Books

GOA: A Daughter’s Story by Maria Aurora Couto. Viking, Penguin India, Delhi, 2004.

IT is not without reason that Maria Aurora Couto’s book Goa: A Daughter’s Story has created a sort of sensation, not only among Goans or persons of Goan origin or those whose ancestors migrated from Goa centuries ago to other parts of the country, but also among those with no direct relationship with the soil of Goa but a genuine curiosity about the real Goa. The book presents the past and contemporary history, capturing various facets keeping the soul of Goa at its centre. It thus touches chords that bind members of the human race to each other, successfully transcending geographical and political boundaries.

Books on Goa by Goans usually suffer from a noticeable though unintentional shortcoming. If the writer is a Hindu, what you see in the book is a reflection of the Hindu Goa and if the writer is a Christian the reader moves only through Christian Goa. Consequently the picture is incomplete, often projecting a distorted image of the place and people. It goes to the author’s credit that she has avoided falling into that kind of trap and therefore, her portrait of Goa – past and present – is complete and devoid of any distortion. Achieving this is never easy but Couto has painstakingly gathered facts, impressions and reactions from a cross-section of Goan society, making the story not only a ‘daughter’s story’ but Goa’s own story.

Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa for the Portuguese in 1510; his successors left the shores of Goa and India forever in 1961. Among the colonial powers, the Portuguese stayed the longest on Indian soil. Their regime not only brought in religious conversion and inquisition, but what is unique and more significant is that they followed a policy aimed at uprooting Indian culture and implanting Portuguese culture on the Goan soil. Conversion was not restricted to religion alone; rather the attempt was to convert Goans entirely to an alien culture. The forceful pursuit of this policy had a devastating impact on religion, language, law, art, architecture, food, dress, culture and the lifestyle of the Goan people – Hindu, Christian and Mohammedan. Some influences may have been good while others worth giving up, but most have endured and become part of contemporary Goan life.

Maria Couto rightly begins with the geography and history of Goa as these are the basic factors that have made Goans what they are. The writer then goes on to examine the different effects and influences resulting from the long colonial rule. They include the destruction of folklore and the gaunkari system, and the creation of a new lifestyle that influenced one section more than the other.

If Couto had merely dished out all these facts and comments, forgetting that she is a daughter of the soil, her prose would perhaps have remained dry and soulless. But she is very much there in the total picture. Through references to her parents and their distinctive qualities, her words acquire a human face and touch a deep chord within the reader. Her lucid prose makes for a compelling reading that satisfies the reader in good measure, if not wholly.

The reader, however, is likely to feel that although the impact of colonial rule has been discussed, the selected ‘representative’ families belong to a certain strata of society which today can be classified as upper middle class. The influence on the masses or the lower strata of society is not as clearly articulated as it should have been. Of course, there are constraints, but that is the major block and as such deserves further discussion. Perhaps the masses did not count in those turbulent times; yet the impact on them has definitely adversely affected their socio-economic status and Goa’s pristine culture.

Couto’s views on the transformations witnessed by Goa provide very interesting insights inviting historians and sociologists to further probe and discover the factors that have contributed to the synthesis and communal harmony despite the scars of conversion and inquisition, partial treatment and selective conferment of privileges.

However, the book is not only about the political history or social transformation. Language and identity, word and song, mind and soul, myth and reality are topics that add rainbow colours to the portrait and make it interesting reading so that the real Goan and not his caricature emerges from the word-picture. The writer is at her best when she cruises through the two major rivers of Goa, Mandovi and Zuari, to trace the remnants of history and the founts of culture. One feels that one is with her in the boat, reading nature and discovering the port.

In a way this book locates the contemporary situation in Goa in its historical context, especially the colonial period. The discussion about the present situation is insightful and incisive. Maria Couto rightly emphasizes disturbing trends like attempts to destroy communal harmony and the growth of an exclusivist outlook and intolerance. The book conveys an implicit warning that the emerging patterns may not be in the interest of the nation in general and Goa in particular.

This ‘daughter’s story’ informs, educates and entertains. Above all it reflects the Goan ethos in a manner that leaves it unadulterated and undiluted.

