - the forest minister intends on intervening in
India’s smallest state’s final intact stretches of the Western Ghats, which
are part of one of just 12 remaining “biodiversity hotspots” in the world
(there are only two in India). And the “animal safari” he wants to emulate
in Goa is actually a zoo, classified as “infotainment” by the Statue of
Unity project in Gujarat. Earlier this year, in the state assembly in
Gandhinagar, the government admitted that 53 out of 163 animals brought to
Kevadia were already dead.

“There is no aspect of these plans that can be considered environmentally
sound or wildlife friendly,” says Prerna Singh Bindra, the distinguished
conservationist and writer, who served on the National Board of Wildlife
from 2010-2013. A frequent pre-pandemic visitor to Goa, she writs with
great passion in her outstanding 2017 *The Vanishing: India’s Wildlife
Crisis* about how she used to “soothe my weary soul [and] vanish into its
less-visited interiors, trek its forests, kill time in sleepy villages,
stroll beaches more visited by turtles than humans.”

But then, she says “I have seen the ravages: Beaches and villages covered
in rotting trash, mountains flattened, forests stripped bare and replaced
by red dust of mined ore, green fields, ponds and wetlands razed for hotels
and gated colonies, turtle-nesting beaches overrun by resorts, shacks,
cafes, bazaars.” Now that same calamitous “development model” is targeting
the surviving jungles of Goa, she told me that “there is a huge disconnect
here, with totally misplaced priorities. Where is the state’s wildlife
management plan? Where is the assessment of carrying capacity? You can’t
just say ‘Singapore has this. South Africa has this.’ None of that is
appropriate for the Western Ghats.”

Parag Rangnekar – an Expert Member of the Goa State Biodiversity Board, and
experienced wildlife tourism entrepreneur – agrees: “No special interfering
in the Ghats is required at all. Goa is already an excellent wildlife
destination with its own character unlike the wildlife destinations in
Central or North India. It is popular as a birdwatching destination during
winters, and during the monsoons has amazing macro diversity. What we need
is cultivating the right kind of people to visit these areas and a positive
narrative around wildlife (e.g. our state symbols displayed prominently
when one steps out of the aircraft/train/bus). The success of a wildlife
destination should not be measured solely based on footfalls.”

Rangnekar told me wildlife-oriented tourism in Goa must begin with six
questions: “Do we want the coastal scene replicated in our hinterlands?
Does the initiative integrate natural beauty and the daily life of rural
communities in its offerings? Does it promote productive sustainable
practices? Is it owned, maintained and controlled by local initiatives to
strengthen local organisations? Does it integrate the local populace in the
economic activity, and distribute benefits even-handedly? Has it worked out
a carrying capacity/acceptability limit for itself?” After that, “if the
answers are yes, then such development should happen.”

Instead of looking to Kevadia for inspiration, Rangnekar says “why should
we even think of it? Artificial safaris are not what Goa should consider.
One problem is that enclosures itself is an outdated idea, however large,
and second is that our landscape is just not meant for safaris. Goa’s
wildlife has to be experienced on foot.” On the other hand, “the North East
states have shown us some good examples, like parts of Sikkim and Nagaland
where decisions are community controlled and initiatives too are
community-owned. Closer home we have two examples - Aangan Village Stay 

[Goanet] 75 Years of Being Goan in Pakistan (O Heraldo, 13/8/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/The-Karachi-connection75-Years-of-being-Goan-in-Pakistan/192857

Late tonight “at the stroke of the midnight hour” it will be Independence
Day across the border, and Tollentine (Tolli) Fonseca’s stirring
arrangement for the Qaumī Tarānāh will begin to play across the length and
breadth of the country that was brutally cleaved apart from India during
Partition in 1947. The late naval bandmaster’s contribution, often
misattributed to his friend Ahmad Chagla, is just one footnote to the
remarkable - and continuing – story of Goans in Pakistan.

This astonishing history remains hidden in plain sight, despite outsized
contributions to both countries – and indeed the world – by indisputably
the most accomplished and successful outpost of the Goa diaspora. It was
Anthony de Mello of Saligao and Karachi who founded the Board of Cricket
Control of India (BCCI) and Cricket Club of India, and also chaired the
organizing committee that established the Asian Games. Another example:
Frank D’Souza was the first Indian on the immensely prestigious Railway
Board, and later set up Pakistan Railways at the mutual agreement of both
his countries (he had opted for India in 1947).

Goa’s connections to Pakistan track back 180 years to Charles Napier’s
opportunistic 1842 annexation of Sindh, and the breakneck development of
“Currachee” into an essential port city for the Bombay Presidency. In her
useful 2019 paper *Profiling Karachi Goanness (1840s – 1970s): Monuments to
Goan Emigration and Identity*, the historian (and former Director of
Education of the government of Goa) Dr. Celsa Pinto describes how ambitious
Goans piloted dhows up the Arabian Sea coastline “to take advantage of the
opportunities afforded by the formation of the Indian Flotilla in 1850, the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 that made Karachi, South Asia’s closest
port to Europe, the construction of the Lloyd Barrage and the fact that
Karachi had become the biggest wheat exporting port in the British Empire.”

In this 19th century boom town – think Dubai more recently – huge fortunes
were made by pioneers from Portuguese India, who vaulted themselves up to
push against – and sometimes even surmount – the colonial “colour bar”. As
the community historian Menin Rodrigues puts it in his recent *Footprints
on the Sands of Time: Goans of Pakistan 1820-2020*, “the early Goans who
came here in sizable numbers and brimming with hope, were a mixed bag of
talents with professional and semi-professional skills; many were unskilled
too.” Through dint of sheer effort, they “excelled in everything they
touched, grew in numbers (never more than 20,000 at any point in time) and
affluence, and made an indelible impact on the society, rulers of that
time, [and] development of the town and [all of their] countries
(British-India, India and Pakistan) at large.

The lore of the Karachi Goans is almost beyond belief, considering the tiny
numbers involved (by contrast just the village of Santa Cruz in Tiswadi has
always had a larger population): the first two Cardinals of South Asia, the
first two Goans to play test cricket, distinguished servicemen aplenty for
both Pakistani and Indian armed forces. Many emerged from the substantially
Goan-built and Goan-administered St. Patrick’s School in Karachi - where
the current principal is Anthony D’Silva – which has yielded two Presidents
and two Prime Ministers of Pakistan, as well as BJP co-founder LK Advani.

Dr. Celsa Pinto grew up near St. Patrick’s, before leaving in 1964 at the
age of 13. She attended the sister institution St. Joseph’s Convent, where
“I received world-class education at the hands of many a Goan teacher.” She
says her home Lotia Mansion, “was a cosmopolitan building with Shia and
Sunni Muslims, Hindu and Catholic Goans, East Indians, Parsees and Punjabi
Christians all living in harmony” and points to a shop in Karachi called
‘Amchem Goa’ that posts often on social media about its thriving business
selling bebinca, sorpotel and other delicacies originally from the Konkan.

Like many others with roots across the border, Pinto says “with love for
India, my motherland, and affection for Karachi, my birthplace, I sincerely
wish that the 75th Independence Day would lead to friendly and closer ties
between India and Pakistan.” It is the identical sentiment shared by
successive generations of Goans in the so-called “enemy nation” including
the wonderfully talented 29-year-old artist Zoila Solomon, whose warm,
textured paintings (her 2021 gouache Staple Food accompanies this column)
often return to “fragments of the stories and experiences that my mother
and relatives have shared with me over the years, carefully woven together
to pay homage to my Goan roots.”

