Hungry Tide - Writing out of Goa

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hungry-tidewriting-out-of-goa/767428/0

Dilip Bobb Mar 26 2011, 02:53 hrs

Goa can be all things to all people. Hedonist’s heaven, party place, hippie hangout, foodie paradise, seaside tourist attraction, exotic marriage of Indian and Portuguese and, above all, liberal, laid-back destination for the world’s lotus eaters. Goa is all of the above, but fountainhead of literary expression? That’s literally a novel side to its heterogeneous character.

We did have Frank and Dom Moraes but since then, Goa’s literary scene has been rather thinly populated except indirectly: Orhan Pamuk and Kiran Desai and Amitav Ghosh have vacation homes here. Yet, part of the charm of Goa is that there are always local groups who are striving to add respectability to the pleasure-seeker imagery. Enter the Goa Writers, an association that was founded to promote the state’s literary scene. Not all are authors: some write occasionally while pursuing other professions, there are the obligatory foreigners who have made Goa their home, others are expatriates, and there are those like Ghosh who migrate here every winter.

I’m wary of the phrase “new writing’ which suggests the emergence of Hunter Thompson clones high on substances and free association. It also smacks of vanity publishing, which is actually the case here: the book is published by the Goa Writers themselves under the imprint of Goa 1556, a reference to the year the first printing press in Asia started operations in Goa. Their efforts have been boosted by Ghosh joining in their literary crusade. For all that, this is a venture worth applauding.

Some of the contributions stand out, notably expatriate writer Victor Rangel-Ribeiro and the Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo. For the most part, the anthology consists of factual accounts of people’s lives: the foreigners on how they got to Goa and stayed on, while others are inspired by nostalgia or events that took place in their lives. If there’s anything that falls short of expectation, it is the star of the literary show, Amitav Ghosh, with a rather academic piece he first wrote in 2008 on a nautical dictionary compiled by a Goan seafarer, Anthony Vaz. The other celebrity who features here is fashion designer Wendell Rodricks who gives us an insight into his creative journey and where it all began.

There are a couple of poems, which are actually my pick from the selection for their wit and style, but overall the anthology does add some necessary spice to Goa’s cultural underpinnings and its literary stature which, till now, was dominated by original works in Konkani or Marathi. There is considerable promise in this mostly non-fictional collection — namely José Lourenço, Cecil Pinto and Rosalyn D’Mello — who manage to lift this well above sea level, so to speak. As a disparate collection, it is well worth a read, especially if you’re sitting in a shack on Baga beach while on holiday looking to absorb some local flavour along with the prawn curry and sorpotel.

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