------------------------------------------------------------------------
* G * O * A * N * E * T **** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S *
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy your holiday in Goa. Stay at THE GARCA BRANCA from November to May
There is no better, value for money, guest house.
Confirm your bookings early or miss-out
Visit http://www.garcabranca.com for details/booking/confirmation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Attitude is the bottom line.
Possibility and Problem are two sides of the same coin.
Recently we had a Writeshop at International Centre-Goa to document the
achievements in 'shifting cultivation' in a state in India. The Writeshop
[Writers' Workshop] is a system that puts a field level officer amidst his/her
peers, editors, illustrators, DTP persons and facilitators to help draw out
the experiences, polish and document them in a coherent text shorn of
technical jargon and embellished with graphs and illustrations so as to be
understandable to a cross section of readers. People can use what they can
understand. Jargon impresses but does precious little to enhance the knowledge
level of the uninitiated. This book will become a 'Source Book' not only for
the people of North Eastern states of India but even for people in other
countries, from Argentina to Zambia, who practice 'shifting cultivation' of
rice that is locally known as 'kumeri' cultivation.
The developed Western countries normally view 'shifting cultivation'
in 'developing' countries as a problem that causes environmental degradation
and increases level of Green house gases [GHGs] that cause global warming. The
people who practice shifting cultivation consider it as integral to life as
breathing: they live on the rice produced by this method. To them, GHGs are of
no concern at all as they live in the green, forested countryside. A few trees
burnt here or there are nothing to bother them. The enormous amounts of GHGs,
generated by burning of diesel and petroleum products, similarly do not bother
the developed countries. A via media was found through which the Western
countries could help the people of North Eastern states to increase the
productivity of their rice crop along with the protection of the forests. The
project implemented in India became a Win-Win programme that others want to
emulate. The Writeshop was designed to document this success and to make it
available to planners, policy makers and farmers in similar situations.
A 'problem' was transformed into a 'possibility' that will make ripples around
the world. It will touch and change lives for the better. Goa is proud to have
provided the venue and the personnel to make this possible
and earn both money
and experience from it.
At the Writeshop was a young lady from Philippines who is a mother of an eight
years old boy. She is a devout catholic and had been married for a decade that
I have known her. Now suddenly she finds herself 'unmarried'. She is not a
spinster any more because she has been married for ten years and has a child
by that marriage. She is not divorced because both, the Government of
Philippines and the Roman Catholic Church to which she has allegiance, do not
recognize divorce. She was married. Her marriage has be annulled, a unique
system of negating ground reality practiced by the Catholic Church. She is
unmarried, not divorced or separated. She also has a legitimate and legal
child. I can imagine the trauma of the boy, legitimate son of parents who have
since been unmarried. The parents are now free to marry, as most unmarried
couples do, or join any congregation to become priest or nun. I can now truly
understand what fellow Bardezkar, Jose Custodio de Faria, must have undergone
en route to understanding 'lucid sleep' and becoming a famous pauper in Paris
called Abbe Faria. While he was still a teenager, his mother became a 'Sister'
and then a 'Mother Superior' at the Santa Monica nunnery. His father, Caetano
Vitorino de Faria, treated his marriage with Dona Rosa de Sousa as a brief
interlude in his seminary life. He went back to it to finish what he had begun
before marriage. Annulment is such a wonderful mechanism for the couple to
begin life anew
and separately.
With far less provocation, teenagers of today are willing to kill or end their
own lives through suicide. Imagine having to call ones own father as 'Fr. XYZ'
or one's mother as 'Mother Superior'. Perhaps the ideal way out is to follow
the maxim,'If you can't beat them, join them.' Jose Custodio de Faria joined
the seminary and became a priest and the whole family became a part of the
service of God. Actually, Jose Custodio de Faria could have been part of the
statistics of suicide victims. Instead, he experimented and came up with the
principles of hypnotism which are now used to understand suicidal tendencies
and to treat such disorders. One young and enthusiastic counselor, Mahalaxmi
Bhobe, has volunteered to help in combating such suicidal tendencies amongst
students in Bardez during the current academic year. That, perhaps, is the
best tribute one can pay to the great Bardezkar, Abbe Faria, who would have
been 250 years old this month end. No one lives that long. Abbe Faria lives
through his dedicated work and discoveries. Whether the Government of Goa, the
Archdiocese of Goa & Daman, the Corporation of City of Panaji, the Indian
Medical Association-Goa Chapter, IPHB, Psychiatry & Psychology Associations,
Village Panchayats of Colvale and Candolim or any other body wants to
celebrate the event or not, it matters little. Abbe Faria's work helps to save
lives and make them fuller than they would otherwise be! (ENDS)
Miguel Braganza's column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=482
==============================================================================
The above article appeared in the May 26, 2006 edition of Gomantak Times, Goa
_____________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list.
Goanet mailing list (Goanet@goanet.org)