Via email, Solomon told me her mother Catherine (Fernandes) Solomon left
Goa in 1992 to get married in Karachi, “and even while living and being a
part of the Pakistani culture, and molding herself to fit the local
Pakistani life, never 

[Goanet] Patriotism for Dummies (O Heraldo, 7/8/2020)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Opinions/Patriotism-for-Dummies/192659

The *tiranga* in this 1955 photograph isn’t quite visible, but it flew
boldly in the hearts and minds of all four men who are beaming with pride
just below. Second from left is Morarji Desai, the doughty freedom fighter
and Chief Minister of Bombay State, which – prior to division in 1960 -
spanned across most of present-day Maharashtra plus Gujarat and parts of
what is now Karnataka. At his right elbow is William Xavier Mascarenhas of
Porvorim and early-20th-century Poona (now Pune), the chief engineer of the
state, who had just delivered up the Sachivalaya - now called Mantralaya -
where they are all standing on the roof, after hoisting its flag for the
very first time.

Mascarenhas was my maternal grandfather, and so this Sunday column begins
unusually personally. That is because the topic is patriotism, and I’m
intimately aware how he – and indeed the entire generation of
nation-builders to which he belonged – never believed in public
chest-thumping about their patriotic sentiments. Thus, over long decades of
dedicated service to India, during which he also built the National Defense
Academy in Khadakwasla and served as the Chairman of the first Planning
Board for his beloved homeland of Goa, my grandfather never wavered from
Mahatma Gandhi’s dictum: “my patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is
all embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount
upon the distress or the exploitation of others.”

Gandhi was perfectly explicit in *Young India*: “My mission is not merely
brotherhood of Indian humanity. My mission is not merely freedom of India,
though today it undoubtedly engrosses practically the whole of my life and
the whole of my time. But through realization of freedom of India I hope to
realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of man. The conception of
my patriotism is nothing if it is not always, in every case without
exception, consistent with the broadest good of humanity at large. I want
to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human,
but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such beings as
crawl on earth. I want, if I don't give you a shock, to realize identity
with even the crawling things upon earth, because we claim common descent
from the same God, and that being so, all life in whatever form it appears
must be essentially one.”

Those visionary words were written almost 100 years ago in 1929. Now, on
the 75th anniversary of “freedom at midnight”, the original nation-builders
inheritance is the *Har Ghar Tiranga* campaign, described at
amritmahotsav.nic.in as “under the aegis of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav to
encourage people to bring the Tiranga home and to hoist it to mark the 75th
year of India’s independence. Our relationship with the flag has always
been more formal and institutional than personal. Bringing the flag home
collectively as a nation in the 75th year of independence thus becomes
symbolic of not only an act of personal connection to the Tiranga but also
an embodiment of our commitment to nation-building. The idea behind the
initiative is to invoke the feeling of patriotism in the hearts of the
people and to promote awareness about the Indian National Flag.”

It's not too difficult to figure out what “the father of the nation” would
think of this novel twist on “nation-building” (where Uttar Pradesh alone
has pledged to spend an astonishing 40 crore rupees on flags), especially
considering it has been accompanied by an unconscionable dilution of the
original code to allow polyester flags instead of the previously mandated –
and Gandhi’s deeply cherished – khadi. But far more troubling still is the
imposition of cheap jingoism in the guise of patriotism, and the very high
likelihood it will be weaponized to violence.

It's true that hasn’t happened yet – let’s wait until after the 15th to
breathe easy – but it’s already quite breath-taking to watch every
villainous rogue in public office (not to mention all other fields) race to
flaunt the sacred tricolour on social media, as though it’s going to
absolve them of their crimes. They’re a perfect illustration of why the
great 18th century intellectual Samuel Johnson once wrote in disgust:
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

The last time this pot was stirred was the 2016 Supreme Court order to play
the national anthem in all cinemas before each screening “for the love of
the motherland”. Even then, Justice Chandrachud pointed out the glaring
inconsistencies: “You don’t have to stand up at a cinema hall to be
perceived as patriotic. [Besides] the relevant Article 51A of the
constitution also requires citizens to develop scientific temper, humanism,
spirit of enquiry – are we [the Supreme Court] supposed to enforce all
this? Next thing will be that people should not wear t-shirts and shorts to
movies because it will amount to disrespect to the National Anthem. Where
do we stop 

[Goanet] Tambde Roza in Australia (O Heraldo, 6/8/2020)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Tambde-Roza-in-Australia/192617

An unexpectedly stirring debut riveted attention in the Australian
Parliament last week, when Zaneta Mascarenhas made her inaugural speech as
the newly elected MP for Swan (it’s part of Perth in Western Australia). We
have become accustomed to associating “down under” with crude anti-Indian
racism, but here was the first woman to represent her constituency in 101
years standing resplendently confident in her lovely red sari, and speaking
with great pride about her family roots. Our impressions of Australia will
never be the same again.

Make no mistake: Mascarenhas has all the ingredients to be a powerhouse
politician in the Obama mould. The 42-year-old is whip-smart, but also
effortlessly congenial (which she rather charmingly credits to being Goan).
She studied science and engineering – which only adds to her evidently
formidable capacity for problem-solving – and has always been singled out
to lead: college guild, regional chapter of the national union of students,
and her various workspaces. This year there were 26 candidates of Indian
origin in the Australian federal elections, and she was the only winner.

Mascarenhas has an irresistible backstory that is profoundly rooted in the
mythos of Australian identity. The new MP told her colleagues that
“building cubbyhouses in the bush and chasing lizards in the red
dirt—that's how I grew up. I was born in Kalgoorlie and grew up in
Kambalda, a nickel mining town. My dad, Joe, was a metalworker. My mum,
Ethel, was a lollipop lady and kindergarten cleaner. Kambalda had the best
of everything.”

Her parents were born in Goa, but grew up, met and married in Kenya before
migrating to Australia in 1975. Mascarenhas says “steelcap boots on a mine
site: that's how I started [and] I relished the opportunity to work with
operators and tradies—though times have changed. My dad is from a
generation of tradies who have fewer than 10 fingers; my dad has 9½.” But
“as a graduate engineer on a construction site, I remember calling out an
unsafe practice. The maintenance manager backed me and supported my
concerns. At another time, this would not have been the norm. This culture
shift took decades, and the mining industry still has more work to do, but
I have all my fingers, unlike my dad.”

These are highly unusual credentials, which add up to formidable political
capital. On the one hand this delightfully personable young woman speaks
the language of the future –STEM, climate change, decarbonization – but all
the while fluently code-switching to paleo-Aussie: “politics is a blood
sport, and a Kalgoorlie girl who has made it in mining should be able to
make it in parliament.” She has a gift for making the impossible turn
inevitable: “who would guess that someone like me would be elected as the
member for Swan? I stand here as the child of Goan parents, a Kalgoorlie
girl, a Swan local, a mum, a lady with an unusual first name and a long
surname, a climate change specialist, an engineer.”

Of course, the X-factor in politics is timing. Here too, Mascarenhas has
emerged in the vanguard because, long after the rest of the west – and many
other countries – Australian politics is now purposefully inching towards
adequate demographic representation. The new MP is among 58 women in the
house of representatives, which is a new record, but still under 40%, and
the percentages reflecting ethnicity are even more skewed: just over 4% MPs
of Asian descent in contrast to 18% of the general population, and only 15
of 227 (6.6%) MPs of non-European heritage representing 25% of Australians.

These numbers reflect the dark side of Australia’s settler colonial
history. As the very fine Goan Australian writer Roanna Gonsalves once put
it, “We are not the perpetrators, the ones who wielded the guns in the
forgotten wars between invading white settlers and Indigenous Peoples. We
are not the victims. However, as mainly economic migrants from South Asia
(I acknowledge the many South Asian refugees from the conflict zones of
Afghanistan and Sri Lanka), we are not absolved of complicity. We are
beneficiaries of the genocide of Aboriginal people, the dispossession of
their land, the loss of their homes, their families, their cultural values,
their tongues, their songs. It is such soil that we step on when we first
step into Australia, soaked not just with the promise of a ‘first world
lifestyle’, but squelchy with the memory of massacre.”

