Alia Abreu
TG : When you were young, did you come to Goa often with your family?
DM : I came to Goa when I was very young, but it was a trip I don’t remember. I remember seeing photographs with my grandparents. After that I didn’t come until I was in University. It was quite a big gap. But now I’ve come a few more times.
TG : Did you feel connected with Goa when you visited?
DM : You feel that connection to the place, but it’s quite weird, because you also see the differences. You hear about the stories, and some of that definitely seeps through and you see what your parents were talking about, but in some ways I realised how Canadian I was.
TG : What are the things that surprised or shocked you the most about Goa?
DM : How much it’s changing in the past trips I’ve come. When I first came, it was very quiet and not much traffic in my parents’ village. Now, there’s a lot of construction going on, and the pace at which India and Goa is changing is shocking. It’s happening everywhere of course, but the effect on the environment is concerning.
TG : You said that you didn’t really relate to any of the characters you read about in books when you were growing up...
DM : Yes. What we were taught and forced to read in school was very homogenous and from a privileged white historical perspective... I think that’s very limiting, because there are so many other perspectives not being considered.
TG : Did you guys have any Indian texts at all?
DM : No I don’t remember reading Indian authors in school. Then later, on my own, I discovered these great Indian authors like Arundathi Roy’s “The God of Small Things” and Jumpa Lahiri’s “The Inheritance of Loss”, Anosh Irani and Rohinton Mistry, which made me realise “This is what literature can be.”
TG : Tell us how you came by your publisher ...
DM : In the province where I live in Canada, there was an event on writers of colour, and the issues writers of colour face... My publisher was on different panels, and afterwards, I just randomly met him in the bathroom and gave him my card.
TG : Was your manuscript in place at that time?
DM : More or less. It was a very long process. From the time I started writing till the time of publication, the book took 10 years to complete. You reach a point where you’ve done all you can, and then have to let it go.
TG : Did it click with the first publisher?
DM : Yes, it just kinda happened that I met my publishers and it felt right. I liked the work they were putting out. I was very happy with the process. I think I got a little bit lucky, because usually there is a lot of rejection especially when it comes to short stories.
TG : Did you decide that you want your short stories to be a book right at the beginning?
DM : The two main characters kept popping up in my short stories. Their voices were the most intriguing to me, and any kind of writing I was doing, they came up. So then I thought, maybe this could be something.
TG : What do you like most about GALF?
DM : The energy around it. I love events like this because there’s so many people excited about books and literature. I also liked sharing my book with people here, cause it’s a different perspective - the Goan-Canadian perspective.
