Perhaps you are a bookworm on a trip- curious about the tales of this little state, a casual reader sampling the local flavours or a long time resident of Goa looking for books close to home.
If so, here's a selection of books to help you kick off your journey through Goa, one story at a time.
The first is a book that has earned itself a legendary quality for several reasons. One reason is that Sorrowing Lies My Land by Lambert Mascarenhas, published in 1955, joined itself to the cry for freedom for Goa from the Portuguese rule. This is a simple story, set in the fictional village of Copena. It follows the lives of Tobias and his family as they struggled to deal with the onslaughts upon their family circle, their land and their identity as Goans. The book has a familiar feel as it plays out in the houses and fields of Goa, but it also takes on a revolutionary spirit as Tobias joined the fight against all that is laying waste to his sorrowing land.
The next book is Acchev by Pundalik Naik. Translated as The Upheaval, this novel was originally published in Konkani in 1977. Acchev takes off where the previous book on this list ends, after Goa's liberation. Beginning in the 1970s, the story traces the life of the village of Kolamba in Ponda and its various inhabitants. In the beginning, Pundalik Naik presents quaint tableaus of village pastimes and festivities, but the story soon gets murkier. As the first mines are blasted from the Goan, the firmament of Kolamba is shaken. The society, its morals, customs, dreams and livelihood are washed away forever as idyllic village life falls prey to the rampages of the mining industry. The story of Kolamba is true for several places in Goa even today and this book is the perfect wake up call to the destruction that corruption and greed has wrought upon the state and its people.
Ferry Crossing is a collection of Goan short stories edited by Manohar Shetty. It is a treasure horde of works from some of the most renowned authors on the Goan literary scene. The stories cover a wide range of topics including the bonds of family and the pain of an empty house, the religious ceremonies in hope of a child and the nuances of young love. It brings to life several amusing characters including Senhor Eusebio who returns from abroad to try and build the house of his dreams, the parish sacristan who gets the better of the village miser and Uncle Peregrine who travels around the world but returns to live out his days in his ancestral house. According to the introduction, this book was written in order to correct the ‘distorted picture of Goa' that many may harbour. This anthology manages to do just this with its simple style and stories drawn from the varied lives of the people of Goa.
The last book in the spotlight is Reflected in Water. This book is a collection of poetry, stories and essays about Goa, edited by Jerry Pinto. It includes contributions from writers from Goa, India and beyond. This collection will be of particular interest to those who want to delve more deeply into more intricate details of Goan culture. Here you will find chapters on St. Francis Xavier, feni, traditional Goan pao as well as Konkani folk music. There are also several short stories and poems set in Goa which allow for some lighter reading. There's even a collection of three ghost stories told in comic strip form that are particularly riveting.
These are four books to start off your Goan literary adventure. This list is by no means exhaustive, but is merely the tip of an ever-growing collection of stories right out of the Goan soil.
(Tara Saldanha holds a Master's degree in English. She lives under a pile of books, emerging at regular intervals to write about what she loves)