Gonsalves, who migrated to Australia in 1998, has an award-winning
collection of stories (*The Permanent Resident* was launched at the 2016
Goa Arts + Literature Festival) that illuminates the interior lives of Goan
migrants to Australia. Via email from her home in Sydney, she told me
“Zaneta made such a moving speech, our very own *tambde roza*. She provided
a visual and symbolic representation of a different way of being Indian
Australian in noting her Goan roots. While it is refreshing and affirming

[Goanet] The Radical Designs of Anupama Kundoo (GQ, August 2022)

[V M]

https://www.gqindia.com/live-well/content/how-can-architecture-help-solve-social-environmental-and-economic-crises-berlin-based-architect-anupama-kundoo-has-the-answer

On the 8th of October 2020, even as much of the rest of the world stayed
locked down against the devastating first wave of the global COVID-19
pandemic, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen proceeded with
opening “Taking Time”, its retrospective of the remarkable oeuvre of
Berlin-based architect Anupama Kundoo.

In their foreword to the book accompanying the exhibition, museum director
Poul Erik Tøjner and curators Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Marie ­Kallehauge
posed an elemental question: “How can architecture help solve the social,
­environmental, and economic crises that the world is facing?” They noted
the industrial age established “time as a yardstick”, which resulted in the
hasty “creation of thousands of mediocre buildings around the world”. But
here was an alternate way of thinking: “Kundoo tries to return qualitative
time to the production of architecture—by human work and human hand, which
­naturally takes longer than machines but involves a far better sense of
materials, detail, space, and the building’s relationship to the site.”

“Taking Time” was a thunderclap of a turning point for Anupama Kundoo, and
unleashed a cascade of honours. In May 2021, she was awarded the Auguste
Perret Prize for Technology from the ­International Union of Architects
“for her innovative use of local building techniques, material sourcing,
and construction principles, all the while being acutely ­responsive to the
environment, climate, and culture”. Just a few weeks later, the Royal
Institute of British ­Architects gave her the 2021 Charles Jencks award for
“significant contributions to the theory and practice of architecture”.

“I always felt a bit like a weirdo,” says Kundoo to me, towards the end of
our first video conversation between Germany and Goa, in June earlier this
year. “But now it’s clear there are so many more people who understand and
appreciate my work, the postures I’ve taken to my life, and the things I’ve
pursued on behalf of our collective selves.”

There can be no doubt the 55-year-old is at the heart of the global
zeitgeist. At this very moment, she is being showcased in the “Good News:
Women in ­Architecture” exhibition at MAXXI in Rome, the spectacular
Italian national museum of contemporary art and architecture designed by
the late, great Iraqi ­British architect Zaha Hadid. And in ­September,
“Co-creation. Architecture is Collaboration” at the ­Festival
D’Arquitectures de Barcelona will explore “Kundoo’s research-oriented
practice, which focuses on rethinking materiality, energy-efficient
architecture, inclusive participatory processes, affordability, and
circular economy, as well as green infrastructure”.

An additional development closes the loop to where Kundoo kick-started her
practice in 1990, almost immediately distinguishing herself from other
Indian architects of her generation. As of the beginning of this year, she
is the head of urban design for ­L’Avenir d’Auroville, the town development
council under the aegis of the Auroville Foundation, created under an act
of parliament to function under the Ministry of Human Resource Development
in New Delhi.

Now she intends to do nothing less than rethink the city in every possible
dimension, by experimenting on a large scale that permits “radical and
integral thinking of habitat” in an endeavour with huge implications for
India and the rest of the world.It has been an unlikely, highly
individualistic road to celebrity for Kundoo, who told me she was born into
“an uprooted Bengali family who became Bombayites but remained rooted in
Bengaliness”, and raised in Kalina opposite the University of Mumbai
campus, where she graduated from the nearby Mary Immaculate Girls High
School. Although she had no role models in architecture or design in her
social milieu, the storied Sir J.J. College of Architecture—the oldest
architecture school in Asia, which completed its centenary in
2013—attracted her interest because she thought the field would allow “a
grand synthesis of my many interests, particularly math and fine arts”. In
a field of over 1,000 applicants, she managed to rank 13th and secure one
of the 33 ­available spots.

“Anupama was always a star,” says Nita D’Souza, one of Kundoo’s classmates
who now runs a flourishing architectural practice in Goa along with her
­husband Arvind (another J.J. College graduate). “I don’t mean she was the
typical topper, but more in terms of always pushing boundaries, challenging
even the most basic assumptions, and doing things the rest of us had not
even begun to think of. No one could have predicted what has played out
over the past 30 years, but even then, we all recognized her thinking was
different. Her calibre was evident from the very beginning.”

D’Souza and Kundoo were part of an exqui­sitely timed generation of Indian

[Goanet] The Enduring Significance of Angelo da Fonseca (Scroll.in)

[V M]

https://scroll.in/article/1028278/the-enduring-significance-of-goan-artist-angelo-da-fonseca-whose-work-was-erased-from-art-history

“Better had I died,” wrote Francis Newton Souza about a debilitating
childhood bout with smallpox that left his face permanently disfigured, “I
would not have had to bear an artists’ tormented soul, create art in a
country that despises her artists and is ignorant of her heritage.”

The great, relentlessly pioneering artist (1924-2002) wrote those lines in
his *Fragment of an Autobiography*, which was published by Villiers in
London in 1959 during difficult years when both money and fame remained
mostly elusive. Although that plight did alleviate somewhat – including a
singular albeit brief heyday as an acknowledged London luminary alongside
masters of the contemporary canon like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon – the
mixed reception on his homeland has never improved, beyond the shallow
vagaries of an essentially ignorant art marketplace.

That is why, even now, despite any number of auction records, there is no
meaningful scholarship to be found anywhere about Souza, and innumerable
fakes continue to be attributed to him, in fact constituting the majority
of what goes on sale under his name in India. This grotesquely shameful
charade is cynically, cyclically perpetuated by unscrupulous business
interests, which in the final analysis comprise almost all of what passes
for the desi art world.

If that is the plight of Souza, whose paintings are internationally
celebrated, on permanent display at the Tate Modern in London and National
Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, and regularly snapped up by
international collectors for prices that long ago crested above the
benchmark of a million dollars, what about everyone else? Have we
progressed at all from what this son of Saligao, Goa, and the Crawford
Market neighborhood of Bombay complained about, or do we still despise our
artists and ignore our heritage?

Here, even the most wide-eyed optimist must concede the report card is
notably poor. Indian art has established a fairly robust marketplace at the
high end – thus the fetish for Souza and his contemporaries, even if the
paintings are conspicuously dubious - but we have almost no catalogue
raisonnés, and only a handful of serious retrospectives have ever been held
for even the most celebrated artists. That vacuum of understanding allows
anyone to mouth any kind of absurd gibberish, and get away with it. This is
how the committed desh bhakt M.F. Husain became tarred with patently
ridiculous slurs and then forced into exile in the UAE, and also explains
how and why the unwaveringly hard-edged modernist Vasudeo Gaitonde is being
steadily repositioned into some kind of woolly-headed quasi-spiritual
mystic.

Understanding the extent of this uniformly pathetic scenario, there is
perhaps some cold comfort to be derived from the happenstance of an even
earlier pioneer’s work remaining so totally unknown that it has not yet
been perverted. This is the curious case of Angelo da Fonseca, whose
magnificent oeuvre was created in yawning obscurity that only deepened
further after his death in 1967.

