The Greatest Goan Stories Ever Told by Manohar Shetty - A Book Review

Manohar Shetty is spot-on when he tells us, in the Introduction, how “a small state like Goa”...“has produced a disproportionate number of good writers”. Reading through the Introduction is, in my opinion, necessary. For the editor has taken pains over explanatory notes from his selection of translators. These notes provide a much needed overview to the anthology. They also strike a personal chord. “These responses shed some light on the tricky process of translation and the finding of English equivalents to things that are uniquely Goan.” (Tell us about it!)

The Gold Coin (Laxmanrao Sardessai translated from the Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro) is a good choice for a starter. “Nothing remained of their opulence but the thick walls of their house,” says it all. “Yet his family’s traditional nobility had set thorns in his path.” Here is a story of a once high-born, socially high-ranking family that has fallen off the pedestal because “the prestige of a family is measured by its wealth”. And yet, honest virtue wins the day. When a gold coin is found missing in the home of the wealthy host, the impoverished guest leaves the only coin he has in his possession under the broom to save himself from the eye of suspicion. “And so Tulsi, maiden and modest, twelve years old, sincere and splendid” finds her groom.

The Heir Apparent (Augusto do Rosário Rodrigues tr. from the Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro) is a story of a vicar’s visit to the grand mansion of the Cabral family in which the head of the Brahmin Roman Catholic house is bedridden and is being cared for by a young Shudra Catholic boy who is “tall and sturdy, with broad shoulders… friendly-looking if slightly coarse face.” If that sentence doesn’t tell you anything about the caste system in Goa, nothing will. As a lot of the short stories in this anthology reveal, this one too ends with the vicar saying, “I too am a Brahmin. Pardon me! I was. A Christian is what I am. And it won’t be me who spills the beans.”

A Story about Mines (Epitácio Pais tr. from the Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro) is a story of smuggling, a business “that needs men as strong as oxen, not runts sired under the influence of alcohol” and where these men can make themselves noticeable to “deflect attention”. Until mining as a better prospect comes along. “This deal was on the right track,” says our protagonist to himself. “Of course, the worst can still happen, but that was down to fate, and you can’t fight fate.”

Job’s Children (Vimala Devi tr. from the Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro) is a fisherman’s story, his position in “Shudra society” and “the duties he couldn’t shirk that enslaved him,” the main being to assemble a dowry for his daughter and ensure “her future prospect as a woman.” Vimala Devi’s brilliance is hidden in sentences like “Suddenly the women broke into smiles. They smiled in unison as if they were one woman.” But when Bostaio returns from his fishing trip ill, it is the good Dr Amoncar’s  admiration for these “humble dark-skinned Shudras” that increases and the disgust that Dona Lavinia (from the landlord’s house) diminishes. Despite this, she listens to her “damned conscience” leaving her “no choice” and hands the patient, “slowly so that everyone could see her generosity, a rupee from her bag.”

The Yoke (Mahabaleshwar Sail tr. from the Konkani by Vidya Pai) is a story that is perhaps familiar to all of us, where three brothers divide up the land their father has left them and offer an old coconut palm and a cow “not very young, nor (was it) very old”. But when our protagonist leads the cow home, her husband rains blows on the hapless animal. “The blows that landed on the animal’s back were actually meant for me,” she thought to herself. The cow soon gives birth to a bull-calf who grows up bearing a deep-rooted grudge against his master. “Like a custard apple sapling that sprouts beside a mighty banyan.”

Coinsanv’s Cattle (Damodar Mauzo tr. from the Konkani by Xavier Cota) is a story of a husband venting anger on his animals and his wife’s compassion compensating for this cruelty. It is a story that describes Goa of many decades ago, where neighbours would leave the slop from boiled rice for your pigs and cows, where a few drops of coconut oil drizzled over smoked sardines would suffice for dinner, where the cows in the cowshed were like extended family, where paddy seed was more precious than gold and, where “our animals are so loving anybody will grab them.”

The Return (Maria do Céu Barreto tr. from the Portuguese by Nalini Elvino de Sousa). There are many stories that speak of homecoming after long gaps, sometimes spanning over decades-how things have changed, how, “as a good Goan, the driver wanted to chat,” “how the Catholics were now a minority”, how “they just needed to know how much he was earning,” how “justice in India is very slow”, how “parents would prefer that their kids remained single over them marrying someone from an inferior caste.” This is one such love story that ends in tragedy, like a lot of… oh, well, never mind!