Uday Bhembre

 

GOA INDICA: A Critical Portrait of Post-Colonial Goa by Arun Sinha. Bibliophile South Asia in association with Promilla and Co., 2002.

NOT all books about Goa do justice to Goa and Goans. This book falls in this category. The writer claims that it is a critical portrait of postcolonial Goa. The portrait though critical remains incomplete and distorted.

The book begins with the history of the conquest of Goa by the Portuguese and the chapters that follow discuss topics like unique identity, land reforms, mining boom, tourism boom, the Catholic Church, Uniform Civil Code, ethnic fencing and the future of Goa. Sinha provides information on the various topics that he has discussed and presents his views. In the process, he throws light on the strengths and weaknesses of Goan society, which should provoke introspection among Goans. Sinha also draws bold conclusions about the future of Goa in the final chapter of the book. Only time will tell whether those conclusions are right or wrong.

What strikes the reader is the existence of blank spaces in the portrait. Goan politics, which has been a subject of interest and criticism throughout the country, is not discussed at all. Similarly, the social and cultural scene which has changed vastly in the postcolonial period, is left out making for an incomplete portrait.

Sinha conflates Salazar’s definition of ‘separate identity’ of Goa with Nehru’s definition of ‘distinct identity’ and is critical of Nehru for backing the demand to treat Goa as a distinct political entity within the Indian Union. His analysis of Nehru’s views lacks depth and the conclusions are erroneous, to say the least. Nehru in clear terms emphasized that Goa has a regional cultural identity and that the colonial period had added to it other distinctive features.

Sinha approaches various aspects of Goan life with a bias most self-respecting Goans will be tempted to describe as anti-Goan. His views about the Catholic Church, about Goans attempting to protect economic and cultural interests, about Konkani, the language of Goans – all lack a proper appreciation of ground realities. At times he is clearly ill-informed. This is evident in his conclusions about the future of the Konkani language, totally ignoring the fact that thousands of children from the Catholic community are learning Konkani through the Devanagari script, whereas the generation which favoured the Roman script for Konkani is slowly fading out.

The book is a typical example of ivory tower analysis, its weakness further compounded by attempts to show Goans in a bad light and to belittle their efforts for a cultural renaissance. The book presents a distorted image of Goa although an effort has been made to inform the readers about Goa’s economy, the mining boom, land reforms and the Uniform Civil Code. The portrait lacks a socio-cultural analysis of Goan society and the conclusion that it is only a multi-cultural society is only a figment of the imagination. Any reader wanting to know about post-colonial Goa closely will be well advised to take the views of the writer with a pinch of salt.

Uday Bhembre

 

KARMELIN by Damodar Mauzo (translated by Vidya Pai). Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 2004.

FOR English language readers there are very few books of quality fiction that language an authentic picture of the Goan lifestyle. The caricatured characters projected by Bollywood and the media have been responsible for constructing an image of Goans, especially the Catholics, as a people who drink, dance and make merry. In addition, the slogan ‘Go Goa 365 Days – Everything Included’ inanely dreamed up by Goa Tourism and the promos of the star hotels send wrong signals to people outside Goa. In part, Goan literature has been able to convey Goan sensibility to the readers in a better perspective. Damodar Mauzo, a sensitive writer, has shown this in his short stories centred mainly in Catholic-dominated South Goa. His outstanding novel Karmelin, set in Goa and Kuwait, published recently in English translation by the Sahitya Akademi, shows a different facet of Goan life.

Karmelin is a simple tale with no philosophising or complexities – the story of a Catholic lower-middle-class Goan woman ravaged by fate from early childhood through her teens and early adulthood, to marriage with a worthless, uncaring brute of a drunkard. In each of her encounters, she was fortunate to find a saviour to lend her a helping hand. When Karmelin lost her entire family – baby brother, mother and father – to an epidemic of typhoid, her aunt and uncle took her in. Though not exactly welcomed by her paternal aunt, the uncle showered her with enough love to make her feel like a real daughter, not a foster-child. Her cousin Agnel treated her like a baby sister. The brotherly love graduated into a heady romance till the bubble was pricked by her scheming aunt who had visions of a dowry-laden bride for her only son – not an impoverished orphan, even if good-looking and sweet-natured.

