Goa Chitra request the honour of your presence for the release of the
book Just Matata: Sins, Saints And Settlers, a Novel Set In Goa And
Kenya; penned by Braz Menezes. The book will be released by
Consul-General of Portugal in Goa, Dr. Antonio Sabido Costa.
DATE: February 26, 2012
TIME: 5:00 pm
VENUE: Goa Chitra, House No. 498, Pulwaddo
Benaulim Goa
Goa and Kenya are tied not just by numbers of migrants of the former to
the latter, but by Goans who made a difference to the African country.
There are persons who helped build the economy, excelled in sports and
others who gave its politics direction. Pio Gama Pinto is perhaps the
best known face.
The book release will be followed with the author Braz Menezes in
conversation on the Goa- Kenya connection with renowned psychiatrist
and writer Dr. Belinda Viegas Muller and Alexandre Moniz Barbosa, writer
and current Assistant Resident Editor, The Times of India, Goa Edition.
About the book:
This is a truth-based but slightly fictionalized account of a Goan
family told about sixty years later, with sensitivity, acuity and
humour. Told through the senses of eleven year-old Lando, the freshness
and detail of his descriptions throughout the book captures the keen
observations of the sea voyages between Mombasa, Kenya and Mormugao and
the dynamics of racial segregation, caste and religion.
The book is co published by Goa, 1556 and Broadway Publishing House.
About the author:
Braz Menezes, Kenya-born with family origins in Raia and Loutolim, Goa,
now lives in Toronto. His work has appeared in various anthologies,
including Canadian Voices, Vols. 1&2, Goa Masala, Indian Voices and
Canadian Imprints. He is an architect and urban planner.
Synopsis:
The author Braz Menezes, born in Nairobi, has his origins in Goa, a
small but beautiful bump off the western coast of India. Situated on the
Arabian Sea, Goa has beautiful ocean beaches and is now an international
tourist destination. But for much of 450 years, starting with the
explorer and conqueror Vasco da Gama, and ending with an Indian Army
invasion in 1961, it was a prized Portuguese possession but a backwater,
no less. Goans, traditionally simple, hospitable, educated and Catholic,
became a diaspora people like the Jews of old, not out of persecution
but economic necessity. In the early and mid twentieth century, the
colonial service in East Africa where they served Britain faithfully and
well, became their passport to a better future. Kenya, where half of the
narration takes place, was a fairly recent British conquest and in the
period of the book they had sufficiently established themselves as the
governing power and were consolidating their administration and
infrastructure.
This is a truth-based but slightly fictionalized account of a Goan
family told about sixty years later, with sensitivity, acuity and
humour. It is sufficiently contemporary to hold general interest, but
even if it were not so, Menezes’ easy style would sustain the reader
throughout. He has great appreciation of the Kenyan lands, flora and
fauna, and his descriptions of nature in Africa bespeak of an ecological
passion. He is a storyteller in the genre of Rohinton Mistry and Michael
Ondaatje, first-generation award-winning immigrant writers in Canada.
Told through the senses of eleven year-old Lando, the freshness and
detail of his descriptions throughout the book shine like embedded
stones in the already bright necklace of its chapters. The sea voyages
between Mombasa, Kenya and Mormugao, Goa, are occasions of keen
observation of the foibles of the travelling circus around him. So also
are the dynamics of racial segregation, caste and religion, that drove
Goan families to do things that were not always in harmony with the
wishes of its members. Though sadness is rare in the book and when
present is not heavy or burdensome, yet the young Lando’s troubles
stalking him at every turn, make the reader pause and reflect on one’s
own passages of life. The book can best be described as quiet excitement
and is worth every minute the reader spends reading it. Although
complete in itself, this first book will without a doubt cause one to
look forward to the next in its trilogy and hope it is as good. No mean
feat to overcome.
Goanet A-C-E!
Arts ~ Culture ~ Entertainment
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