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Showing posts with the label Damodar Mauzo

Goa’s Beloved Coconut Tree

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The ongoing controversy about the coconut tree not being a tree but a palm brings to mind Damodar Mauzo’s short story These are My Children , where the main protagonist Rosalina names her coconut trees after her three children who have left home to start a life of their own. The trees are surrogates for her children and she treasures them to the point of crossing swords with the authorities. Her last words in the short story are, ‘No! I won’t let you cut my trees. Cut me first, then cut my children!’ The underlying theme is the importance of the coconut tree is equivalent to that of one’s own children. The scientific fraternity has categorised the palm ( Arecaceae family) in terms of trees, shrubs, and woody vines. Palm trees, in fact, are noted in the regions where they thrive for their productive role in human life. The coconut palm has been labelled as a tree because of its growth habitat. The United States Department of Agriculture definition of a tree says: ‘Perennial, woody pl

The Genius of José Pereira

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Eccentric scholars do not abound in Goa and most recently she lost one of her most enigmatic sons. Tenacious in his pursuit of refined scholarship, José Pereira formed the fourth member of an intellectual group (Mario Miranda, Alban Couto and Eusebio Rodrigues) that had sworn to resurrect intellectual endeavours so dominant in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, but perhaps hindered by the censorship imposed by Portuguese dictator, Salazar. He passed away after completing 84 years of age, on the 26 th of January in the USA. Though a native of Curtorim, Goa, José Pereira was born in Mumbai and spent much of his life outside the realm of his ancestry. His literary contribution is vast, amounting to 145 articles and 24 books. His knowledge spanned a range of subjects, including theology, architecture, literature and ethnomusicology. Some of his books are Hindu Theology and Golden Goa’s Art. José Pereira’s illustrious academic career began with an honours degree in Sanskrit f

Stories Set to Music

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There is a new trend in the literary world in Goa: one that promises to set your foot tapping while listening to engrossing tales. That’s right – we are to be entertained by musical book readings. The author of Fair-Weather Brother , Pogoat, has already dipped his toes into this new experience at 6 Assagao with much success. Pogoat tells us that combining music with book readings is not an invention of the 21st century, beginning somewhere in the 1950s with great credit to the efforts of Jack Kerouac, American novelist, poet, and leader of the Beat Generation literary movement. Pogoat says, ‘Book readings with music go back a very long way, back into the 1950’s when the blues and jazz scene began to explode in America and the beat writers mixed it all up with prose and poetry. But the writer who took the art of musical reading to the mainstream media was Jack Kerouac. Jack claimed to know jazz more than any other writer, and his book readings with jazz music were culture defining momen

A Writer’s Journey From Mind to Keyboard: A Review

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Being a writer is a hard work and anybody who has dabbled in writing, albeit occasionally, will bear testimony to the fact. Imagine having the gumption to carry on with it alongside your primary source of income, or even adopting it as your only means of livelihood. Only the madness and passion that fuels the tenacity of writers presents us with a plausible answer to why there are people who have chosen to enter into writing professionally. From Mind to Keyboard , edited by Sheela Jaywant and published by Goa, 1556, is a book of stories from different writers living in Goa about their journeys as writers: what set off the spark and what kept them going despite any odds that presented themselves against their choice. The contributors are not all of Goan origin, and so they provide us with an insight into a writing world and its struggles that goes beyond the narrow confines of our State. It is, nevertheless, heartening to acknowledge the number of prominent writers Goa has produced. The

An Author in Translation

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Damodar Mauzo is a name well known to connoisseurs of good literature. A Konkani novelist and short story writer, he has won fame in the world of English literature too; having had his short stories and novels translated into English and his short stories  Teresa’s Man and These are my Children  included in Goa University’s syllabus for the BA course in English Literature. He has earned countless awards for his work, which include the Sahitya Akademi Award (1983) for his novel Karmelin and the Vimla V Pai Vishwa Konkani Puraskar (2011) for Tsunami Simon . A childhood attachment to books that grew from the age of ten, serves as the foundation of Mr Damodar Mauzo’s skilled authorship. He confesses his earliest choices, for lack of guidance, were not desirable in the sense of literary value. As time passed, however, he came upon writers who would shape his intellect and understanding, and enhance his skill as a litterateur. Sane Guruji, Sharadchandra Chatterjee, Premchand and others of

The Genius of José Pereira

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Eccentric scholars do not abound in Goa and most recently she lost one of her most enigmatic sons. Tenacious in his pursuit of refined scholarship, José Pereira formed the fourth member of an intellectual group (Mario Miranda, Alban Couto and Eusebio Rodrigues) that had sworn to resurrect intellectual endeavours so dominant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but perhaps hindered by the censorship imposed by Portuguese dictator, Salazar. He passed away after completing 84 years of age, on the 26th of January in the USA. Though a native of Curtorim, Goa, José Pereira was born in Mumbai and spent much of his life outside the realm of his ancestry. His literary contribution is vast, amounting to 145 articles and 24 books. His knowledge spanned a range of subjects, including theology, architecture, literature and ethnomusicology. Some of his books are Hindu Theology and Golden Goa’s Art . José Pereira’s illustrious academic career began with an honours degree in Sanskrit from Sidda