After Agnel’s wedding with a prosperous but ugly girl from an expatriate family settled in East Africa, Karmelin is married off to a typical football-crazy, hard-drinking, hard-gambling, semi-literate moron. Her descent into abject poverty as a result of Jose’s gambling and drinking is made even more acute by the arrival of a daughter. Her nasty mother-in-law makes things unbearable. Her aunt tersely tells her not to expect any help from her, while her loving foster-father, now ailing, is helpless and soon dies. At this point, her sister-in-law, Isabel, despite being estranged from their mother-in-law, becomes her second guardian angel, helping to keep the wolf from her door and providing sorely-needed emotional support. After several years of this limbo existence, Karmelin decides to tread the path chosen by thousands of Indian women in a similar predicament – go to the Gulf countries to work as a maid. The transformation in her social status back in Goa from an object of pity to a moneyed person with bank managers, landlords and even parish priests beating a path to her door accurately captures social reality. Though gratified at the change in her fortunes, she is aware of the price she has had to pay. But she is grateful to God that her fate is infinitely better than that of many other hapless women who even paid with their lives in the virtual slave-labour conditions of the Gulf countries of the 1970s and 1980s. But she stoically bears her cross, trying to repay debts of gratitude by doing whatever good she can. Above all, she strives to give her only child, Belinda, the best.

The juxtaposition of the news of her husband’s death in Goa after her customary Jumma session with her virile Kuwaiti boss reflects the powerful evocative imagery of Mauzo. The shocking episode when she has to helplessly submit to her husband’s friend, Rosario, is sensitively handled. Even while acknowledging the sheer physical release that her husband could never give her, she still manages to be revulsed by Rosario and by herself.

Though the book shuttles from rural Goa to metropolitan Kuwait, it is not overly burdened with travelogue accounts of the two places, keeping the reader’s focus firmly on the characters. Mauzo is not judgemental; though Agnel and Jose’s behaviour is despicable, they are not condemned. Even Nissar’s character, probably typical of the petro-dollar-rich Arab who believes that everything can be bought with money, is marked by some redeeming sensitivity. Above all Karmelin herself, though not lily-pure, comes across as a true everyday heroine – buffeted by fate but preserving her humanity and integrity. There are thus enough shades of grey on Mauzo’s canvas to make the story both plausible and sufficiently riveting to grip the reader.

Throughout the story, though the focus remains firmly on the main characters, Mauzo manages to weave in a number of portentous events of the latter part of 20th century Goa – the epidemics of the late forties and early fifties, the end of Portuguese rule, the mining boom, the post-liberation period, Goa’s linkages with Maharashtra, the fragile money-order economy and dependence on remittances from expatriate workers on ships and in the Gulf, particularly after the 1970s, and the trauma of numerous Indian children being brought up by single parents.

Normally it is the breadwinner father who is away, but as Karmelin reminds, Jose is one of thousands of Goan, rather Indian, husbands who like drone-bees have become accustomed to a life of lazing and drinking while their better-halves slave away abroad like indentured labourers with virtually no human rights, paying off their husbands’ debts and working to secure a better future for their children. Bankers see our Karmelins as a source of hefty fixed deposits, parish priests as dependable donors, neighbours and friends as soft touches, impoverished landlords and real estate agents and other businessmen as not too discerning customers and gossip-mongers as targets for their envious barbs. But what about the protagonists themselves? At the end, is the stupendous price they pay really worth it?

This novel, which won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award 21 years ago, has been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada. With the publication this year of the English version it is expected to reach an even wider readership. Translation, more correctly called transcreation, is a painstaking process as it entails delving into the writer’s mind. A mastery of both the languages, local milieu and idiom is almost indispensable. The loss of nuance and local colour, and the absence of the powerful evocative imagery of the original, has therefore to be understood in this context. Despite the constraints of working from faraway Kolkata and not being from a Goan background (though a Konkani speaker), the English translator Vidya Pai has been able to retain much of the ethnic flavour. She has done a commendable job.

Xavier Cota