Misunderstood, misrepresented, and purposefully ignored throughout the
intervening decades, the main body of his paintings somehow survived intact
via the extraordinary faith, courage and determination of his widow, the
indomitable Ivy da Fonseca. Emerging now in the light of the 21st century,
it is amply clear these paintings are of immense global significance. What
is more, their publication in this meticulously compiled and lovingly
produced volume (see angelofonseca.com) feels nothing short of miraculous.
Out of nowhere, in an astonishing twist of fate, it seems justice will
finally be served to Indian art history, more than 50 years after the
artist himself departed our world.

How did this staggering lacuna occur in the first place? Why did Fonseca’s
irresistibly gorgeous paintings disappear so thoroughly from our collective
understanding that even the nearly-1,000-page Encyclopaedia of Visual Art
of Maharashtra – which lists hundreds of artists – fails to record even an
inkling their presence? The short answer is that there have been several
layers of bigotry at work, starting with the fatally flawed global
backdrop, as Dr. Rupert Arrowsmith has described in his invaluable *Modernism
and the Museum: Asian, African, and Pacific Art and the London Avant-Garde*
(Oxford University Press, 2011).

Arrowsmith lays out the problem on the very first page: “There is a problem
with the study of Modernism as a global phenomenon. Histories of the period
have been written, until very recently, by scholars with little or no
knowledge of the culture provinces other than their own, resulting in a
situation where the dots of apparently discrete geographical regions are
not adequately connected by lines of influence.”

These blind spots have “led to a distorted view of Modernism as essentially
a European 

[Goanet] Goa’s Missing Women (O Heraldo, 31/07/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/GOA%E2%80%99S-MISSING-WOMEN/192403

Such pleasure to hear Deviya Rane speak up for Poriem and the Goa Forest
Corporation (where she is Chairman) in the assembly sessions earlier this
month. The debutante legislator was not always right – such as her
suggestion that Goa emulate Haryana’s highly dubious “jungle safari park” –
but she conducted herself with dignity, grace, and the assured capability
that comes with solid qualifications. By itself, that is most welcome
change from the highly degraded business as usual, but it also highlights
two glaring gaps in our state leadership: an abysmal lack of professional
expertise (Ms. Rane’s MBBS is an extreme rarity), and the near-total
absence of women’s voices (they are three out of forty MLAs, but all serve
alongside much more powerful husbands).

Make no mistake, this is an emergency which costs Goa heavily. During the
Covid-19 crisis, the entire world has been reminded again and again that
women make far better decisions under pressure, as states and countries
with female leaders markedly outperformed others: Jacinta Ardern in New
Zealand, Angela Merkel in Germany, Teacher Shailaja in Kerala (where she
led the state’s remarkable pandemic response as Health Minister). Harvard
Business Review says “at all levels, women are rated higher in fully 12 of
the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership. And two of the
traits where women outscored men to the highest degree — taking initiative
and driving for results — have long been thought of as particularly male
strengths.”

The conspicuous irony in India’s smallest state, which ranks so high in
economic and human development, is - of course - that Goan women have
outperformed their male counterparts in every professional and academic
field for at least 30 years. Well over a decade ago Goa shot past Kerala
for the highest percentage of female enrollment in higher education in the
country (most likely over 70% now), and when it comes to higher
qualifications – postgraduate degrees – the numbers are similarly
impressive: 60% women to just 40% men. Yet, in leadership and power, all
those numbers fade to oblivion. Women literally disappear.

“Indian women are trained to habitually delete themselves” says Deepa
Narayan (an international poverty, gender and development expert who has
worked at the World Bank and United Nations) in her superb *Chup: Breaking
the Silence About India’s Women*, which was launched at the 2018 Goa Arts +
Literature Festival. About the research for this brilliantly insightful
book – it’s based on over 600 interviews – she writes ruefully that “over
and over I would shake my head in disbelief that yet another smart and
smartly dressed woman, an artist, a business manager, a financial analyst,
a professor, a dentist, an engineer, a lawyer, a researcher, a scientist, a
teacher, an educated stay-at-home mom was so unsure of herself. Or that she
sounded, after the obligatory gender equality claims and sometimes
passionate lecture, like her mother would have sounded thirty or forty
years ago.”

Narayan says “we thought that when women became educated, they would be
valued, free and unafraid. They are not. We thought they would speak up.
They don’t. We thought that when women earn their own money, violence
against them would stop. It has not. We thought that when laws change, and
women have rights to property and maintenance after a divorce, they would
become independent and safe. Women are still not safe.” She concludes that
“while it is deeply satisfying to focus on the outer independence movement
of women – we can count the changes – this approach is deeply flawed. It is
misleading and, worse, it is diversionary. Just because women are visible,
it does not mean they are not invisible at the same time. This focus on
visible external change assumes that the cultural ideology that kept women
invisible, and even denied women life itself, has evaporated. That
assumption is wrong.”

After “thousands of hours of listening to girls, boys, women and men”,
Narayan developed “one unifying idea that helps make sense of the hundreds
of definitions of a good girl or a good woman and a good boy or a good man,
our cultural and moral compass.” That is, “our culture trains women not to
exist. Being a woman itself is taboo. Not allowed. Invisibility is just one
manifestation of this cultural training. One way of ensuring that women do
not exist is to kill them. A safer and less crude way is to train women to
disappear. This helps explain the hundreds of ordinary, everyday
behaviours, proverbs and admonishments that are part of a cultural morass
that sucks us all in to perpetuate a culture of non-existence for women.”

Narayan says we are all complicit, “because nobody talks about it. It is a
nameless cultural secret. It is so unpalatable that it is disguised and
buried, otherwise women would surely object. Instead what we see is
hundreds of cultural practices that 

[Goanet] Reaching for Reconciliation (O Heraldo, 30/7/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Reaching-for-Reconciliation/192366

Surrounded by descendants of precolonial Canadians gathered in a pow
wow circle, Pope Francis delivered an apology of great potency earlier
this week in Maskwacis, Alberta. The pontiff said he was on
“penitential pilgrimage.” That “when the European colonists first
arrived here, there was a great opportunity to bring about a fruitful
encounter between cultures, traditions and forms of spirituality. Yet
for the most part that did not happen.”

The 85-year-old Argentinean (he is the first Jesuit, and also the
first non-European pope  in well over 1000 years) shared his grief
about how “many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the
powers that oppressed the indigenous peoples” underlining “I ask
forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the
Church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through
their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced
assimilation.”

There was quite a bit of minutely couched legalese, intending to evade
legal culpability, but this pontiff’s candour is highly admirable. At
the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, he explained “it pains
me to think that Catholics contributed to policies of assimilation and
enfranchisement that inculcated a sense of inferiority, robbing
communities and individuals of their cultural and spiritual identity,
severing their roots and fostering prejudicial and discriminatory
attitudes.”

For many in Canada – and representatives of other communities that
experienced conversion via colonialism – Pope Francis did not do
enough. The Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak – an indigenous peoples
organization – noted that “saying sorry and acknowledging the harms
that have been caused is just one step of many that need to happen.
There is so much more work to be done.”

Laryssa Waler, an official spokesperson of the papal visit, promised
the church would go further - “galvanized by the calls of our
indigenous partners, and by the Holy Father's remarks, Canada's
bishops are working with the Vatican and those who have studied this
issue, with the goal of issuing a new statement from the church.” This
is the promised repudiation of the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery”,
papal pronouncements of the 15th and 16th century (they are called
“bulls”) which ruled the world open to conquest by Christian
Europeans, and which are still the legal framework for settler
colonial states founded on genocide, like Canada.

Those same intolerant – indeed inhuman – attitudes came to Goa as
well, where the main relevant item of nonsensical legalistic gibberish
was the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas – where the bone of contention was
precisely India - which grandly divided the world beyond Europe into
giant spheres “owned” by Spain and Portugal. Thus, the barbaric modes
of thinking that Pope Francis apologized for in Canada were unleashed
here too, with the main difference being that they failed.

