EDITORIAL
Goan themes are infinite. This is proven by issue after issue of our magazine, and the current edition, in which we talk about history, politics and religion; languages and the arts; literature and culture; cookery and sport; society and the environment, as well as illustrious Goans. It is all grist to our mill.
Goa is in the public eye, but some aspects of its living have been forgotten, such as the costume on our cover: a kunbi pair dancing (painting by our resident contributor Clarice Vaz). Victims of globalisation, the traditional wearers gave up the dress years ago, and here’s how it the apple of the artist’s eye.
In this vein, Celina de Vieira Velho Almeida, another of our resident contributors, covered various cultural expressions of the Goan people in a series of essays in our magazine. She has put together these and a few others in her recently published book, Feasts and Fests of Goa: Flavour of a Unique Culture, reviewed here by Óscar de Noronha, under the title “Culture between the Covers”. And another work, Becoming Goan, by Michelle Mendonça Bambawale, is the subject of a feature entitled “Of falea, feni and fighting for Goa”, by Brian de Souza.
This typical Goan alcoholic drink naturally leads us to our “Wines and Delicacies” section, where we have Goa Curry as a unique dish happily married to Soalheiro, the “matchmakers” being our associate editor José Filipe Monteiro and the eminent food and wine critic Fernando Melo. Be sure to savour this artistic contribution, as well as visit the art section, which features a new artist, Deborah Fernandes; Edgar João, who, far from the land of his ancestors, dreams of coconut trees; Girish Gujar, who paints one of Panjim’s iconic locations; and Rima Dhume, an oyster-shell window with bougainvillea around it.
That’s how we live in Goa!… a theme that inspired Valentino Viegas’ feature article, “A family home in Goa”. Our associate editor says that “with the creation, promotion and development of dynamic family homes, many of the problems that Western society faces in its daily life could be avoided and overcome.” The said author also discusses “How Goa perceived the Carnation Revolution”, an event that marked not only Portugal, but also its former Pearl of the Orient.
In fact, Goa and the Goans have made their mark across the world. In Mário Viegas’ feature, we learn about “António Mascarenhas – an unpretentious star”. And, according to Philomena and Gilbert Lawrence, “Goa’s heart-lung system is alive and well”, thanks to the development of ecotourism. Let’s wish Goan society the same.
Meanwhile, a 19th century understanding of Goan society is found in the novel Jacob e Dulce, which was the subject of a lecture by Luís Cabral de Oliveira, at Casa de Goa. That lecture, as well as the launch of the book A Língua Portuguesa que nos une, by Ivo Álvares Furtado, feature in our News section.
Just as Lusophony unites a long tropical strip, from America to Asia, the Konkani language continues to be the conducting wire of Goan society throughout the world. And when denied citizenship status, Monsignor Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado restored it through a series titled “Konkani is not a dialect of Marathi”, which we publish in translation by Óscar de Noronha. The latter has also updated the Konkani of J. C. Barreto Miranda’s Enfiada de Anexins Goeses serialised in the Konkani Corner.
In addition to this historical document, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the birth of Luís de Camões, we publish the essay “Camões, the Poet of the ‘Renaissance’ and the Island of Goa where he lived”, by Renato de Sá, followed the Bengali academic Suniti Kumar Chatterji’s fair assessment of The Lusiads. And the section closes with the story of the imposing statue of the Portuguese Bard, which used to stand in the square of the city of Old Goa.
Pedro Miranda Albuquerque’s “Modesta Epopeia Portuguesa” also comes in very opportunely, taking a new look – critical and original – at the Portuguese epic story in the Orient. It should be noted, however, that without it there would not be Gilberto Freyre’s “sociological miracle” of Goa; there wouldn’t be the literary miscegenation that Júlia Serra talks about in her essay titled “Vimala Devi e a Voz da Saudade”: “the feelings, social inequalities, linguistic and religious diversity and so many other themes that the author captured and brought back from her Goa-India.”
Incidentally, in A Literatura Indo-Portuguesa, Vimala Devi and Manuel de Seabra only cover Goan authors. Their magnum opus does not include Daman, which in fact holds an important dialect of that “Portugal Without End”, as journalist Barata-Feyo put it: a good pretext to publish “Calor”, by Damanese poet Hermenegildo Lopes, who took part in the celebrations for the Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities, which this year took place in Daman, at the happy initiative of the Consulate-General of Portugal in Goa, as you can see from the respective section. And we have a report of the activities of the Goa Delegation of Fundação Oriente, another institution that has been rendering yeoman’s work to Goan society.
Last but not least, we wish to highlight two great contributions to this issue: J.M. John Marshal’s study on the historical evidence of the links between the old City of Goa and the Lateran Archbasilica; and a lucid biography of the last Archbishop-Patriarch of Goa, Dom José Vieira Alvernaz, by Adelino Rodrigues da Costa. This block of two original articles comes in very handy as the 18th Exhibition of the Sacred Relics of St Francis Xavier takes place in less than six months.
Curiously, the Basque missionary who, on his arrival in Goa, in 1542, exclaimed “cosa para ver”, later said “Goa will end by itself”. Without going into the merits of such an enigmatic statement, whether or not apocryphal, we should rather pray that Goa never ends, or rather, that its dynamism endures: a Goa spread across the world, a Goa without end!
Revista da Casa de Goa, No. 29, July-August 2024, pp 1-3 https://rb.gy/mt3jzy
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