The spooks return to Goa
By Frederick Noronha
Sometime in December 2009, I first came across an
introduction to the work of Jessica Faleiro, a lady who
traces her roots to Margao. She was then a young wanabee
writer. Just like so many others who feel the urge to enter
the creative world, and believe they have the talent and
determination to get there.
By 2012, Faleiro has come out with her book
*Afterlife: Ghost Stories from Goa*, published by
Rupa, promoted quite a bit and even noticed by the
reviewers. It's not every year that the pan-Indian
reality condescends to take note of a Goa-related
book. So, when this happens, there's naturally a
lot of curiosity over it back home.
In terms of a bare outline, the story is this: the Fonseca
family gathers in Goa before the 75th birthday of Savio
Fonseca. It's raining heavy, the electricity fails. (What's
new?) But then they choose to spend their time taking turns
narrating ghost stories to each other.
The ghost story is -- or has been -- something typically
Goan. Anyone who grew up in the Goa of the 1960s or 1970s,
or earlier, would know how this reality dominated local life
then. Everyone spoke of ghosts. You couldn't escape them
(or, rather, stories of them).
Things were far more scary in those times. Certain
places were best avoided. So was moving out
late-evening. Today, youth searching for kicks and
hedonist tourists (together with a section of the
local middle-classes, of course) have become ghosts
of their own kind, in a way, haunting the local
reality with their pleasure-seeking ways at all
times of the day or night!
If you're skeptical, you could just say that Goa saw more
ghosts in those times because we were are more rustic and
agrarian society. The dark, lonely and isolated nights let
our imaginations work more hyper-actively. We had few
distractions. With even villages being crowded (sometimes
excessively) with street-lights, where's the time and space
to even think of ghosts now?
That's where Jessica Faleiro comes in. Some like the Goan
artist-expat Venantius Pinto have been suggesting a Goan
ghost stories book for some time now. But it was Ms.
Faleiro who actually got it done.
There are quite some plusses in her work. She writes with
flair, and surely knows how to tell a story. At Rs 150, the
book is reasonably priced, and its 159 pages of text are a
good read. The cover is charming indeed. Besides, the book
has been promoted well, making it visible to all who might be
interested.
Faleiro's work contains a number of 'ghost' stories
woven around common, oft-narrated Goan themes. The
person who died tragically and gets reincarnated as
a bird to visit family members. The
not-so-bad-after-all miser who guides his family
towards his fortune. A young boy possessed by
the spirit of a man murdered by a relative. A girl
led to her suicide in the room where another woman
had done likewise in another generation.
Forewarnings by strange individuals we encounter at
night
As would expect of any typical emigrant-based Goan Catholic
family, the ghost stories from Goa are not restricted to
Goa alone. You have one based in Bombay (of course!) and
Martha's Vineyard, the affluent summer colony and island
south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Interestingly, Faleiro weaves all these disparate themes into
one common story, very well connected with each other, and
tied up neatly with the skill of someone who has learnt the
art of story-telling.
Not a coincidence. She has been based in London and worked
full-time in development work for an international charity,
and has also done an MA in Creative Writing part-time at
Kingston University, Surrey. Faleiro has been into editing
non-fiction, contributing to Amazon's book and movie reviews,
and has kept her blog at itsawriterslife.blogspot.in
So does learning the art of creative writing make for better
story-telling? This was just something being discussed
recently at the Goa Book Club on Googlegroups.
Faleiro's story is interesting for another reason.
It represents the returned expat, attempting to
understand and interpret the story of their
ancestral society. One can see a few but growing
number of such attempts happening in the
English-language space in recent years -- from
Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, to Dr Antonio Gomes,
Margaret Mascarenhas (whose canvas is not
restricted to Goa), Prof. Peter Nazareth, and Ben
Antao, among others.
Does Faleiro succeed?
One must have read the quick-paced text with an extra
critical dose, to find the answer to this question. Her
adept story-telling skills stand her in good stead, and make
a