Still, even if there are direct connections between 16th and 17th
century Goa and what happened in Canada much later, there are also
crucial differences. The historian Sanchia de Souza (a Goan from
Bombay who is completing her PhD at University of Toronto) told me
“there is an enormous difference in context. There has been a
court-mandated, years-long process of research, documentation and
witnessing, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that examined
the systemic abuse, with two publicly released reports. The conversion
of people to Catholicism, whether violently or voluntarily, and the
first colonization of Goa is several centuries in the past; by
contrast, the Pope’s apology in Canada was to living people who had
experienced abuse themselves and are still suffering its
consequences.”

De Souza says “Catholicism has ceased to be a religion allied with
state power in Goa, and it never held that position in most of South
Asia. It did in the Americas. In this light, I have thought a lot
about the work of Catholics like Fr. Stan Swamy, Fr. Bismarque Dias,
Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and others and their relationship with
the state. It is an irony that while the Catholic Church has been
complicit in state violence in the Americas and in state appropriation
of traditional Indigenous lands, there are certainly individual
Catholics in India who have worked tirelessly for the rights of the
most marginalized in our society: Adivasis and Dalits.”

Says de Souza: “An apology is an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and a
sign of wishing to make restitution. In the case of Goa, narratives of
the Inquisition — including several that are no longer considered
historically sound — circulate widely and sensationally, to be either
stoutly denied or seized upon depending on an individual or
community’s political bent.  Before we consider whether an apology is
necessary, we have to think about what we might want an apology for.”

In very much the same vein, right after Pope Francis’s 

[Goanet] Is Nothing Sacred? (O Heraldo, 24/7/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Is-Nothing-Sacred/192100

Not even God is spared by the deeply disgraceful politicians of Goa,
in their orgy of party-hopping and broken promises. There seem to be
no limits to their shamelessness, sinking ever-lower with each passing
week. Lies are piled up on more lies, with the supreme vulgarity of
crooks who think they will get away with it. This is a national
failing – witness the shockingly anti-democratic farce across the
border in Maharashtra – but now we’re really seeing the worst of it in
India’s smallest state.

It was only six months ago on January 22 that the Congress paraded
would-be MLAs to the Masjid-e Hamza in Betim, the Fulancho Khuris
shrine at Bambolim, and Panjim’s Mahalaxmi temple – three revered
sites that are deeply venerated by all Goans. At each stop, they swore
that “once elected, we will stay with Congress and work for betterment
of the people for the next five years, irrespective of offers made by
the opposition. We will leave Congress at no cost.”

Knowing what we do, it’s impossible to look at the photos from that
day without feeling disgusted. Those promises meant nothing. Just last
weekend, five of these characters had to be flown off to Chennai,
because they were perceived to be on the verge of switching sides, and
that drama came after party leaders had already sacked Michael Lobo as
Leader of the Opposition, and also removed Digambar Kamat from the
Congress Working Committee.

It is interesting to revisit Kamat’s comments during that oath-taking
farce: “We have tried to remove any doubts in the mind of the public.
Some politicians are saying there is no point in electing Congress
MLAs as they will go to other parties. These are the same politicians
who are poaching our MLAs. If a son leaves his parents, the son and
parents are both responsible. Parties who are poaching our MLAs are
also responsible. We have to be more aggressive towards politicians
who are offering money to our people to buy them. Goans are not for
sale.”

Leaving aside the obvious ironies, the 68-year-old veteran from Margao
has a point about culpability. The party that has ruled Goa since 2012
is forcefully against religious conversions – earlier this month
Pramod Sawant claimed it’s one of his government’s achievements in its
first 100 days – but simultaneously devotes huge amounts of time,
energy and money to converting opposition politicians to the BJP. What
is more, there are many other dubious conversions underway: black
money into white via the gambling mafia, dead men becoming alive to
get liquor licenses, and illegal constructions regularized via rampant
subversion of the rule of law.

In the past few days of assembly sessions, our political cadre’s
capacity for trying to fool the public was on full display. One
egregious example centred on the grotesque mansion that has been
constructed right next to the magnificent 17th century St. Cajetan
Church in Old Goa, which drew such sustained protests last year –
especially in the run up to the elections – that every politician from
every party swore that it would be demolished as soon as possible.

The facts of this case are brilliantly explained by 91-year-old Edgar
Ribeiro, the former chief town planner of India (who continues to
serve his country with great distinction, just like his older brother,
the heroic Julio Ribeiro) in his statement last July: “Due to my age,
I have not been able to [fully] participate in the spirited fight by
the citizens of Goa against this grave irregularity within the
ASI-protected area, but it’s a clear case of misinformation, and
misinterpretation, and contrary to national and state laws. This
construction is totally illegal, against India’s mandate for
protection of archaeological and other heritage sites, and a fit case
for demolition and fixing responsibility on all the officials and
committees who have not done their homework.”

That kind of clarity and moral purpose was absent in the legislative
assembly last week. Instead, as the bright young architect Tahir
Noronha (the 27-year-old is heading to the University of Michigan for
a Masters in Urban Planning later this year) has detailed in an
excellent fact-checking, the state leadership fell over themselves to
issue false and misleading pronouncements.

In this way, the chief minister said the subject is sub-judice, but
“several state departments had issued permission to this project, and
later, after being informed of discrepancies, have investigated and
withdrawn their permission. This is not sub-judice.” Then, “Vishwajit
Rane said the TCP only gave permission after the National Monument
Authority did. This is also untrue. We have seen the file (under RTI)
and no Central Govt department gave permission before the TCP. In
fact, in a written reply to MLA Cruz Silva, the TCP portrayed an ASI
letter from 2020 as the NMA permission. But ASI & NMA are different
departments, they do similar work like GSIDC & PWD but ASI 

[Goanet] Making Mumbai: The Goa Story (O Heraldo, 23/7/2020)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Making-Mumbai-The-Goa-Story/192060

The burgeoning genre of big illustrated volumes on art and culture in India
– often referred to as “coffee table books” – has an outstanding new
addition. *Mumbai: A City Through Objects – 101 Stories from the Dr. Bhau
Daji Lad Museum *(Harper Design, Rs. 2999) has been edited with great flair
by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. It is an instantly invaluable resource on Urbs
Prima in Indis, the “first city in India” that expanded explosively from
isolated fragments of coastline under Portugal to the second-largest city
of the British Empire (after London), and foundation stone to India’s
modern identity.

Mehta has been working with that remarkable history for many years, as main
architect of the revitalization of what was The Victoria and Albert Museum
when it first opened in 1875. Renamed 100 years later, it remained fusty,
hidebound, and meaningless to 21st century audiences until she gave the old
collection new wings with clever, audacious, profoundly impactful
programming. This new book burnishes and enhances that legacy most
impressively.

“Museum objects are time machines,” writes Mehta. “They allow us a peek
into a civilization long past or bring us face to face with today’s issues,
in a sense harking the future. Like architectural treasures, objects are
record keepers that reveal their mysteries as you get more deeply engaged.”

She elaborates: “As you read the many object stories, you begin to glean
Mumbai’s evolution from a small group of marshy islands – that the Greek
polymath and geographer Ptolemy called Heptanesia – into the dynamic
powerhouse that it is today. You begin to understand the many layers of the
city’s history as the Museum shifted focus over 165 years…This is not a
comprehensive history but a sociocultural reckoning.”

*Mumbai: A City Through Objects* wheels through an illuminative selection
of artworks and artefacts, from the famous sixth-century stone pachyderm
from Elephanta to stunning 21st century sculptures by Sudarshan Shetty and
Jitish Kallat. Mehta says her museum’s collection is “small but unique, and
bears testimony to the city’s constant renewal. It gives voice to the
vision and dynamic energy of the many people who have laboured for,
supported, or contributed in some way to the city’s making [and is] a
record of these ambitions and dreams, and the traumas of upheavals the city
has experienced on its extraordinary journey of transformation.”

