Prutha Goa

For years Prof Prajal Sakhardande has been idolised by his students and admired for his activism. The college professor is famous for his ability to pull out historical facts at the drop of a hat and has indeed inspired many of his students to take up history as a subject of study. This associate professor of history at Dhempe College of Arts and Science at Miramar, Panjim, has been lecturing there since 1993. Prof Sakhardande is also the vice chairman of the Goa Heritage Action Group, a non-profit involved in the preservation of Goa’s heritage, and the convenor of the History-History Forum that organises history-related activities under his guidance.  Goa Gold Goa Silver: Her History, Her Heritage from Earliest Times to 2019 is the third book written by Prof Sakhardande. The first two are Muslim History and Heritage of Goa and Matanhy Saldanha, the Legend: Hero of the Subaltern , which was written with Santosh S Sawant Wadkar. Prof Sakhardande talks about his love for history, w

Kaavi art is slowly going to become a note in history if it is not revived and promoted. This is the message Heta Pandit, heritage activist and author of books such as Houses of Goa (co-authored with architect Annabel Mascarenhas) and Dust and Other Short Stories from Goa , geared up to send across to the audience gathered at Gallery Gitanjali, Panaji. Ms Pandit says, ‘I first saw kaavi at the Deshprabhu house in 1998. I was on a Homi Bhabha Fellowship and I went to the Deshprabhu house…It fascinated me then and it fascinates me now.’ A unique art form that originated in Goa, kaavi was Goa’s gift to Maharashtra and Karnataka. This art form possesses the wisdom of ages in that it has survived the rigours of weather, time and other deleterious factors. Showing the audience a visual description of an ordinary Goan house (the Boraskar house in Poinguinim), Ms Pandit explained that while some houses will have external embellishments of decoration on windows, the dogs, lions, soldiers seen