Goan Diaspora

                                                               Lino Leitão

Lino Leitão  responds to Professor Festino's Diaspora and the Goan Experience. Additional comments from Ben Antao
 

Prof Cielo Griselda Festino’s article, The discourse of Diaspora and Goan Experience, published in CLARITAS (revista do Departamento de Inglês da PUC-SP – no 8- 2002, São Paulo) gives us (Goans at home and abroad) cognizance and insights into our psyche. By reading the body of Goan literature, though, Prof. Cielo who isn’t a Goan, has brought her explorations into our collective consciousness and unique Goan experiences to the fore. These, according to my view, are believable experiences of the Goans at home and in the diaspora.

Cielo’s important source material, from which she draws most her perceptions about us, comes from her reading of Prof. Peter Nazareth’s anthology – GOAN LITERATURE: A MODERN READER; ( Journal of South Asian Literature, Michigan State University, Volume XVIII, Winter, Spring 1983-Number 1). Prof. Peter Nazareth might not have realized then, but this anthology gave Goans in North America the awareness of Goan literature, making us understand ourselves, who we are as Goans. Applying some of the theories of diasporic consciousness, Prof. Cielo’s article brings us an awareness that we aren’t unlike other diasporic communities in the world.

It’s true though that during the dictatorial period of Salazar, the Goan creativity was stagnant, as Prof. Peter Nazareth points out in the Introduction. But that censorship affected only the Goan elite as such. The humble people of Goa, non-elites, had their own creative performances – tiatr and khell. The colonial authority and the elite did not take these skits seriously, maybe because they weren’t in Portuguese; they were in the native language – Konkani.


Ben Antao: I agree with the above observation. There was tremendous creativity in the Konkani language through the tiatr and the khell. I once mentioned this fact to Joao da Veiga Coutinho, author of A Kind of Absence, when I met him in Toronto in 1999.

"The colonial administration never affected the people in the villages or like me who did not speak the Portuguese language. We were free to write as we pleased," I said to him.

He nodded in approval. For those who don't know, Veiga Coutinho, now 84, of Margao, was formerly a priest educated in Portuguese, who has left the priesthood. He now lives in New York with his American wife Barbara and son named Ravindra. His book is a meditation on colonial Goa, written from the perspective of a pro-Indian.

Lino Leitão: Tiatrs and khells were vital elements of Goan culture to the common people of Goa then. That was the era of no radio and TV. The plots of tiatrs and khells satirized the landlords, bureaucrats and other bigwigs. The commoners, who were kept analfabetos –illiterate, had no other outlets to give vent to their repressed anger and irate emotions. By going to these performances they got imaginary revenges on their oppressors and laughed to their hearts’ content at their own peccadilloes and follies.

Another significant novel of that dictatorial period, besides Sorrowing Lies My Land, is Orlando da Costa’s novel, O Signo da Ira – Sign of Anger, written in Portuguese in 1940’s. Orlando da Costa, a Goan, who now resides in Portugal, explores in this novel the numerous iniquities that the Goan psyche inherited from the colonial and feudal system. Prof. Peter has included its summary and a chapter in translation in the Anthology. Dictator Salazar’s administration had banned this novel, but in 1961 it won the Ricardo Malhieros Award. Prof. Cielo, somehow, missed to make a reference to this novel in her article. But, to my understanding, the novel depicts accurately the social reality and the subdued psyche of the Goans of that period. So, Signo da Ira, is, too, the outcome of that colonial experience.

“Who is a Goan?” this question is addressed by A. K. Priolkar, a Goan historian. He finds it difficult to define Goan identity in terms of ethnicity, notes Prof. Cielo. That’s because We Are World Wanderers, as the renowned Goan poet, Manohar Sardessai, recites. Goan soul is universal. When it soars and flies, crossing the boundaries of the native land, Goan Diasporas carry Goa in their soul.
Diaspora Goan writers, like Ben Antão and myself have never left Goa as writers; we carry Goa in our souls and imaginations. To quote a well-known Goan thinker Dr. Francisco Luís Gomes (1829-1869):

The land of one's birth isn’t one's Nation, but certainly it lies in the family images that one carries in one's mind, in the early reminiscences of one's youth, in the heredity of our forefathers, and indeed it lies in all these infinite bonds of love.

Ben Antao: To use a cliche, I'd say you can take the Goan out of Goa, but you can't take the Goan out of him. I never imagined that my Goan consciousness would reflect in my writings even after being out of Goa for more than 35 years. When Cecil Pinto of Panjim commented in his recent piece in Goa Today about Goan fiction writers in English that I am a Goan writer living abroad, I thought he was flattering me. However, if Lino Leitao also says the same thing, who am I to deny the roots?

Lino Leitão: In the above citation of Francisco Luís Gomes, I think, Goan identity is embedded.

Ben Antao: I agree with the sentiment expressed by the great Goan journalist Francisco Luis Gomes.

Lino Leitão: I’m grateful to Prof Cielo for writing the essay and bringing it to my notice. She also wrote an article Reading the Gift of the Holy Cross, an article on my novel, which is due for publication in the literary journal of the University of São Paulo.


Lino Leitão
February 7, 2003