With such creditable purpose, so usefully pursued, it may be nitpicking to
point to where this otherwise unqualifiedly superb book misses an
opportunity. That is its treatment of Bhau Daji Lad, whose two-page
biographical sketch – by Ruta Waghmare-Baptista – comes off as rote. We can
and should expect better from the institution named after this great
pioneer, who argued so passionately for “a temple of science containing the
wonder for ages, of Literature, Science and Art” and constantly pushed back
against colonial-era race barriers in ways that seem astounding today.

The late historian Teresa Albuquerque is much better on Lad in her 2012 *Goan
Pioneers in Bombay*, describing how the Mandrem-born prodigy arrived in
colonial Bombay at the age of 10 in 1822, along with his father, “a simple
painter making earthen images who hoped to make a better living in the
city.”

Albuquerque writes that Lad “studied first in the Marathi Central School,
and then attended a free private class conducted by Govind Narayan
Madgaokar, after which he gained admission to the Elphinstone Institution”
where “the Earl of Clare, Governor of Bombay, was simply enthralled at his
performance in the game of chess and advised his father to give him a sound
education.” Soon afterwards, “young Daji joined Elphinstone College, swept
off all the prizes and scholarships plus a gold medal.” From that point,
his preternatural intelligence and energy went in every direction:
Sanskrit, archaeology, numismatics, education, photography, dramatics,
politics, civic reform.

Even that laundry list is not nearly complete, because, when already well
into his thirties, Albuquerque writes “yet another avenue of study unfolded
itself to this brilliant academician with the opening of Grant Medical
College. Discarding every foreboding prohibition, Bhau Daji boldly enrolled
himself as a free student in its first batch and, along with three other
Goans, came out with flying colours at graduation in 1851. Soon after, he
set up private practice in the city, and, assisted by his brother, also
reached out to the poor and needy. He distinguished himself by operating on
tumours and eye cataracts, and even performing obstetrical surgery.” Ever
the patriot, he “refused to accept any payment from a Goan who came
especially from Goa for his treatment.”

That last line is poignant, but also highlights the hidden history of Goa
in the making of Mumbai – and by extension modern India. This is incredible
lore, starting with Rama 

[Goanet] Sudhir Patwardhan's X-Ray Vision (India Today, 15/7/2022)

[V M]

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/magazine/leisure/story/20220725-a-new-book-on-sudhir-patwardhan-shows-why-he-is-in-all-likelihood-india-s-greatest-living-painter-1975724-2022-07-15

In her introduction to *Sudhir Patwardhan: Walking Through Soul City*, the
mammoth volume that has follows and accompanies an excellent retrospective
at the National Gallery of Modern Art’s Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall in
Mumbai from November 2019 to February 2020, the exhibition curator Nancy
Adajania writes, “I would advance the claim that, after M. F. Husain, it is
Patwardhan who commands the widespread attention of Indian viewers across
several generations.”

It is an apt comparison, and not just for that one reason. Both these
terrific artists, who were born roughly three decades apart in the
turbulent first half of the 20th century, have portrayed – and indeed
embodied - the story of modern India in ambitious narrative paintings that
only look better and more interesting with each passing year. This is
especially true in the case of Patwardhan, whose masterworks from the early
1980’s onwards always possessed a veritably canonical heft, but now, from
our 21st century vantage, we can clearly see that his pulsating,
indispensable oeuvre is amongst the best of our best, and perhaps the
greatest of all.

Adajania does justice to this consistently stunning corpus in her literally
monumental book (it is almost 500 pages long and weighs nearly 4 kilos).
Explaining her approach, she writes that “In bringing together the various
phases of Patwardhan’s practice, this retrospective plays linear chronology
against the artist’s deep, recurrent preoccupations: his insistence on
crafting place from layers of memory, his engagement with the subaltern
figure in its vulnerability and strength, his curiosity about what brings
people together into various forms of collective formations and what tears
them apart.”

Here, it is essential to understand the twinned frames of reference that
bookend Patwardhan’s perspective, and inevitably his artistic practice as
well. In his mien and search for meaning, he is thoroughbred 1970s Indian
Left in the George Fernandes mould; grounded in Marx, Camus and Sartre, and
forged resolute by opposition to the Emergency. At the same time, he
graduated from the Armed Forces Medical College and started working as a
radiologist in Thane in 1975, which remained his “day job” for the
following three decades (from 2005, he has been a full-time artist).

The critic and curator Ranjit Hoskote - who happens to be married to Nancy
Adajania -  puts it beautifully vividly in his own excellent 2004 book, *Sudhir
Patwardhan: The Complicit Observer*: “Patwardhan the painter operated with
the same penetrating vision as Patwardhan the radiologist, diving the inner
events of an individual life from the physique that is presented before
him, reading the symptoms of an unease that burns beneath the skin and
remains occult even to the owner of that skin. Patwardhan has honed this
faculty of second sight for nearly four decades, bringing it to bear on the
self as constituted by the interplay between private impulses and social
relationships.”

Via Adajania’s meticulous compilation in *Walking Through Soul City*, we
can see that Patwardhan’s unusual calibre was already evident by the time
of his 1979 solo exhibition debut at Art Heritage -  Ebrahim and Roshen
Alkazi’s gallery in New Delhi -  and we also see just how quickly his
formal ambitions were substantially realized by early masterpieces like
Overbridge (1981), about which the art historian R. Siva Kumar (whose essay
is also in this book) writes with great insight that “the visible ripples
of fraternal empathy that run through these pictures are not strong enough
to integrate and turn everyone into a participant. These are not collective
assertions, but moments of subaltern coming together sprinkled with
individual despair and defeat.

The great thing about Patwardhan, of course, is those initial breakthroughs
were followed by more. Sometime after the passing of his direct forbears in
the Progressives – Gaitonde (2001), Souza (2002) and, especially, Tyeb
Mehta (2009) and Husain (2011) – it became increasingly obvious he was
probably our greatest living painter. *Sudhir Patwardhan: Walking Through
Soul City* makes that distinction explicit.

[Goanet] Goa’s Rainbow Revolution

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Goa%E2%80%99s-Rainbow-Revolution/191825

In his fascinating new essay *How Goa Became LGBTQ Friendly*, the
wonderfully thoughtful journalist Vikram Doctor (who moved to Assagao after
the onset of Covid-19) notes that Goa “without much fanfare, has become one
of the most queer-friendly places in India.”

Doctor possesses a magisterial long view of LGBTQ rights (the popular
acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and those who are
questioning their sexual or gender identity), and their great contemporary
inflection point in 2018, when the Supreme Court decriminalized the
colonial-era Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, terming it “irrational,
arbitrary, and incomprehensible.”

Getting to that point was not easy. Doctor notes “one of the problems with
fighting Section 377 was finding examples of people charged and convicted
under it. Most of those who had been charged were lacking in the means, or
will to appeal to High Courts, so their cases did not become public
knowledge. Even more just succumbed to the threat – and paid to settle
their cases.”

This was a real problem: “because these cases weren’t recorded, the
evidence of use of Section 377 wasn’t there. This left activists open to
the charge that they were fighting to change a law that was rarely used.
Early in the course of the case a bench of the Delhi High Court had even
dismissed the case for lack of standing on the part of activists, and it
was only on appeal to the Supreme Court that the High Court was charged
with hearing it again.”