A Cousin from the Mother’s Side (Gajanan Jog tr. from the Konkani by Augusto Pinto) is the story of a young man, Raya, frustrated because fate has deprived him of a steady job, a wife and family. “A man is only as good as his money.” Raya meets with his childhood sweetheart Pushpa, now a married woman but confesses that “in my heart even I’m not really married.” And when Pushpa takes him home and, surprised by her husband, she introduces her former paramour as “a cousin from the mother’s side”. In this case, however, the husband is not the last to know. 

The Palm Tree (Pundalik Naik tr. from the Konkani by Vidya Pai) is a beautifully crafted story of Khushali Rama or Happy Rama and his relationship with a coconut tree. “Like the palm tree, Rama too sways in the breeze” until the iron ore mine closeby robs both Rama and the tree of life, of love, of joy.

Mr Secondhand (Manohar Shetty). Our protagonist in the story is a “sixty year-old bachelor, Caji, (who) loved, above all, to tinker about in that garage and around his small bungalow that he had bought some twenty years ago from a couple who had migrated to Abu Dhabi.” “None of the residents in his colony could recall him buying anything new.” 

A Tale of Two Islands (Fatima M. Noronha) is a story graphically describing life in the Goan village of Divar. “Conceição or Consu Bai as they called her, grew up surrounded by all the noises and familiarities of a bustling village, but also by the enchantment of a small island with limited interests beyond itself.” The author also gives us a vivid description of Zanzibar, and the Goan diaspora there. Eugénio, our protagonist, is not a “marrying man”; his career was all. Eventually, his career demanded a woman by his side-his promotion to postmaster general was in sight.” However, fate had something else stored for both our protagonist and his chubby-cheeked sister. The description of Zanzibar and Divar are like a patchwork quilt, bringing two hearts and many lives together under one warm embrace.

FloRitta (Savia Viegas) is a story of how vivaah.com, a matchmaking site, changed the life of a “forty something, holding a teaching job”. As the opening line suggests, “It wasn’t easy making a choice.” Our protagonist holds this teaching job in Bhatinda, Punjab and had it not been for Sr Pionila, the school headmistress, would still be there (who can tell?). It is Sr Pionila who uploaded her profile picture. “Otherwise, who would have looked at me here on this side of Bhatinda where all the turbaned folk live and Catholics are very rare.” Indeed. Savia describes the abrupt end to the wedding bells ringing a warning alarm bell in our hearts.

In Sunanda’s Dream, Sheela Jaywant’s characteristic wit and charming turn of phrase delight. “Drums for storing rationed water, overflowing sewage, washing hung out to dry on wire fences and liberally strewn garbage marked the neighbourhood.” and, “Today, Sunanda earns twelve thousand rupees a month, more than any man in her village.” And, in the middle of a page describing security guard Sunanda’s job, Sheela admits, “Yes, Sunanda’s job was boring.” “No firearm had gone off. No sick man collapsed. Forget booby traps and things like that, not even a lost child had she had the joy of tracking down.” “There were other tasks,... like opening the doors of the cars when VIPs came, for example. (In a fish products factory, even an inspector of septic tanks was a VIP.) And when Sunanda “had seen a beautiful toilet that day, one she would not have believed existed, experienced a thrill, felt an indescribable emotion, perhaps never to be repeated. Sometimes, heaven is found unexpectedly in the most mundane places.”

The Protector (Nayana Adarkar tr. from the Konkani by Augusto Pinto) is the story of every woman whose parents are looking for a man, a protector, for their daughter, even if she is a graduate and has a good job and “is built like a hefty block of wood”. In other words, looking for a protector when none is needed. Finally, such a protector is found and a son is born, who dutifully follows the father, in every abusive, oppressive, misogynistic way. At a puja, for example, our protagonist is told that if she is unable to get a day off from work, her presence can be substituted “with some supari rolled into the knot of my dhoti.” A crystalised description of the status of women in Goa, one that not many of us hear about too often because these stories are simply not voiced in our state.

A Dolphin in the Ganges begins with Raymund, a second generation Goan in Australia disgusted by the fact that his parents had bought him a ticket to “home country” as a graduation present. Adventures follow, “the ancestral villa was a study in melancholic decay and picturesque rot,”. Finally, an aunt decides that “he’s too Australian for his own good anyway” and whisks him off to Bombay. More adventures follow (crude same-sex propositions included), until, back in Australia, he finds both himself and his sexual orientation.

Bed Blocker No 10 (Selma Carvalho). Here’s another writer that I admire personally. Take a look at this: “When she’d arrived from Goa, five years ago, she’d been horrified at the food vended across London. Food in Goa was sacrosanct.” This just about sums it up, for us, what nostalgia means. Mary is a nurse, at the mercy of racial jibes from her bed-ridden patients. “Mary wondered how she had arrived at this place in time where her individual history had been reduced to the rubble of stereotype” gives us Selma at her brilliant best.

