Vignettes of Goa
SUDEEP CHAKRAVARTI
REFLECTED IN WATER — Writings on Goa: Edited by Jerry Pinto — Editor; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.
Rs. 395.
Perhaps it is fortunate I first met Goa outside Goa — in its itinerant people, food and tradition. A guest is not turned away and the larder never empty till it is. Suitable dried red chilly is worth travelling hours to source. Stories that are tales. Smiles that aren't underwritten by money. Wretchedness of condition met with a certain dignity. And all enveloped in a pining, wispy yet tangible fabric of the mind that wraps Goans in a security blanket. The idea of Goa, I came to believe, is greater than the sum of Goa. It saved me the humiliation of presuming to know the place through chips-with-everything menus at several terrible eateries along its coast, typecast in Hindi movies, and shoddy coffee-table books about its "heritage".
This notion has only reinforced itself these past 20 years as I visited with increasing frequency, dressing and undressing Goa at her whim, and came to acknowledge and understand her beauty, brains, blemishes and empty boasts. She is both perpetrator and victim of stereotype. She hides a glorious, seething world outside the karma-kebab beach strip that embroiders the west of her. This world is tempestuous. It turns. It churns. It spits and kicks, and loves. Goa revels in magic. Trust me. I now live here, with her.
Glimpses
Reflected in Water largely captures this Goa, with history and hope. Anger and disgust as well, but these are corollaries to any work in progress, as Goa is. There are names in 44 self-contained glimpses and excerpts — a few, larger than life. The proto-Kipling Richard Burton; Graham Greene; Indologist in residence William Dalrymple; Gita Mehta; poet Manohar Shetty — who has a knack to turn innocent jasmine into jaundiced wreck.
Except for a prophetic Greene, these are mostly clichés. Necessary for background, roundedness and the weight of names, perhaps, but essentially, easy picking from a particular time and space. The joy is in the gems in this collection: some raw, some cut, others polished and bursting with colour, exploring the boundary of what Goa means at home and abroad.
Prabhakar A. Angle's passionate "Misunderstanding Goa" and the equally passionate, erudite "The Freedom to Choose" by Armando Menezes set up past and future combat over language (Konkani and Marathi), religion (Hindu and Catholic) and pride — too little and too much — that is all too often the ignored undertow of Goa. Naresh Fernandes' arresting search for a relic of St. Francis Xavier in Macau, through "Tomb Raider: Looking for St Francis Xavier", appears to be a search for roots as much as luscious adventure.
Vivek Menezes grabs at Goan-ness with a tormented, brilliant Francis Newton Souza in New York, his desperate interaction with the painter in "The Man Who Swallowed Goa Whole" a highlight of the anthology. The haunting "Outkast de Souza" underscores the arrival of Sonia Faleiro as a young Goan writer to watch for, fearless in her exploring of demons. There are demons too in an excerpt from Margaret Mascarenhas' "Skin". Samita Sinha, Peter Nazareth and poets Adil Jussawala and Ranjit Hoskoté are cameos; Pundalik Naik's `When An Ass Mounts a Cow' a nifty kick in the lower abdomen.
Churn of Goa
This is a buffet as sit-down. Other pieces — lyrics, poems, stories, essays, a let's-blur-the-lines graphic set co-authored by Jerry Pinto, the collection's editor — are interludes between hors d'oeuvre, entrée and sinful dessert. It's a patchy but honest meal, cheap at the price.
The best takeaway for me is that, the collection suggests reasons for the churn of Goa, but not one piece justifies it. The beast comes with the beauty, take it or leave it.
Goa is now again politically aware, angrier at its development desecration, more ambitious, and learning the hard way that balance is the greatest weapon against myopia of the mind, and greed. It is again learning, reluctantly, what generations of travelling, freethinking Goans have known: that it is not the centre of the universe; there are as many barbarians inside the gates as outside: those who wreck Goa are very often Goans.
There could be several choice anthologies to reflect it; this tiny state has enough moods, and writers to capture these. But the next anthology could be more discerning, more assured, braver. Reflected in Water proves conclusively there's a world beyond the vaddo, the immediate neighbourhood of the village. Readers live there too.
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