As it so often is, Goa would different. In 2007, the Colva police arrested
UK tourist Desmond Hope – who was visiting with his partner Frank Lacey -
on the steps of Our Lady of Mercy church, where he was sitting with an
Indian man. Thus began the standard shakedown –the first fabricated charge
was of attempting to rob the sacristy, and the bribe demanded was Rs. 1800.
Then, after figuring out he was a foreigner, the extortion was upped to Rs.
10,000. Finally, after suspecting some gay angle, “Hope was harassed,
called a ‘homo’ and wasn’t allowed to use the toilet, forcing him to soil
himself.”

Now things got truly shameful. Doctor quotes Arvind Narrain and Alok Gupta
(it is from Law Like Love: Queer Perspectives on the Law) that “when Lacey
finally traced Hope to the police station [he] immediately informed the
British Consulate in Goa, who called the police station and spoke to the
notorious Inspector Uday Parab in charge of the case. This made Parab
angrier. Within two hours of the phone call, a false and fabricated case
against Desmond under Section 377 was registered.”

This part of the story will make any Goan feel truly ashamed: “Lacey was
called by Parab with a new offer – for 10 lakhs the whole case could be
closed. He was told this happens routinely with the Russians, and
everything could be arranged…The police then proceeded to act with complete
prejudice in the matter – with Parab regularly calling to see if they were
ready to pay.”

Doctor writes “it was all playing out in a way that has become sadly common
in a state, with fears about corruption about Goa’s culture being used to
cover up rather more real issues of corruption in the police force and
organized rackets targeting tourists.” But that is not where the story
ends, because “on 15th March the case came up before Justice N. A. Britto,
who fairly clearly recognized what had been going on.”

With impressive clarity, Justice Britto ridiculed the Colva police’s
contentions, and – specifically noting Section 377 was under challenge -
delivered the unambiguous ruling that “it cannot be said that the offence
committed is grave and punishment provided is severe, so as to deny bail to
the applicant.” Hope walked free.

Albeit barely remembered in Goa, but Doctor writes that it “gave proof of
both the use and misuse of the Law. Even more, the fact that a High Court
judge like Justice Britto could see through the police’s tactics, and note
the law was currently being challenged, was a heartening sign that the
battle against Section 377 could be won some day.”

*How Goa Became LGBTQ Friendly *is in the monsoon issue of *The Peacock
Quarterly* from the Entertainment Society of Goa (where I am on the
editorial team), under the chairmanship of the chief minister. More than
just symbolically, that fact in itself is highly creditable for India’s
smallest state, perfectly illustrating the trajectory of LGBTQ rights into
the mainstream of our polity.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”
preached Martin Luther King. At least in in this case it did. People
changed their minds. One person who substantially made it happen was
Wendell Rodricks, the late fashion designer and proud Goan cultural
activist who stood up for equality with an irresistible combination of
flamboyance and great dignity.

In 2002, Rodricks became one of the first openly gay Indian celebrities,
after his 

[Goanet] Goan Food, Going Global (O Heraldo, 16/7/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Goan-Food-Going-Global/191744

The ascent of Goan cuisine in the global imagination acquired interesting
footnotes this week, as the latest edition of the wildly successful
MasterChef Australia television series came to an end with Sarah Todd – who
has based herself in India’s smallest state since 2015 – pushing hard
throughout finals week, before succumbing to the one-of-a-kind composure
and sheer culinary chops of Billie McKay, the first-ever two-time winner of
the world’s most popular reality show.

Less than 3% of Australians are ethnic Indians. Nonetheless, the
subcontinent has exerted outsized impact on MasterChef Australia via
previous winners Sashi Cheliah (an Indian-Singaporean-Australian prison
guard who won in 2018), and Justin Narayan, the Indian-Fijian-Australian
youth pastor who emerged victorious last year. Todd is not Indian, but
became a desi social media star in her first season of competition when she
prepared Aloo Gobi to the delight of millions of viewers on this side of
the Indian Ocean. This time around, rising to the top in an unusual
mingling of previous favourites and new competitors, she cooked with Indian
emphasis constantly.

Todd used to be married to an Indian-Australian of Punjabi descent. After
the 2014 series of MasterChef Australia made her famous, she toured New
Delhi, Mumbai and Goa to deliver cooking demonstrations. In a 2018
interview, the native of Queensland told the journalist Tanvi Dubey “it was
my first trip to India and I had never seen anything like it before. The
town where I am from has 1000 people, so it’s very small. When I got to
India I was so overwhelmed with the people [but in Goa] I felt like this
was a sanctuary for me. Also, Queensland with its Great Barrier Reef, its
tropical climate, sea and food is similar, and when I visited [Goa] it felt
like home.”

In 2015, Todd opened her “dream project” of Antares, one of the ambitious
restaurants and hotels clustered (with deeply uncertain legality) near the
waterline in Vagator on the North Goa beach belt, and also immediately
started making television series. Wikipedia says My Restaurant in India was
broadcast in 150 countries, and Serve it like Sarah and Awesome Assam with
Sarah Todd have aired in several different markets.

All this is textbook celebrity strategy, implemented by an indisputably
attractive talent (Todd is a former model). But there’s an additional twist
which became increasingly evident – and eventually undeniable – as
MasterChef Australia 2022 laid out the rich emotional banquet for which its
producers are justifiably famous. We were able to see and understand how
Indian flavours aren’t just another career move for this ambitious
culinary/media icon-in-the-making: Todd knows and loves them intimately,
keeps travelling and studying how they are used, and both Goa and India
have become essential elements in her sense of belonging in the world.

This is complicated territory, because Australia is a settler colonial
country founded on extraordinary atrocities – indeed genocide - and remains
defined by systemic racism centred on the unscientific and patently absurd
notion of “whiteness.” As the wonderful East Africa-born Goan-New Zealander
(she works in Australia) academic Ruth DeSouza writes on her excellent blog
at ruthdesouza.com, “The consumption of ethnic food points to a desire to
consume difference through appropriation of food and tradition as exotic,
where ethnicity becomes spice for mainstream culture, losing its own
legitimacy in the process. Instead of engagement, the other is consumed.”

Is this what Todd does, when preparing Cafreal or Xacuti (which she did on
MasterChef Australia this season)? Does that qualify as cultural
appropriation, which DeSouza defines as “a charge levelled at people from
the dominant culture to signal power dynamic, where elements have been
taken from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by
the dominant group.” The answer has to be solidly no. That is not what is
happening here. It is true we haven’t seen the more enlightened stage of
cultural appreciation either – DeSouza says we would recognize an “exchange
where mutual sharing is involved” – but there’s no doubt Goa/India isn’t
any gimmick to Todd. It’s part of her identity.

As it happens, just a few months ago on the opposite end of the planet from
“down under”, Goan food had another unlikely tryst with big time global
media as Crystelle Pereira – an endlessly enthusiastic twentysomething
relationship manager for Goldman Sachs - stormed her way into the finals of
The Great British Bake Off television series, while continually referring
to her family background and ethnic origin. Although she has definitely
spent much less time in her ancestral homeland than Todd, this cheerful
young Goan-British culinary enthusiast personified those cultural roots
with great feeling, most notably when she won both Star Baker and “a
showstopper Hollywood 

[Goanet] Goa’s Road to Ruin (O Heraldo, 10/7/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Goa%E2%80%99s-road-to-ruin/191549

It is raining gloriously in Goa, but it’s very hard for citizens to
enjoy it because the roads have fallen apart to the worst condition in
living memory. In the “bad old days of socialism” at least the dirt
roads were flat, and the age-old drainage systems built by our
ancestors remained intact. Now there are only axle-breaking
moonscapes, and dangerously flooded highways. Adding considerable
insult to injury, the worst damage is precisely where the maximum
money has been squandered, in just one more painful example of the
criminally callous anti-people “development” being imposed on India’s
smallest state.