Bapo Kale’s House (José Lourenço) is a story of havoc vented on a remote village by government officials under the guise of a mock drill. The villagers do not understand the seriousness of a man-made disaster and are only concerned about abandoning the mud houses left to them by their ancestors, even if for a short time. Our protagonist, Bapo Kale, scares the intruders with a rusty old shotgun and when they flee, wakes his sleeping wife with, “Wake up Bhagi, we won! We won!”

The Goal he never scored (Alexandre Moniz Barbosa) is a story after my own football heart. “It was early morning, but the young footballer had finished a run through the narrow and dusty roads of Navelim, and was having a suloli, a pancake of rice and coconut, that his mother had prepared over the wood fire.” It is lines like these that draw word-pictures of our boys and girls and their passion for the game.

The Sacrifice (Prakash S. Parienkar tr. from the Konkani by Vidya Pai). Just when you thought that Shigmo was a one day festival like the North India Holi, this story spells it out for you. The story revolves around the felling of a fruit-laden mango tree to be set alight at Holi ending in tragedy.

Tale of a Toilet (Ramnath Gajanan Gawade tr. from the Konkani by Vidya Pai). Why are our writers so obsessed with toilets? Read the anthology and find out! This is a sad story of a man who desperately needs a toilet but is faced, instead, with a tidal wave of red tape. Desperate, he finally creates a stink (literally) outside the Sarpanch’s house every morning. 

The Homecoming (Cordelia B. Francis). Our protagonist is a “religious man” who, “in his carefully crafted world” keeps things “simple and austere”. In retirement, Theodore takes to sculpting and when asked by the rotund Fr Pinto how he makes exact copies of the originals, Theodore says, “I am not a complicated man, Father. You give me something and I will imitate it pat down,” to which Fr Pinto replies, “Blind faith, Theo, if more people were like you, it would make my job easier.”

Mushrooms (Uday Naik tr. from the Konkani by Aditi Barve and Augusto Pinto). Snakes seeking revenge, thirsting for vendetta is something you hear all the time. The story tells us about an impoverished Bhagdu who tries to sneak into a protected forest to collect wild mushrooms, a harvest forbidden by law. Uday Naik gives us a vivid picture of local legend, belief and superstition. “You should spit if a chameleon crosses your path… or it will jinx you.”

Excess Baggage (Cherie Naroo). Our protagonist is not ashamed of her “full figure” that “could charm and harm at the same time.” Peppered with some hot humour, the story has Sandra’s short-lived marriage end in fiasco where Cherie’s sense of wit shines through. “It had to be the shortest marriage in the history of Cortim.”

Here’s another piece of sparkle and wit. Roanna Gonsalves, in Curry Muncher brings us a story from the Goan diaspora and racial attack. “I had lost all faith in the ability of clothes to be markers of class and trustworthiness” and “then I heard the sob, Vincent’s sob. Indian men only cry at funerals.”

The dead donkey (Pralay Bakshi). Read the first line in the story and you’re sold! “It was Raju, the pav bhaji vendor, who first spotted the dead donkey under the bridge.” And, like all the other sizzlers in the anthology, this one too has a twist in its tale.

Jessica’s up to tricks (as usual, I might add) in On Sernabatim Beach. “She’s afraid to look at me as much as I’m afraid to look at her, even though she’s too young to know for a fact what I already know.” This is a story that rolls our domestic violence through the eyes, ears and written words of an abused mother’s child. When his mother goes missing, the child tells us, “I stayed close to the edge where the streetlights along the walkway threw the curdling waves into relief. The water gave me nothing.” The most heart wrenching line comes from him when he says, “there’s a place inside me that tells me she’s here, somewhere, loitering in the murky depths of the Arabian Sea, but I need to know for sure.” The story ends, as all stories do. His search, however, doesn’t.

Coconut Dreams (Derek Mascarenhas). “Four days in Goa nearly killed me.” might lead you into thinking this story is devoid of humour. Wrong! “The bus was early,” I said. “I only have one bar of battery left.” “You’re at the bar?” Later, at the coconut stall, “Where are you from, my friend?” “Canada. How did you know I’m not from here?” The coconut seller chuckled. “You have hope in your eyes. Too much hope for here.”

I don’t recommend that you just read this anthology, I would go so far as to say that the Tourism Department should give out complimentary copies of this anthology to every visitor who gets off that flight and heads towards a hotel/homestay/gated community or real estate agent. When that happens, we too shall have hope in our eyes. Too much to hope?

Our team would reccommend buying your books from an independent bookstore. Here are our picks - The Dogears Bookshop and Champaca Bookstore, for the wonderful job they do curating books.