This catastrophic misgovernance is especially evident in the capital,
where hundreds of crores have vanished in the name of Smart City, but
it’s impossible to recognize the very same streets where the biggest
names in Indian politics paraded with so much bandobast before the
elections. Most notably, when the home minister visited last October,
every main thoroughfare in Panjim and Taleigao was “hot-mixed” as
smooth as glass so swiftly and efficiently that Rohan Khaunte (the
Porvorim MLA was then in the opposition) sarcastically invited Amit
Shah to “visit every month” and “tour the entire state” so everyone
could reap the benefit.

Back then, Khaunte posted on Twitter: “#GoaGovt thinks of Good Roads
only when Netas come! Till date we have been suffering bad roads and
now selective roads where BJPs top brass will pass are being suddenly
repaired. This Govt works for progress of @BJP4Goa not #Goans.
#CallingOut.” But fast forward past the elections, and also after the
former independent was strong-armed into the ruling party to serve in
Pramod Sawant’s cabinet, and now the ambitious 48-year-old is busily
deflecting blame in every opposite direction. Earlier this week, with
an impressively straight face, he expressed full confidence in the
same government he had condemned, to deal with the same problem that
he had complained about just months ago.

The execrable condition of roads is just one symptom of the shameful
dereliction of duty by Goa’s elected representatives and their cabal
of complicit bureaucrats. In the absence of accountability, they are
running rampant with incredibly ill-conceived scam infrastructure
projects. As the 42-year-old retailer Rohan Govenkar put it rather
pithily on Facebook a couple of days ago: “All you expressing shock
over the pitiable condition of roads in Goa right now: There's nothing
alarming or surprising about it. When you have ordered for dung, you
have ordered it with full congnizance that you will receive dung.
Don't be baffled over not getting mutton biryani.”

Govenkar is part of Together for Panaji, which he describes as “an
association started by a group of concerned citizens to come together
and approach elected representatives, and recommend solutions to the
dozens of problems plaguing the town.” Via email, he elaborated, “The
solutions are not too hard: citizens have to only voice them to their
representatives and make it known that they are refusing to be taken
for granted. The representatives should feel threatened by the
public's warnings, and should feel compelled to act on developing
better roads and bring them in par with the roads of those countries
like Indonesia and Malaysia where the rainfall is much higher.”

Here, rather ruefully, Govenkar recalls how “the roads were smoothened
prior to the arrival of a certain politician a few months ago, but the
smoothening job was as much as a temporary installation as the pandal
and stage set for his address to the public. Such privileges are only
meant for the 'kings of democracy' and now that the 'kings' are
pleased, the servile and meek junta are only expected to content
themselves with the belief that they managed to satisfy the kings. As
a citizen, I feel hopeless that we have not developed the culture of
placing our demands to our elected representatives, and we have failed
to put in place systems where we can make them accountable for their
action (and inaction).”

How did it get so bad in Goa, despite its citizens ranking so high in
the crucial matrices for education, wealth, and human development?
Govenkar says “as a society, we have failed to understand democracy.
It’s evident by the way we treat elections as a cheerleading squad
would, rather than what it ideally should have been: as informed
consumers of public services. Only an ideal democracy can save [us],
because that’s the only way we can [register and] achieve serious
will.” But even that won’t be enough says Blaise Costabir (who is
managing director of GMI Zarhak Moulders at the Verna Industrial
Estate, and also a columnist for this newspaper), because “the people
who make the rules are the ones benefiting from the shoddy work, so
they cannot be relied on to make the change.”

The veteran entrepreneur – and respected leader of the business
community in Goa – told 

[Goanet] Fortune Favours the Braverman (O Heraldo, 9/7/2022)

[V M]

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Goa/Fortune-favours-the-Braverman/191517

More obvious contenders to replace Boris Johnson were still being coy when
Suella Fernandes Braverman seized the day on live television. While being
interviewed by ITV’s Robert Peston on Wednesday night, the Attorney General
for England and Wales excoriated her boss for handling matters
“appallingly”, which made his leadership “untenable.” Then, when the host
asked the question she had been waiting for, the 42-year-old went for it
with gusto: “I’ll be straight with you, Robert. Yes, I will. If there is a
leadership contest, I will put my name into the ring.”

Talking past Peston to the national audience, the
barrister-turned-politician now leaned into her practiced pitch: “I love
this country, my parents came here with absolutely nothing and it was
Britain that gave them hope, security and opportunity. This country has
afforded me incredible opportunities in education and in my career. I owe a
debt of gratitude to this country and to serve as PM would be the greatest
honour, so yes, I will try.”

For the time being, that distinction – Braverman being the first to enter –
is only one footnote of the fast-changing race to claim the top job in UK
politics. There are many better-regarded candidates, including former
health secretary Sajid Javid, the defence secretary Ben Wallace, the
previous defence secretary Penny Mordaunt, and Rishi Sunak, the former
chancellor of the exchequer who is married to the daughter of Narayana
Murthy of Infosys.

The conventional wisdom gives Braverman no chance. In fact, on the morning
after her announcement, she was skewered hilariously in parliament by Emily
Thornberry, the shadow Attorney General, who rose to address Braverman
directly across the aisle, and pronounced with mock gravitas, “Can I say
what an honour it is to be at this dispatch box facing the next Prime
Minister, as she awaits the call from the Palace.” It was a moment of pure
humiliation, and all the other MPs laughed uproariously.

One person who isn’t amused is the well-known British-Indian journalist
Sunny Hundal, who warned in *The Independent* that “her pitch almost sounds
sweet and earnest. A girl from an immigrant family who has done well, proud
of her country, and willing to step up and take charge. She would be
Britain’s first non-white prime minister and would shatter a big glass
ceiling as a non-white woman. But make no mistake, Suella Braverman would
also be hugely divisive, turbocharging Britain’s Brexit divide and our
culture wars. She would be Boris Johnson on steroids, a brown, female
version of Trump.”

In terms of personality and public appeal, the comparison is off-base.
Braverman comes across more like Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, the former Governor
of Louisiana and stalwart of the Republican right wing in the USA. They are
both zealous converts (Jindal was born Hindu and is now Catholic, and
Braverman belongs to a somewhat mysterious Buddhist sect) who radiate with
an unnervingly intense ambition. The biggest difference is timing: the
Indian American was always an outlier, but the British Indian is at the
centre of the whirlwind of her times. All those other MPs can laugh as hard
as they like, because the joke is actually on them. There’s every
possibility it will work out for Braverman in the end.

How did this happen? How did we go from four “first Black Parliamentarians
of our times” in 1987, with that absurd umbrella category lumping in Keith
Vaz (who wss born to Goan parents in Aden) along with Paul Boateng, Bernie
Grant and Diane Abbott, to the astonishing 40 elected in 2019? More
importantly, does the ethnicity of any politician matter, beyond the purely
symbolic?

In this regard, there is no denying the historic nature of this moment,
with – given the revolving-door nature of current leadership – the strong
likelihood of one or another British Indian leader taking residence at 10
Downing Street. There is the unavoidable context of imperial history and
the connections between Britain and its colonies that brought the likes of
Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Fernandes Braverman to the UK in the
first place.

In the case of Braverman, her father Christie Fernandes of Assagao and
Nairobi (he married an Indian from Mauritius) stepped off the plane just
weeks before Enoch Powell delivered his bilious “Rivers of Blood” speech
warning of cultural ruin that would ensue if Indian subjects from Kenya
were allowed to settle in the UK. Before and after, there was a long
drought of British Indian members of parliament since Dadabhai Naoroji and
a couple of others at the turn of the century (including Ernest Soares of
Ucassaim and Liverpool, who was elected from Barnstaple in 1900).

That began to change in 1987, but not always for the better. Where we are
now is complicated – there are many children of immigrants in British
politics who support regressive right-wing policies. Sadly, that is how
Braverman rolls, railing against